“Okay, well, enjoy!” I turn back and shoot her a cheery smile—failing to interpret the dead silence of every single one of my employees staring at me from their desks—as I disappear into the elevator.
In my car, I put on Ryn Weaver and turn up the volume, humming along as I make my way to South Congress. It’s a beautiful late-summer day, not a cloud in the sky, the air dry, scorching hot. I park in the retail section of an apartment complex and make my way up to street level, a giddiness running through me as I spot the customer line.
My phone rings. I fish it out of my purse and see Will’s name.
“Guess where I am?” I keep my voice low.
“Josephine.”
“I’m in line! It’s, like, fifty people deep!” I shriek-whisper.
“Josie, you should get somewhere private.”
“I’m not planning tostayhere,” I say. “I’m about to head to the back entrance. But I wanted to see. Most of the time, our customers are behind a screen, but these people are real. And they’rehere,” I go on, enchanted.
“That’s great, J,” Will says. There’s an edge to his tone I haven’t heard in a long time. “I’m happy for you. But seriously, Nora Lindberg fromForbesjust released a piece on you, and it doesn’t sound to me like you’ve read it yet, so maybe you should step away from—”
“Josephine Davis?”
I pull the phone down from my ear. The girl ahead of me has turned.
“Hi!” I say, extroverting my hardest. I was prepared for this today. People perceiving me. I practiced my warmest smile in the mirror this morning. “Thank you so much for being here.”
The girl frowns. She holds up her phone screen to me, and that’s when I see the article title for the first time:The Truth About Josephine Davis.
“Is this true?”
If there’s one thing we’ve come to expect from female founders, it’s that they know the power of their personal brand. Customers fall in love with the often young, always smart, unreachably aspirational founder just as much as whatever product or service she’s peddling.
And nine times out of ten, itworks.So why, I asked myself, is Josephine Davis hesitant to let her customers get to know her?
I talked to former Revenant employee Margaret Dwyer, who was the director of retail experience before she was fired after the Revenant pop-up a few months back. She told me her opinion: Josephine Davis is not very nice.
The employees all hate their CEO, according to Dwyer. Davis is rude, demanding, authoritative, and quick to pass blame. Even worse, Dwyer claims that Davis’s own CBO and college friend, Camila Sanchez, has fallen out with her formerbest friend to the point that Sanchez is planning to leave the company for good.
Kyle Waterhouse, a consultant at the Carlisle Group who had a handshake agreement with Revenant, further substantiated Dwyer’s opinion, saying, “Davis fired us, too. That seems to be her calling card when a person makes one single mistake.”
I myself have reached out to Davis in a professional capacity on multiple occasions to request an interview, with no response.
The bottom line is: no one is above the news cycle, especially someone in a position of influence, and just because Davis avoids press doesn’t mean there won’t be a public reckoning when the truth comes out.
My very worst nightmare, come to life.
I don’t want people to think of me when they think of Revenant. It’s the surest way I could gut my own company.
I tried my hardest to stay out of the spotlight, and it still didn’t fucking work.
I guess Nora Lindberg got tired of waiting for me to reply.
Coming back to myself, I realize I’ve taken the phone from the girl’s hand so I could read the piece. She’s looking at me now with a thoughtful, curious expression, her brows pinched, her lips tight.
“Is it true?” she asks me again.
“Parts of it are… true,” I say. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. “But I’m Camila’s maid of honor.”
“Is she leaving the company?” another girl asks from behind the first.
“Yeah,” I say. Still too disoriented to think rationally. “I need to…”
