by Davis Bunn
Bernard Featherstone had an actor’s mobile features, product of years on the courtroom stage. “Son, your father . . .”
“My father is not a factor. I am here looking for representation.”
Bernard made a process of settling into his chair. “If you’re certain that’s the case . . .”
“I am. It is.”
“Then there are any number of local headhunters who could handle an account executive.”
“Which is why I’ve come to you, sir. You know I’ve been more than that for years.”
Bernard picked up the silver pen. Perhaps it was by chance that the sunlight reflected off the surface into Buddy’s eyes. But he doubted it. The man had his own methods of creating a disconcerting moment. “How old are you, Buddy?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Not yet thirty. Son, if you waited a few more years, I might—”
“You know the truth. You’re probably the only one who does, outside the bank president, where I have no interest in working, and our corporate auditor, where I would die of boredom. I have tripled the company’s revenue in eight years. Tripled.”
Bernard must have seen that the trick with the pen wasn’t working. He set it down and put away all the pretenses. “Your father’s company has been going through a very hard time. Any potential employer will see you as another bitter family member running from the sinking ship.”
“I landed the Lexington account.”
That froze him. “When?”
“Friday night. The Helms Group is back in the green.”
“Then why are you leaving?”
Buddy was ready for that as well. “It’s time I receive the recognition I deserved.”
Bernard had a habit of treating his words like precious gems he was reluctant to release, leaving his sentences unfinished. It gave him the chance to say a great deal that could never be either repeated or confirmed. “Perhaps I might have a word with Jack, I could . . .”
“I told you. My father is not a factor.”
“But your age most certainly is. You’re chasing after a job I’d have trouble landing for someone twice your age. Plus, there is the issue . . .”
“I’ll never get a decent referral,” Buddy finished for him. “What if I was able to bring in a major new account?”
“Not Lexington. For you to leave the firm and take a new client with you would be borderline illegal.”
“I have a different group in mind. One I’ve been working on almost as long.”
“You’ve been working on two potential accounts of that size?”
“The project is everything but landed.”
Bernard’s chair creaked as he leaned back and inspected Buddy from a different angle. “In that case I suppose I could make a few calls.”
The band around his chest eased a fraction. “Thanks. A lot.”
“Did you have anyone in particular you wanted me to approach?”
“Hazzard Communications is looking for a new VP.”
“Your father’s oldest foes?” Bernard actually looked nervous. “You can’t be serious.”
Buddy rose from his chair. “I’m due for a meeting with the president of that new account. If I land that deal, see if Hazzard will agree to a meeting.”
* * *
San Luis Obispo stood almost equidistant between two more powerful cities representing two very different California façades. Despite the devastation caused by recent forest fires and the mudslides that followed, Santa Barbara remained a haven for coastal wealth. The largest and most successful Hollywood titans made a Santa Barbara residence their reward for getting it right.
Two hours north of San Lu stood a very different version of the California lifestyle. Santa Cruz was a hard place for even longtime residents to describe, for it showed the world too many conflicting faces. The coastal roads fronted lovely bungalows and well-tended parks and magnificent surf. The University of California, Santa Cruz, regularly produced a high-value crop of engineers and technicians. But farther inland resided a very different sort of local. Survivors of Iraq and Afghanistan shared steep-sided valleys with ancient clans who remained hostile to all outsiders, especially lawmen. Added to the mix were hothouse growers whose produce was on the reckless side of legal. Even in the daytime local police never came out here alone.
Recently a group of local movers and shakers bought up vacant land near the university and established a major new commercial park. Using state money and their own tax dollars, they brought in a new crop of high-quality, good-paying jobs.
Everything about the International Solutions headquarters shouted cutting-edge. The steel-and-glass headquarters looked like two crystal spaceships that had landed so recently the blast-zone still glistened of raw earth. Translucent tunnels connected the main buildings to a series of pods. Huge bulbous windows in the central structures showed people at work. Outlying pods contained rooms where kids made silent mayhem in a crèche, while in the cafeteria next door, their parents drank coffee and ate afternoon pastries over spreadsheets. Others worked out and swam laps in a glass gym. Still more sat around conference tables and wrote on electronic whiteboards and argued at people on massive telescreens. IS ran at such a pace that most new employees had no idea how other divisions spent their time.
The IS main entrance was staffed by a lone security guard. There was no receptionist. There were also no chairs. A few visitors clustered and talked in low, tense tones. At first, Buddy had been disconcerted by the frenetic pace and the utter absence of protocol. But with time he’d decided that he liked it. A lot.
Buddy was shown straight into a conference room. As before, the group filtered in gradually, some texting, others talking into Bluetooth headsets, two in deep discussion that continued as they filled the swivel chairs. Buddy’s was the only jacket and tie in the place. A few greeted him. Most ignored him entirely. Buddy smiled at the thought of how his father would respond to such treatment. But he wasn’t here for ego stroking. He was after the next rung.
When the company president entered, instantly the atmosphere shifted. Eleven different and driven people focused with one intent. Get this done and move on to the next task. Judgment was swift here, and lacerating. As Buddy knew from experience.
“All right, Helms. We’re here.” Mark Weathers rapped his knuckles on the tabletop, and the final two iPhones were instantly stowed. “Fire away.”
Buddy took a breath and rose to his feet. It had all seemed so simple at two in the morning. Now he stood on the ledge and looked down, down, down, to the swirling waters at the bottom of the cliff. He jumped.
“This is the fourth time we’ve met. And I imagine most of you are assuming it’s the last. Am I right?”
One of the group managed to look abashed. The others just showed him the blank faces of people ready to move on. They were all aged between late twenties and early forties. Mark Weathers, the company president, was thirty-six. Married, with two children and a third on the way. Dropped out of Stanford’s physics department, where he had been working on a doctorate in quantum computing. Buddy knew the basic history of every person in the room. Five department heads, two more from sales, the rest from finance and corporate planning. The green-light board. Here to show him the door. Unless he gave them the totally unexpected.
“Here’s what we know. Basically, you don’t need any product advertising. And you can generate your graphics design work in-house.”
Until Buddy’s fourth year with his father’s company, the Helms Group had focused exclusively on advertising. All their work had been aimed at a regional clientele. Buddy had changed that, slowly, subtly, often behind his father’s back, bearing the rage, swallowing the resentment when his ideas proved right. Growing the company into Internet and social media. Building new divisions for graphics design and printing. Gradually Buddy had brought everything possible in-house, lowering costs and raising profits. When more than half of the region’s marketing and PR firms went belly-up in the recession, the
Helms Group clung to life. Largely because of Buddy’s grim determination to shove the company into a future his father despised.
The VP of sales demanded, “Then why are you here?”
“He’s decided to admit we were right all along.” This from a dark-haired waif of a woman, scrawny and tight and perpetually dissatisfied. Head of the IS hospital group. “Apologize for wasting our time.”
Buddy waited for the chuckles to subside. “You don’t need product advertisement. You knew this when you brought me in. What you wanted to know was, could I help draw in more business? But you’re already running as fast as you can. So the question is, what do you really need?”
“Nothing you can offer,” the woman replied.
“At least, not legally,” the kid from games said.
“What do you really need,” Buddy repeated. He knew they wanted to needle him out the door. But his father’s scathing blade had left him immune. “What was the real reason why you brought me here? The itch you can’t scratch in-house.”
“Now he’s getting personal.” The kid again. “I’m out of here.”
“You need three things,” Buddy went on. “You need national recognition. You need to become a household name. And you need fresh blood.”
The waif scoffed, “You’ve let a vampire in the room?”
“Your company started just ten years ago, making software for hospitals. Tying patient care directly to admin and billing. Helping with the train wreck of Medicare paperwork.” Buddy began pacing in the narrow aisle between the head of the table and the empty whiteboard. “Three years ago, you branched out into other areas of the medical world. That original division has morphed into four, and you’re expanding at a breathtaking pace. Now you’ve added a fifth division, working with pharmaceutical companies trying to maneuver through the FDA maze and bring new products to market. And you’re making some progress designing software for regional doctors’ offices.”
“Why are we sitting here listening to stuff we already know?” the waif whined.
This time nobody responded. They weren’t on Buddy’s side. But they were paying attention.
“In a decade you’ve gone from five million to a hundred million in annual revenue. Twice you’ve turned down acquisitions. You’re a closely held group and you intend to stay that way. You came to me asking for ideas that would help you grow in your targeted industries. But you don’t need any help. Everyone in those areas already knows you. Either they’ll do business with you or they won’t. Hiring me won’t change that.”
Buddy stopped and counted on his fingers. “National recognition within your chosen fields. An awareness of who you are by the greater public. And more people. The third issue is by far your most desperate need. You require highly trained software designers. But there aren’t any. The shortage is national. The situation is dire. Without more software designers you can’t grow. You can find lower-skilled staff. But the artists who create the preliminary design are just not out there. You will have to steal them from other companies. The problem is, most of them are in the Silicon Valley, and they don’t want to move to Santa Cruz. They see this as a backwater region. Anybody who comes here risks never having the chance to return. Plus, they don’t think there is the creative energy here, the cutting-edge potential. So even if you offer the same money, and even though that income would go much further here, they won’t come.”
The waif had a very unpleasant voice, like a low-pitched dentist’s drill. “He’s still telling us things we already . . .”
She stopped because Mark Weathers raised his hand. He was not just the company’s CEO. Mark was the company star. Through his vision and leadership, every person in this room was on track to become rich. Weathers said, “Go on.”
“What if there was the possibility of meeting all three goals with the same campaign? Raise your profile in the industry, make you a household name, and draw in the personnel you desperately need.”
“We won’t do a national television campaign,” Weathers replied firmly. “It doesn’t pencil out.”
“What if you could do it for the cost of a standard regional campaign?”
“That’s impossible,” the waif declared. “It can’t be done. What, you think you can waltz in here and . . .”
This time, it was the VP of sales who glared her to a sullen silence.
Buddy went on, “Back to the personnel issue. What is the one thing you hear most about this place? The one response they won’t say to your face, but you know they’re thinking. Santa Cruz and the IS focus on medical software have one thing in common. They both aren’t . . .”
“Sexy.” The oldest of the division heads gave the answer Buddy had been hoping for. “We aren’t sexy enough.”
“So my job,” Buddy said, hard-pressed not to run around the table and hug the guy, “is to change their mind. Show them that they’re wrong.”
Five of them asked, “How?”
“One question before I answer that. How much does a top software designer make? I don’t mean a designer who’s moved over to run a division. I mean the artist at the table. The person who can create the totally new concept out of thin air.”
Mark Weathers answered, “Two hundred thou. Two twenty-five tops.”
“Okay, so we design a contest. We put together a campaign, challenging the nation’s top designers to come up with a totally new algorithm.”
The waif scoffed, “You don’t even know what an algorithm is.”
“An algorithm,” Buddy replied, “is the structure through which a step-by-step procedure is mathematically defined. It is a system of moving from an initial state and set of inputs to a desired output. It contains a finite set of well-defined successive states that can be logically followed to obtain the preferred outcome.”
“There’s no way you can make an algorithm sexy,” the VP declared.
“Or turn this into a national campaign,” the kid agreed.
“What if,” Buddy replied, “the contest is to create the world’s first dating algorithm?”
“Send this guy down the trapdoor.” The kid hit a mock buzzer. “Dating agencies. Zillions of them.”
“Not finding a date. A dating algorithm. Design the nerds’ ideal answer to cold sweats. How to handle the opposite sex, expressed in mathematical terms. If a, then b. Right up to . . .”
The kid hit the invisible buzzer again, but this time it was to say, “Bingo.”
Mark Weathers asked, “You like this?”
“You kidding? Somebody’s going to design a system for me never to fail with a lady again? I’d pay real money.”
“You won’t have to,” Buddy said. “But it’s a nice thought.”
He had intentionally not brought in any graphics. He had started several PowerPoint presentations, then discarded them as a bad idea. Now he was glad he had done so. The designers were smiling, their gazes aimed forward and beyond where he stood, filling the empty whiteboard themselves.
“We start small,” Buddy said. “Quiet at first. Internet only. Let word filter out by ‘Nerd Express.’ A contest to design the perfect algorithm for handling the opposite sex. We nudge things along. Then six months in, boom. We go national.”
Mark asked the question Buddy had been hoping for. “How much? The prize, I mean.”
“One million dollars. Enough to create a buzz.” Buddy waited, then added, “But there’s a catch. The other part of first prize is a two-year employment contract. And the two go together. No work, no pay.”
The head of marketing smiled. “We can factor in the additional sum as advertising.”
“We’ll be deluged with nutcases,” the waif moaned.
“So what?” This from the kid. “We’re not after an actual winner, right? I mean, we already know the people we want for this gig.”
Mark Weathers picked it up. “What we want is to get people talking.”
The kid was nodding with his entire body. “Get them to rethink who we are, and why we love it here.
”
“Which they will,” the VP said.
“And here is your slogan,” Buddy said. “International Solutions. We define sexy. Wherever we land.”
Mark Weathers led by consensus. It was another thing Buddy admired about this guy. He asked his group, “You like this?”
“A lot.” This from the head of sales. “Sign this guy up. We’ve found ourselves a winner.”
Their chief checked the table and received nods, even from the reluctant waif. “Thanks, gang. We’re done here.” Mark rose from his chair. “Buddy, let’s walk and talk.”
* * *
Mark Weathers led him outside. A first. The company president looked even younger than his years. Even so, he carried himself with the gravity of a man whose turnover was skyrocketing, and who now employed close to four hundred highly qualified people. Mark stopped in the middle of the front walk and said, “We like you. We don’t like your company.”
It was the man’s way to be blunt to the point of rudeness, Buddy knew, but it still caught him off guard. He was sorting through a whole host of possible responses when Mark went on, “We want you to come work for us.”
“I don’t know the first thing about programming.”
“But you know marketing. We don’t. Up to now, we’ve done without that skill set. But everything you said today was correct. We are growing. We need national recognition and we don’t want to pay for it. Your campaign is the answer.”
“You can get that without hiring me.”
“You’re trying to talk yourself out of a job even before you hear what we’re offering?”
“Sorry. No.”
“Your own division, for a start.”
“I can hire my own team?”
“With my approval, of course. And you’ll be wise to get input from our VP of sales. But it’s your boat. You rock it how you want.”
A wide screen of oaks and California pines shielded them from their neighbors. The sky was gray with the arrival of yet another spring storm. “What if I don’t measure up?”
“You think you’re the only one who does research? You checked me out, right?”
