I have waited all of my life for this week.. (spoiler - this one goes on a little long...)

and, many months to share it with you.

This past Thursday we announced to the world that our company, EMG, had been acquired by the $5 Billion global leader, Bureau Veritas... or BV.

No one will appreciate more than all of you... Bureau Veritas is Latin for...

“The Organization of TRUTH”..

Let’s take a step back...

Let’s go back, oh...

40 years...

Essentially my whole life I have wanted to be a “successful” business man. I have wanted to add value to a company - to grow a company. My whole life I have dreamt of being on top... leading a company... creating great strategy and culture... and creating greater financial certainty for my colleagues and my company.

This has been a life-long dream... a life LOOOONNNNGGGGG pursuit.

When I left Procter & Gamble in 1998, I left to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. I left to take greater risk and to try to have a more influencial role in affecting the trajectory of a smaller business and the lives of those who depended on it.

“I believe I can fly, and to fly, I let go...” I wrote on the day I left.

That was 1999.. nearly 20 YEARS AGO!

I have “failed” at 4 different companies, before landing at EMG. And, I say “failed” only in that the 4 companies I worked in after P&G and prior to EMG, don’t exist today. They didn’t make it.

So very much to share about the lessons I learned in those years between 1999 and 2006, What a ride... And then the ride since 2006 at EMG... In so many ways, my life felt like it was happening at random, until I started visualizing the concepts of harmony.

I spent so much energy - so I effectively wishing for things to be different - and wastefully placing my energy on the past or the future instead of in the moment...

And, it was searching for truth... searching to understand the progress of my own pursuit... that kept teaching me... kept clarifying “the way”...

I don’t consider those companies life failures...

I do consider them business failures.

I have been at EMG now for 12 years, and I have certainly grown up here.

I have learned so very much about who I am as a leader, and who I am as a person.

I have learned so very much about what makes great strategy and great culture, and we have been reaching for it together with so many colleagues who get it and are passionate about making us better.

I created this Harmony blog in 2014, almost a year before we merged with the company QPM. Ironically, while we had been talking to them for years, they reached out to us “ready to do something” about two weeks after I started this blog.

I named my homepage for the blog, “absolute truth” because that was at the heart, I realized, of what I had always been pursuing... trying to uncover.

The pursuit of “harmony” - the discipline of embracing the “IS” of every moment and then reaching for the want, and staying away from the wish... is about finding joy... and its about the never ending search for TRUTH.

Embracing the “IS”, at the heart and core of harmony, is working to understand the ABSOLUTE TRUTH of the moment...

The ABSOLUTE TRUTH of the moment, being the absolute truth of the universe, of human kind, of situations, and, for me, also the absolute truth of ME.

The ABSOLUTE TRUTH being the reality free from human bias, human emotion, human intervention... Understanding what simply “IS”...

The website is absolutetruth.squarespace.com... It is the “home” of harmony...

Now, 90+% of my brain realizes that it is simply coincidence that my life-long dream of reaching “success” happened at the hands of the company called “Bureau Veritas”... a company founded in 1828 on the premise that companies deserved to know the truth about their business, their products, their shipments. At the heart of the company is the desire to bring companies information with integrity, without bias, without error, without corruption. Bureau Veritas means the office of truth... ;-)

And, 10% of my brain believes that it could very well be the forces of the universe acting for me... my pursuit of truth in all aspects of my life, professionally and personally, flows beautifully and deliberately into this new “company of truth”... and, with it, we become part of a company that is reaching to grow to $1 Billion in North America employing more than 6,000 people.

How did it all happen? How did I get here?

Did something really happen this week? Or, was this week simply the announcement of what has been happening at my company and in my life for years?

What “happened” started happening decades ago, and it started at the hands of others. Michael Logsdon had a dream and he started EMG. Claude Limoges also had a dream and he pursued multiple companies until acquiring EMG in 2005. Warren Johnson and Paul Masica had a dream and started QPM in 1996. And, I joined the party in 2006 with my own dreams...

But, I can tell you, for the past 12 years as part of this company I have been relentlessly trying to understand and embrace our “IS”, more clearly define our “WANT” and align our team to it, stay away from “WISHING” we were someone else...

Day in and day out... we have been at it together... battling volatility in markets... the Great Recession... challenging acquisitions... legal matters... all the ‘normal’ business dynamics that happen...

And, day in and day out... we have been getting sharper at who we are, at what our “IS” was, aiming and working for “what we wanted”... and we have been moving steadily toward our want...

To transform the company and transition it to a larger investor or owner that could help us bring our vision to life...

We have been working on finding that partner, that investor for years. And, in middle of 2017 we started the process for real. We sent our story to hundreds and hundreds of possible investors of different types. We had calls with more than 80 potential investors. We had multiple hour meetings with more than 20.

And, from the very first moment we spoke on the phone with the team at BV, my partners and I knew, there was one company for us... one company we needed to close the deal with...

I smiled...

Bureau Veritas... The Bureau of “Truth”...

Our certainty came NOT because of it’s name (as perfect as I thought it was), but because they unlike anyone else embraced our “IS”. They not only saw the potential in our financials, but they saw the clarity of our strategy - “Technical Excellence in a Scalable Way” and they identified with it... They had been pursuing it in different words for nearly 200 years.

Our IS was their IS...

We shared our “IS”...

And, our desire and vision of becoming the “most accurate, reliable, consistent and timely provider of technical assessment and project management services in the United States” was their vision as well.

From the very first conversation we knew that this company brought great value to our clients and our employees, and leveraged EMG for all that it was... to become a larger version of ourselves... to expand on the definition of who we were while keeping our core and values intact...

From the very first conversations, through the interviews, through the due diligence... we kept defining and accepting the “IS” defining the “WANT” and moving into the next moment...

There have been so many amazing moments of harmony and disharmony for me in my pursuit of this eventual professional consummation... I have wanted to share them with you as we went... but I couldn’t.

My most compelling dream, outside of living in harmony with my wife and boys... came true in the past few months... and became completely real in the past few days...

I so wish my father had made it just a little longer to share this celebration with me... It was his desire for financial independence, for control of his own life, for a story of success that he was proud to tell, that defined so much of who I am and how I have lived my life... to a fault perhaps...

I have been so motivated, have so defined my want, by trying to achieve what he admired but never truly pursued...

I have always admired entrepreneurs, I still do. To me the ultimate entrepreneur is the man that “jumps into the deepest ocean and tries to build his own ship...”. I have never been that entrepreneur. I have never wanted to risk drowning. But I jumped off the big ship (P&G) because I knew I could hide on the big ship and never be truly at risk... I wanted to jump into a small vessel and make it faster, make it bigger, make it better... I wanted to hold myself accountable for my own results... I wanted to see them impact something meaningfully for the better...

Clearly, life has only one finish line, and I am in no way eager to cross that.

It all continues... my desire to build a better company is no less relevant today than it was yesterday.

I wake up today, in many ways, to a brand new world, and my same old dream.

Now, as a company, we have more tools, more resources, more people, more complexity and more opportunity...

The “IS” of who we are is now larger and more complex, and I must start to understand it, embrace it, so that I can help steer it toward our “WANT”...

I have had to redefine my expectations of this day, and now I am thrilled to be part of expanding who we are into the next version of who we have always wanted to become.

As we approached this milestone, I realized that I have been living my dreams for some time. I have been at the helm, having an impact on the trajectory of my company for years... and despite all that we still need to do to improve and become more who we want to be... I can see how far we’ve come... and I know it’s been meaningful for many of my colleagues... And, I humbly and gratefully am trying to own my little role in making our journey better.

This week, a life-long dream came true... Perhaps the dream that had most notably filled my mind... And, created a hole in my life.

I am so very humbly aware that my life IS my dreams... they are now one and the same...

and now, I want to start dreaming again...

now with a fuller heart, with greater understanding of what matters, and with an even greater desire to impact the lives of those around me more so than my own.

Many people congratulate me... “You’ve worked so hard”, they say. And, that feels so wrong. So wrong, because I have worked no harder than anyone else, and in many cases less hard. I have, however, been consciously trying to help steer us this direction deliberately to this day... I have had a small hand in steering us constantly toward our absolute TRUTH... and, have been learning every step of the way...

Yesterday, nothing changed and everything changed...

I don’t know if it’s coincidence or fate...

I do know that I am here because of HARMONY...

So many days, I have pushed myself from moment to moment, with the certainty and the comfort that I only existed in those moments... and that all I could do was push infinitesimally into our want...

12 years, 144 months, 4,646 days... nearly 40,000 hours and a nearly infinite number of moments... working to understand our TRUTH - embracing our “IS” and steering ever more wisely into our “WANT”...

So many moments distracted by wishing... and wasted...

All to get ever closer to our truth... of who we were... and who we wanted to be...

This week, a huge part of my dreams became reality... my life will NEVER be the same...

I love what I do... I believe in it... deeply...

And, I strive to do better with it... daily.

MY life is a tribute to harmony, and a real and constant struggle with disharmony...

I have an unwavering commitment to see it through...

to refocus... redefine... reengage... and recreate...

Every day... in every moment...

I try a little harder everyday to understand the power of the universe.

I try everyday to accept my own insignificance.

I try to achieve a greater integrity with who I am, and what I believe... to be “TRUTH”...

And, I try to share it and apply it with those I love, those I care about, those I know...

Those I hold myself accountable to...

I am LIVING my dreams... And, I am grateful and humbled...

I want to make dreams come true... NOT just my own... the dreams of the many great, passionate, dedicated people I work with, play with, and love... THAT is still my WANT...

Every moment I live...

I reconsider my “IS”... and launch myself as best as I can into my “WANT”...

Thank YOU for being part of my journey... for sharing in my dreams, my conversations, my passion...

Every moment, I try to live my life more and more...

In a greater understanding of the absolute truth...

in “VERITAS”...

Is it by chance, or by design...

In either case - my faith in the framework of IS & WANT, and my mindfulness around WISHING...Is now unshakeable...

it really, really, really works!

Success truly is simply NEVER GIVING UP!

It’s funny...

My life-long dream just came true...

And, its helped me realize I was already living my dreams...

And, it feels so very clear, that this is no end, but the most joyful of beginnings..