Four years ago I attended my first Engage! conference, created by Rebecca Grinnals and Kathryn Arce of Engaging Concepts. I could spend a whole day talking about what they have done for our industry but that’s for another time. (However, if you are in the luxury wedding market, you need… strike that… you SHOULD know about these women.)  Rebecca and Kathryn always say, “we’re better together” and that’s a founding principal that guides our process like a rudder on a sailboat every single day.

Ever since I was little, I’ve bled Maize and Blue. For those who you not from the midwest, those are the school colors of the University of Michigan. My alma mater. I grew up watching the Michigan football team play every Saturday during the fall and loved watching old playbacks of Coach Schembechler. To give a bit of context, Bo Schembechler was the head football coach of the Wolverines from 1969-1989. In his 21 years at Ann Arbor, his teams won or shared 13 Big Ten Conference titles. With Coach Schembechler, it was never about the accomplishments of the individual players, it was always about teamwork. He is a legend in college football and is likened a Saint on campus.

As a student at U of M, I’ll never forget my first time walking through the tunnel from the locker room out onto the field at The Big House and reading Coach Schembechler’s words overhead. The words painted in the tunnel at Michigan Stadium weren’t written in a foreign language, or deeply philosophical, or even in code. They weren’t written in vain or with ego. They weren’t complicated or a work of art but they were powerful and they resonate with me every day. “The Team, The Team, The Team.” In 1983 Coach Schemblecher gave his “The Team” speech to his Wolverine’s in the locker room and to this day, it’s one of the most celebrated speeches about the bettering of the team over oneself.

We have many players on our team. We have our clients, we have our vendors, we have our business advisers, we have our colleagues, we have our friends and families. Every single person on our team plays a specific role in our successes and failures. We win as a team. We loose as a team. No single individual is more important that another. Now, being that we are in the service industry I bet you are thinking, “wow, how can she say that her client’s aren’t the most important element to her business? Without them, they wouldn’t have any work?” You are right, that is a true statement- without people connecting with A Day in May Events and ultimately contracting us to produce goods and services for them, we would not have work. However, in that same breath, I can easily say without our vendors that we work with to execute the particular goods and services for those clients, the client’s vision wouldn’t come to life and without these suppliers we wouldn’t have any work either. Same goes for our board of directors; the accountants, bankers, lawyers and all the not-so-glamourous-but-neccessary-to-business-advisers, when we are working with our clients and our vendors, these team members keep the day to day operations in check. Without them, the lights may not stay on. Our colleagues in the industry are like our friends and family- if they didn’t support our cause, what we were called to create with A Day in May Events, then we would not have the same confidence and stamina to do what we do every day.

No matter what you do for a living or the stage of your professional career, if you can understand that you are a part of a bigger team and that you are better with them, you will go far. Your successes will be sweeter and your failures softer. And you will find that no matter what, you cannot do this alone. I never make New Years Resolutions. Why? Because I can never keep them! But in 2015 I broke my own rule and made one; it was “to work with people that I love, for people that I love” and I’m proud to say I haven’t broken that resolution yet, nor do I plan on it, because I love my team.