We are not idiots. That’s the least we can say without argument. We need say no more anyway, to justify the creation of our enterprise. Intelligence, however, will carry us only a short distance to that shining city of personal success we glimpse occasionally from the muddy confines of the self.
We were probably caulking, or rolling a wall, when the three or four year old idea was dredged up. Imperial Services North America. Had I come up with it while temping at IBM? We were on another jag, riffing on some idea born of a complaint or observation. And I wondered where all these ideas go, swimming into the mind from a bodiless grotto, then out of my mouth. Why waste them?
Imperial Services was conceived of, then became the umbrella for a number of smaller businesses that offered extremely limited services, either because of personal need, or to explain some otherwise opaque phenomenon: a division that destroyed documents and personal items, of course, and a messaging service that dispatched yoga-butted women to addresses only on College Ave. to deliver coffee, clothing, books, and organic produce, the latter of which explained the frequent sightings of just such women carrying just such things on just such a street.
The mythic approach and jokiness ballasted a buoyant plan that, three years later, emerged as a ticket out of house painting. The Protestant work ethic was ridiculous. All sorts of people around the world were making money doing nothing but coming up with ideas. Putting in an honest day’s labor, day after day, squandering energy and ideas, had to stop. Especially given the fact that we are not only not idiots, but smart, and brimming with answers. Or rather with questions.
The breakthrough came from realizing that there is an idea and a story behind any particular thing a person wants. Every purchase of goods and services acquires a psychological value equal or greater to the physical value. This was obvious, even on the level of house painting: Steven saw it when he helped clients choose wall colors. The client, in choosing a wall color, is also satisfying psychological needs, which explains why it’s such an agonizing process. What is choosing a color worth per hour? The sky might be the limit, if the right color provides the client with the reassurance of comfort, of stylishness and nowness, and of domestic harmony.
So we’ve decided we will be general consultants, and our company will be Imperial Services. We will supply ideas and fulfill needs, the more intangible the better. The company will model itself on our clients: we make business cards with an old-fashioned logo, a classy border, and use the typeface of American money; we make a web site with a picture of a shiny glass building in some south San Francisco city and a mission statement; we meet clients in the bar at the Palace Hotel, wearing clean slacks and designer running shoes, a black or grey turtleneck. We dress not like billionaires, but millionaires. And it’s there that the known quantities of the enterprise cease.
Steven suggests we learn contemporary business speak. We should read Dale Carnegie and his modern equivalent with the seven habits of highly effective people. I’m on track to finish the series of Tony Robbins’ “Personal Power” cassettes in 29 days. We shall read them all, these practical spiritualists, but they all say basically the same thing. Confidence with a dash of bourbon will be our drug of choice and the whiff of it emerging from our old-fashioned calfskin briefcases will be intoxication, yet reassuring.
Imperial Services, even in its grossest failures borne of the most startling naïveté, cannot fail. The mere act of breaking ourselves, Steven and Erik and I to start with, out of the mental mold of job applicant, the mere attempt to do even this is a triumph. With employers, with friends and strangers alike, with dates, gallery owners, etc., the act of supplicating ourselves, and asking what we can do for them, will cease.
Instead we will charge clients in increments of $100 to advise them in any capacity they need, provided we are willing to do so. We are no longer sluts, after all. Art, literature, management, travel, love, psychology, cooking, self-defense, color, music, the sky is the limit. The less tangible the better. We will do whatever the hell we want and we will assist our clients in same.
Imperial Services: Envision the Life You Want.
(11.22.07 / 02.12.12)
