DECLAN
Grant Mercer believed every problem could be solved if you controlled the photograph taken afterward.
He arrived at the training center wearing a navy coat that cost more than my first car and carrying two phones, which meant he planned to tell me something I didn’t want to hear.
“Smile,” he said when I walked into the conference room.
“Not happening.”
“That’s why God invented candid photography.”
“I thought that was journalists.”
“Same business model.”
I dropped into the chair across from him. Grant had represented me for three years. He was good at his job. Better than good. He knew when to push a general manager, when to let a sponsor think an idea was theirs, and how to turn a bad week into a story about leadership.
He also had the moral instincts of a calculator. He sl
