Page 3 of Love Me In Color

“I really don’t know if I can, Lainee.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Blake,” she spoke honestly. “If anyone here can handle it, it’s you.”

“You have entirely too much faith in me.”

“No, you don’t have enough faith in yourself. You’re the only one Nathaniel trusts with his accounts, and the man is an absolute control freak, so you know that you must be good at what you do.”

Lainee’s reassuring smile helped settle my nerves. She stared at me, waiting to hear the news that the email contained, with a mix of joy and suspense in her eyes.

“I need to open it eventually,” I hovered my mouse over the email.

Lainee encouragingly leaned forward, setting her elbows on my desk. Trepidation and excitement crowded the room as the email materialized before me. The text was short, typical for Nathaniel.

A loud sigh escaped me as I started to read it out loud.

Blake,

Meeting with Amelia is done. Contract is signed. She’ll be @ HQ with her team a week from Monday. Congrats! Project Porcelain is now in your very capable hands. Boarding now. See you tomorrow.

Nathaniel.

“He did it!” Lainee jumped from her seat. “Blake, he did it! This is incredible! I knew he could do it.”

“He did it…” I muttered.

Lainee brought her hands to her mouth and held in some of her excitement. She slowly put them down, revealing a smile that could light up the room.

I could hardly believe the words in front of me. The realization of the monumentality of this moment hit me like a freight train at full speed. A cocktail of panic, happiness, fear, relief, and excitement flooded me. I leaned back on my chair, threw my head back, and let myself smile for the first time since waking up this morning. My black office chair creaked as I shifted my weight.

Nathaniel’s proactiveness and perseverance, our countless hours poured into developing the perfect pitch, and lots of hope convinced Amelia to award us our most significant contract ever – a one-year deal to completely handle the marketing for Truly You Cosmetics across the entire country. We had been looking for a widespread national opportunity and finally had it.

Even after five years, Capital Media remained a small company, but our dreams were as big as ever. We served various companies across the country from our two small offices but had never handled one company’s entire national presence.

I turned to the windows that composed the back wall of my office and stared down at the streets of New Windsor, where our headquarters was established just three years ago. From this office, we served everything east of the Mississippi River.

The only other office was in California, which had been the original birthplace and headquarters of the company. From there, that team served the rest of our customers since they were primarily local to them. Since our contracts were mostly regional, the two locations had never worked on a joint campaign. Our regions required vastly different approaches, so there was little collaboration. Our presence in the South and Midwest was scant due to a lack of resources, which was quickly changing.

I suffered a mixture of dread and anticipation at the prospect of working with the California office.

Amelia’s company, Truly You Cosmetics, was a recently founded brand focused on cruelty-free and ‘green’ cosmetics. When we started working on their presentation, I ordered some of their items and fell in love with them. Their mascara didn’t leave gunk behind when I took it off, and their face cream didn’t leave a film on my face as many others did. Advertising a product I enjoyed was easier, so putting together the materials was more enjoyable than not.

From what I understood, Amelia herself had been handling most of the marketing since their support team was small. Most of their employees were focused on research and development. However, their brand was taking off, and she wanted her team to continue focusing exclusively on their products and not worry about marketing. That’s where my team shined.

Someone in Nathaniel’s web of contacts caught wind that they were open to outsourcing their marketing and passed the tip on to Nathaniel. Immediately, he focused most of his efforts on the Truly You contract and started trying to win them over. We were met with hesitancy and skepticism due to our inexperience with a nationwide campaign, but Nathaniel could be awfully persuasive.

We worked day and night for two weeks to develop the perfect pitch to prove to Amelia that we were the best choice. We were young and small but highly motivated to put forth our best efforts. The countless hours spent confined in the conference room amongst mountains of takeout had come to fruition.

Lainee and I walked out of my office, and I looked out at my team sitting at their desks. I watched them finish their days for a few seconds. This was the team that made this opportunity happen.

Jamie, my research genius, poured over a spreadsheet filled with numbers. Her head was down, and her pencil was moving, indicating that she was double-checking some of the math she had been staring at. Sometimes, I swore that she would be better off without a computer.

Stephen, my gifted graphic designer and the only person on my team who could see all the colors, furiously drew in his notebook. His ideas were often perfected on paper before he touched the software that we spent thousands of dollars on. It frustrated Connor sometimes, but he could design it first on sand, for all I cared, as long as the beautiful outcome was the same.

The rest of our portion of the floor was sparse. The only people left on this side of the break area were us and Gordon from IT, who seemed to be fighting with his monitor. There were cables everywhere, and the monitor was on its side.

Between the four of us, we handled seven long-term contracts and over a dozen short-term assignments at any given time. The workload was heavy, the hours sometimes long, and we desperately needed to add headcount, but my team was excellent. Every day, I aimed to make them feel appreciated and ensured they were adequately rewarded for their hard work.

“Hey guys, can I get a few seconds before we head home?” I called out.

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