The HTG/Evolve Story

25 Years of Evolve/ HTG

HTG was born out of necessity. In fact, it wasn’t called HTG in the beginning at all but rather Heartland Technology Partners. The roots of HTG go back to the IT company I was running at the time. Founded in 1985, Sorensen’s Computer Connection Inc. served small business clients across Southwest Iowa. It was the spring of 2000 when a crisis was happening that caused us to stumble upon one of the best business accidents of my career.

We had grown the company from our farm-based office located near Harlan, Iowa, to 36 employees when the clock struck midnight and Y2K failed to happen, at least as advertised. SCCI had scaled up to meet the overwhelming demand that had been promised for technical services to help companies do business in the new century.  Our phones never rang, and the business did not come. The mantra of the movie Field of Dreams was “If you build it, they will come.” We scaled up but no one was coming. Could it be that we were just missing the opportunities? It was a novel concept, but we were getting desperate to figure out what to do as we had never experienced a slowdown like this before.

It was at a management team meeting that one of the SCCI team suggested we talk with some other companies and get some perspective on what was happening. Did Y2K really miss Iowa, or were we just missing the opportunity somehow?

We reached out to three other Iowa technology providers we were familiar with and asked if they would meet us in Des Moines for a half day to compare notes. All three agreed, and we spent most of a day commiserating about the lack of Y2K opportunity we all had uncovered. We had a great day telling stories of how bad things were in our neck of the woods. We realized that the issue wasn’t just localized to SCCI but was a broad-scale issue with the state of the IT economy.

That first meeting may not have yielded any big strategic breakthroughs, but it had a benefit that is still one of the top benefits peer group members mention today – perspective. We also realized we weren’t alone. As we wrapped up the day, the three companies decided to continue meeting via teleconference on a regular basis to continue sharing what was happening in our patch. We did that until taking the next step to have another face-to-face meeting a year or so later.

That was the beginning of what later became HTG. Four companies struggling in their own markets who took a chance to come together and share. The focus was on helping each other, not what we could gain for ourselves. (We’d learn later that this is the Go-Giver mindset). We learned a lot from each other that day. Over the next few years, we stayed connected but only met face to face sporadically. After the on-again off-again interaction, we got more serious about working together and really began to build a regular structure of meetings and interaction.

The focus moved toward becoming a buying group.  After some financial challenges for one of the companies and an introduction to reality from one of my mentors, John Fago from Ingram Micro, it didn’t take long for us to move away from the idea of being a buying group as a reason for HTG to exist.  We knew we had something valuable, so we made a quick pivot and decided the real value of HTG was to have smart IT company decision makers sit in a room together and serve as a board of directors for one another. A place to bring ideas and get feedback. A place to set goals and receive accountability. A place to have iron sharpen iron as well as be encouraged. It is usually very lonely at the top.

HTG began to focus on helping each other succeed in business and in life. We have been on that mission ever since. As history has shown, we have grown over the years because of a focus on helping one another achieve our dreams and accomplish our plans. It is peers helping peers do the things that need to be done, not just the things we want to do.  The truth is that many entrepreneurs run their own business for just that reason – so they can do what they want to do.  However, having peers who can hold us accountable to doing the things we need to do is an essential part of being successful.

While what we learned during that first meeting was bad news for our companies, it provided clarity and allowed SCCI to make informed decisions on what had to happen. That meeting, along with the warning from our banker, led us to make some painful but extremely necessary cuts. We downsized from 36 to 25 – the one time in my career where I had to do layoffs beyond an individual or two. We began to move our now excess inventory through discounting to our current clients, but also aggressively on eBay, which at the time allowed us to recover 80-90% of the value of the product over the next 6 months or so. While that was a painful decision, it was far better than carrying a million dollars of inventory that was losing value every day.

Because of the learnings we had from our peers, and with more than a nudge from the bank, we took action that saved the company. Had we not had that first peer group meeting we likely would have spent the next few months trying to uncover non-existent opportunities related to Y2K. That would have crippled us and may have even caused us to fail.

We learned that day the importance of a famous quote by Ken Blanchard: “None of us is as smart as all of us.” That was true then and continues to be true to this day.

It was 2002 before we truly formalized Heartland Tech Group (HTG) and put some structure in place. You’ll note the name was singular as I had no plan to go beyond one group. We created this peer group to assist SCCI in our desire to grow and be successful. Arnie Bellini, CEO of ConnectWise, came to the farm to implement ConnectWise Manage as the operating platform for HTS. That relationship would prove strategic throughout the HTG journey.

Over the first five years HTG1 grew to 12 companies, which was the maximum I was willing to have in the group to be sure every participant could get value from their time and investment. Morning devotions became part of the program early on as we spent time daily before we met seeking wisdom from Scripture and each other. That has continued ever since. We also had slowly expanded outside of Iowa and then outside the Midwest. We had gone as far as I ever intended to grow HTG, but the clamoring to join became very loud and I finally agreed to create a wait list in 2005. It seemed that God had a different plan.

By the end of 2005 there were over two dozen companies on the list, and the noise was so loud we decided to try a second in the summer and then third group in the fall of 2006. In those days, I facilitated all three groups – one meeting a quarter for each group spaced so it amounted to twelve quarterly meetings of one per month. It was working quite well and the three groups were developing nicely, but then came 2007 and things exploded.

I had been attending the SMB Nation conference held in the Seattle area since 2004.  I spoke and shared some of the experiences of our peer group and the value it was providing. The fall of 2006 I presented on the topic again, and after the session there was a long line of people waiting to get more information. That fueled our rapid growth spurt.

In 2007 we grew from three groups to nine groups. Obviously, I was no longer able to facilitate each group, so I began asking people on the HTS ownership team to lead a group. Expansion continued until my entire team was leading at least one and in most cases two HTG groups. (SCCI had rebranded as HTS through our merger and acquisition run that began in 2003). Facilitation would be in addition to their full-time day job helping lead the IT company which had grown significantly through our M&A efforts. We also got our first vendor sponsorship from Zenith Infotech who made a significant contribution to help us grow the HTG program and kick started our vendor sponsorship program.

Microsoft also wanted us to build an online version of HTG for smaller organizations, and we worked with them for a couple years before funding was cut the summer of 2009. We also held our first ever community day between groups called HTGALL in conjunction with the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver that year. We followed that with a second HTGALL meeting at SMB Nation in the fall in Seattle. Our Four Plans (Legacy, Life, Leadership and Business) became a foundational part of the program this year as well.

As we began 2008, the demand was continuing to increase as we added eight more US groups along with a Canadian group (our first international attempt). The challenge of facilitation was growing, and my leadership team was pushing back on the amount of time it took them away from doing their day jobs. In the fall of 2007, Scott Scrogin, a member of the HTS leadership team, had drawn the short straw and had to come tell me that the plan of having HTS facilitate all the groups was overwhelming and crazy.  We made the decision to shift to member facilitation in 2008, relieving the HTS team of that burden. We also rolled out our path to prosperity that was focused on practice, performance, process and people and would serve as our focus for a number of years.

While it was a critical step in our ability to scale and grow, we didn’t have well-defined processes, procedures, and systems to support that transition. Details are definitely not my strong suit. Scott got tapped to become the President of HTG in January 2009, moving off the HTS team, to take on the role of Integrator (EOS language) and accomplish the task of building a system that could support the mission we were on of helping partners succeed in business and life. We hired Ken Shetler and Christy Sacco to help manage the vendor relationships and event activities as we had 18 peer groups to plan and execute each quarter. We began working with Service Leadership Inc to benchmark members and have been working with them ever since. We published our great idea book – “Peer Power” with ideas from group members. HTG also helped deliver the US launch for Microsoft SBS 2008 with training on the new product at our summer event in Dallas.

Growth in 2009 slowed a bit so we could get our platform developed to support the mission and reduce the chaos. We only added an EMEA group along with three more US groups. At our Q2 meeting, we had Bob Burg, co-author of our culture book The Go-Giver, come speak to us in Dallas at our first SMB Summit. We had begun using the book as an onboarding tool shortly after its release the end of 2007, and it has been part of how we teach the HTG Way ever since. This was also the year we struck an important agreement with the team at ConnectWise to help provide a financial safety net for the fragile state we found ourselves in with HTG as we were growing far faster than our financial management had prepared for.

Our agreement was to have ConnectWise Manage (PSA tool) as a requirement for new members to the HTG program in exchange for some guaranteed financial support if needed. That remained in place until 2018 when HTG was acquired by ConnectWise and became IT Nation Evolve. Jason Magee, now ConnectWise CEO, was part of the vendor peer group that visited ConnectWise that year. 2009 was also the first time we did centralized peer group meetings at the Omni Hotel in Dallas. Up until then, each group determined their own meeting locations which was a logistical nightmare to schedule and manage. Service Leadership began quarterly benchmarking this year. We also began our monthly newsletters – “The Voice of HTG” and “The HTG WAY”. This was our first year of having shirts for members with bright green as the color of the very first shirt.

2010 marked our 10-year anniversary as an organization. The year took us Down Under to begin a group in the APAC market. Our first vendor peer group began this year as we worked to help our vendor partners understand the HTG experience. We also held our first vendor town hall meeting where we spent the day training our vendor partners on the way SMB IT providers did business and the challenges they faced in an effort to create a better understanding between the two groups. We also focused on building leadership with our first CEO Forum which taught the strategic planning system from Microsoft called Accelerate. HTG announced the 1-4-250 target: One mission, four plans, 250 members, ten thousand employees, touching one million end customers with the HTG way each year. It seemed like a daunting goal at the time, but we achieved it a few years later with the exception of the number of employees in our member companies. We also began a 2-year longitudinal study on the impact of peer groups with the University of Nebraska Kearney that validated just how important peer groups are for those who participate. Our shirts for this year were bright orange.

In 2011 we added our first ‘large company’ group to the membership program. Dr. Larry Little, who wrote “Make A Difference”, which is another of our onboarding resources, trained those who attended the CEO Forum on the importance of understanding personalities as we lead people. Our group shirts were bright yellow.  I had a dream that we could build a culture that would become focused on giving rather than taking – on using what we’ve been given to help others – on making a difference rather than collecting stuff for self. God gave me a vision for what is now called Hands That Give.

We had experienced a couple HTG challenges where members were up against difficult situations, but HTG had no formal way to respond. Because there was no structure or system, nothing happened in response, at least of major significance. It was frustrating to know that one of our own needed assistance, but we were almost paralyzed by having no mechanism to respond. That had to change. We needed to grow in our membership so we had significant mass that could come together to help one another. We needed to create a planning methodology that would allow us to look inside each other’s businesses and lives so we could truly hold one another accountable – but also know what the goals and objectives were so when assistance was offered, there was a clear understanding of what success looked like. That seed was planted in my mind very early in the HTG story.  As only God can, I had the fortune to meet with Lester Keizer from Xilocore at an industry event to talk about a way to help people and give freely of what we had. He and one of his team, Mike Semel, helped build a framework.

In Q2 at Dallas in 2011, we announced Hands That Give, our philanthropic effort to make sure no member ever faces a personal crisis or natural disaster on their own. The idea of a community coming together behind a cause – funded by giving rather than dues or billing – where members would give from their success to help others who were in need. The mission of Hands That Give is to provide response to any sort of disruption – whether it is in business or in life.

Before I had left the stage after making the announcement, we had our first request for assistance. One of our members who had been unable to attend because of a personal health crisis was in need of our help. During another individual HTG group meeting that day, a second opportunity was raised around a financial crisis that was being experienced by one of the members. Within a few weeks were dealing with a major natural disaster as Joplin, Missouri, took a direct hit from a massive EF5 tornado. SNC Squared took a direct and completely destructive hit. We had twenty people on the ground there within a day of the disaster and spent a week as a team helping our local member begin to recover.

We also served Mission Arlington with a tech refresh.

Hands That Give exists to make sure no one ever faces those disruptions alone. There are hundreds of members in the program, and we’ve made dozens of responses over the last nine years to assist people with the challenges they face. This is truly one of the major differentiators between HTG and other peer groups. We are not afraid to get into the mud to assist anyone facing a personal crisis or natural disaster. It is members helping members overcome the challenges life can throw at us. We continue to stand with members offering resources and people to help them overcome and succeed.

In 2012, we reached 25 groups and started our second groups in both APAC and EMEA so our international footprint was beginning to grow. We began a Leadership Track that met each Wednesday during our quarterly meetings with a focus on building leaders which was a limiting factor for growth in many member organizations. Heartland Leadership Group (HLG) was founded to meet the need for consulting and later became a part of HTG bringing in a team of industry veterans to the facilitation and consulting team. The original name we used was Heartland Technology Consultants (HTC) but it was confusingly close to HTG, so we made a change in naming. This team became a foundational part or our facilitation team even to this day.

In an effort to build members holistically, we had Drs. Gary and Barb Rosberg join our Q2 meeting in Dallas to deliver a marriage enrichment conference following the peer group meetings that week. We also kicked off our first work project for Hands That Give spending the day at Mission Arlington doing projects for them with the 100 or so volunteers that attended. We would continue to serve them over the next years to assist their mission to help people in the DFW area. We sold HTS at the end of the year which allowed me to spend much more time focused on HTG going forward. We had bright red shirts this year.

2013 brought the return of the online groups with 58 members. We kicked off a more formal Leadership Academy with a structured yearlong syllabus. In Q2, we delivered an Extreme Office Makeover for Mission Arlington with the assistance of our partners from Microsoft, HP, Intel, SonicWALL and others. We held our first APAC Summit and added our third group down under. For the first time, we had our Planning For Success four plans put into a resource manual which we were able to provide to members to assist them in developing and maintaining their four plans. We had black shirts this year.

2014 took us to 30 groups and saw the return of Bob Burg to keynote one of our community sessions. We kicked off our second vendor peer group. The quarterly “Observations for Vendors” newsletter started which captured the high level topics that occurred in the peer group rooms each quarter in order to provide our vendor partners with additional insight into the challenges and successes that partners were experiencing. We developed and presented the Cloud Summit workshop to help members begin to understand the opportunity and get questions answered on how to have the conversation with their clients and prospects. Our shirts this year were green.

In 2015, we held our 15-year anniversary celebration in Minneapolis in Q3 with a wonderful program and lots of member sharing. The online groups almost doubled to 110 members. We started our fourth APAC group and added Stuart Applegate as a teammate down under. That truly kickstarted the expansion of our efforts there with feet on the street that could be available rather than when someone flew over from the US.

Scott Scrogin came back from his peer group of people who run peer groups in different industries with an idea for Jumpstart, an onboarding program which completely changed how new members joined HTG and intentionally prepared them for success. The infamous bobble head dolls of Scott and Arlin came about and literally traveled the globe to provide pictures and entertainment for the 15^th anniversary all year long. We held our first Marketing Summit hosted by Intel to help members learn marketing skills and gain ideas. And we took a team to Asheville, NC, for a Habitat for Humanity build. The shirts were blue this year.

2016 found us with 32 groups. We continued to expand the online program by adding some Continuum specific online groups that had 27 members. We kicked off our SEPG (service exec peer groups) with 110 members and held our first ever Service Summit. We took HTG through an entire rebranding effort and changed our three distinct offerings to Empower, Engage and Emerge. And the Planning for Success book was updated to V2 and became more workbook style which was a welcome change for members. We also began early discussions with ConnectWise about the future and discussed the potential for a deeper relationship or potential acquisition. We did an Extreme Office Makeover for Mission Arlington through our Go-Giver and Hands That Give outreach. Our shirts were gray this year.

In 2017 we rolled out our 1 to many program called Engage (now called Evolve2).  We had created the concept as part of the branding exercise the previous year but now put the plan into action. SEPG continued to grow, achieving 170 members. We added our first SAPG (sales exec peer group) and rebooted the Jumpstart program to leverage the new Engage program as part of that strategy. Connie Arentson led that charge. In coordination with ConnectWise, we introduced the HTG Booster Program which was a huge success. It was an offer to provide 10 hours of free product consulting on the different ConnectWise products HTG members were using. It was the most successful program we have ever introduced to membership. We rolled out the Cloud Opportunity Framework model as more thought leadership on bringing cloud services into member offerings. And in a flurry of year end activity, we came to agreement with ConnectWise to be acquired on 1-1-2018 and become part of their organization. Our shirts were teal that year.

2018 found us as new colleagues at ConnectWise, and the year began with the entire team coming to Tampa in January for onboarding. We were at 35 groups in the Evolve (new name for Face to Face groups) program. We did a reboot of the SEPG program with Dan Saxby taking that lead. Across all our programs, we had 43 facilitators (staff and contractors) leading over 50 groups. The Planning for Success workbook became V3 as we rebranded and updated the content adding PWT (personal wealth target) and BVT (business value target) into the plans. We had black pullover light jackets this year.

2019 saw us grow to 43 Evolve 2 and 3 groups. We added a Security Booster Pilot group which transitioned to the security peer group. We kicked off an M&A focused peer group and also a VAR peer group. We expanded our interaction with Dr. Larry Little for our Wednesday Community Day sessions as he helped us through a series of leadership development topics. The Evolve1 program got a bit of a relaunch this year under Dan Saxby as he worked to bring consistent delivery of the program and help members grow their companies. I took one for the team to demonstrate some leadership principles at our Q2 meeting in Dallas. Our shirts this year were gray. Here is a picture of the group in 2019.

That brings us to 2020, the 20^th anniversary of the Evolve peer groups. Hands That Give moved under the ConnectWise Foundation umbrella which gives it 501c3 status for the first time.  We were at 49 Evolve3 groups having added a CFO group this year.

The membership grew significantly. In 2020 we had:

• Evolve1 (online meeting monthly) – 93
• Evolve2 & Evolve3 (face-to-face groups meeting quarterly) – 410
• SEPG (service exec with 2 face-to-face and four online) – 181
• SP (solution partners meeting face to face quarterly) – 18
• M&A (meeting face-to-face quarterly) – 7
• CFO (meeting one day quarterly) – 6
• SAPG (sales exec with 2 face-to-face and four online) – 10
• Facilitators across all programs – 43

If you’re keeping score, that is over 700 interactions across the Evolve portfolio with over 500 unique companies.

But 2020 created a major challenge for delivery of the peer groups. Covid 19 put us into a new world – virtual peer group delivery – after a successful Q1 face-to-face meeting in Phoenix. Our staff was up to the challenge, and we pivoted to online meetings.

It was a bit of a learning curve as face-to-face interaction had been our model since the beginning. But the team stepped up, and we learned some new tricks and techniques to keep members engaged. Our NPS and CSAT scores dropped a bit, but overall, the members understood our situation as they were facing the exact same challenges.

We remained virtual until Q2 of 2021. It was fantastic to be back together and sitting across the table from one another again. While we continued to deliver value during the year we were virtual, nothing can replace the opportunity to sit together in the room.

In 2022 we added security peer groups to the role based offerings along with the first group focused on Empire Builders (based on Modes Theory) to the program. These were companies that had outside financing from Private Equity and were on a rapid growth path. We added a second group in 2023 with a third beginning in 2025.

2023 brought the addition of SLIQ from Service Leadership, a tool to help optimize a company’s operational maturity, into the Evolve program. This has a significant impact on helping businesses identify the areas they can improve to take their organization to a new level. It is prescriptive in guiding a company and their leadership team to make the necessary changes to achieve their goals.

We also added COO role based peer groups to our role based offerings as Evolve members were growing and adding executive leadership to drive their continued growth.

As median income for member companies climbed north of $7M, our appeal to new members is that owners need to expose multiple members of the leadership team to the power of peers as a way to impact holistic transformation within the business.

In 2024 we migrated the M&A peer group into a new industry event called M&A Nation and then rebranded to IT Nation Grow. The purpose is to educate attendees on business transition and build an ecosystem of trusted partners and SME’s that can help them prepare, plan and have a successful transition.

In our second year now, we have almost 75 attendees each quarter and believe the program will continue to grow (no pun intended) for years to come.

We also forged relationships with Sandler Sales Training, Up-Skill and vCIO University to bring more skills training to our members on community day. We had some great keynote speakers that challenged members to pursue and experience more success!

We added the OML peer groups (formerly Service Leadership led) to the Evolve fold in 2025, along with more role-based group options. The program continues to grow in depth and breadth and we are serving an ever increasing number of companies and leaders each quarter.

Here is a visual of our overall program as of 2025. You’ll notice that the core remains serving owners and managing directors, but we have expanded well beyond that today. And there are still plenty of ideas for the future as well!

Now in 2025 as we celebrate our 25^th anniversary, here’s the scoreboard for the Evolve program:

• Evolve1 (online meeting monthly) – 55
• Evolve2/3/4 (face-to-face executive groups meeting quarterly) – 506
• Operational Maturity (OML) – 48
• Solution Partners (vendors) – 22
• Facilitators across all programs – 64
• SEPG – 176
• CFO – 34
• SAPG – 47
• Security – 25
• COO – 36

That translates to almost 1000 interactions across all these groups. That’s up 300 from five years ago. Our impact on the MSP community continues to go deeper and wider.

Who would have ever dreamt (certainly not me) that a small group of 4 companies from Iowa would be the seeds that planted a foundation for what Evolve peer groups have become?

I’d love to be able to pull out the napkin that contained the detailed plan for HTG and the peer group framework as it exists today. But there is no napkin, and there was no plan on my part.

Along the journey, God has faithfully provided vision, insight, direction, and most importantly the people to help us move to the next step on the journey. I take no credit for what HTG and now Evolve has become beyond seeking wisdom and guidance because I had no idea what to do next.

It all started with desperation to figure out how to survive.  Much of our success at HTS came from the companies that we were able to spend time with and learn from over the years. They provided real time data and perspective that informed our decisions and allowed us to move confidently in the market.

Peer groups truly are a secret weapon. When people ask me what the secret sauce has been in whatever success I’ve had, it comes down to two things:

• Surround yourself with the right people who are smarter than you, are ‘all in’ for the mission and are committed to the journey.
• Engage with peers who will open the kimono together and share openly in a high trust environment.

It would be a lie to say that success happened because I was a brilliant leader. Success happened because of the people that surrounded me and those companies we have served.

And that is still true to this very day. As an entrepreneur who is continually looking to create something new, my skill is in visioning and starting things. I run out of gas pretty quickly if the responsibility to manage ongoing operations lands on me. Finding and hiring the right people has always been a major part of my secret sauce. That extended to having the right companies in our peer groups so we could learn outside our own walls.

It has been an amazing ride over the last 25 years. While I am no longer directly accountable for peer groups, I am still passionate about the peer-to-peer experience and love facilitating groups. Peer groups are a powerful tool in many ways. But you can’t get the value by looking in. You need to be all in, sitting as part of the group at the table.

It’s not for the faint of heart, but for those who dive in completely and focus on giving value rather than taking it, the impact will not only change your business but also change your life. That’s the thing that gratifies me the most. It’s great to help a company be more profitable or to grow their company. But it’s completely satisfying to help a leader with their marriage, family, team or themselves as individuals on the journey through life. That’s what keeps me in the game!

Here are a few of the things I’ve learned leading HTG and participating in Evolve over the last 25 years. They are important lessons I would have never learned without the peer groups and people involved:

1. The foundation of anything worthwhile must be unmovable. For HTG, God, scripture and my Christian faith have been the foundation from the beginning. I didn’t figure it out on my own. I saw what Jesus did with the Twelve and learned from the principles of scripture to develop HTG.
2. None of us is as smart as all of us – there is power in peers. Being in a trusted environment where people share everything openly is the secret weapon for success.
3. It’s not about me. Peer groups are not about the individual but the group. The focus is on delivering something of value to every person around the table each time we meet. Individuals are not the center; the group is central in every situation.
4. Time is the greatest resource we have. We all get 168 hours each week. It is how we choose to use those hours that matters and determine what happens in business and life.
5. Value is created by what we give away. The Go-Giver has been our guide. We create value by giving more in value than we receive in payment.
6. Vision without execution is hallucination (Thomas Edison). Without execution we will not progress on our path to success. We need peers to hold us accountable to do what needs to be done rather than what we want to do.
7. Leadership must be developed and rewarded. Leaders are made, not born. If we want to grow, and provide a path to the future, we must invest and take care of those who will lead.
8. You cannot separate work from life. Purpose (mission), vision and values must be the same across our life and business. We can’t separate them but must be true to who we are in every environment we are in.
9. Planning is foundational for all areas of business and life which is why we have our Four Plans. (Legacy, Life, Leadership and Business)
10. Culture eats everything for breakfast. How we live and act together is critical to how we do everything.
11. You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Service Leadership benchmarking is how we keep score along with our scorecards on legacy, life, leadership and business. Our MPD (monthly performance dashboard) helps report on the metrics that matter.
12. Accountability drives behavior. Setting quarterly SMART goals which must be completed by the next meeting drives success. Being accountable makes sure they are done.
13. Community/ecosystem is critical to success. Resources like the HUB, newsletters, blogs, community days and other tools create a large ‘family of peers’ that provides even more value than the individual groups can by themselves.
14. The people you surround yourself with determine your impact. That is never truer than the team we have delivering peer groups. It’s the thing I am most proud of in my career – being able to assemble the greatest team imaginable to lead people to success in their lives and businesses with passion.
15. At the end of the day, we are in the people business – it is all about relationships. “Make A Difference” and other tools teach us how to effectively connect with others. But make no mistake, people are the thing that matters. We may sell and service technology, but our business is always people!