Well, perhaps I was too young or too naïve to know, but I was definitely too busy to care. Why make rocket science out of something that's not? (Apologies to all those computer scientists out there, but as someone schooled in astronomy and physics, we always felt it was our job to figure out a way to drive those thinking machines absolutely bonkers.) And therein lies the lesson of this fable.

We all want to be the best we can possibly be. We often think the road to this success contains insurmountable obstacles. It doesn't. It's usually just as simple as reading the manual. But not all jobs have manuals. True. On the other hand many fields, like that of providing financial services to retirement plans, have industry journals replete with numerous stories of hands-on reality, up-and-coming issues and hints of discoveries yet to be applied. In effect, this body of literature becomes the manual for the professional.

With that kernel of truth, we know what we must do. We must read what our peers read. That's actually easy. You can do this just by going to a list of most widely read stories in 2013 like this one: "2013's Top 5 FiduciaryNews.com Stories," (FiduciaryNews.com, December 31, 2013). But, while it's one thing to know what everyone else is reading, it's quite another thing to know why they're reading it. Here's a quick rundown of some of the important lessons we learned from analyzing the most widely-read stories of FiduciaryNews.com in 2013:

1)      The search for the perfect fiduciary fee remains the Holy Grail of the industry. Not one, but two, different articles on the subject scored heavily in the top ten last year. One of them was actually written in 2012, which tells you the staying power of the subject. Unfortunately, there will never be a "perfect" answer to this question because: a) Fees come within the context of service; b) Service is a subjectively measured item; and, c) competition between service providers means fee levels and the value of specific services will always be debated in the open market place.

2)      Leading thinkers will always seek the thoughts and opinions of other leading thinkers. Think of this as "a room of our own." It's a safe place where we could enter free from the burden of not speaking in jargon. It's a place we can talk shop, confident it won't come back to bite us. It's a world – either real or virtual – where like-minded folks can gather and extend the overall knowledge-base of the industry for the sole reason of exploring the possible.

3)      No matter how hard we try to honestly express the nature of our business, the mass media will trump our trope with a meme that resonates with the hoi polloi. There is only one appropriate defensive tactic to employ in the case of large scale bullying of this nature, and that is to immediately and unrepentantly confront the bully. Yeah, yeah, I know what they teach you in all that sensitivity training mumbo jumbo, but if you want to survive in the wilds of the jungle that is marketing with the likes of Charlie Daniels and Chuck Norris, then you've got to be brave enough to stand up for what you believe.

And while that last elements promotes a specific tactic, let me leave you with a concept that might become the talk of 2014: A Specific Strategy.