I don’t remember the ad, just the phone call. A dog was barking in the background. Her voice cut through the noise. “Yes, when can you come in?” she asked, already moving on to the next thing. She didn’t need to see my resume.

That moment set the tone for everything that followed.

Her house was chaos. Papers everywhere, dogs barking, phone always ringing. If you could handle it, you could work there.

My first job was reposting the ad and scheduling interviews with other candidates. But at the end of that first day, she said, “When can you come tomorrow?” And the next day it was the same. It wasn’t until the first year passed that it was understood I got the job. She didn’t particularly like me, but she couldn’t find anyone better than me.

At first, I was just helping, like printing things, carrying things, assembling things. But eventually I had become her secretary, marketing department, and professional voice.

What I learned was how to sound professional when you had no idea what you were doing. How to write emails that sounded like they came from someone who knew things, when really I was just mimicking patterns I’d seen online. Sandy would hand me tasks that required experience I didn’t have.

She sold therapy certifications. Expensive ones, $3,000 for a weekend workshop that would supposedly teach you her proprietary method. My job was finding people to buy them. I’d harvest email addresses from her mailing lists and send them copy about “life-changing breakthrough techniques” and “limited-time certification opportunities.”

The people who emailed back sounded desperate. They wanted to know about whether this would actually let them practice therapy. I learned to deflect those questions. To focus on the transformation they’d experience, the tools they’d gain, the community they’d join.

Sandy believed in what she was selling, which made it worse somehow. She wasn’t a scammer because she genuinely thought her method worked. But she was underwater financially and couldn’t stop pushing. Every interaction became a sales opportunity. Every conversation ended with a pitch.

I stayed because I needed the work. I stayed because the chaos felt familiar. And I stayed because, despite everything, I was learning. Not from her, she had nothing to teach me about professionalism or ethics or how to run a business. But I was learning from the necessity of filling gaps she couldn’t see. From having to sound competent when I felt like a fraud. From watching what happened when passion wasn’t backed by substance.

She never made me prove I was useful. She just handed me something and trusted that I’d figure it out. For that, despite everything else, I am grateful to her.