Funny how certain moments in life create indelible memories. More than two decades hence, I can still see Kronos Incorporated founder and then-CEO Mark Ain come sauntering into the ballroom of a major hotel in Orlando, Florida resplendent, as he often was, in a brightly colored Hawaiian-styled shirt and Birkenstock sandals.

“How this?” he asked me with arms held wide to display what he clearly perceived to be sartorial splendor.

“What do you mean?” I asked back. “Is that what you’re wearing for your speech?”

By that point I was already overloaded with anxiety. We’d shot interviews with Kronos customers the day before, then toiled overnight to create seven short videos that would play during this upcoming session, kicking off a three-day conference designed for an audience of about 1,500 Kronos customers. We had video introductions for each speaker and several other elements that made this a decently complicated two-hour endeavor. So, the butterflies in my stomach already threatened to lift me into the air like a real-life version of Tinkerbell.

This event would mark my sophomore effort as a freelance writerdirector- producer, the basic role of the man-behind-the-curtain, for Kronos, the first having been an internal event held in Dallas a few months earlier. During that event, I’d worked with key executives, but this user conference marked my first outing with Mark, definitely the most free-spirited executive with whom I’d worked to that point in my career.

I’d already come to enjoy Mark. He was definitive in what he wanted. But he also took input. And you had to admire him for what he’d done to bring Kronos from start-up to a point where his company had been able to attract this many customers to Orlando that fall.

But Mark, at that time, had come to believe that he was a better speaker if he did not rehearse, a belief that I, who had been working on executive presentations for some time by then, did not share.

“Mark will not practice no matter how many times you ask him,” his equally affable brother and Kronos Chief Operating Officer Aron had maintained enough times during our planning sessions that I finally and belligerently bet him $20 that I would ultimately coerce his elder brother to rehearse at least once.