It's Thursday night, otherwise known as my date night with Michele Kleier. I just finished dinner, cleaned up after myself, and should be all set for an HGTV meeting. Unfortunately, that's not happening tonight. You see, I have a big day tomorrow and I'm not at all prepared. As soon as I'm finished with this, I'm going to be putting in some solid meeting preparation time.
I generally don't stress out over work-related meetings. I actually like them. Today, for example, was a great day. We had a client meeting in the morning and then a sales call with a prospect in the afternoon. Both appointments went very well. I'd spent a modest amount of time getting ready and knew exactly what points I wanted to make and how to make them. That's the way it typically goes. While there's always a bit of the unknown in each of these meetings, I've done so many of them that they're second nature.
Tomorrow's meeting is going to be altogether different. Why? Because, it's a brand new audience for me. I'm spending the morning at an elementary school. In a weak moment, I volunteered to speak at career day at one of our customer's elementary schools. When I said "Yes," I didn't realize that it was going to be a full morning's event, with 25 minutes in front of each grade -- including the kindergarten!
Do you know how hard it's going to be explaining the concept of insurance to kindergartners? I'm freaking out and have no idea where to start. Kim tells me I should come up with an activity of some sort to fill time. I'm thinking that maybe I could have them call the customer service line and count the number of voice response options we're given. Or, better yet, maybe we could place bets on how long it will take before we get to a live person when we say "speak to a representative." That might keep them busy for a while.
Actually, it's probably a good thing that I've got to figure out how to boil down insurance concepts to a level understandable by elementary school students. It will be a good reminder of how complicated we often make things and how greater simplicity in our industry would be a very good thing. Maybe this will be productive, after all.
This is where the magic happens.
