Does one client make your career?

I haven’t been able to sleep in the 48 hours since Vanessa Camones brought one of her clients to my home. I can’t tell you who they are. But they showed me some technology that goes way beyond anything I’ve read about in Wired Magazine or seen covered in other press yet. This company builds satellites and planes and lots of other things. Is hugely important to American history and technology. Unfortunately the NDA she had me sign keeps me from saying more.

I’ve been thinking about what they showed me ever since.

You’ll read about it someday in Wired or New York Times but that’s not what I’m writing about today.

Instead, I’m writing about Vanessa Camones.

I’ve known her for years. Decades, even. She’s always been nice to me, always shown me companies that are competent and interesting. Always had a kind word for me and about anyone else in the industry we talked about.

I ran into her a few months back leaving Facebook. She was working on something there that I’m still interested in.

But before Thursday I’ll be honest. Thought she was doing a great job but nothing she was doing rose to the top of my mind as a legendary consultant or world changer. She hadn’t brought me something that I thought the leaders in Spatial Computing industry, or the tech industry overall, should see.

That all changed Thursday.

When companies asked me “who would you hire to do PR or do other go-to-market consulting if you had a world-changing technology?” I wouldn’t have thought of Vanessa.

Today she’s at the top of that list.

Why? One client.

Now, to go all Gary Vaynerchuk on you, she did the hard work for decades. That put her in position to win that client. She never took credit, was happy to stay in the background. I bet this post is making her uncomfortable.

But, as of today, she is now the top go to market strategist in the Spatial Computing industry in my mind.

I no longer look at her that way. One client changed all that.

She, and her client, shook my world Thursday, and reminded me of other times when I was first to see an important technology, like when Siri was launched in my son’s bedroom. Adam Cheyer and Dag Kittlaus are burned into my memory because of that. Or when Elon Musk gave me the first ride in the first Tesla, before he gave his best friend Jason McCabe Calacanis a ride (they still are great friends and Jason, unlike me, had both the ability and risk-taking capability to become one of Tesla’s first investors). Or when Uber was invented by Garrett Camp or Travis Kalanick right in front of me at Loic Le Meur‘s conference in Paris. Or when I was an early user of Instagram, amongst its first 100.

What I saw Thursday will change the world as deeply as any of those and, because Vanessa Camones brought it to me, she has rocketed to legendary status in my mind.

Thank you Vanessa. I’m headed to San Diego on vacation dreaming huge new dreams that I wouldn’t have dreamed before Thursday. Anyone who gives me a new dream (and, honestly, some new nightmares because this tech is so crazy futuristic, Black Mirror has nothing like it) rocks.