The Surprising Highlight of My Career

For the first time ever this year, I submitted forms to a state government to register my seminars for official continuing education credits. One of the required pages was an instructor bio sheet to prove my qualifying expertise. It was the closest thing to a résumé I’ve had to complete since starting my business—more content than I typically whip up for a speaker bio or magazine byline.

I ended the page in bold print: “Ryan’s greatest accomplishments are not directly related to the auction industry or his successful business.”

In the small pond in which my career swims, there’s not much that will be included in my obituary. I would hope what I’ve accomplished away from my desk and my seminar venues would push any Biplane Productions accolades out of any eulogies.

There is one career accomplishment, though, that ranks high on my virtual mantle. I guess its categorization as a professional highlight depends on where you choose to start the timeline of my career in the promotion business. The truth is that I was in this field years before I was getting paid for it.

The strict religious college I attended required all students to be in one (and only one) of its forty or so gender-specific Greek societies. On-campus sports, tutoring, ministries, recreation, dorm-to-dorm mail, and other extracurricular activities were organized and promoted through this Pan Hellenic system. Every other Wednesday morning, in leu of chapel service, these collegians would meet in lecture spaces or class rooms around the campus.

As soon as I was eligible, this gangly homeschool graduate ran for office. Positions cycled via election every semester. My sophomore year, I worked in society promotions. Both semesters of my junior year I served as vice president of Omega Kappa Delta. During my last two semesters of my undergrad years, I was honored to be the president of the Vikings.

The college regulated the size of these groups by restricting enrollment during Greek Rush every September. They did this to attempt parity in the intramural sports system and other competitive activities and also to keep the groups as diverse as possible. At that time, the college had grown in enrollment for 24 consecutive years. Every four years or so, it would open new collegians to accommodate the growing student body. So that there would be upperclassman leadership of these organizations, members of current collegians were allowed to opt out of their current Greek society to join one of the new ones.

During my last semester, hundreds of bored, disgruntled, or leadership-aspiring students were preparing to make this jump. I can’t remember now whether or not I was assigned to explain this opportunity to the men of Omega Kappa Delta. What I do remember is that I found this juncture to be a good opportunity to purge the unhappy from our group for the benefit of its culture in the year or two following my graduation.

Roughly 100 guys heard me declare, “If you aren’t a Viking, get out of my collegian. If you don’t like it here, leave.” There was more, but that was the core message.

Fast forward a few weeks. It was the last collegian meeting of my life. So much of my college experience had been shaped by the letters OKD and everything that swirled around them. I was so busy preparing for that last meeting that I failed to draft a proper goodbye speech. My emotional fairwell was all over the place. (I would use the word “terrible.”)

As the clock was ticking on our last gathering, Dean Hearst entered the room. He managed the Pan Hellenic system. He and his administrative assistant were the only non-students in the entire organization. A benevolent bouncer, it was his job to make sure we didn’t do anything untoward in our meetings, outings, and on-campus events. That meant that I had been in his office multiple times a semester—a few times for pushing the envelope.

We had never experienced a dean visit in my four years of collegian meetings. I don’t think I knew that he was going to make an appearance. I’m sure the guys could tell that in my face.

He grabbed the podium with two hands and leaned forward. Standing behind him, I couldn’t see his full face. I don’t remember his exact words, but here’s how I will always remember what he said.

“Men, never in the history of this college has a collegian done what you guys have just done.”

He probably had a stern look on his face. He definitely was building suspense, especially in me. “Every few years, we give students the opportunity to leave their collegians to join new ones. And every time we have done this, every collegian has lost at least one member. Until this year. Until Omega Kappa Delta. Every single one of you who are not graduating have chosen to stay.” He smiled and added something about what that said about us and the accomplishment that was. I don’t remember any of that.

I just remember the roar of my fellow Vikings on the fifth floor of an academic building. Cheering. Desks being overturned, maybe even tossed. Moshing and body surfing. At a school that required men to wear sport jackets and ties to dinner, this might as well have been a scene from Dead Poets Society.

I know this accomplishment didn’t mean that 100% of the guys in that room enjoyed being members. I’m sure a good number sat ambivalent every other Wednesday, enduring one of their necessary evils.

But nobody wanted to leave.

Depending on the motivation for staying, retention is a win for any culture—be it a company, a non-profit, a sports team, or community group. I’ve been in multiple healthy organizations or groups that have lost engagement and participants. That’s to be expected, and leaders should seek to learn from those losses and address them with those who remain in the culture.

In my spheres of influence now, I bolster the reality of such disengagement, disapproval, and loss of participants with the memory of my last Omega Kappa Delta meeting. With that confidence, I regularly remind my clients, my siblings, my readers, and my parking teammates what it is we’re trying to accomplish—why it matters, why our lives matter. I sell our respective cultures on our values and our strengths.

Over the years, I’ve learned that one of the marks of a healthy culture is its exports to others. So, retention cannot be the primary benchmark by which I’ll measure buy-in for the rest of my promotional career. That said, I will never stop being proud of the moment when a raw, untrained kid in khaki corduroys asked, “Who’s with me!?” and everyone else in the room answered, “I am.”