Three hours later and the great paperwork plan to save his sanity had completely failed. Tristan had accomplished more mundane operational company tasks in the last few hours than he had in the last month, so go him on that one, but Dylan stayed front and present in his mind with every stroke of the keyboard.
Funny how he kept thinking in terms of stroking.
Landry sent him a dozen or so messages through email and text, wanting to have a word with him. Their last meeting hadn’t ended well. That usually meant they both needed time before they met again. Against his better judgment, he decided to make that phone call today. He kicked back in his office chair and palmed his phone. Landry answered on the second ring.
“Hey, did they get off?” Tristan asked. Probably not the best starter, but it was the most urgent thought on his mind.
“Yeah, about an hour ago. I need a few minutes to talk to you.” Landry sounded tense, so the cooling off probably hadn’t had time to kick in. They shouldn’t have this conversation now, but Tristan was primed for a fight.
“Can it wait until the morning when I come in? I’m catching up on emails and going over this contract with Secret,” Tristan said, trying for reason and to buy himself time. Putting the huge issue of moving an entire division away from the chief operating officer’s responsibilities due to poor performance aside, Landry knew him too well. Childhood best friends tended to pick up on simple things like who each other was attracted to. If Landry went there, Tristan would never be able to convince him his actions were purely company-focused, and in those decisions, Tristan only had WilderNation’s best interest at heart.
“You’re coming to the office in the morning?” Landry questioned, clearly surprised.
“Yeah, I figured I would,” he answered.
“If you had a problem with me, you should have told me directly. Not made me look like an ass in front of the entire company,” Landry started right in.
“Whoa there, you’re barking up the wrong tree,” Tristan cut in, trying to stop the rant he knew his friend was headed toward. “It’s only the social media division and that isn’t much of what we do. Actually it’s nothing to the overall picture, except a huge loss that I’d really like to at least make an attempt to break even on.”
“It’s an operations function of Wilder, Inc.,” Landry shot back.
“Reeves doesn’t want a long-term deal. We have him for transition, maybe a few years total. He can get us up and going,” Tristan replied.
“I call bullshit. If that were the case, you wouldn’t have gone around me. Are you fucking him? ’Cause if you are, then don’t tie my hands. Let me in there. I can figure out what they’re doing right, what we can’t seem to understand, and roll it out properly to fit our corporate values.” Those words were almost yelled at him.
There was silence from Tristan. He didn’t plan to change anything he’d set in place. Landry had been with him from his youth. He didn’t want to cause them issues, but he’d seen the problems with his own eyes during the tour of his company. They were becoming stagnant. Honestly, not just on WilderNation’s level, but as a whole. Landry hadn’t allowed them to move forward. He’d become a serious stuffed-shirt micromanager. Tristan completely blamed himself for all of this. He’d let things go. Let Landry run the show without watching him close enough because they were still making money. Now he saw he needed some one-on-one time with the guy to remind him of the innovative headway they had always made and how they got to where they were as a company. The advertising cash cow of their search engine wouldn’t hold them forever.
“You are fucking him! I swear, Tristan, this is fucking business.” Landry’s tone turned hard. That attitude was just what Tristan needed to stop softening the blow and to finally put things straight between them.
“Prescott, you’re letting this happen and you’re going to learn from this company and this man. They’re doing it right. We aren’t. And you’re too damn fucking hardheaded to do anything but go in there and dominate until you tear that company down. That’s why they’re under me now.”
“So it’s my fault we’ve slowed down?” Landry shot back with a very distinct defensive-as-hell tone in his voice.
“It’s all of our faults. Every member of the executive team is to blame, but you’re over all the operations for the entire company. It doesn’t take rocket science to know where the problem lies. We can fucking fix our issues or become obsolete.” Tristan laid the facts out there. He shouldn’t have made this call. He shouldn’t have talked to Landry yet.
“We aren’t becoming obsolete. We might have bitten off more than we can chew,” Landry stated, so completely not a visionary’s viewpoint as far as Tristan was concerned.
“If that’s the case, after everything is said and done, I’ll be spending millions to figure that out, so you better hope I’m right and you’re wrong,” Tristan countered, and Landry didn’t say anything.
“I want in on this,” Landry finally said.
“I’m not leaving you out. I just want to see if we can recoup what we’ve lost. WilderNation’s going to Secret,” Tristan explained, dropping his latest bombshell decision. It had been Landry that stuck his last name on everything they owned. Maybe the fix was as simple as a new face.
“Another thing you decided without discussing it with anyone. I don’t think that’s it, you’re barking up the wrong tree. It’s a market share and first to draw in the baby boomers issue. You need to hear me on that,” Landry argued. He’d used those words over and over for the last few years, but technology was a younger person’s advantage. That was where they failed in this division. Landry kept targeting the wrong audience no matter what market research kept saying.
“Are you really fucking him?” Landry asked.