Chapter 16: My Life In Business – Roadshow Warriors (2018)

My life as Co-Founder of Thirty-One

20 chapters from my 20 years

Including never before shared stories

Not sure how we got here as a business but we’ve made it to our 15th anniversary year and it’s all so surreal. The year 2018 was a huge milestone because if Forbes is correct only one out of every three small businesses make it to ten years and here we were still going strong at 15 years.

To celebrate the big accomplishment and do a big marketing push, we did a 15th Anniversary roadshow. This entailed taking a pink truck + a showroom on wheels on the road across the country. The 15th anniversary roadshow started off in Laguna Beach, California in January as part of. Leadership event we were hosting.

A highlight for me was when the pink truck was in Chattanooga for a visit and we convinced the driver to visit each of our business locations to take some photos.  These places will always be a part of the Thirty-One story and I will hold special memories from each of them.  

The original home office basement location in Soddy Daisy, TN (above)

The second home office location in Middle Valley, TN

The third home office location in Hixson, TN

The fourth home office location in Chattanooga, TN

In April we were in the Caribbean hosting a smaller leader event on the island of Barbados. The island was gorgeous and the consistent weather and days full of sunshine make it an amazing place to visit. We had the opportunity to take a catamaran tour and snorkel with sea turtles and stingrays among the remains of two sunken shipwrecks.

Back on our mini-farm we expanded from chicken raising to now owning a couple of male Nigerian dwarf goats. My son, Jacob, was 12 at the time and he came up with the names Mario and Luigi which turned out to be a perfect fit. Goats are a hoot to watch when they are playful. The funniest thing to me is that even though their horns were removed (disbudded) at a very young age they wrestled with each other as if they still had horns.

One of the special celebration moments during the 15th anniversary year was a gathering of friends and family in Chattanooga, TN to share the special milestone together. The same week as our annual conference we were able to gather with our Thirty-One employees and Consultants from Chattanooga and do a makeover of the local Ronald McDonald House's family room play area. It was a special time where this group was able to reflect on all we had been fortunate enough to be a part of over the years.

Our biggest party of the year took place annually in July and this year we were making it even bigger as we celebrated 15 years as a company. Close to 10,000 consultants joined us on Columbus for the party and it was a great time of celebration and reflection. We had a museum of sorts on display showing items we had sold over the past 15 years. Many of the items were from my personal collection.

In September we hosted a huge gathering of incentive trip earners at Atlantis in the Bahamas. I would say this one was my favorite trip of all because of the opportunities I had to bond with co-workers in person that I had missed for the last several years. Playing in the Atlantis lazy river rapids and sliding down the Leap of Faith water slide provided some of the biggest laughs of the week.

In October we gathered at the home of our very first party hostess who so graciously opened her home to this new idea of a business in 2003. Many of our Chattanooga employees and Consultants were able to join us for the special celebration to commemorate where we started 15 years earlier.

As the year was winding down some big news came that the lease on our home office and operations facility that we had spent quite a few years at was no longer going to be offered to us. That meant we would again be moving the company. No other move compared to the scale of this one due to the size of the business and the number of employees we had accumulated since the last move.

Fortunately we were moving into a building in the same area about 10 miles away. The company purchased the Bob Evans headquarters in New Albany, Ohio. It was the most beautiful campus and facility we had ever been able to work from and I was sad I would only get to visit a few times a year. As part of the move the new building would only be the home office for the company. The other big news was that we would be moving the operations facility out of state.

On a fun note, when my daughter started Kindergarten in 2018 we received t-shirts with their graduating class year on it. It was so fun to realize she will be part of the 2031 graduating class since her life was so greatly impacted by this company.