For most of my career I haven’t had a logo or letterhead or even an SEO strategy. But I’ve always had a message that starts with: How can I make a difference?

A client called and said they’d just watched some speaker predict average brokerage commission rates falling - by half - over the next decade. The client was quite upset.

“That will destroy the industry. What can we do?”

The old maxim goes: It’s not what happens to us, but how we react to what happens to us, that determines our success in life. Even in our great age of automation and information, it’s hard to accept that much of what happens in life is beyond our control. We’ve been making plans our whole life - what we’d do, where we’d live, how we’d win - and conditioned ourselves to think everything and anything is within our control.

Except that it’s not.

Health is a big deal in our lives. We toast to it, wish it for each other and spend billions improving it. We know when it’s good: We stand upright, have energy, sleep well and look fit. The building block of fitness is food: So we spend lots of time, energy and technology picking our ingredients. We grow it, buy it, cook it, google it, reserve a seat for it and endlessly share it online.