“You manage feelings?”
“I manage feelings like a bouncer manages drunk men. With firm boundaries and the occasional threat.”
He chuckles. “Okay. So what’s the plan?”
There it is.
The question everyone asks me when something isn’t going right.
What’s the plan, Sloane?
As if I’m a magician and the plan is a rabbit I can pull from my blazer pocket.
I stare at the dashboard again and force my brain into its favorite coping mechanism: problem-solving.
We’ve already done:
— Radio pitches.
— Influencer boxes.
— A behind-the-scenes mini-doc.
— A late-night open mic pop-in (which, to be fair, went viral for exactly twelve minutes until someone posted a video of a cat playing piano and stole our thunder).
We’ve done the “authentic content.”
We’ve done the “raw and real.”
We’ve done the “let’s make fans feel like besties.”
And yet the numbers are sitting there like:
No ??.
“Plan,” I say slowly, because if I say it too fast, it sounds like I’m bluffing. “We need visibility that doesn’t feel like we’re begging.”
“I agree.”
“We need a moment.”
“A moment,” he repeats, like he’s taking notes.
“Yes,” I say. “A moment people want to clip, repost, argue about, send to their group chat with the caption ‘OMG.’”
“That’s very… Gen Z of you.”
“Don’t patronize me,” I say. “I can doom-scroll with the best of them.”
“What kind of moment?”
I open my mouth.
Then close it.
Because the truth is, I already know what kind.
I just don’t like it.
