“Perhaps it will,” Norcross said slowly. He let out a sigh. “I have to tell you, Ms. Vincent—I like you. I like this lotion.” He pushed it back across the desk toward her.
“You can keep that bottle,” she said quickly.
He nodded. “Thank you, I will. But this is a tough industry, and I’m not hearing you mention a clear marketing differentiator. What’s going to separate you from all the other skincare products out there? Why will people choose yours?”
“We’re going to be the best,” Stephanie said. It sounded trite even to her own ears.
“They all say that,” Norcross said. “That’s the problem. I’d like to help you out with this, but I don’t know if I can justify the loan in the amount you’re asking for. I’m sorry.”
Stephanie felt as if her stomach had been hollowed out. Just like that, in the matter of a few sentences, the whole thing was over. “You’re turning me down?”
Norcross nodded. “I’m sorry. But don’t hesitate to set up another meeting if you come up with something else you’d like to share. I do think your goals are interesting, and I’d like to hear more about them.”
He looked down at some papers in front of him, and Stephanie realized she was being dismissed.
Great. Back to the drawing board. What am I going to do now?
Her spirits hadn’t lifted by the time she made it back to the apartment she shared with her terrier, Bruno. He leapt eagerly at her as she let herself in and she scooped him up and went to sit on the couch. With a sigh, she scratched him behind the ears.
“What am I going to do now, Bruno?” she murmured. “We have no funding. That was my best plan.”
He licked her face soothingly and wagged his tail.
Stephanie tipped her head back and stared at the ceiling. There was simply no getting around the fact that she needed money to continue building her business. She wouldn’t be able to keep making product if she didn’t get funding from somewhere. And now the bank had turned her down.
I need to find someone else who might endorse my company. Someone who might be able to get behind what I’m doing enough to invest. But where am I going to find someone like that—someone who both has enough money to invest in this line and understands and values skincare well enough to take a chance on me personally?
It seemed impossible. And if she was even going to have a shot at it, she knew, she was going to have to meet with a lot of people wealthy enough to make investments all at once. She needed a bunch of possibilities all in one place.
She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to think of the answer.
And then her eyes snapped open.
The San Valentino Innovator Awards.
It’s perfect.
But it was insane. Stephanie had dreamed, now and then, of receiving an invite to the SVI awards ceremony, but she had certainly never gotten one. The awards were ostensibly for people who were doing bold and daring things in their independent businesses, and a lot of them did honor that sort of thing, but as an unspoken rule, you had to be above a certain threshold of profitability to be a contender. It was a threshold Stephanie had never come close to crossing with SilkSoft. Thepeople who gave out those awards probably didn’t even know who she was.
But they could know. They could find out. Or, more to the point, the other people on the guest list could find out.
An event like that would be full of big names. Rich people. People who had already succeeded in business and were now looking to pay it forward. If she was in that room, she might meet someone who would be charmed by her story and her desire to make her hopes and ambitions come true.
She could attend the awards ceremony.
She could sneak in and meet with people she had no business meeting with. They would be important and influential, and either they would help her or they would be able to connect her with someone else who could. Even being in that room and having the chance totalkabout SilkSoft would be good, would advance her toward what she was trying to do. It would mean more people knew about it, and that would be to her benefit.
Of course, if I get caught sneaking in, I’ll look incredibly foolish—and that’s the best-case scenario.
Still, she was smiling as she moved Bruno to the floor. He trotted along behind her to her closet, where she began to comb through her clothes, looking for the perfect thing to wear to the event.
How was she going to get in? No doubt it was the kind of thing where you would have to show an invitation at the door, and she didn’t have one. Her name wouldn’t be on any guest lists, either. She would have to find a way to convince people she was supposed to be there without having any evidence to support her claim. That was going to be difficult.
But Stephanie believed she could do it. She was a charmer and she knew it. She was good at making people see things her way. If only it had worked with Oliver Norcross today! But he seemed to have been prepared to say no to her from the moment she had walked in the door, she thought gloomily. She had been naive to think she’d ever had a chance at that bank loan.
It’s exactly like I told Norcross when I was meeting with him today. If you’re not going to do something yourself, nobody is going to do it for you.
Nobody was going to hand her success. Nobody was going to give her what she needed to make her dreams come true.
