Did I ever tell you the story about when a consultant I hired for my company suddenly died?
I used to work in an organization that provided unique training for employees that they couldn’t get anywhere else. It was around productivity, employee engagement, leadership, and such. It was a dream job because my task was to figure out how to spend a bunch of money.
I would find consultants who had certain training programs and would hire them to bring them into my company.
I found this one consultant who offered to build a unique training course just for us around being Change Agents. It sounded awesome and so I hired him. In fact, consultant fees are always crazy and fluctuate up and down so much that you never know what someone is going to charge. So, during my negotiation with him about his fees he said, “You can pay whatever you think it’s worth.”
It blew my mind, but was a perfect move on his part because he could have said a price too low and I would have taken it, but if he said too high, then I’d think he was crazy and maybe not hire him at all. He also knew that I worked for a respectable company and I had budget to pay him, so I wouldn’t just give him pennies. I ended up paying a somewhat standard price, which I think was a lot for him, so he was happy.
Anyway, he developed the course and we had an awesome experience. It was a multiple day course where students would come in for half the day, a few days in a row.
After his first successful course, we planned to have him come back a few months later and do it again. He was about to get on the plane, but wasn’t feeling well, so he decided to delay his flight and go get checked out. It turned out he had a serious blockage in a vein or heart and the flight would have killed him. That’s what he told me.
Well, a few weeks later, it didn’t get fixed and it took his life. And he was a young guy, probably in his 40’s.
It was a shock and devastating blow to our program.
We learned that nothing is certain.
And to listen to your body.
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