Mr. Kimchi leased us a company car during the first week that Lou and I were both in California.
It was this brand new gorgeous black Hyundai SUV with leather interior, and it had every creature comfort you could imagine. Everyone who worked for the company had a leased Hyundai, and while Lou and I were previously BMW people, I remember being positively giddy about not only having our own car but also having one that was so luxurious! (I don’t think there was a single day that I didn’t tell God how thankful I was for that car!)
But having only one car meant that I would have to drive Lou to work in the morning, and then pick him up every afternoon during rush hour if I wanted to use the car on my own. So that meant having to deal with some of the most oppressive traffic known to modern man. In case you didn’t know this, California traffic is honestly the worst.
It’s the land of the slow-moving Prius driving just under the speed limit to conserve “battery power” while blocking the carpool lane, as well as the reckless punk driving a crotch rocket at supersonic speeds while weaving between cars driven by people texting and taking car selfies.
Orange County and LA traffic can transform a good day into a total nightmare with one tap of the breaks.
So everyone organizes their lives around optimal travel times, and by the best freeways to take. I quickly learned to never drive to Lou’s office straight up “the 5.” It was way better to use “the 405,” and then take “the 55” to cut back over to “the 5” if I wanted to avoid the worst of it. But you could never really avoid the worst of anything when commuting in Southern California.
So early on, I decided it would be better if I just stuck around Lou’s office during the day, and did some writing of my own, while Lou did his new job. The company offices were extremely nice, and they had this awesome coffee machine, and loads and loads of exotic Asian teas to choose from in the break room. Everyone was always so sweet to me — and the whole team was happy to have Lou in charge of the company’s new direction. So it was a positive place to hang out!
But it quickly became obvious how badly the company needed a writer, and someone to project-manage the huge plans that Lou and Mr. Kimchi were setting in motion. During one of the first days that I was hiding in the break room — sipping on some excellent jasmine tea left over from the Chinese New Year — a super dear employee (let’s call him “Mr. Wiggins”) asked me if I would proofread something for him.
Many of the people working on the team were Asian, and English was obviously not their first language. So a lot of the writing for the sales materials they already had were very awkwardly translated into English. (Erg.) But after proofing the sales sheet for Mr. Wiggins, I felt a little worried for Lou. Mr. Wiggins was American, but he was no writer…
So I offered to re-write the content.
And, the content for all of the product sales sheets…
And, the content for the brochure…
And, the new website.
Before long, I had my hands in nearly every single written document in the company. Lou had hired one of his talented graphics people to rebrand the whole company, and in a matter of a week or so, I was also project managing the complete overhaul of the company brand identity, and, I was building teaching tools for Lou to use when he started the first leg of his distributor recruitment campaigns.
Mr. Wiggins was so delighted to have someone to help him — because up until I showed up, everything fell directly on his shoulders, and it was a lot to carry alone.
So about a month into things, I had officially assumed the role of “the office temp.” That was my term for myself, actually. I wanted to make it clear to everyone that I was only “helping out” for a month or so. I wasn’t being paid for my services — this was just a favor I was doing to help my husband’s new company become super successful. As soon as things were all balanced and flying right, I’d gracefully exit my position as the company busybody, and I’d start pursuing my own writing career once again.
But. The more I did for the company, the more things we discovered that needed to be re-written, or just plain created for the first time. The products that this company was selling were incredibly sophisticated; and, if a distributor didn’t understand how to speak about the products, things could go very wrong. So I spent a lot of time with Lou, figuring out the best way to craft the story of these products so people could simply repeat the pitch verbatim.
I must say, at first I enjoyed working on the content. Lou was so invigorated and the products were very exciting. It was satisfying to be useful and productive, and…I wanted this company to work out for Lou so badly.
