Chapter 30: Things Get Serious

I stood at the front of the posh conference room on the executive floor of PR Engineering Headquarters. Against one wall sat the rest of my ragtag consulting team: Sheri, Maryann, Todd, Kevin, Owen, and Dale. Tara was sitting with them taking notes for Tom, plus she’d also helped us put the presentation together.

Tom, the CEO, sat a few feet away in the nearest leather-bound barrel swivel chair. Across from him sat Herb Winters, the head of marketing, and probably the most important member of the executive team that we were trying to please. He was also the Number 2 man in the company to follow Tom.

We’d already screened the presentation with Herb, so nothing I said should have been a surprise. Tom had also helped put the presentation together, knowing his colleagues as he did. He wanted our recommendations to happen.

Our team of consultants, named Porter Consulting after my last name, had spent six months on the job and talked to the top four layers of management in the company, even going into the field to meet with some of their project leaders. PR had paid us over a million dollars to do this, although I hadn’t even had time to think about my relatively new riches.

A thick notebook had been given to each of the ten executives with my presentation, an anonymized summary of the interviews, a benchmark study comparing PR Engineering with fourteen other worldwide engineering companies of comparable size, a statistical breakdown of the past twelve years of company business, and more. The final report was about two-hundred pages, plus the one-hundred PowerPoint slides that were really dense in terms of content.

I looked out over the executive and said one word, “Questions?”

I had been talking at about the speed of machine gun for an hour. The men and women in the room had about two major ideas a minute dropped on them. Some were costly, but significant. They’d been prioritized. They’d also seen relevant samples of our recommendations where specific electronic or print media was involved.

John Winston, the CFO of the company was sitting at the other end of the table from me and hence Tom and Herb. He stood up and started to applaud. Gradually, the other men at the table also stood and looked in my direction and then at my team, and applauded.

I thought, ‘Holy shit. They liked it.’ I gestured to my colleagues sitting against the wall.

Tom stood and wrapped his arm around me, and then invited the rest of Porter Consulting to come up to the front of the room. He got Tara to come up, too.

John spoke from the far end, “When this study started, I thought we might be throwing good money after a wild goose chase. I admit I was very wrong to think that. This is the best piece of outside help this firm has ever received. I congratulate all of you.”

The other managers nodded. I was blushing.

Herb said, “Much of this report falls in marketing’s lap. I plan to personally oversee the overhaul of our marketing efforts. Brie doesn’t know this yet, but she and her team are being asked right now to continue with us for at least the coming year to help bring their recommendations into fruition as rapidly as we can. I add my thanks to John’s and I know Tom is in agreement with this.”

Tom shook my hand. He said a few words of appreciation, and then the meeting adjourned. I was almost speechless.

Tom said, “I bet you didn’t expect that did you?”

I shook my head. “They bought all of it.”

“Yep. A small secret, not to take anything from your work, but Tara let it leak that I helped build the PowerPoint presentation. No one wanted to displease the boss, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t have voiced their concerns if they had any. Of course, I only did the two background slides on the company, but they don’t need to know that. Tara will correct any misconceptions in the coming week.” He laughed.

Herb came up, “I’m serious about keeping you around here for the coming year. Before you leave, please let’s talk.”

Tom gestured for me to leave the meeting with Herb. I shrugged and followed him out of the conference room. Sheri moved into my spot to talk to Tom. She’d become my strong number two in Porter Consulting, much to my surprise. She was a go-getter.

I had worried about what would happen when the job at PR Engineering ended. Kevin had stirred up several other strong leads, and at least one of them looked like a sure thing for future business closer to home. Now, we’d also have follow-on work from PR. We were on solid ground for a while.

I thought of how the work at PR had been the result of meeting Tom at Mike’s home when we were engaged in some swinging sex. That was an odd place to pick up some multi-million-dollar consulting work.

Mike had also asked me and Owen to spend some more time in his company doing some technology planning work, particularly upgrading their security yet again. A competitor had just paid out several million dollars due to a ransomware attack, and Mike didn’t want to ever face that threat.

The work we did for Candy and Connie also paid off for them in a large way. Candy now had a dozen shops between Colorado Springs and Loveland, with the concentration in and around Denver. Flowers by Candy was a huge success. She was about to make another acquisition of a competitor. Connie’s boutiques were also expanding at a rapid rate.

Herb and I sat down in his office. He outlined what he had in mind for the coming year as I took notes. Pretty much it was to take our recommendations and make them into tangible pieces of PR Engineering’s operations. Several would involving them hiring additional staff that had broader knowledge of marketing rather than a pure engineering background.

I went back to the office that Tara had assigned to the outside consultants and told the rest of the team what was planned. Sheri volunteered to write the proposal and then run it by the rest of us before we presented it to Herb and his staff. We also talked about how we’d staff the job. Not everyone that had been on the PR job would be involved in the next effort.

While I’d been meeting with Herb, Kevin had confirmed new client work in Tampa. This would be great because whoever was on that team could be home every night.

I checked in with Tom before we headed out. We were scheduled to fly back to Sarasota that evening, but Tom asked me to stay. “I have something serious to talk to you about.” I thought there might be some kind of a consulting problem, but didn’t think so. We had a relationship with intense communications. If something was wrong with our work, I would have heard about it before now.

I said goodbye to the rest of the team, and went back to Tom’s office. He gestured for me to shut the door. This was rare because Tara sat right outside his door and was privy to just about everything that went on in Tom’s life.

Tom gestured to the sofa in his office and he sat at the other end. He pulled out a bulky envelope from his desk drawer and set it on the table.

He began, “I was married for twelve years in my twenties and early thirties. I was too wrapped up in my work, as I still am, and Paula, my wife then, couldn’t take my long absences and lack of concern for the family. I have two children fresh out of college now, but I didn’t have much to do with their growing up.”

He sighed, “I think I’m a different person now, but I need your guidance on the next steps in my life. I guess I’m asking you to be my life coach, but I’m on the verge of a decision and need your advice.”

Tom reached over and took the package and pulled a ring box from inside. He opened the box and showed me the ring. He said, “I want to ask Tara to marry me, but I’m very unsure of many things.

“First, would she accept? She knows how I can lose myself in the business for days at a time – even weeks. Second, if she accepted could we still work together? Would that even be wise? Third, she’s young enough that I think she’d want at least one child; am I ready for that? Fourth, would the dynamic of our group sex sessions change? I like those and I know she does, but would being engaged or married change that? Fifth,...” he paused, “I wonder if we could create something meaningful together.”

He looked at me and his face was full of those questions and many others, plus I’d never seen him so unsure of himself. He was the CEO of multi-billion-dollar business. Where’d this uncertainty come from?

I plunged in to respond to his concerns.

“Tom, Tara adores you and has since she first went to work for you twelve years ago. In many ways, she’s already married to you. Of course, she’d accept. Becoming engaged and married would be closure to her. I have no doubts about that.

“As far as working together, you already are. Thousands of businesses function with husband-wife teams at the helm, and some of those are almost as large as PR. I think the full answer to that question would be better answered by talking with your management team to see if they’d have concerns.

“As for the rest of your questions, you’re asking the wrong person. You should be talking to your fiancée about them. You don’t need precise answers to these kinds of things. Family life needs to be flexible and adaptable and unfold as the days go by.

“Ask Tara about her wish for children. I do think she’d be a fabulous mother, by the way. She has all the right instincts to be a great loving mom.