Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
“What do you need from me today?” I ask.
“Your trust. And a room I can convert into a booth.”
I walk her down the hall. The room adjacent to the production space is the right size, and she sees it the same way I do. She stands in the center and turns a slow circle, measuring with her eyes, her fingers tapping her notebook.
“This works,” she says. “Sound panels on every wall, new board, a desk for you on one side and the production setup on the other. Glass divider here.” She traces a line with her hand. “I can see you the whole time. I’ll give you a diagram with the hand gestures I use so there’s no question when we’re live.”
I nod and tell her to order what she needs and bill the studio account and to use my name to get stuff here faster. She pulls out her phone and starts making a list before I’ve finished the sentence. I leave her to it and go back to my office. I can hear her on the phone with a supplier a few minutes later, her voice friendly and specific, asking about lead times on acoustic panels, confirming dimensions.
I pull up my email and scroll past the unread messages from Mira, from the label, and from a booking agent I haven’t spoken to in months. I close the laptop. I sit in the quiet of my office and listen to Bex as she starts to change my life.
By lunch, construction has started.
Paige shows up after school. I hear her before I see her. My daughter has one volume, and quiet is not a part of her range. She comes through the studio door with her backpack over one shoulder and a coffee she grabbed on the way. She’s wearing her hair pulled back in a ponytail and has on one of my old 4225 West tour shirts, the black one with the setlist cities on the back, tied in a knot at her waist. She and her mother have been raiding my closet for years. I own nothing.
She drops the backpack on the floor of my office and leans in the doorway.
“Let me run the social for this,” she says.
She doesn’t say hello first.
“You already run accounts for Sinful Distraction and half of Elle’s roster,” I tell her. “You have school, cheer practice, and you asked if you can work at Ralph’s. You’re starting to make me think you’re desperate for money, which I know isn’t the case. Are you on drugs?”
Paige rolls her eyes. “I’m good at social media.”
At least one of us is.
“I’m an employee,” I tell her. “You’ll need to talk to Bex. She’s the boss.”
Paige stares at me, with her hands on her hips. I shake my head and call out, “Bex, can you come in here?”
Bex comes into my office. There’s dust on her jeans and her shirt is covered in sawdust. I could’ve sworn there was a crew in here working for her, and her not for them.
“Bex,” I say. “This is Paige. She handles the social media accounts for FMG Records, and she would like to talk to you.” I purposely leave out that Paige is my daughter. If she wants this, she needs to earn it on her own skill and not name recognition.
Paige doesn’t waste a second and opens her laptop, much to my surprise. She lays it out for Bex: teaser clips before the show launches, audiograms with waveforms, behind-the-scenes content from the studio build, a full engagement strategy with hashtag structure and platform-specific formatting.
“You post the full clip on one platform, the first fifteen seconds on another, and a still image with the quote on a third,” she says. “Different bait for different fish. The algorithm rewards native content. Cross-posting is lazy and the reach dies.”
I lean forward, captivated by all of this and wondering how the heck she came up with a plan when I haven’t even discussed this with her.
She tells us she can build anticipation before a single episode airs. She tells us she knows the audience because she’s already managing multiple artist accounts, and she’s tracked what people share, what they save, what they come back for. She built Sinful Distraction’s online presence turning it into the kind of following that labels use as leverage in negotiations.
Paige turns toward Bex. “I know you have your own teams but hiring me saves you money. Plus, I already live in Beaumont so you’re not asking someone to uproot their lives or move here.”
Bex looks from Paige to me. “She’s my daughter,” I finally say. “She’s employed by FMG Records and is still in high school.”
“I don’t care whose daughter she is. She knows what she’s talking about. And she’s right, hiring her or someone local saves money.”