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Hanging Out in Washington

The year 2000 not only ushered in a new millennium, it brought with it a flurry of recognition for the pinnacle of success that The Medical Manager had achieved. To me, who was just on the magic carpet for the ride, it was all simply a tribute to the perfection of life’s flow. I had not sought any recognition; I had just thrown myself into life’s wind to see where it would take me.

I was invited by one of our previous board members, Ray Kurzweil, to join him at the White House in March where he was to receive the National Medal of Honor in Technology. Ray is credited with many major inventions, including the first microchip that allowed an electronic keyboard to sound like a grand piano and other real instruments. He is also considered one of the fathers of speech recognition software. Ray had been on Medical Manager Corporation’s board, and I had sat on Kurzweil Education System’s board. Through it all we had become good friends. He even stayed with us at the Temple a few times and showed a serious interest in Eastern philosophy. I would have to wear a tuxedo to the While House, which was far from my normal attire, but I was excited about joining Ray for this honor.

Like many others, I had been to the White House as a tourist but certainly not as a guest of the president. There was a cocktail party after the ceremony, and we were allowed to walk freely throughout the rooms of the first floor residence. I gazed out a window in the Green Room that overlooked the Washington Monument and thought about how many presidents had taken in that view. Getting used to actually sitting on the antique furniture in those rooms was difficult enough, but then I kept realizing that the people I was having conversations with were all National Medal of Honor winners in some field of science. President Clinton joined the mix, and I even ran into Stevie Wonder in the hallway. All in all, it was one of those “what am I doing here” moments. I’m a yogi who moved out to the woods to meditate. I surrendered to the flow of life, and I end up here—unbelievable.

That was not my only trip to Washington that year. The very next month I came back to represent The Medical Manager when it was installed into the archives of the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian was sponsoring an effort to document the Information Technology Revolution for future generations. In much the same way as we now look at the Industrial Revolution, someday people will be fascinated by the time period in which computers revolutionized how we live. Each year a panel of CEOs of the world’s leading IT companies did a search for organizations that had done extraordinary work in the field. Because of our work in the area of electronic health-care transactions, Medical Manager was one of the companies selected in the year 2000 to have its story preserved in a time capsule for the future. There was a grand banquet the night before and a ceremony at the museum the next day. I brought a few of the old-time employees with me, as well as Donna and Durga. Reflecting back twenty years to when I was sitting in that twelve-by-twelve-foot room in the woods by myself writing this program, one could never have imagined that it would lead to the Smithsonian.

As it turned out, I would have to return to DC once again in August of 2000 on a very important trip. I had been asked to represent the company at a meeting with the Department of Justice (DOJ). Before larger companies can combine, the U.S. government reserves the right to determine if the combination could stifle competition and violate antitrust laws. In the case of the Healtheon/WebMD–Medical Manager merger, the government requested very detailed information and a face-to-face meeting. The reason for this was that Medical Manager Network Services was sending so many claims to Envoy that the government was concerned about allowing us to become part of the same company. My immediate reaction to this situation was one of deep humility. Had Medical Manager actually reached the point of success that the U.S. government had to be concerned about the very antitrust laws I had studied in business school? No, not really, but we were going to have to convince them of that.

Sabrina and I flew up to Washington to prepare for the Justice Department meeting. It was around that time I began to notice that my life was becoming filled with more and more attorneys. We met for a strategy meeting at the office of one of the largest law firms in D.C. There were attorneys everywhere, but one always stood out from the rest. Jim Mercer was Marty’s litigation specialist, and he understood both the law and business at a phenomenal level. I had learned to have great respect and confidence in Jim, and I was glad he would be present at the DOJ meeting.

I, of course, had never previously dealt with the Justice Department. It was not exactly my everyday experience to be entering the DOJ building surrounded by a large team of attorneys. Nevertheless, after hours of very intense questioning, Sabrina and I managed to address the government’s concerns satisfactorily. When it was all said and done, the merger was not going to pose any anti-trust problems. Though we were very relieved when the ordeal was over, it had actually turned out to be quite a learning experience.

All this exposure to intensely powerful people and situations was having a profound effect on the psyche I watched so diligently. I had never been exposed to this powerful lifestyle. Nothing in me got off on it or wanted anything from it, but it did make me deal with parts of my being that I would not have faced otherwise. If I saw any weakness, fear, or anxiety come up, I just deeply relaxed back into where I was watching from. I simply kept letting go of whatever came up. This is where life had taken me, and I used all these situations as a way of letting go of myself. It was definitely working. I kept being pushed into strongly positive and negative situations, and I increasingly found myself in a very clear and undisturbed state. It seemed that the more challenges life put me through, the less my inner energy flow was affected by outer conditions. What years of willful meditation had not gotten rid of, life’s situations and challenges were rooting out of me. As long as I made getting rid of myself my only goal, every situation was a fruitful experience. If I’d had any other goal, I think the constant pressure would have been overwhelming. I found that I actually got more peaceful inside as I dealt with the ever-increasing magnitude of challenges. Life was molding me each day to become who I needed to be in order to handle tomorrow’s tasks. All I had to do was let go and not resist the process.

For the next few years, my Medical Manager Practice Services Division continued to grow to its peak financial success. We grew to more than twenty-three hundred employees and were generating more than three hundred million dollars a year in revenue. We were the most widely installed practice management vendor in the country, and we had begun turning our attention toward building a fully computerized electronic health record. It was a period with tremendous challenges that I thought was putting me through unprecedented growth. Little did I know that life’s portal of dramatic change was about to open up once again. When it did this time, it would completely redefine for me what it meant to go through a transformational growth experience.