Page 10 of The Frock Up
"Forgot?"
I shrugged. "It happens."
She seemed to be struggling to suppress whatever words were burning on the tip of her tongue.
Go on, Sally. Let me have it.
"You're not a child, Ash. You are a grown man. You are a CEO. The CEO. You founded this company and have grown it to be what it is today. But that growth—that exponential growth that has allowed you the luxuries you have today—it relies on you maintaining it. You have employees who need you to lead."
I sucked in a breath, feeling as if I'd been punched in the gut. "Noted."
"Now." She shifted in her chair, reaching down to pull a tablet from her bag. "Let's talk design agencies. I approached eight small-to-medium-sized businesses that had stellar reviews. Of these, five agreed to submit a proposal. Of those five, only three are suitable. I've assembled the package for you to approve."
She tapped on her screen, casting the three logos onto the monitor on one of the walls in my office.
Of the three, one stood out.
"The bottom one. What's their pitch?"
She hesitated, her finger hovering over the screen. "The logo is good, but the launch pitch…. It's quite ambitious."
"Play it."
The video rolled; the sounds of nature filling my office, overlaid by an instrumental medley. Short snippets of people from around the world played across the screen—a man sweating as he ran up a hill track beside a clear flowing stream, a woman and her daughter swimming, a couple crying as they broke up on the beach. Each focused on the water in the scene.
The music shifted, the images changing to sludge-filled water, dark and horrible. To water contaminated by pollutants.
The final image was of a young girl holding one of our water filters. As she poured filthy water through the filter, clear water emerged, filling the glass.
The final image was of the clear glass. Words appeared on the screen.
Every drop counts.
"Wow," I said as the screen faded to black. "That was exceptional. What's the ambitious part?"
"They want Dogg Wood Industries to partner with a not-for-profit whose aim is to bring clean and safe drinking water to everyone. They want us to donate two filters for every one sold."
"Sally, this is perfect. This is exactly what we were aiming for when we created this product."
Her lips pursed together in a way I'd begun to recognize as a signal for her displeasure.
I sighed. "Go on."
"Accounts did the sums. We'll lose money for the first five years."
"How much?"
"At least ten percent."
I leaned back in my seat, pressing a button on my phone.
My brother answered immediately. "Yo, bro, what's up?"
"James, if we lost ten percent on the water filtration over five years what are we looking at figure-wise?"
There was a pause. My brother was a certified genius when it came to numbers—hence becoming my Chief Financial Officer.
"About eight-to-ten million, depending on sales."
