How I Killed My Inner Girlboss, Part 4
Part 4
Melissa certainly did pass my number along to her so-called “well-connected friends,” and one of them, a guy named Michael, texted me a few days later. He briefly introduced himself and asked if we could meet up for coffee and a quick chat about my future. It felt a little strange, but again, I was in such a wide-open time in my life. The future I had imagined with the person I moved to Portland with had vanished before my eyes, and once the initial shock and anger began to wear off, I was feeling downright hopeful.
However, I wasn’t quite champing at the bit to meet this Michael guy, because I was too busy getting stoned and forgetting to text him back, or rescheduling a planned meeting with the excuse that I “had to stay late at work,” but really I was meeting up with my ex, who now lived a whopping two blocks away, to have sex in the sunroom of our old apartment where he still lived… with his new girlfriend.
I’m not gonna pretend to be proud of any part of that.
However, eventually Michael was losing patience (reasonably so) and told me he wouldn’t keep pursuing a meeting with me if I wasn’t really serious about “making connections.” Ashamed (reasonably so), I settled on a concrete date and time and drove out to the suburbs of Portland to meet Michael at a Starbucks.
I was teeming with excitement and brimming with possibility as he told me about how he was connected with some self-made, millionaire business owners from around the area and that he had met my friend Melissa only a few months prior and been very impressed with her (reasonably so), so I must also be an impressive person if she was passing my number along to him. To be clear: Michael was not kissing my ass. Not to spoil the story, but Michael eventually became a very good friend of mine and even married my husband and I. He is just an absurdly genuine guy who is sickeningly positive all the time. All. The. Time.
Looking back, those qualities make him an ideal spokesperson for the industry he was about to introduce me to.
And truthfully, I trusted him almost right off the bat because he didn’t make any pitches or offer me anything or try to sell me anything in that initial meeting, and he also didn’t make any promises. Again, looking back, I understand now that I was simply being put through a process that is creatively called The Process, and that each phase of this process was psychologically designed to make me trust the people I was talking to and learning from. It was just a happy coincidence that the person I was talking to in that moment is actually a good person and not a scam artist. Many others have not been so lucky.
I think it’s important to maintain a mindset of directing my anger at systems instead of people, whenever possible, and it’s hard to fault any of the people who participate in this industry, however manipulative or exploitative it ultimately ends up becoming. It’s hard to fault a person who is wholeheartedly, genuinely, firmly, and honestly committed to the idea that they’re improving the world with their work—at least, when that person is not a billionaire. It’s hard to fault a person who starts out with naught but a dream and then achieves their own all-American success story through something that they perceive to be a morally good and ethically correct job or business.
But at some point, as with any system that involves humans, there are at least one or two humans who could be said to be pulling the strings behind the scenes—but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.
The first thing Michael did after our meetup was text me an invite to an upcoming meeting—he was very clear about the fact that I would be learning from some top earners, like those millionaires he mentioned earlier, and that I should be early and dress business professional.
Well, shit. What do I have to lose? I asked myself yet again.
At that very moment, I had almost nothing to lose, or so I thought.
