There’s a swirl of chatter, crinkling bags and children’s programs coming in symphonies of crashes of dialogue, music and ambient searching. Me? I’m in the bedroom. My laptop warming my legs as the rain peppers the dark tarmac roads in glistening wetness. I can hear the sound of tires cutting through the slick road in a hurried 5 PM hiss.
Today I came home early from the office. It was partly because I just didn’t want to be around a toxic personality. The toxicity is largely due to the unhappiness of the companies president. It’s quite sad and at the same time, it’s fucking discouraging. I’ve committed to this company for three years, this March, we drew up an MOU with milestones and shares tied to those milestones over a period of time in exchange for a reduced rate of compensation. The remaining shares owed seem to be a point of contention. As a friend of the product developer who brought me in, I believe in the mission of the company and the value we provide.
Earlier in 2016, the company president threatened to “put a bullet in the back of my head”. It sounds really screwed up, I know. Thankfully I recorded his forced apology prior to him “letting me go” for reasons that merely masked his inability to effectively run a company. What disturbed me most is not the bullet in the head comment but the lack of recognition for taking their shit product messaging and distilling it into an easy-to-understand video and website that helped him to raise a nice chunk of money. What I do is oftentimes referred by him as “a necessary evil” or “you’re not as important to the company as so-and-so…” So I left in October 2016. But hey, no hard feelings, I moved on and refocused on what I do best – build kick-ass websites and do kick ass marketing.
Projects came at me immediately. One after the other. After roughly 8 months, just as I was hitting my stride with more projects, I got a call. It was the president of the company. They needed me to do some work for a tradeshow. It was work, so I agreed. Then more work came. And more… Pretty soon I was pulled back into the company. Filled with optimism, I was all in. My wife and I were about to move to Oregon and I asked if there would be a problem working remotely. We cancelled our plans to move because I wanted to commit myself to the success of the company.
We hired a few people, who seemed to have the magic sales bullet but at the end of the day, what seemed to be an easy sell, was actually tough. So now I sit in the library, the day after I began writing this, following up on opportunities.
One thing I do know, I am surrounded by the abundance of the world. Unlimited resources at my disposal and I’m about to grab it.
Godspeed