New Additions and New Excitement

Hey everyone! Sorry for my absence over the last couple week, but as some of you may have seen.......we've had a lot going on in the Sawyer household. On September 22 at 2:14pm Jackson Ezra Sawyer graced us with his presence and added to the craziness that is our life!!

Mom and baby are doing well now. We are all tired as you'd expect, but being this is boy #4 we expected no less!!! First time we've done this with a toddler too, so that's a fun wrinkle we haven't experienced before lol.

I took some time to be with the family and help my wife so you might think not that much happened military recruiting-wise right? No chance!!! So much has happened! The week before Jackson came, I had a great meeting with Alfredo ?? Torres who is amazing on LinkedIn and gave me lots of great advice. Fun fact: I actually knew of and probably met Alfredo before we chatted. I've seen his content, loved it and knew an Alfredo Torres who worked on a radio show back in Virginia Beach that was hosted by my lifelong friend Mike Powers. I just assumed it was someone with the same name. Well, I went to connect with him and saw that we have a number of common connections, but one of them was my brother!! My brother also worked at the radio station for a while, so I was pretty sure it was the same Alfredo, scrolled down and sure enough, same guy!!! I reached out and neither of us could believe it. Alfredo was at my brother's wedding where I doubled as the officiant and the best man, so we probably met briefly and I'm sure Alfredo laughed at my hilarious best man speech!! It's so amazing when the world shows you how small it really is!!

Pre-baby I also met with Gillian Russell who helped set up the military program at Amazon!!! I've chatted with retired Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Louis who wrote an amazing book called "Hiring Veterans: How to Leverage Military Talent For Organizational Growth" I'm currently reading it, but I can't wait to implement some of these ideas. You can get a copy of his book here, Hiring Veterans.

Sounds like enough right? But wait.....there's more! Last week I received a connection request, which happens all the time and I love connecting with people. This one was different though. This was from Major General Gregg F. Martin ! A TWO STAR GENERAL WANTED TO CONNECT WITH ME!!! We chatted some and I hope to have him come and speak with us one of these days. I was super hyped by this and I'm gonna have to get a copy of his book to read too. Mental health and the military are two things I believe in deeply, General Martin writes about how these worlds collided for him.

One more thing that got me excited and I'll end this long recap of the past couple weeks. Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are so important, I could and probably will write another article one of these days about how much I believe in them! At Brinks, we have a military ERG called Patriot Pathfinders. When I got here, reaching out to them was one of the first things I did. It turns out that at the same time, the leadership was changing. I met with James Whitlock who is now leading the ERG and have met with him a couple times now. We talked about how I could help and things we could do. An ERG is especially important for military members transitioning as that type of support is very much needed. Anyway, last week while I took our threenager (for those that don't know, this is a toddler who has the attitude of a teenager) to a play session to get him out of the house, James messaged me. Even though I was out for the week, I responded, cause that's who I am and while he wasn't going to keep me long, he asked if I wanted to be part of the ERG! You are now reading a newsletter written by the Director of Communications for Patriot Pathfinders ERG at Brinks!!! I'm honored and excited for this role. I want to help our veterans and this is just another way I can do that!!

Thank you again to everyone who has subscribed and reads these.