Takin’ A Leap

This past week we all celebrated an extra leap year day – it was fun for me in three ways – it added a work/sales day to our month-end calendar (hope to see a tiny blip in my comparables), it  gave me a great excuse for a night out with my golf pals (since our wives let us go out on a school night, we boldly decided we’d make it an “every-four-year event).  And it also made me think how lucky I am to be running KHT.

When I got back in on Tuesday, I was sort of energized by the leap day.  I walked around the plants and thought about all the times in our company history when we took a risk and “made the leap” to build a bigger, better operation for our customers. So many milestone events came to mind – my first sale, problem-solving with Dad, hiring talented people, adding new furnaces, new land acquisitions, new building additions, new treatment service offerings, new delivery trucks, new investments in technology for our lab, new employee training programs, new financing partners and more. I’m sure just like you in your business, we did it much the same – “dreaming”, then due diligence, second guessing, then securing financing,  battling with design/development and finally waiting anxiously for things to get completed.  I can’t tell you how many times I’d lie in bed at night and wonder – did we do the right thing?

My marketing guy tells me he built his company around “the thrill of the leap”. He refers to that feeling you got when you were a kid standing on the high board at the pool. You had the guts to slowly climb the ladder – each step filled with trepidation. Slowly as the wind blew, you finally got to the top, and it was your turn to walk out to the edge. Once there, you looked down and realized “whoa, It’s “way” higher than I thought it would be”, and you got that little belly flutter of “I’m not so sure of this now”. Then your courage inside says “go” and you are all at once in midair, kicking and yelling and falling until you hit the water, scrambling to hold your breath and paddle endlessly looking up to the surface. You pop out of the water, take a big gasp of air, then look around to see if anyone noticed.

As you pull yourself up the deep end ladder, you look up again at the high board filled with a gentle strength and confidence and ponder “was it worth the leap” as a smile curls across your face. And then your buddy “Mikey” runs by, slaps you on the back and says – “come on, let’s do it again” and you race to see who can get to the base of the stairs first as the lifeguard whistles and yells – “no running boys.”

If this makes sense to you, give me a buzz and let’s compare notes. 216-631-4411 ext. 2211