Life Really Can Change for the Better in an Instant

Last Thursday I sat down with my wife and admitted things were dire. 

Four years ago I started my own marketing strategy and execution practice. I got off to a good start, signing a major deal to run a short series of events for a growing startup. It would pay our bills for six months, and leave me plenty of time for other projects.

I signed that deal on March 2, 2019. Two days later on March 4, Governor Newsom declared a State of Emergency in California due to Covid. Needless to say, all events were off.

It was a harsh reminder to include a kill fee clause in my contracts.

I scraped by. I adapted. I won engagements with digital transformation projects. After years of kicking the can down the road on having a digital-first strategy, suddenly everyone needed to adjust fast, or go out of business.

But things had to be scrappy. Budgets were tight and tough to win. Two and a half years later, I had depleted our savings.

As we emerged into the post-Covid era, contracts were flush again. I signed a deal with a Fortune 100 company that would pay the bills for the next year. It was my biggest deal ever. I signed that deal on October 30, 2022. One week later it was canceled. Turns out PC sales were not going to keep rising now that people could leave their homes again. Thankfully, I now had a kill fee clause, and I'd be able to make it through the next month.

These were just two of the big ones. Others had come and gone, too. A job offer at a global consulting firm turned into an apparent ghosting by the senior partner. (He re-emerged later, but it was a long dormant period before he did so).  Another big contract pulled back. A pipeline of startup projects drying up.

A week ago Thursday I had two big meetings with prospects that seemed to go nowhere. Email correspondence with another didn't look promising either.   What is a "bite-sized" engagement exactly anyhow? Would it buy me part of dinner? 

So, I sat down and shared one of the hardest things I've ever had to do with my wife and friend of 27 years: I have no options right now. I don't know where the next thing will come from, and after four years of hustling, I don't know if it will.  We may need to sell the house. We may have to move. I don't know where, but somewhere cheap.  I just need you to know. Because I love you, and I just don't know what to do next.

It wasn't pleasant. There was no "well that was a relief, getting that off my chest." No, it was nothing like that. It was admission of abject failure.

My mind was a wreck. Absolutely entrenched in rumination, fear, and despair.

The only thing I had to turn to was my meditation practice. So, I detached from the emotions, observed them, embraced them, experienced them fully, and let them go. I welcomed my higher power to be with me. I reminded myself there is so little we actually control. Maybe nothing. And I gently engaged my curiosity and gratitude. I wondered what would come next, and I was grateful for all I did have.

I kid you not, by the end of the next day, everything changed. I suddenly had a strategic advisory role to a CEO who insisted on paying my top rate -- he wanted my attention, and knew the money would make him my priority. And the CEO of another firm candidly and secretly told me she wanted me to be her co-CEO, which in the days following evolved into a position as her Chief Growth Officer for practical reasons and reasons of optics.

Keep at it. Joseph Campbell knew what he was talking about. "The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed."

This is a truth. It is not a metaphor. It is the way things unfold in this creative universe of ours. Things do get better. Keep at it. And enjoy the ride. It might be the only one you get.