I recently had a rare coffee with one of my mentors. He is very organized and you can see he has everything planned out to the highest level – and when he commits, he delivers and he had made the commitment to have a coffee at a certain time and place – he is also actually hard to have a sit down with, but when you are with him, he is fully present and listens to you wholeheartedly. He’s got bags of wisdom and very open minded at the same time – true symbolism of humbleness and humility.
Prior to getting to the coffee, I had a bit of a problem and had to deal with a bit of “crisis” and lost track of time. So, a minute after our set meeting time, he politely texted me asking me whether I was on the way since he’s got other engagements stacked up for the day. I have often heard of people saying “my heart went into my throat, and I was speechless”. Well, for me, it wasn’t quite my heart, but I felt that rush of flight mode into my throat – I had planned to dress appropriately and arrive at our meeting relaxed and well-prepared.
I was really caught off guard, wearing shorts and casual tee! The one thing that I didn’t want to lose was time, which if I decided to dress-up as I had planned to do, would have basically cut the meeting off, and come out as being disrespectful! Well, not being “appropriately” dressed up is also kind of disrespectful, is it not?
So, I had to think really fast! Show-up LATE, “appropriately” dressed or show-up ON TIME, “inappropriately” dressed. So, I decided that I’d show up on time – in my “inappropriate” dress code. On my way to meet him, I kept on judging myself on why I lost track of time – but at the same time, a sense of peace came through me, and I began to feel that the “inappropriately” dressed me is the genuine me – I don’t have to recall anything that I would have rehearsed for the meeting – I just shot off the cuff.
I explained to him why I was late, and he didn’t seem to care much about that! He then asked me how I was doing and why I wanted to meet up with him. I then opened up about all the developments that had taken place, I think he was also a bit surprised about how I took his advice and direction from the previous coffee we had.
Our coffee session didn’t last more than 30 minutes, actually by the first 15 minutes I had accumulated so many action points and direction going forward…it was amazing! I was shooting off the cuff and he was bringing back raw advice which was incredibly valuable to me. Just before we said our goodbyes, he said “You are an accountant, right? Why do you bill by the hour? You could have sat with a client for an hour and billed them for those hours without producing any real output. Do you think it’s okay? Only entertainers should bill by the hour!” That got me thinking, “what counts more, output or time?” For a client certainly more value is obtained from the output. Where do you stand, output or time?