It’s interesting how one’s family situation while growing up can shape who they are, what they become, and how they lead. For me, I was shaped by life in a military family. Last time, I shared a bit of the profound influence my mother had on me, and as I sat here thinking, “What do I want to share with you today?” I found myself thinking that beyond the specific guiding questions that I learned from my mother, there are lessons derived from the very fabric of my military family structure that I unknowingly brought into my life as a business owner. For example,
- Accepting change
- Being resilient
- Valuing relationships
- Remaining open to possibilities
Without these four qualities I would be a very different person, and I have no idea where ExecuNet would be.
You see, my father was in the Navy, a Captain of a Destroyer, so we moved around – a lot. Pretty much every three years until I was in 10th grade we moved, until finally one day my mother told him it was time for the moving to come to a stop. From then on he managed port operations of Pearl Harbor Naval base and later left the Navy to manage port operations in the cities of New Haven and Houston. I am a product of that environment, and it taught me so much (not the lest of which is how to pack).
Every move was a new opportunity in so many different ways, despite the natural nerves caused by new places and faces. There were new experiences and people at every location. I learned to be open and accepting to what I could find, learn, and experience. Leaving behind people I’d come to care about was not easy, but I quickly learned how to make new friends and how to maintain friendships over time and distance, something that was much more challenging in the times before social media.
These skills serve me well as President of ExecuNet, like so many others, we’ve had to be resilient in the face of the pandemic. We navigated the move to remote work and embraced significant change with the retirement of our Founder and CEO, Dave Opton. And that’s just recently; there have been many more challenges and changes along our 34-year journey.
As for relationships… that’s the very fabric of what we do! We are all about making and maintaining connections and helping people find the right professional relationships for them. We counsel executives to be open to the possibilities, to their options, to seek out what is meaningful to them and how to go for their Next Great Next, unlocking the path to having a meaningful career and continued happiness and fulfillment in life in general.
Little did I know when I was bouncing around from Naval base to Naval base that I was picking up the very skills which would become foundational to my future business life at ExecuNet. I suppose I helped shape ExecuNet’s core belief in building relationships because of how important it was for me to be able to build relationships while growing up. I had to work hard to maintain the relationships I had built with the people who mattered with me at my various stops, all the while it was necessary for me to become comfortable meeting new people and developing new relationships, repeatedly. My eyes were trained to always be focused on making friends and seeing new possibilities… and that’s really what ExecuNet does and what we are as a brand.
How has your upbringing shaped your career path in unexpected ways?
