Me: Not long enough. You?
Anthony: Same. I have rounds until noon. Can I find you after?
Me: I'll be writing. Come to the library alcove.
Anthony: I'll bring coffee.
Of course he will.
I put the phone down and look at the mountain view and think about how strange it is to have someone who knows how you take your coffee within a week of meeting you.
I don't know his order, I realize. I should find that out.
I should find out everything about him.
I write for three hours in the alcove. The big client email sits in the back of my brain and I keep going back to it, not obsessively, but it’s hanging heavy over me.
I work on the content calendar instead of the agency side. I map out the resort launch piece, the follow-up features, the reindeer footage I have that's going to do well, the ranch content I want to ask Anthony about developing further. I open a new document, and I start drafting a partnership pitch that’s not generic but very specific. It’s for a luxury resort ambassador relationship that consists of ongoing content with guaranteed reach in exchange for access to the resort and a base fee.
I write the pitch for the Evergreen first, because I know it best now, and because writing to something real is easier than writing to something hypothetical.
It takes ninety minutes and it's good. I know it's good.
You're not selling the wrong thing. You're just pricing it wrong. The algorithm can plan the trip, but it can't be you. That's the product. You’re the product. You have to figure out how to advertise it as such.
Anthony said that to me and I've been thinking about it ever since.
He arrives at twelve-fifteen with two coffees. He pauses when he sees the documents open on my laptop and reads enough to understand what he's looking at.
"You've been busy," he says.
"I had a productive morning." I take the coffee. "Also a difficult one. Can I tell you something?"
He sets his coffee down, moves the other chair to face mine, and sits. Giving me his full attention without being asked.
That. That level of presence. It's the thing I didn't know I needed and now I don't know how I went without it.
"I got an email this morning," I say. "A big client is leaving. They represent thirty percent of my agency revenue, gone by the end of the year."
He doesn't make a sound of sympathy. He doesn't immediately offer solutions. He just looks at me with those steady dark eyes and says, "How are you feeling about it?"
How are you feeling about it?
I realize what he didn’t say. He didn’t ask what my plan was or offer suggestions on what I should do. Just, how are you feeling? Like the feeling comes first and the plan comes after and both of them matter. Because I matter.
"Like I built something I love and it's changing shape on me," I say. "Like I know there's a path forward but I'm not entirely sure I can see it yet. Like I'm sad and also fine and I'm trying to be honest about both."
"That's all true," he says.
"Yes."
"Good that you're not skipping the sad part."
I wasn't going to acknowledge it at all, I almost say. But I might have, a week ago. I might have gone straight from the email to the productivity, used the doing as a way to not feel the losing.
Something about this week has changed the order of operations.
"I made a pitch document," I say. "Want to look at it?"
