Revenue Diaries Entry 80

My friend and mentor, Lorraine Ball, passed away on September 16th from a quick bout with cancer. And I've been trying to figure out how to write this…

The truth is there's no clever framing device for it. There is no creative way to start this message because it’s bullshit and unfair, but that’s life.

So this week's edition is just this. One story. Just Lorraine.

On Lorraine

I honestly can't remember the exact day I met her. I think I was in college, maybe still in high school, when my dad dragged me to an organization called Rainmakers, a networking group in Indianapolis run by a guy named Tony Scelzo. Lorraine was one of its biggest champions. She ran an agency called Roundpeg, and Rainmakers became the foundation of my entire life in this city after college.

And it was tough out there in my early 20s. You can have a degree and still have absolutely no idea what you're doing. I graduated with a marketing degree, moved to Indianapolis from Anderson, and wanted to do graphic design and couldn’t get a job to save my life.

Lorraine took me under her wing and hired me as a graphic designer at Roundpeg. I spent two years there working on her small business clients' brands. And the thing about Lorraine, the thing everyone at her funeral kept coming back to, was that mentoring people was everything to her. Her husband stood up and said she called a lot of us her kids. One of her mentees called her "biz mom."

And I agree, because she was that for me.

When I finally told her I wanted to start my own agency, one that was going to compete directly with hers, she didn't blink. She let me start it out of her office. For f*cking free. She taught me how to run a business while I was, by any reasonable definition, becoming her competitor. I don't know many people who would do that.

I know exactly one.

And she let me deface her property to market my company (then called Brandswag). The Indianapolis Business Journal wanted to do a feature on it, and Lorraine said, "Why don't you spray-paint the logo on the side of my garage?”

I said hell yeah. Then it took me six months to repaint the garage back to the beautiful white it was before. She may have cursed me for being lazy, but she never once made me feel bad about it.

That was her.

She cared about the people around her enough to hand you her literal garage wall and then have the patience to wait half a year for you to get your act together. Younger marketers especially. She never stopped trying to help us make the most of whatever we were building.

Whether you believe in God, the universe, or the simulation, Lorraine was put in front of me at exactly the moment I needed her. I am a better man, a better marketer, and a better leader because I got to work next to her in my twenties.

At one point during the funeral, Andrew, her husband, asked everyone who had been mentored by Lorraine to raise their hand. Thirty hands went up. I sat there thinking, I want that. I want to be the reason thirty people raise their hand someday.

Cancer is a bitch. It took her too soon, and it isn’t fair. But I know Lorraine went to bed every night having actually lived that day, fully, on purpose.

I'd bet everything I have that she didn't waste one of them, and that’s the best lesson of all.

This city lost one of its most relentless advocates this week. I lost a mentor. Rest easy, Lorraine. Thank you for the love, kindness, and support over the years.

♥️ kyle