Rachel

I've hired a lot of people over the years, and I can usually tell in the first five minutes. Rachel took about three.

She came in for a business development role — essentially a sales job with some client management attached. She'd spent years in radio, built an entire book of business cold at iHeart in Houston, and before that worked for what she described as an import-export company out of Virginia right out of college. I clocked that immediately for what it probably was and decided not to press on it.

What she was looking for, she said, was the freedom of a startup. The high-stress, high-leverage piece. The challenge without the structure. She was the fifth interview. It wasn't a close call.

Rachel is sharp, hard-working, and genuinely good at what she does — she's been growing the client base and holding off a larger competitor that's been trying to poach our accounts since she arrived. The problem, if you can call it that, is a simple one: she was trained in environments where you survive by out-competing the men around you, and she never quite figured out how to turn that off. She has all the wrong skills for the thing she actually wants.

She moved to Baton Rouge for a fresh start after a marriage that ended quietly — no drama, just two people who ran out of relationship. I think she's still figuring out what that fresh start looks like.

Whatever that import-export company actually was, I have a feeling those skills are going to come in useful before this is all over.

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