The call was supposed to be twenty minutes.
I sat down at 1:51 with my laptop open, my three questions written on a Post-it stuck to the bottom of my monitor, and a glass of water I’d already finished. Doug was downstairs. The door was closed. I’d told him I had a call with a former colleague, which is technically true the way “I’m fine” is technically true.
Terri called at 2:01. One minute late, which she apologized for, which made me like her again immediately. People who apologize for one minute are people who respect your time, and I have spent 24 years in meetings that start eleven minutes late with no acknowledgment.
I had three questions. I’m going to tell you what they were, because I’ve been talking about them for two days without saying them, and that’s starting to feel like a strategy more than a decision.
Question one: How did you find your first client?
Question two: What did you not see coming in the first year?
Question three: If I described a consulting service focused on the last 60 days before enterprise contract expiration, would you think that was a real business or something I made up to feel productive?
The first two went the way conversations like this go. Her first client was a referral from her old boss, which she said felt like cheating but was also just how most of it works. What she didn’t see coming: the loneliness. Not the “miss my coworkers” loneliness. The “nobody is going to tell me if I’m doing this wrong” loneliness. She said she went four months without anyone giving her feedback on her actual work, and she didn’t realize how much she’d depended on that until it was gone.
I wrote that down. Four months.
Then I asked question three. And the call changed.
Terri was quiet for maybe five seconds. Which doesn’t sound long, but on a phone call five seconds is a geological age. Then she said: “The idea is real. I’ve seen companies lose six-figure accounts exactly like you’re describing, and nobody owns that window. You’d be the first person I’ve heard pitch this as a standalone thing.”
My heart rate did something I’m not going to try to describe.
But then she said: “Here’s what I’d want to know if I were you. Who signs the check? Because the VP of Customer Success usually knows this problem exists but doesn’t have the budget. The VP of Sales has the budget but thinks renewals are someone else’s job. And the CFO doesn’t even know what a renewal is. So who are you actually selling to?”
I didn’t have an answer. I said something like “I think the VP of CS” and she said “probably, but you need to know, not think.” She wasn’t harsh about it. She was being precise. I recognized it because it’s the same thing I do to my own team. Did. Or still do, technically.
That question is the thing I didn’t know I didn’t know. I’ve spent three weeks building a service in my head. The pricing, the scope, the deliverables. I know what the work looks like because I’ve been doing it for 24 years. What I have not spent a single minute thinking about is the sale. Who I’m actually calling. What words I’m using. Whether the person who needs what I’m offering is even the person who can say yes.
I know how to do this work. I do not yet know how to sell it. Those are not the same skill.
The call ran 47 minutes. At some point around minute thirty, Terri mentioned she’d been talking about me to other consultants the previous week. Someone at a dinner had brought up how hard it is to find people with real enterprise account experience, and Terri had thought of me. She didn’t say my name, she told me. But she was thinking it.
“You’ve been ready for this longer than you think,” she said before we hung up. “You just haven’t given yourself permission.”
I sat at my desk for a while after. The Post-it with my three questions was still stuck to the monitor. All three answered. And now I have a fourth one I can’t answer yet.
Doug is downstairs. I can hear him on the phone, something about a coverage limit. Normal Thursday. I should tell him. Not about the call. About all of it. The spreadsheet, the blog, the idea, the timeline. Everything I’ve been building in the room above his head.
Tonight, maybe.
Maybe.