Brooke looked at him. Really looked at him. She saw his T-shirt and jeans as his attempt to look casual and like “one of the little people,” but it looked like a getup that had cost at least a hundred dollars at one of those fancy sportswear outlets. It didn’t help that his haircut was probably top dollar by one of those fancy stylists who came to your home and charged a small fortune for the convenience. She thought of the people who would be seated in the conference room, watching him talk, and the fact that they probably had barely bothered to run a comb through their hair before rushing out the door for the two-hour morning commute. They would not see him as one of them.
But she was a brand consultant. Although she’d never tried to overhaul an individual’s image before, she’d spent years preparing to do it for a business that had suffered a social media crisis. How would that be any different than overhauling a CEO going through a public image crisis?
“Come here.” She stood, setting her planner and pen down on the chair. “Let’s see what we can do.”
4
Brooke was his rock.
Justin had always thought of himself as fiercely independent. He’d blasted through life with confidence, rarely being told “no.” In fact, he’d argue if anyone said it about him, but he’d faced very few obstacles to get where he was now.
But where he was now was pretty much screwed. As he stood in front of his ridiculously small team, looking at their fearful-yet-hopeful faces, he felt the full weight of his responsibility. These thirty-five people—thirty-four counting the employee who was out with a sick baby—were counting on him to pay the rent and keep food on the table. And they were looking at him for confidence.
Brooke nodded at him as though to urge him on. So, Justin did exactly as she’d suggested and climbed up to sit on the conference table, crossing his legs in front of him like he was about to lead a meditation session. He wasn’t some big, powerful CEO. He was a dude in a now-untucked T-shirt and jeans with mussed hair, thanks to some quick work from his new marketing director.
“Let’s keep this simple. Why don’t you ask questions and I’ll answer them? What concerns do you have?”
He waited for arms to shoot up, but nobody raised a hand. Nobody spoke. Someone in the back cleared his throat, but it sounded like a nervous move.
“What’s going to happen to our office space?”
He’d never been more relieved to hear someone speak. That person was, no surprise, Brooke. She was looking at him with that expression that made him feel like she believed in him. Brooke, someone he had only met three days earlier but hadn’t been able to stop thinking about, was giving him the strength he needed to push through the darkness threatening to overwhelm him.
“Good question. As you all have probably noticed, we have some empty workspaces. We’re still in the early planning stages, but we’re going to consolidate. I have to speak to the property manager, so I’m not sure exactly how that will work, but we’ll all be working a little more closely together soon.”
Now hands shot up in the air. Uh-oh. That probably wasn’t a good sign.
Justin pointed to a guy toward the left side of the room. He was in a cluster of people that included some developers Justin recognized.
“I’m part of the app development team,” the guy said. “We need quiet to work.”
“We’ll keep that in mind.” Justin glanced over at Charlie, who started typing on her tablet screen. “Maybe we can make sure the developers are in a more private area? Pipe some white noise in? I’d definitely recommend noise-canceling headphones.”
That brought laughter. A developer Justin recognized from project meetings explained, “I think we have that covered.”
“I’d say most of the staff live with headphones on,” someone seated on the other side of the room explained.
Justin’s gaze immediately went to Brooke, like she was his life raft. She gave him a gentle smile, then nodded as if to urge him to continue.
“Any other questions about the workspaces?”
No hands. He shouldn’t have been surprised. These people had watched their coworkers pack up their belongings, some with tears streaming down their faces. They were all in survival mode. They certainly weren’t going to complain about having to work in confined spaces.
He glanced over at Brooke, who was starting to look a little worried herself. The face that had calmed him just a few minutes earlier now held an uncertain expression. She was making him doubt what he was doing here.
“Look. I know you’re all worried. I’d be worried, too. But I’m not worried. You know why?”
Still, silence. He didn’t expect an answer to that. He was giving a speech. It was something he’d done at least a hundred times in recent years, but his confidence had been shaken during a very nasty call with a couple of his investors who demanded change. He wasn’t sure he’d ever get it back.
He hopped off the table and stood, rising to his full height. Forget being one of them. Right now, he needed to show them he had what it took tolead. “You are my best resources. My app developers and marketing director and HR guru.”
He realized then, as he paced from one end of the room to the other, fingers steepled in front of him, that he’d named his entire team in one sentence. His app developers were his business’s lifeblood. They were the core of the company—the people he absolutely needed to make the changes and refreshes necessary to encourage every student in the country to use his app for tutoring. But he didn’t want to point that out, so he kept going.
“I’m going to sit down with each and every one of you and get your ideas,” he said, speaking as the thought came to him. “You’re just as invested in this company’s success as anyone else, so why not have you help me push this company to the next level? By next year at this time, TravTech is going to be the biggest comeback story in Silicon Valley history.”
If he expected cheers or applause, he was seriously disappointed by the total lack of a reaction. Nobody clapped. Nobody even coughed. The room seemed to be filled with tension. This was not good, and he had no idea how to turn it back around.
“Hi, everyone,” Brooke said, jumping to her feet. She stood at the front of the room, all her energy and enthusiasm coming across loud and clear. She was…rescuing him? “I’m in charge of marketing, so I’m going to need to get to know what you’re working on. I’d love to come through and maybe snap some photos of you working? Maybe do a profile on each of you for the website. We’ll talk about that later, but it’s all about letting the public see the faces behind the work we’re doing.”