Chapter 8
Iwake up to an email from my largest ongoing client. It’s a company I’ve worked with for years planning all their business trips.
They're moving to a corporate travel management platform run with artificial intelligence. The contract ends at the end of the year and they won’t be renewing it.
I read it twice. Then I put the phone face-down on the duvet and look at the ceiling and do the math in my head, which I've been doing in the abstract since the business started slowing and now have to do with real numbers.
End of year is six weeks away. The contract represented thirty percent of my agency revenue.
The content side doesn't cover the gap. Not yet.
Not yet. I hold onto that.
It takes about four minutes for the specific brand of quiet devastation that lives underneath my optimism to show up.
Not panic. Worse than panic in some ways, the slow recognition that something I built and loved is contracting, that the version of my career I imagined is not the version that's showing up, that I'm going to have to rebuild something and I don't know exactly from what yet.
I was so happy last night.
I'm allowed to be sad this morning. Both things exist.
I don't text the group chat immediately. I lie with it for a little while, which is something I'm learning to do, to hold the feeling before I deflect it with humor or pivot immediately to action. Anthony told me to slow down in the moment between seeing something and doing it.
I slow down instead of full on panicking and sending an email begging them to reconsider. Instead of sending an email, I text Holly.
MAYA: Bad news this morning, my biggest client is leaving at end of year.
HOLLY: Oh no. Maya. I'm so sorry.
MAYA: I'm okay. I will be okay. Just needed to say it to someone before I figure out what to do about it.
HOLLY: Do you want to talk? Grab some coffee? Brunch?
MAYA: Later maybe. I need to sit with it first.
HOLLY: Okay. I'm here.
HOLLY: Does he know?
MAYA: Not yet.
HOLLY: Tell him when you're ready. Not because you need fixing, just because he'd want to know what’s going on with you.
MAYA: I know he would.
MAYA: That's still strange to know someone cares about what’s going on with me just because he cares.
HOLLY: It gets less strange. It gets really good actually.
Anthony texts at eight-fifteen.
Anthony: Good morning. How did you sleep?
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?"
He pulls his chair closer to see the screen. His shoulder is against mine. He reads in silence.
He reads slowly which drives me nuts. I want him to read fast and give me his thoughts immediately. That’s the type of person I am. I’m worried when after he reads the whole thing, he goes back to the second page.
I want to know what he thinks. Not because I need validation, because I know I do. But, also, because he sees things clearly and he'll tell me the truth and I need truth more than validation.
"This is good," he says, finally.
"How good?"
"Justin will say yes to it."
I blink. "I didn't write it for Justin." Okay, maybe I wrote it with this resort in mind, just because I’m here and I know it.
"I know. But you should send it to him." He scrolls back to the rates. "These are too low. You know they're too low."
I did know they were too low. I wrote them too low because there's a specific fear that lives in the gap between what your work is worth and what you let yourself charge, and I haven't fully dealt with it yet. Because there’s a level of imposter syndrome attached to my work. If I raise my prices, will anyone even pay it? But, also, I know Justin and Holly and don’t want to ask for too much from them.
"There's a number that feels like enough and then there's a number that feels presumptuous," I say.
"The presumptuous number is closer to accurate." He looks at me. "What would you charge a wealthy client you didn't know?"
I tell him.
"That number," he says. "Not the one you typed."
This is what I mean when I say he takes care of me. Not the coffee, though the coffee matters. Not the hand-holding, though the hand-holding is its own world. This right here. Sitting with my work and telling me it's worth what it's worth when I'm afraid to say so.
"I'll revise it," I say.
"Good." He hands the laptop back. "The ranch content for your socials, what were you thinking?"
I tell him what I've been imagining. A long continuous series, not a one-off post but a running thread, following the animals through their rehabilitation.
The orphaned elk calves. The fawn. The foxes when they're ready for release. Something that gives a specific audience, the people who love travel and animals and stories that go somewhere, a reason to come back every week. They’ll be invested in the lives of each animal and in turn, in my feed.
He listens without interrupting.
"The release days are the best footage," he says, when I finish. "The day they go back to nature. That's what people want to see. Although, it can be hard for the caregivers and people who’ve grown attached to them."
"I was thinking that."
"You'd need to be there for those days." He says it evenly, looking at the mountain through the alcove window. "Some of them are weeks away. Some are spring."
He's talking about spring. He's talking about me being here in spring. It’s not about the animals or my work anymore and we both know it.
"I'd need a base," I say, carefully. "If I was going to be here that regularly. I can't live in the resort."
"No," he agrees. And doesn't say anything else.
He doesn't need to. He's placed the piece on the board and he's giving me time to see the whole board.
I see it.
I see it and it doesn't scare me and it probably should and I've decided to be honest about that instead of performing.
"I want to build something," I say. "With my brand, something real."
"I know." He looks at me. "You're already building it. You've been building it all week."
"I want to build it here."
The words land between us. I watch him take them in, watch something in his face go still and then quietly, completely certain.
"Then build it here," he says.
We spend the rest of the afternoon on it.
He pulls up a chair and we work through the pitch together — him with his coffee and his clear-eyed practicality, me with my laptop and the specific creative momentum that kicks in when I’m excited about something.
He catches the places where I'm vague because I'm afraid and asks questions until I get there.
He suggests a contact at a Colorado outdoor lifestyle publication he knows from the rehab network.
He tells me which of my blog posts he's read, which catches me so off guard that I stare at him.
"You read my blog," I say.