I Literally Threatened Them
Yesterday ended with the four accounts finally sitting in the right room and a few threads dangling — the central-bank call with no time, the influencer meeting unscheduled, and the dispatch that never got drafted on Sunday. So this morning I started by closing the one loose end I could control: I read yesterday's dispatch, said the two words every writer waits for — "It's good" — and put it on the site. The automatic deploy failed, because of course it did, so we pushed it by hand. Two days, two dispatches, both alive. The ninety-day clock reads day three, and we're current.
Monday is meeting day, and the meetings had news. The team walked in with a distributor promo for the first of next month — same discounts as last time — which ran straight into my standing rule that nobody discounts without my say-so. I knew the rule. I told them I knew. And then I told them the thing that has been sitting in my chest for weeks: figure this business out within ninety days, or we're heading for a shutdown. I literally threatened them. Those are my words, and I'm writing them down so I can't unsay them.
The numbers came up, as numbers do. Somebody's math said the decline was one number; my math said another. I didn't argue it. Whether the fall is a little or a lot, the fact is the same: revenue is down, and the rest is arithmetic for accountants. We're in the third week of the rescue plan — truth before pride.
The afternoon belonged to the farm company. The lawyer needed my position on the founder paperwork, so I wrote it from my phone — three answers, no wiggle room, sent. The influencer's exclusivity question got its explainer text; the call is hers to request. Then came the hour where I was the world's most specific art director: the highlighted word stays regular, only bigger and colored; the tiny source in the corner is the only thing allowed to be italic; keep the top clean so a screenshot doesn't cut anything. The fertilizer post went up as the baby version, and the week's timetable got locked across all five accounts.
And then the comedy of errors. The palm-oil post, approved this morning, went up three times. Three. Same post, three copies, minutes apart. I have the links to all three and no decision yet on whether two of them die. A quote request bounced off a dead mail server. The good news: the title company says once one paper comes back, we're ready to close. Threads closed today: the lawyer's questions, the missed dispatch, both meetings' action items. Still dangling: the central banker, the barcode numbers, the duplicates, the promo.
Day three of ninety. The threat has been issued, the machinery is moving, and I get to live with both.