The Speechwriter, Part 1: I Get the Call
I recently returned from a strenuous, two-week corporate meeting, and the experience was so unusual, so heady for me—a guy who normally spends 80% of his time alone—that it's going to take at least three entries to fully communicate my feelings about it. I hope you keep tuning in for the next installment.
---
About three months ago, my good friend and sometime business partner/employer, Mark Foster, gave me a call. It turns out I had just walked in the door from my "temp job"—as the handyman on a Millbrook estate. I did okay at the work, but by the time Mark called, I had begun to grouse about the state of my life. I was beginning to wonder whether I had spent enough time with my high school guidance counselor.
My muddy work boots. Soon to be traded for my square-toed Kenneth Coles.
Anyway, sweaty, breathless and smelling of Burt's Bees Lemon Herb Insect Repellent (mmm...), I answered the phone and we spoke for about an hour. Mark is a VERY busy guy, yet he spent 1/16 of his workday talking with me, so I knew it was important. It turned out that he was doing a mega-event for one of his Fortune 100 clients, and he needed a speech- and script-writer.
"So," he asked, "is this something you might be interested in?"
I glanced down at my coffee-stained toolbag and my mud-caked work boots. (I'd just bushwhacked through an overgrown garden/cemetery on the property that morning.)
Alexas was nearby, bouncing up and down with hands clasped—because she knows, like anybody who knows Mark, that the man has the Midas touch. Put another way, the guy is a tractor beam for success.
I glanced at Alexas and said to Mark, "Let me check my calendar...(two second pause)...Yup, I'm free. So, what do you need?"
He said that the client needed a speechwriter, as well as somebody who could write a play that would dovetail with the company's annual operating plan, dramatizing the principles they wanted to communicate. The client's illustrious founder would be the centerpiece of said play, but beyond that I would have carte blanche with the story, characters, etc.
Gettin' serious: speechwriting demands the heavy artillery—my Mont Blanc.
While Mark's company regularly handles all aspects of major events for the client in question, this event was particularly important to his business because it represented an opportunity for him to branch into written content—a step beyond the fabulous multimedia and meeting planning services his company has always provided.
"I'm not asking anybody else," Mark said, "because there's no one else I would trust with this."
"All right," I said. "I'm in."
TO BE CONTINUED...