Last night during our wrap up session, I decided to build our normal prayer circle by tenure and longevity in a spiritual effort to build a circle of passion about our Revolution! As I started, I asked Eddie Stockton to calculate how many years of service to the Revolution were in our leadership team. We have always prayed holding hands, as an entire team, for as long as I can remember.
I wanted to use a design where the momentum would build, where I could welcome our newest cohort, say thanks to our amazing leadership upgrades since the move to Louisville 2 1/2 years ago that are poised to make SHC #1 in the country, and look each top leader in the room in the eye as we called out their years of service. With humility and gratitude, I wanted to let the entire room know what each person had contributed to our sacred journey. I wanted to personally thank every leader who restored their local communities as our partner, town by town. We are a turnaround organization that takes the worst high-risk situation and believes, with God’s help, there will be full restoration.
The energy kept building as we crossed into 5- and 6-year leaders who led the creation of Signature just 5 1/2 years ago where I saw deep emotion and a little water in the eyes of both of us. We just kept going to groups that moved to Florida from Kentucky over 9 years ago as a personal favor to me. As we started to get near the end, I saw all of our inflection points as an organization in a historical lens that really shook me up…
I feel like I was watching my life flash before me…with every deep eye contact and spiritual connection with each partner, I saw the great loyalty and commitment from each leader as the visualized building blocks of the early Revolution launch went through my mind.
I saw some of the original authors who helped me write our data points on bar napkins, great leaders who remember the famed bus trip when I was a radical young leader myself, ones who helped created the FAB launch to hostile crowds, partners who helped launch new companies that are thriving today, and one leader who helped me start the Spirituality Pillar after my dramatic personal conversion during my son Luke’s extended illness, which defines much of who we are today.
As we neared the end I saw my first recruits, my first leaders, with me side-by-side like the old days. I also saw my partner who helped me recruit 80% of the leaders in the room when I was back at day one, November 1, 1999, before the turn of the century, with no money, a bar napkin, and a dream, and what I thought was all the time in the world ahead of me…
Here is what you learn from 727 years of service within a small group and a young company:
- Today may be your best day, but remember where it started because the authentic journey is more important than the end zone!
- A reminder of the value of the sacred gift of loyalty and service that very few groups will ever collectively own in today’s churn-and-burn world that we have daily at the Revolution!
- A chance to see my own personal journey like movie scenes, remembering, despite the wins, the losses, and life’s painful challenges, that the love you have for your partners and leadership team that never goes away is why you did it in the first place.
- A reminder that big things start with big dreams; you just keep saying it over and over again, even when it looks bleak…And some day they will happen.
- And lastly, I do not know what the future holds for me or my team, but it has been the best journey a man could ever ask for so far, and I still see brighter days and bigger mountains to climb. I would not want to do it without the best leadership team anywhere in this country…The sky’s the limit at the Revolution!