I spent 6 hours cooking Thanksgiving dinner. At 7 pm, my son arrived with 6 guests from my daughter-in-law’s family. They sat down like they owned my home. My DIL said, “Would you mind eating in the kitchen, Dad?” I just smiled and walked into the kitchen… what I did next had everyone screaming. – usnews

Trey was born in the eighth year of the business. I remember driving to the hospital with both hands tight on the steering wheel, not from fear exactly, but from the particular weight of understanding that everything was about to become a different size than it had been the morning before.

He used to ride in the truck with me on summer Saturdays when he was small, sitting in the passenger seat, eating crackers from a Ziploc bag, watching the subdivision streets go past the window with the focused attention of a child who has decided that whatever his father is doing is important.

I would glance over at him on those mornings and think, “This is what I am building it for.”

Trey came into the business full-time 5 years before that Thanksgiving. He had a business degree and ideas about marketing and software systems and client relationship management.

And some of those ideas were good. Some of them cost me money I did not need to spend.