The Breakfast Club for 40-Somethings

Chapter 4Josephine

This is only round one, thought Josephine, smiling on the outside as she shook hands with the marketing manager who was rejecting her first approach for a $250 000 event sponsorship.

Josephine knew this one was going to take some work — she seemed to be one of those female middle management marketing people who didn’t appreciate other women in business. Josie had seen many over her career — the ones who blocked innovative ideas if they hadn’t thought of them, and who distrusted anyone they hadn’t installed getting access to their CEO and board.

These women usually went out of their way to make sure opportunities didn’t come to Josie. But she’d been playing the game long enough to know how to combat them.

‘Always go up,’ was usually how Josephine dealt with the matter at hand, but this time she knew she had to bide her time and develop this relationship — or this deal was going to be a dead horse. She needed this woman on side, even if she had dinner booked in with the CEO for next week at her favourite restaurant — and was confident he would understand her value. Regardless, she still needed the budget from marketing to keep the billings coming in, and the budget lay with this woman.

With a sigh she headed back to her office, knowing she would be inundated with emails and requests for meetings the minute she walked back into the room.

Josephine had always loved her work. She had started as a speechwriter and had grown to be the CEO of an events business that ...