So, yesterday my partner and his girls—who always go to these meetings—conducted a debriefing where they shared the highlights of what they had learned from this year’s session with me. I sat at the end of the conference table and girded my loins for what I was sure would be a white knuckle emotional roller coaster. I was not disappointed. Let me summarize:
1. All of us are one mistake away from being sued and losing everything.
2. IF we don’t get sued, we will probably get fined a gazillion dollars if one of our office computers gets hacked and client information gets compromised...oh, and our errors and omissions coverage probably won’t cover it.
3. None of us know the first thing about computers and this fact will probably wind up causing our financial and professional ruin.
4. The way I do business is likely to be rejected by the latest regulatory regime within a year or so, causing me to change the way I charge clients for my services, the net result being I must charge them WAY MORE in exchange for less performance.
And this, my friends, is why I don’t attend these meetings. This industry is tough enough without having to be beaten over the head with just how tenuous my survival is for three days in a meeting that I have to pay to attend. I mean, if I wanted to cultivate suicidal thoughts I could stay home and watch CNN for free.
But then I talk with me friend about her cancer and what kind of day she’s having and I check myself. It’s a hard day. She’s tired and fearful and feeling defeated. She’ll snap out of it because she’s tough as a two dollar steak...but this morning it’s rough. She wants to feel normal, she is tired of thinking about cancer, she’s tired of the relentless burden of it all. I tell her a couple of bad jokes. She laughs. Then she gives me a passage of scripture to look up. I do. It’s about perseverance. She tells me she feels better now. She reminds me that I don’t have...any problems. And unless you’re facing a chemo treatment this Thursday morning...you probably don’t either.
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