Had a breakfast meeting (sans breakfast unfortunately! Only a coffee, boo) with a crossover potential investor. En route to the breakfast from office, I discovered this quaint little secret passage. I rather miss knowing all the nooks and crannies and secret passages of a place.

It was a fun convo. I really enjoyed myself – the intellectual challenge he posed me early in the morning (so unfair, given I’m not a morning person. but I passed his ‘tests’), the industry banter, the sharing of anecdotes, ‘embarrassing’ stories, rapid credentialising, push and prod, that is part of very quick relationship building, but also gauging and taking the measure of one another.

To be fair, I’d spoken to this guy a couple of times before, on Zoom. And my ‘boss’ (I’ll call him “The Fearless” from now now, for his initials) has basically given me the tacit nod on him. But there’s something about meeting in person that is really different.

I can’t believe how high energy he is. He’s super alert, great at reading cues, shifting from topic to topic. Super interesting to hear his perspective on The Fearless (“TF”), and to gauge what we each knew about him, I asked him a few things about his portfolio (in price etc) which he told me… not sure if strictly true, but I’ll take at face value for now, and I shared a few things with him, which he laughed at and said he could totally see me doing that. I almost wonder if I’m being too… “me”, too authentic. But firstly, I’m not really in a position of limelight (not C-suite), secondly we were in private setting – not on a public ‘stage’, thirdly, I suppose there can be different types of personalities which succeed, some are more colourful than others. And I’d like to think a bit of colour can’t be that harmful, since my attempts at being bland and colourless hasn’t gotten me anywhere.

It was interesting that he said that being with TF is such an experience, because he’s always a milion miles per hour. I found that… interesting… because TF always appears so calm and endlessly (frustratingly so, to me) patient. He modulates his voice and cultivates a very specific look and feel, which is calm, boring (at least that’s what he keeps telling me I should be!!), stoic. So it’s weird to hear an investor saying TF is a million miles per hour. But it’s true that there are times, in our 1:1s, that he’s much more rapid fire and we just power through items super efficiently. He flings plates at me, and I pluck them out of the air.

On one hand, the meeting made me feel so very alive – I miss this sharpness, the intellectual engagement, and dynamism.. that I just really don’t get from the vast majority of the people – and my interactions – at work. No where close. On the other, I also felt slightly exhausted from it… I felt a bit like I was put through the wringer, because I was ‘on show’, and was being ‘tested’. I suppose that’s how The Fearless must feel in the run up to his previous IPO and in the public eye post IPO.

Or maybe my end of day exhaustion was less about the meeting and more about the rest of the day, with the internal Finance LT meeting, the Senior Leadership Team meeting to start the cost cut Comms cascade, and then the Business Review meeting on hiring with the slightly awkward politics – an odd mix of collaboration and point scoring.

And then the Commercial guy BT trying to push back or stand up against me, when I fundamentally think he’s a bit of a waste of space. But I try to be gracious but firm, when I wish I could just erase his name from the employee roll. To be fair, I might scratch out a fair few other names before I come to his. But still.

And this is just Monday!