Roman was so speechless he couldn’t respond. His two younger brothers had each made their dad proud enough to earn a trip down the Columbia—Drake when he was interviewed for a business magazine after landing his first Fortune 500 company as a client and Legend when he sold his first architectural design—but it had been quite a while since Roman had anything on the horizon that his dad had deemed worthy enough to even dangle the carrot. Nothing was going to stop him now from doing whatever it took to get these investors on board.
“Now head into that meeting and show them what a Powell is made of!”
“I will. Thanks, Dad.”
Roman had successfully shaken off all talk about the Business Success article and walked into the meeting with the investors being calm, confident, and ready to talk them into investing in LivenUP. His presentation was professional, precise, thorough, and concise. If his dad was a fly on the wall, he would be flying over to give him a pat on the back.
When he finished, the investors talked a lot about their vision of the company, which lined up with his perfectly, and how they didn’t want to interfere with the way that he ran the business. If they had wanted to control how he ran the company, he would’ve walked away. But their thoughts on it mirrored his. They asked lots of questions, and he fielded them left and right, the consummate professional. He asked them questions, too.
Then, Thomas Hayes, the investor who seemed to be in charge, closed his folder and placed his hands on top of it. The other two followed his lead, and then they all looked at each other and shifted in their seats. “You’ve built a good company here. I can tell you’ve put together a solid team of people, and that you’re all working together for the same goal.”
He nodded. That was exactly how he felt about LivenUP, so he was glad that they saw it, too. He held his breath for the “but,” though. So far, everything was too good to be true.
“All this we knew before coming here today. We’ve had our eye on you for months because of all the things you just confirmed for us. We didn’t ask to meet until now, though, because we were waiting to see the spark. The extra something that would tell us that you were going to be around for a while and that you were going places. We saw that spark in your interview in Business Success.”
Roman flinched in surprise. What could they have possibly read in that interview that made them want to invest more than the presentation he just gave?
The woman sitting next to him added, “We didn’t really see that spark today.”
How could they have not seen a spark today? He loved this company, and he knew that he had spoken about it with a lot of passion. Sure, he didn’t let them see all the passion he had—that was part of being professional, after all—but they had to have sensed it.
The third guy leaned forward in his seat, resting his arms on the table and meeting Roman’s eyes. “Too many CEO’s keep their noses to the corporate grindstone and lose touch with the customers that they are creating products for. We want to see that you are keeping that connection to your users.”
“Keeping in touch with the pulse of our users is something we take seriously here,” Roman said. “We have a user experience team who tries out new ideas with focus groups, works closely with beta testers, polls our audience for preferences, and implements all the feedback we get. It’s one of the reasons why our apps are rated so highly in the app store.”
“And that’s important,” the woman said. “We wouldn’t be here if you didn’t do all those things. But that’s not the spark what we’re talking about. That’s how you connect to your audience. We are talking about how your audience connects to you.”
“Why does that matter? I’m the man behind the curtain. I’m supposed to be invisible.”
“Once upon a time, that was exactly the way it was. And for most businesses, it still very much is. But not for a company like yours, and not if you want to grow in the way that we think our investment will help you grow. It’s time to come out from behind the curtain. Your audience needs to see you and be able to connect with you. They need to see you as a person. Find a way to do that, and we’ll have no problem investing in LivenUP.”
As they got up to leave, Roman walked to the door to see them out, baffled, not quite knowing what they expected from him. Before walking out the door, the woman paused and said, “You wear your professionalism like a mask. We want to see the man behind the mask. The part of the interview where you said you eat oatmeal every morning with peanut butter and jelly in it was a nice touch. Keep up stuff like that, and you’ll do great.”
The part of the interview that was supposed to be off the record and had absolutely nothing at all to do with his business. That’s the part they liked? How was he supposed to remain professional yet “connect” with his users like that? They had given him a proposal about what they could do for him, and he really wanted them to invest. But he wasn’t sure he could do what they were asking.
He walked them to the front door, and stood there long after they left. He couldn’t have asked for investors that were more on board with the direction he was taking his company, and with their backing, he would be able to grow the company the way he had been envisioning but hadn’t been able to do yet.
And signing with them would make his dad rafting-trip proud. But signing with them also meant doing something that would make his dad not proud.
Roman wasn’t thrilled about it himself, either.
Charli stepped up to him, staring out through the glass doors, too, for a few moments before talking. “How did the meeting go?”
“What do you think the chances are that my dad would watch Bexlandia?”
Charli snickered, and he looked over at her. “Sorry. What do I think the chances are that Dr. Richmond Powell IV, D.B.A. will watch Bexlandia? Zero, Roman. I think the chances are zero percent.”
He really hoped that was true. He nodded, his mind made up. “I think I’ll reach out to Bex Sterling.”
The smile on Charli’s face wasn’t visible from where he stood, but he knew it was there.
3
Bex
When Bex’s thirteen-year-old nephew, Enoch, kicked the ball, she ran from third base toward home. Owen caught it, though, and quickly threw it at her. In an attempt to keep it from tagging her, Bex dove, landing in the grass of her parents’ backyard a good foot away from home base. And the ball hit her anyway.
She hadn’t even had time to push up with her hands before three of her nieces and nephews piled on top of her, pinning her to the grass.
“Guys,” she said, laughing, “this isn’t football!”
Her seven-year-old niece, Tessa, leaped onto the pile of bodies. “No, but our parents said we get bonus points for tackles anyway.”
Bex managed to free her arms so she could tickle her niece. “But you’re on my team!”
“And you’re supposed to be on second base,” Asher said as his knee pressed into her back. He stood and raced after the kick ball.
“Dinner’s ready,” Bex’s dad called out from his station in front of the barbeque, and the score and where everyone was supposed to be was forgotten.