What a difference a year can make!

This week I kissed my family goodbye and headed out to Phoenix for Knight's annual Leadership Meeting.  What a difference a year can make!  I was in a horrible place, professionally, during those same meetings in 2011.  An extremely tough trucking economy, we were overworked and over committed . . . I couldn't even breath, I felt so trapped within my job.  I was in a downward spiral and there was a negativity that surrounded me and quite a few others.

I had just received a new boss and I am forever grateful that he listened to me and realized that if things continued on, my career at Knight would come to a close.  He believed I was worth keeping.  We fought and I pushed (and pushed), together we added two additional employees to my group.  It was an extremely tough road, but in May of last year I began to see the difference, in September I began to feel positive about the year ahead.

Last week our CFO vested (early) our stock plans from 2008 back and gave us a larger amount of our 2009 restricted shares.  To say what this does for the financial security of my family, is beyond words. The reason why we all stuck it out . . because we hoped the time taken away from our families, that the blood, sweat and most definitely tears would be rewarded!

So the positivity is back!  I work with an amazing group of people and although we still work extremely hard, it's not all consuming and we see the light at the end of the tunnel, we all have a common goal, to kick some serious @&& in 2012 . . .well and maybe to see that stock price rise to $23!!!!

Knight Sales Conference 2002 (displayed when entering the meeting Friday)

Perry Paquette, Scott Tice, Jason Knight, JW Hunt (retired), myself, Wayne Gillow, Mike Stallsmith (left) and Chris Treubert

Ate an ity bity bite of rattlesnake at a company dinner, very chewy. I'm sure it was mind over matter (or the skeleton), but I was not a fan.

 

I did have some down time during the week, my first stop was at the Disney Store - what I couldn't have bought for Katie and Caroline!

I was also given four tickets to the Coyotes/Sharks Hockey game - the seats were no hardship!

I love you girls, thank you for always making time for me!  I'll see you end of August!!!!!