The other day I was flipping through my old Rolodex (you know, that iconic desk accessory that doubles as a warehouse of accumulated life stories) when all of a sudden I passed into… what was. I started remembering all the people I knew and worked with. Yes, these were once my people!
Every card held a story.
There was the print rep who always had a trunk full of condoms (pleasure pack courtesy of her biggest client, Trojan) and whose relationship status could be described as… revolving; the world-famous photographer with bipolar disorder who refused to take his meds saying they killed his creative edge – you did the ride with him because his photos were always worth it; the copywriter who spent a week on a sentence and whose words were so very precious that, god forbid, my client wanted to make a change; and the eccentric CEO, with the famous name of tire fame, who always showed up to every executive portrait session flying low. (Ahem, excuse me, sir, could you…)
While remembering them, I also remembered an earlier me. Yeah, that me. The blew-that, tried-that, believed-that me. Why am I always bumping into older versions of myself? Maybe because inside 65-year-old me is 35-year-old me. I’m sentimental I guess. It’s why I still have my old Rolodex. It’s also why I never want to trash my previous iterations. Because whenever I go back in time to some version of myself, I’m given the gift of clarity.
Thank God for new creation!
Blew-that Me
I came across a funny meme the other day. It read “Someone said ‘30 years ago’ and my mind went ‘Ah, yes! The 1970s,’ but they meant 1992, and now I need to lie down.”
Remember the early ‘90s? We were in a deep, prolonged recession. The buzz phrase was ‘Survive to 95’. Lots of people didn’t. Many lost their jobs and their businesses.
My husband and I were in the early stages of our business, still coming off the glorious excess of the previous decade. Our business was design and marketing – you know, the expendable fluff. The last budget item to be funded and the first one to be cut. Funny, isn’t it, when business is good you think you’re so smart. But when the economy goes south it makes you realize you’re just dumb with a lot of confidence. Now those generous budgets were gone, new work was impossible to find, and no one was paying their bills on time – including us.
When you’re a creative entrepreneur running a small business you do it all: pitch new business, manage existing business, and try to keep everyone on the team motivated. Plus, you make sure you never run out of coffee because it’s the late show every night. Nothing was more important than doing great work, getting the next marketing award, and the praise of our peers.
But in a recession, nothing is more important than managing your ins and outs.
Billings, collections, cash flow – who’s got time for that bookkeeping stuff when we have a deadline Friday!? We were lucky enough to have blue-chip clients and a lucrative book of business – you might even say a sort of low-grade fame. But while big clients are nice to have, they also leverage their “bigness” and pay… all in good time.
Suddenly, one morning – and I do mean suddenly – the bank called our loan. Guess we should’ve found the time for that bookkeeping stuff. Seems we’d maxed out our line of credit while current receivables were still a recession factoring 60-90 days away. Those same blue-chip clients and lucrative contracts that were once considered valuable assets were now – to use that banking term – insufficient collateral.
Have you ever had to come up with $100K in six hours? Let’s just say you make some phone calls. Truth is, when this kinda thing happens, the people who show up for you are not the people with money. They’re the people who believe in you.
After securing I-believe-in-you-financing, cutting expenses, laying-off staff and establishing payment terms with clients and suppliers while our business activities were constantly scrutinized by our banker, we were still in the game. Thankfully, we survived to ‘95 – and beyond.
Failure was always an option. But nothing motivated me quite like the fear of failure.
That was 30 Catherines ago.
Tried-that Me
Networking is a skill I was never really good at. Introvert Me prefers the world of ideas, learning new things, problem-solving, and the satisfaction of a job well done. But one year, believing I should be somebody I’m not by trying to enlarge my sphere of influence, I decided to join LeTip.
LeTip was a US-based professional networking organization with several Canadian chapters. Why the ‘Le’ you ask? Because French gives everything a touch of cachet! Anyway, it was based on the you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours philosophy of salesmanship disguised as relationship-building.
Every Wednesday morning I’d wake up at 4:30, grab a shower, a quick cup of coffee, throw on my power suit, pantyhose (armour up with control-top and reinforced toe), and black pumps. Then it’s off to Toronto for my weekly 6:30 am breakfast meeting with my LeTip group. The group included a contractor, a print rep, an insurance broker, a financial planner, an estate lawyer, and a realtor – people who were either running a small business or earning income based on commission.
The purpose of our breakfast meetings was to help each other find new customers by providing quality sales leads (tips) each week to at least one person in our group. Offering a tip was a requirement if you wanted to “belong”. I made sure to show up each week with a sales tip for somebody.
So this is what networking’s all about. It starts with a $4.99 homestyle breakie, followed by giving a two-minute elevator pitch while scratching the back of the guy sitting next to you as you pass around the tip bucket believing you’ve done a good deed for the day.
That’s when I realized that caring mattered more than connections and I was just showing up every Wednesday morning to make sure I didn’t lose my membership in “the club”.
Is there anything more intoxicating than belonging?
Believed-that Me
In the days pre-LinkedIn and pre-social media there was this thing in the zeitgeist called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, or Bacon’s Law: the theory that two people in the world are just six connections apart from each other.
To reduce our firm’s Bacon Number (the number of degrees needed to reach Kev and Hollywood-like success), we hired a sales guy. He had a track record in marketing sales… and connections. He knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy. Y’know.
One day he managed to get in the door at Sears to discuss a lucrative project right in our wheelhouse. He was given the chance to make a second pitch to senior management, so I joined him.
We felt pretty good about our pitch. In fact, we nailed it! Our invitation to bid on the project arrived the next day but we were assigned a presentation date at the same time I’d booked a family vacation. I/we really needed that vacation! We called the client to ask if there was any flexibility on our allotted time slot, that I was planning to be away then and we could be ready with our proposal earlier, if needed. You know the trope: You snooze (a.k.a. attend a parent’s funeral, break both legs, catch dysentery or take a vacation), you lose.
I waved my family goodbye as they drove off to our Muskoka resort.
On the morning of our presentation, I packed up our creative boards, five copies of our proposal plus my suitcase. Sears’ head office wasn’t far from the Toronto bus terminal where, immediately following, I hopped on a Greyhound to Muskoka. During that four-hour bus ride, I had plenty of time to re-run the entire meeting over and over again in my head, line-by-line, analyzing every word spoken, every nuanced expression. Have you ever noticed how the perfect words come so much easier the second time around in your head?
When I got back a week later the Comms manager at Sears called me. She said, “I’m happy to tell you that we’ve decided to move ahead with your firm.”
“Fantastic! When do we get started?”
That moment when we were awarded a big project felt like the happiest moment in my life. It was also the moment I always wanted more happiness.
Bacon sizzles with the false promise of fulfillment.
Remember earlier you
One of my favourite writers and teachers, Anne Lamott, says “We are all the ages we’ve ever been”. Yes, we are who we are and who we were at the same time. Our histories become the groundwork from which we move forward, hopefully with less judgment and a lot more love and understanding.
It’s good to remember earlier you.
Think about that time in your life that looked like failure but was actually a win… or when something happened to you exactly when you needed it to happen… or the time you came close to losing all the things you could’ve lost, but didn’t. Or maybe you did. Because sh** happens.
Sometimes I wonder if my card is nestled in someone else’s Rolodex somewhere out there. If so, please don't write about something stupid I did 30 years ago. I’ve got that covered already. Instead, let’s reunite with awe that we’re still here despite our failures and our successes, our fears and our dreams, our doubts and our convictions.
Because grace people.
It’s new creation. All day. Every day!
Epilogue
Imagine this gigantic Rolodex containing a file card for every person on the planet spinning (as one does) ‘round and ‘round supported by a rotating wheel at the centre of existence. Now, imagine your card in there for a minute. On it is your name, address, contact info, how many hairs on your head, all your lies, your truth, your likes and dislikes, your hopes and your longings, your gifts and your potential. You get the idea. Around the edges of your card, in your cursive, are all your failures, foolishness, and fears. Add a few illnesses, maybe rehab, some financial struggles, family and marital conflicts and it’s starting to look a lot like your life. Yup, it’s all on there; nothing goes undocumented. Changes to your card are easily managed with a little White-Out (that heavenly fluid applied to mostly errors in judgment). I know, it starts to get a bit caked on and crusty after a while, but think of it this way: without it, your card looks a bit boring and pathetic. And if you’re really lucky, there won’t be enough room left on either side of your card for new entries, so new information is paper-clipped on. It’s really an elegant solution. You might even start to imagine that this thing held your soul.
I’d like to see a smartphone do that.
