I'm sitting at my desk in my office on a Saturday evening reflecting on the day. My wife & 3 children came along in the afternoon for the routine cleaning of "dad's new office".

I was setting up the new workstation for our yet-to-be-hired employee; I should say "team member", since I don't like the sound of "employee". It makes me sound like a boss instead of a leader who works with his team (and I just happen to own the company).

While I'm unpacking a computer, monitor, and keyboard in my team's office; I can hear my wife giving direction as my kids vacuum and clean the other rooms.

As I feed the HDMI cable through the hole on top of the desk, my mind drifts back to a pivotal moment...

It was early 2017 and I went out for coffee with my best friend, Matt. We don't get together as much as we used to, but we periodically meet halfway between our towns and catch up on life.

Matt has always been a great sounding board. He's far enough removed from everything to give me a good outside perspective.

"...so what do I do, Matt? I know we need to move out of my home office so that my staff doesn't have to be embarrassed about where they work. They're not gonna tell their friends & family that they work in some guy's basement in Reinfeld."

"It sounds shady. I'm amazed that we've been able to attract such great people even though we still work from home."

(Reinfeld is a village that's sort of a "suburb" of the city I grew up in.)

I continued: "Plus, our kids are gonna be home all the time during summer vacation. It doesn't work very well when we mix employees and family."

"I can't bring myself to leasing an office because it feels like throwing away money, even though we can afford it. We're looking at buying an office space in town, but I don't know if we can make a big jump like that."

"People will think I'm arrogant for trying to buy this almost new office instead of leasing like everyone else."

"The other day, we went & looked at it and the place seems like a great fit for what we need. It's called Perry Place since it's on the corner of Perry Street and Kimberly Road."

Then Matt pipes up: "I think you already know what you need to do, George. You're just looking for confirmation."

"Hey, isn't that marketing guru you follow named Perry?"

I smiled and replied, "You're right! Maybe this was meant to be..."

To make a long story short, we ended up leasing a different office for a year. And then we purchased our current spot at Perry Place!

We moved in on May the 4th, Star Wars day. It's a simple way to mark this milestone.

My business has existed in some form or other since 2009. We have numerous long-term customers that we've helped grow & expand to the point where they outgrew their offices & factories.

Now it was MY turn to come out of my cave, let my eyes adjust to the bright sunlight, and run with the big dogs!

Sure enough, one of John Maxwell's laws of growth kicked in. Shortly after we changed our environment, we gained a steady stream of new customers.

We hired more talent and some of us went to meet Perry Marshall at a marketing event in Nebraska in August of 2017.

I had met Perry at a few other marketing seminars where he was speaking or organizing the whole event. However, this was the first time that some of my staff met this guy that I keep talking about.

We all had a great time and enjoyed developing the relationship with Perry, his staff, and other people we met there.

In late 2017, we needed to hire more people again, so we did. Then we heard about Perry's Rosetta Stone Seminar happening in May 2018.

So off we went on a road trip to Chicago! We all learned so much from Perry & others at the seminar. We also shared some of our knowledge with some business owners there.

It was a great privilege to tell people that we are the agency that performs the Google Ads and Facebook Ads audits for Perry's exclusive Roundtable members.

The whole trip strengthened the bond between our team members and it was the essence of "team building".

Now it's June and I'm getting ready to go to Chicago again later this week. I got invited to a private party hosted by Mr Perry Marshall. How could I say no?!

(In case you're wondering, no, I don't believe in coincidences.) 🙂