The client abroad answered. Not the day after, not that week either. Long enough that I'd filed it under polite silence, which is where I file most things I'm afraid of (it's a big drawer).
"Sorry for the delay, board season. The number is fine. Can it start with our invoices, the way it does yours? If that works we'll talk about the rest."
The number is fine. I read that four times, and four times I sat back in my chair. I'd rewritten that number four times before I dared to send it. He waved it through between two board meetings. The whole negotiation, the sweating and the rewriting, happened on my side of the table only. As usual…
By the afternoon the glow had worn off and I caught myself wondering whether I'd asked too little. Also as usual.
So the machine, built for my own paperwork, has its first customer that isn't me. On Monday we set it up for them: their unpaid invoices, their reminder rules, their tone, which is softer than mine (bigger shop, gentler people). It asked me eleven questions I had never thought to ask about my own books.
It wrote its first reminders in their voice and was done before lunch. I sat there and read them over its shoulder. There's a word for what I felt, watching it work in someone else's books, and I don't have it. Pride is close. So is trespassing.
One client, one process, start small. That's the sensible version, and I'd give exactly that advice to anyone who asked. But I know how this machine grows: one reasonable ticket at a time. And I have never once stayed small on purpose.
Mo money, mo problems.
— The Notorious B.I.G.