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Andrew frowns as he lets the thought percolate. “Dad would call you a fucking idiot,” he says. Neither of us is paying any attention to the financial director, and he’s already sitting down, quietly listening to our conversation.
“Father doesn’t run this company anymore. I do. And I want your honest opinion. Do you think we could turn the enemy into a product?”
Andrew stretches out and puts his hands behind his head before he stares up at the ceiling. “It sounds like the perfect place to steal talent. No one else has done it, though. How would we go about it? We’re not set up for direct acquisition. We run through agencies like everyone else.”
I grin. “What if we bought an agency whose only job was to go through the slush pile of self-publishing?”
“That’d be the worst job in the world.” I don’t disagree with that at all.
“Good thing we’re not the ones who would do it.”
Andrew thinks about it for a few minutes. “I mean, that sounds fantastic.”
Then the financial director pipes up. “Where would that money come from, though? Your revenue is falling, and it doesn’t look like it’ll be coming back up anytime soon. Where would you find the money to do all of this?”
Andrew glances at me and back at the financial director. “You know what Dad would say, don’t you?”
“Cut costs before any expansion. That’s the rule.”
He nods. But what costs? Everything’s running as tight as possible. I chew my lip and look at the financial director. “Any thoughts?”
He sits back in his chair, the presentation completely forgotten at this point. “There are some places with excess… I’ll write up a list of possibilities.”
“Have a preliminary list on my desk by the end of the day. This is the answer, guys. Short term, it’ll be a pain, but in the end, I’m almost positive that this is our way out of the hole the entire industry is falling into.”
I look back at Andrew, who’s grinning but kind of looks terrified. “We need to focus on the big goal. A complete shift in trajectory toward blending a side of our business with self-published authors. We’re going to kill the Beijing expansion.”
“That was Dad’s baby,” Andrew says. “He was sure that was the answer.”
“Dad was wrong. This is the way we’re going to dig ourselves out of Dad’s hole.”
I stand up. “Come up with ideas on who we can get to run that side of things. I’ll look into how we’ll afford it. By the end of next week, I want things to start moving.”
Andrew and the financial director nod to me, and I walk out of the conference room, more excited than I have in a long time. For a decade, my family has watched our growth shrink while other publishing houses have started to actually see contraction. No one’s had answers to the changing industry.
We figured it out. I’m sure of it.
I sigh as I look at my phone, which was silenced during the meeting. We went over the expected time by thirty minutes.
And I missed lunch.
Addison Adelaide
Are we still on for our special lunch?
Addison Adelaide
Hello?
Addison Adelaide
Guess not.
Addison Adelaide
Is everything okay?
I can feel the frustration building inside me. Not at her, obviously. Just at how impossible this is. I’ve left the big decisions to my father for so long, and he’s taken the safe route. Nothing new or innovative. Just tweaks and optimizations on the old systems.
