I shook my head at him, motioning for him to keep his eyes on Dan.
“So, page one as always is new business. Let’s go through what’s in the hopper this week,” Dan continued, and we all read along with him as he outlined potential jobs on the horizon. A cat food brand, not too exciting but lucrative and great visibility potential. A small chain of boutique hotels was looking to go global next year, and wanted to raise some green quickly to look more favorable to investors. To raise the funds they needed, they were willing to spend some money to strengthen their brand. I immediately thought of Clara, and wondered if this might be an opportunity to work together. I put a checkmark next to that section, waiting until he finished going through every item on the agenda to formally put in for the job.
Dan ran a very tight ship, with an impeccably tight team. If you brought a client to the firm, then that was your client. But when someone solicited us on their own? It was up for grabs. Each account executive made a case for how they would be the best point person on each project, and then he and the partners would select who got what gig.
Due to my recent success, and the fact that I’d closed more accounts than any other account exec over the past eighteen months, I could essentially pick and choose the jobs I wanted. Like T&T Sanitation. Now, most didn’t want it, thinking it would just end up as a joke campaign. But I saw the potential to go out on a limb with new clients and really make something out of nothing. And, more often than not, the gamble paid off, and I made the partners and myself a nice signing bonus.
I half listened to the rest of the agenda, waiting until it was time to officially throw my hat into the ring on the hotel chain. Might get some nice travel out of it, might get to work with one of my best friends if I could swing bringing in a consultant on this job, and, most important, it could be what finally made me a partner.
A partner before thirty. That had always been the goal.
My father ran his own real estate developing company. My mother was a famous artist. I needed this feather in my cap to keep the name Grayson held with the same distinction that my parents had, and I needed to do it on my own. I could have gone into business with my father; he’d have been thrilled. But other than taking him up on his offer to live in one of his fabulous brownstones, I managed my life on my own.
I scanned ahead on the agenda and realized that Dan was almost through with the new business, and it would be time to formally ask to be considered for the hotel chain pitch. I began to rehearse in my head exactly what strategy to use when I heard him say, very clearly, Bailey Falls.
“Wait, Bailey Falls?” I asked, interrupting Dan and causing the entire room to look at me strangely. “Did I hear you say Bailey Falls?”
“Bailey Falls, yes you did. Looks like someone better hope Rob gets back with coffee soon,” Dan chuckled, and light laughter rang out through the group. “The Bailey Falls tourism pitch, it’s on your agenda there, almost at the bottom.”
I quickly scanned toward the bottom, and right there were the words BAILEY FALLS, HUDSON VALLEY, NY.
It seemed that Roxie’s small town was looking for some big-city direction.
“I’ll take it!” I shouted, surprising everyone in the meeting, including yours truly.
“Natalie, I admire your enthusiasm, but it can wait until the end of this, yes?”
“Yes,” I answered back, a little embarrassed and more than a little confused by my outburst. I quickly rallied, listening to everything he had to say.
Bailey Falls, like most small towns in the Hudson Valley, relied heavily on tourism as a source of income. But with the rise of cheaper flights to Europe again, they’d seen a drop in their tourist business, especially noticing that not nearly as many New Yorkers and New Jerseyans were as interested in weekending there as they were even ten years ago.
People were gun-shy now about buying; they wanted the freedom of renting a summer house, a lake house, a winter camp. They wanted to rent and come and go and not suffer like an owner when the roof leaked or the plumbing broke, or a family of owls set up shop in the attic, which apparently was a common occurrence up in the sticks.
Therefore, some of these smaller towns that featured a slice of Americana as their very bread and butter were not doing so well. And rather than wait, the town council of little Bailey Falls had pooled its town’s resources and decided to hire a big-shot New York advertising firm to put its town back on the tourist map.
Huh. Roxie had just been saying she thought I should come up for a visit. Then Saturday, for the first time ever, something new happened with the dairy farmer, who just happened to live in Bailey Falls.
Could be . . .
Who knows . . .