About eight years ago, I got a call from a trusted friend and colleague. She had left the firm that I still worked for, and was making tremendous strides at an upstart firm that I had never heard of. "Things are happening here," she told me. "Just come in and talk."
Truth be told, I was in a rut. My boss and mentor had left the firm where I was working, there did not seem to be a lot of direction from the folks upstairs and I felt like I was checking boxes just to get by. "Take the meeting," she said. "Trust me."
I took that meeting. Three weeks later, I walked into an office of eleven people in the Empire State Building who were simply beyond anything I had ever encountered before. A few were seasoned veterans and some of us had half a clue. The rest were running on pure instinct and will. But you could feel the electricity. It was palpable and undeniable. And every day I have come to work since, I have felt like we were building, growing, reaching and achieving something greater. I have stated a thousand times over the past eight years, "Pound for pound, this is the strongest group of people I have ever worked with." Never once have I felt insincere.
