And just like that, getting fired changed my story.

Earlier this year, a check-in meeting appeared on my calendar. I joined. HR was there. You can probably guess the rest.

For 15 years, I had built my agency, The Seismic Collaborative, from the ground up. It was something I was incredibly proud of, working with a group of people I loved. I sold it to Spectrum Science in 2022, and was welcomed into the fold right away by some of the most talented, fun, good-hearted colleagues I’ve ever known. You hear about hard acquisitions, and this was everything but that for me.

I spent almost four more years there.

And then, in one meeting, it was over.

Email gone. Access gone. The work gone. Nearly 20 years of my professional life and a huge part of my identity suddenly just gone.

How could something that had been such an enormous part of my life just...end. Like that?

OK, emotions aside, the economy had given my clients in the emerging biotech sector a massive kick in the teeth. Conserving cash, cutting marketing spend, etc., etc.

And, the real truth is, I knew in my gut that I was ready to do something different.

I just hadn’t planned on doing it right then.

My family was in the middle of a health crisis. The universe’s timing was objectively terrible. I was scared. I was pissed. My ego took a hit. And I definitely did not wake up the next morning thinking, What an exciting opportunity to reinvent myself! (Yes, everyone who has ever worked with me, I’m intentionally using the word “exciting” to be ironic.)

Then there was Melissa Laverty.

My best friend and closest business collaborator had been let go too.

We’d spent years working together. We knew what we were good at. We knew what drove us crazy about the way PR agencies work. And we’d already spent a lot (a lot) of time talking about how we thought it could work differently.

Suddenly neither of us had a job.

OMG! We could actually do this. Right now.

And then there was Luke Rodriguez.

My son had started a creative career entirely his own in NYC. He wanted in. (I think the first thing he said to me when I called and told him the news, was… without missing a beat, “Well, I guess it’s time to get Slugline off the ground!” I’d tossed around the idea and the Slugline name on a family Tahoe trip a few months earlier.)

And suddenly, my best friend and my son, two of the most creative and entrepreneurial people I know, were standing there saying, “Let’s do it!”

So we did.

We started with something that had been nagging at us for a long time.

I’ve spent more than 30 years in journalism and communications. I’ve seen extraordinary work come out of this industry. I’ve also seen how ridiculously long and expensive it can be to get to a good story.

Months of discovery. Meetings about meetings. Decks about decks. Executives in the room shouting their opinions with alllllll the sticky notes and Magic markers. (I mean, what self respecting comms professional has NOT experienced a contact high from the fumes of those Sharpies and Dry Erase pens scribbling away in a closed-door conference room with no windows?!)

Meanwhile, AI has made it possible to create more content, faster than ever.

But who cares if you don’t know what story you’re telling?!

That’s the problem we built Slugline to solve.

We start with the people who know the company best. We use AI to listen harder, see more, test ideas against the market and figure out what actually stands out. Then experienced people do the part I still believe people should do.

Decide what matters.

Find the story.

And make really good stuff from it.

Oh! And did I mention? Do all of that in weeks, not months, at a small fraction of what companies typically pay for it.

We’ve spent the last several months testing this with companies big and small. We’ve changed things. Thrown things out. Had ideas that worked much better than we expected and others that absolutely did not. Talked a lot. Laughed more. Legit felt grateful that the floor disappeared from underneath us that day.

And somewhere along the way, this stopped feeling like the thing we were trying to start.

It became our company.

I’ve built a company before. This time is different.

I’m older. I’m less patient. I know more about what I’m good at and a LOT more about what I’m not. And I have zero interest in doing things a certain way just because that’s how they’ve always been done. And I refuse to EVER sit around in an executive meeting putting people in nine boxes again.

Most of all, I have never been more convinced that communications needs what we’re building right now.

Slugline is officially out in the world.

There were some pretty fucking hard days between that HR meeting and today.

But today is a really, really good one.

Let’s go.

p.s. LET’S TELL YOUR STORY! Please reach out to tell me your own story or hear more about Slugline.

p.p.s. If you’ve spent more than five minutes talking to me, you know I can be a little woo-woo about the universe and the signs it sends us. The universe is a funny thing. Getting laid off is hard. No way around it. But almost every person I’ve talked to who’s been through it has pretty much told me the same thing… It turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to them. Not necessarily because it was what they wanted at the time, but the kick in the butt they needed to find their next, better, more satisfying thing.

p.p.p.s VOTE!