If You're Offered a Seat on a Rocket Ship, Don't Ask What Seat... Just Get On!

After a remarkable 6-year run, it's time...

Time for a new challenge.

Time for a new chapter.

Time for the next step in the journey...

I joined Propel Marketing in 2015 as an individual contributor... 6 years, 5 roles, 9 bosses and a dozen brands / mergers / acquisitions later, I truly believe I'm leaving as one of the most fortunate people / leaders on the planet. I had the privilege of working with and learning from some of the most high quality individuals in the space, and was blessed with the opportunity to build teams from zero to a dozen, from a dozen to fifty, from fifty to a hundred and beyond. Each of them reached higher, pushed each other further, and taught me an immeasurable amount about this incredible business we get to be in - the people business.

I could drone on and on (and on, and on) about each one of them. About the one who hired me and how much he taught me about family and balance. About the one who first promoted me and how he taught me to care deeply about people and how leadership is about them not you. Or about how I almost wrecked my car after he called to tell me he had colon cancer (3 days after the one who taught me to bring my whole self to work passed away unexpectedly). The Empire Builders in the Midwest, or the Masters of their Craft in the Southwest, each and every one having a deep, lasting, indelible impact on me as a person and as a leader.

But, for everything there is a season ... er, all good things must come to an end ... er, every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end (Semisonic, anyone?).

However you want to say it, a new chapter starts this week, and I have a feeling it's going to be an absolutely epic one. There's a group of folks who have built one hell of a rocket ship down here in Austin. They offered me a seat on it and I immediately and enthusiastically accepted it. It's a seat that will allow me to return to my roots; to my true passion(s); to building teams that set the bar by which all others are measured. It's a seat that will also force me to stretch, to adapt and to grow. And if you know me, you know I wouldn't have it any other way.

"Excitement" doesn't seem to do it justice. "Elation" is ... temporary. But when I find a word that properly describes the feeling you get when you know - beyond a shadow of a doubt - that you've stumbled onto something great, that you're sitting firmly at the intersection of opportunity, timing, passion and people, you have my word that I'll come back in here and edit this post with it.

Until then, time to take a deep breath. One quick pause to drink in the moment, then off to the launchpad we go. We all know rocket ships aren't built to sit still. Onward, upward!