I’m minutes away from leaving for a dreaded meeting. You know, one of those meetings in which both parties are about as enthusiastic to attend a lunch with the other as they are as excited to have a root canal done. Yes, one of those meetings. In fact, I would love to have a root canal done at 12pm today as long as it allowed me to miss this meeting.

Five out of five days I get to attend a lunch in which I’m discussing a clients business, their successes, what we can do to help, etc. However this is the one week where I have to put on my “wax lips” and listen to all of the reasons that my company is the worst to work with, and the one that gives them as much headache as they give me.

Have you ever had a waiter that you just didn’t like? You can’t really put your finger on it but for some reason there is something that you just don’t seem to enjoy about them when they approach your table. You imagine being in the old west and getting to have a gunslinger stand off with them or you think for a second that the hot soup would look ok spilled on their shoes. Sometimes in business we just have to suck it up and work with folks like this. You can’t connect with everyone I guess and it’s clients like this that make you stronger. The good news is though the waiter leaves your table, clients like this seem to hang around forever.

The key is using all of these experiences to your advantage. Learn from every situation. Of course I’d rather get thrown in jail ten minutes before this lunch but I also know that after lunch I’ll have a better understanding of how we can service this client and hopefully improve my market share with them as well. If I go to jail, then I’ll have to pay bail, tell my Mother what I did, and probably end up in the paper. So I guess learning from the mistakes we’ve made is a better option.

Wish me luck today.