Nine Years Ago Today

It was nine years ago today that I started my position with a little known disaster recovery software company. I had been unemployed for about 5 month prior to this because of the imploding dot bomb markets that many of us chased with great anticipation of IPO’s and wealth and was eager to get started. Not yet having an office and tasked with helping create a professional services organization I read and researched and tried to get up to speed as quickly as possible. However, I wasn’t quick enough as the next day was a day we were all caught in shock. Our headquarters were across the river from lower Manhattan in Hoboken NJ where our office watched in horror as the planes hit, the fire started and towers eventually fell. It was a time of great uncertainty for all of us but even greater was the uncertainty of the businesses that needed to recover and attempt to resume business operations as soon as possible. Although this was an amazing weight of anxiety, fear and shock for all of us the more amazing result was how the people of NYC, businesses, first responders and my fellow co-workers came together to get to work and help.

I then knew, this was the company for me and would be proud to have joined. The character, integrity, ethics shown by everyone coming together immediately gained my respect and energized us all to pitch in and do what ever it took, to do whatever was needed, regardless. That “what ever it takes” attitude carried on as we built a successful professional services methodology, creative marketing department and a sales team second to none. It was that attitude that allowed us to grow our company from a 5Million per year revenue to over 97Million and successful IPO over seven years. That character, integrity and ethics was the soul of what we were as a culture. However, as all good things must come to an end so did this as the market changed in 2007 changes were sure to occur and they did.

Looking back at that time I never thought I would ever hold a job longer than 3 years at a time let alone 9 successful years and am extremely proud to be part of the people, the business, the character and the family which we became. Now that many of us are moving forward I am looking for that same character, ethics and integrity for my next employment opportunity to bring the passion we shared for marketing, listening and caring for our customers and building a successful business model. It was a great ride and I have no regrets. I will always maintain contact with my co-workers where we saw each other celebrate their 40th birthday, 50th birthday, kids growing up from grade school to college and mature as professionals ourselves. It seemed appropriate for me to reflect on our success today, as it was nine years ago today.