A Long, Strange Trip

I just marked my three year anniversary of being a part of Vision Event Management on January 21st. Three Years! On one hand I think, “Time has flown! Where did those years go and how did they go so quickly?” On the other hand, it sure seems like it’s been thirteen years, not just three. Jeff and I both are amazed that it’s only been three years. I think that is mostly due to the fact that we have come so far as an organization in that amount of time.

Those first few months were quite interesting. It was a leap of faith for me. I left a good job with the Mini-Marathon to be a part of VEM but I knew the potential was great. I knew with both of our attitudes we would make VEM successful or we would die trying. We started with a couple of clients who are still with us today; The Indianapolis Marathon, Little Rock Marathon, Geist Half and Spirit Run. They were great to have faith in our mission, but they just weren't enough to sustain the business.

A couple of memories have stuck with me during this time. The first occurred as we were preparing to head to Little Rock for a site visit preceding the event. It was the first of February and we had about seven pages of questions for the crew in Little Rock. It was our first year being involved, so to make sure we had all bases covered, our questions were plenty. I was preparing everything we needed to head to the airport the following day and decided to print the three copies of questions. Well, funny thing about it, to print you actually need paper! We had none and it wasn't because we were going green. We couldn't afford it at the time! I proceeded to pull paper out of the trash, decrease the font to 6, eliminate the margins and reduced it to 3 pages. I made one copy.

The second memory which has stuck with me occurred about a month before the first Geist Half. The first year, we weren't contracted to do all the event production as we are now. We were more of a consultant, handling just certain aspects of the event. However, we wanted the event to be successful and we went well beyond our contract to help make it a success. The event consumed much of our time, (which wasn't bad since we weren't overly busy) but it wasn't enough to sustain us. As Jeff and I were talking through some details, the discussion turned to VEM in general. We both wondered how we could put food on the table if things continued like this; it was a sobering moment.

Soon after this conversation, momentum seemed to shift. We received a couple of calls regarding potential events, neither of which turned out, but you could feel things changing. Soon after the first annual Kent's Run, we received a call from US Road Sports about the Chicago Half saying they had recently purchased the race and were wondering if we knew someone that would be interested in producing it. After my wife called us wimps (well, she used another term, but I won't use it here) we decided to pursue it as VEM. This sort of opened the flood gates and we haven't looked back since.

Things have changed greatly in my three years and it’s sort of fitting that on January 21, 2011, we were fully moved into our new office/warehouse. No more storage closets, working out of Jeff's home and yes, we can afford office supplies. Those three years have definitely been a long, strange trip, but we've enjoyed every minute of it.