Return on Investment.

I came. I saw. I was vindictive.

I got something of a vindicating call the other day. While I realize vindication doesn't pay the bills, every once-in-a-while it's worth the price of foregone revenue.

I think it was Bernbach who said, "it's not a principle until it costs you money." Thankfully, this principle cost me, but not so much so that I had to take a second out on Sparkle.

This was a client who came via an old work colleague, and came by the way of a pro-bono favor. I'm not a big one on favors--but when the person asking is someone you've known for a quarter of a century, and the client is doing something good for the world, you can stretch a point. Not too often. But once in a while and with a sort-of white-glove discretion.

The pro-bono ask was fairly simple, as they rarely are. It was just a manifesto. Having read and remembered something from a Greek philosopher called Heraclitus not too many days before, a quotation of his seem shockingly apt for the subject.

I quickly ran it by my friend, who quickly ran it by the client. In about 42 seconds I had somehow landed on that slim sliver of loft that collided somehow with dreams and aspirations--all without being so high-falutin' you want to gag on your own pomposity. 

I've worked at digital agencies. My soul has grown deep with pomposity.

In any event, in about two shakes of a mackerel's tail I was on the Ameche with my pro-bono client and my friend--reading the whole exegesis. About three-quarters of the way through, the client blurted, "you have to work for me."

In about two weeks we had a fairly hefty scope of work signed. She would pay me a little over $8500/month for the six months of the scope.

The first few months went great and I got a check with a minimum of back-and-forth emailing. But then the checks stopped. With work having been done by me on a "drop-everything" modus operandi.

Expecting me to drop-everything is not cool. Not paying is uncool-er.

H, my business director tried everything from honey to vinegar and back again. Eventually we were cc'd on an email by mistake and we heard about cash-flow issues--which are not my problem. Finally, we got a check for $2,000 out of the $8,500 owed. 

Again, tres uncool.

Frankly, I closed the books on the business.

One of the things I've learned in running GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company is that you can't relax on who you are, your belief in yourself, and your worth. I've worked hard to position myself as expensive and I'm not about to back-track on that well-earned posture.

Yesterday, I got an email from the now ex-client. Needing work like the work I had done for her before for another client she was pitching.

You realize along the way--you force yourself to--that your work is special and unique. That is, no one else can do it how I do it. That's why I get to charge what I get to charge.

The mathematics contained in those sentences were never understood by the holding companies. They saw the very work they did and the people doing it as cheap, interchangeable and not at all unique. 

No matter what business you're in--your job is first and foremost to be different. To do something no one else does. 

If you're an indifferent hitter and an indifferent fielder, you find a way to become an iron-man--you find a way to fill in when guys are hurt. Or you find a way to squeeze a runner over, or start a little 'bingo' if the opposing twirler is throwing aspirin. You find a way to get under the other team's skin, to disrupt a pattern, to make some noise. In advertising and in sports, many of these skills are of ephemeral importance--they're hardly seen except by the cognoscenti and there ain't too many cognoscenti left anywhere at this point. Most of them have been cost consultanted into oblivion.

The hardest thing is finding that thing. 
The second hardest thing is finding a way to actually believe it on those days when you feel like shit. 
The third hardest thing is charging for it and not relenting. 

That's vindication, too.