There's a feeling in a room right before a show starts, and if you've ever run one, it lives in your chest.
I know it because I was usually the one making it happen from the back. Fixing the projector. Counting the seats one more time. The Beach Boys playing over the speakers, because that was always our pump-up music, the sound that told us it was almost go time. David Edge would be off to the side, scrolling on his phone, calm as anything, while I watched the door.
And here's the thing about that door. No matter how booked we were, the room would sit nearly empty until about five minutes out. Then, all at once, it filled. Zero to dozens in a single breath. People piling in, finding seats, picking up the newsletter on the way, and half of them would have their heads down on the word search before they'd even gotten their coats off.
Then Edge would put the phone down, right on time, every time, and crack a couple of jokes to warm the room up. His favorite went something like, "Now, in case any of you are here from the government..." and the room would laugh. It landed because it was true. These were Medicare workshops, and Medicare is about as regulated as it gets. Every single show we ever ran had to be filed with CMS and approved before we were allowed to hold it. So the joke wasn't really a joke. It was us telling the room: we take this seriously, and now let's have some fun with it.
We started right on time. Every time.
I should tell you where I fit in all this. I'm not the advisor. I never have been. My father is the one who sits across from a family and helps them decide what to do. I'm the son who grew up watching him do it, and somewhere in those library rooms I realized I wanted to reach the people who weren't in the room yet. The advisor helps one family at a time. I wanted to help more people than could ever fit in one office.
For a good while, that's exactly what we did. We filled libraries all across the valley, helping hundreds of people every single month. And then, while it was still working, we stopped.
Not because the rooms went empty. Because we needed to be honest about what we wanted the next twenty-five years to become. A full room can be a comfortable place to hide, and it's easy to keep doing the thing you're good at without ever asking if it's still the thing you're called to do. So we stepped out of the spotlight on purpose, to figure out who we were becoming.
But I want to tell you about the best part, the part I miss most. The close. When the presenter opened the floor to questions, hands would go up all over the room. And whoever was up front, David Schaeffer, Edge, Kyle, they'd get this smile that stretched from ear to ear. Most presenters dread the open Q&A, that moment when anyone can ask anything. Ours loved it. Because the truth is, there was not a single question that room could throw at them that they didn't already know the answer to, or know exactly where to find it. So it was never scary. It was fun.
That feeling, we want it back in our bones. And we're coming to get it.
The workshops are returning. The first one is Friday, October second, right back where we started, in a room with a screen at the front and a room full of your neighbors. We can't wait to help thousands more this enrollment season and beyond.
If you've been carrying questions, come ask them. We saved you a seat.