Thursday, second coffee, before a call that will definitely run long. I had seven minutes and I did what I’ve been doing with every scrap of found time lately: I tried to start the list.
Not a list I can put anywhere yet. I’ve done the health insurance research, or, not exactly done, I have two spreadsheet tabs and a saved bookmark for a healthcare.gov calculator I haven’t run all the way through. But I know the shape of it now: COBRA would be $1,840 a month for our family, which is enough to take seriously. The ACA marketplace option, depending on what I project for year-one income, might come out close to $1,100. Neither number is what I had in my head before I looked, which was something between “impossible” and “paralyzing” with no actual figure attached. The real figures are manageable. Annoying, but manageable. I did not expect to feel that way about them.
Anyway. That research is done. What I haven’t done is write down the names.
Real names. People I would call in July. Former clients from the last two companies, a few colleagues who moved into roles managing exactly the kind of accounts I know how to save. There are probably seven of them, maybe nine. Each one is someone I know well enough to call without a formal warm-up, and where I know enough about what they’re managing right now to say “I could help you with this specific thing.”
I keep starting the list in my head and stopping before I write any of it down.
What I told myself was: wait until June, the timing isn’t right, there’s nothing to do with a list yet. And I believed that for a while because it sounded right.
But Thursday afternoon I sat with it, and I think the real reason is that the moment they’re on paper, I have to think about the ethics. Two of those seven or nine people are at companies that are currently my employer’s clients. Not my accounts directly, but in the same portfolio. The question of whether reaching out to them before I formally leave is networking or something I’d feel uncomfortable explaining to my manager is a question I have been deliberately not looking up.
I have Googled almost everything about this plan. I Googled “client retention consultant” on a Monday evening in my home office. I Googled “COBRA vs ACA marketplace self-employed” and spent two hours in a spreadsheet. I found a woman in Texas with a three-page website charging $275 an hour and I have refreshed her testimonials page more times than I should admit. I built a competitive landscape document with seven entries and a color-coded column for rate ranges.
I have not Googled “non-solicitation agreement standard terms.”
I know the gap is telling. I know because the one thing I haven’t looked up is exactly where I’d find either a clean answer or a complication I can’t ignore. Both outcomes would require me to do something next. Either I’d know I’m fine and have to actually start thinking about what to say to these people, or I’d know I have a constraint and have to figure out how to work around it. Both of those feel less comfortable than not knowing.
So instead I carry seven names in my head and I have not written them anywhere, and when I ask myself why, “timing” is what comes out first but I don’t think it’s the real answer anymore.
Terri’s name was in my phone for six months before I sent that text. I drafted the message for nineteen hours. I can see the same shape from here.
The difference is that Terri was optional. The July conversations are on the backward map. They have a date.
I don’t know if what I’m doing right now is appropriate caution or another version of avoidance. I keep telling myself I’ll recognize the difference when I see it.
I keep waiting to see it.