Wacky Dancing at Liberty Tax Can Lead to Good Things

Who would have thought a stint as a sign spinner would be a career path to marketing executive?

It happened for not one but two marketing managers at at 16310 S. Lincoln Highway in Plainfield. 

I stopped to chat with Derek Graf, who was dancing and waving at an exhausting pace along the shoulder of U.S. 30. His blue-green Statue of Liberty robe waved wildly in the breeze and I wondered how many hair pins it took to make that crown stay put on his bobbing head. 

Graf plucked his headphones from his ears and shouted enthusiastically when I asked him how he liked this kind of work. 

“I love it!”  he said. “It’s like getting paid for dancing and having fun.” 

What was he listening to? 

“Christian music,” he said. “I love it so.” 

Drivers honked and gave Graf the thumbs-up as they motored by.  

I went inside to meet Graf’s bosses, Greg Jarrett, who heads up marketing for Liberty’s Joliet region, and Kevin Ball, marketing director for the Plainfield U.S. 30 office. 

“I started out as a sign spinner,” Jarrett said. 

Before I could pick my jaw up off the floor, Ball chimed in. 

“So did I,” he said. 

In fact, Jarrett donned the crown and pranced at the curb for a few hours just last week. 

“I went back to my roots,” he said. 

Jarrett was such a spectacular spinner that the YouTube video he made at a 48-hour office slumber party at the Shorewood office in 2009 won the staff national honors. (He's the guy in the striped pants and hat spinning the American flags.)

The Liberty Tax guys say the spinners bring in about 60 percent of their customers. It something you see outside all of the Liberty Tax storefronts.

“That’s why I came here,” said Rudy Lucas, of Plainfield, who was waiting see a tax pro. 

“They put in so much effort out there, I figured they would put out that much effort in here,” he said.