Independence Day 2023

Hey team, here we are. It is Monday, Monday Message. And July has begun. So we’re in the midst of Summer. I’m in my backyard. I just got back from a two-week vacation in sunny Florida. It was humid, it was hot. It was beautiful. We sat by the pool. The boys had a blast sliding on the water slides and stuff.

It might come as a surprise to many of you, but Karen and I have never taken a two-week vacation. We’ve been married now coming up on 30 years. And we have never walked away from work and been gone for 14 days or more. Never, never in the history of our marriage and our time. We’ve mostly taken about a week vacation, sometimes eight to ten days, but we’ve never taken 14 days or more. It’s never happened.

A big piece of the reason that we feel that we can do that is because of all of you. Because of the great leaders we have. The hard-working dedicated men and women in our leadership team. And the hard-working dedicated men and women that work every day. We got stuck in a plane. We didn’t get home until like almost one o’clock in the morning.

So there’s a huge shout out to Ryan Enos for coming and picking us up. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate having somebody drive in and pick us up and drop us off at the house so that we didn’t have to deal with an Uber or something like that or try to have our Nanny drive in the middle of the night and wake up and do all that. That was super awesome, so I really do appreciate you, Ryan. Thank you.

And I appreciate all of you that are going to be working tomorrow on July 4th. It is so amazing the team that we have developed. You have congregated with us and that you are building with us Northwest enforcement and the hard work. I know I have done many a Fourth of July, 89 to 100-degree weather days, and sometimes even in the rain. Sometimes it rains on the fourth of July. I think tomorrow is going to be beautiful, so that’s a good sign. But if you’re working tomorrow, Karen and I just want to say thank you. Your team leaders want to say thank you. For your dedication to your community and to the people that you serve and working so diligently and working tomorrow. So we appreciate that.

And then the rest of us that are off, we’re going to be congregating at a lake, at a river, on a mountain. Hiking, biking, kayaking, doing some of the fun things with family, barbecuing, s’mores, marshmallows, you know, stuff like that. We’re gonna have a lot of fun, and that’s a lot of great. And let’s not forget the fireworks show and some of our own fireworks shows. Public service announcement: Be safe when you’re letting off fireworks. Don’t burn your house down, don’t burn your neighbor’s house down, don’t burn your neighbor’s bush down, and drink responsibly. But now that I’m done with my PSA announcement, let’s get back into our regular program show.

So God bless you guys. I just want to also remind us that Fourth of July started because a group of people in this nation, colonists, made a decision that they didn’t want to be taxed. They didn’t want to be having an overshadowing government, and they broke loose from that. It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears. A lot of work, and a lot of dedication to tread through that. Our independence, the greatest nation in the world.

The world can thank the United States long term because of all of its advancements through so many things. I mean the light bulb. Jonathan has been doing a lot of reading and stuff, but the car, the light bulb, electricity, AC power, how it works. I mean all of those things. Alexander Graham Bell, the telephone. I mean everything that we have is through the innovation of great men that were free. And we have some huge footsteps to follow and we have some great inventors even in our day and age. I mean the Apple computer. The computer technology, Bill Gates, you know all those different things.

And for many of you, I mean even Amazon, right? I mean how else would you get your stuff? You’d have to go to the store instead of just having it delivered to your house. Imagine that. I’m having to go shopping somewhere and actually get out of the house and walk somewhere and pick it up. But we have these innovations and stuff because we are free and we can innovate, and the rest of the world has these things and they have become more innovative because we are the greatest nation on this planet.

And tomorrow we are celebrating our Independence Day, and so that is a very refreshing thing to be thinking about. So tomorrow on Independence Day, remember that we are free for a reason and it was not for not having the sacrifices. If you see somebody wearing a hat that says veteran, tell them thank you for their service and their hard work. I make a point of doing that.

It was cute. We were in Dallas, and my little boy Jonathan saw some troops walking through. They were all in fatigues and they were obviously getting on a plane to either go to training or come back from training or go somewhere. I told him, I said, you know you should go ahead and he says, you know you know we should go tell him thank you, Dad. I said, you know you should do that, you should go tell him to say, you know thank you for your service. He was telling me he’s like, you know you should go tell him that you were in the Marine Corps. And I said, you know that’s not going to impress them nearly as much as a nine-year-old just walking up and saying thank you, guys, for serving our nation, that’s such a powerful thing.

I know that I enjoy it when somebody notices that I’m a veteran or something somewhere and they walk up to me and they say thank you for your service. It’s a little humbling because while I did serve, I worked hard and I did a lot of things. I have a lot to thank this nation for because it built me to be the person I am today and has helped me in the support of garnering relationships to build with you this great company of Northwest Enforcement. I’m so thankful for the opportunities that the military gave to me to instill in me the discipline to continue and have consistency in my life so that I could continue to persevere through the tough times and build this company with you. So I am thankful for all of you for joining me in that process.

So tomorrow’s Independence Day, remember, drink responsibly and God bless you. Have a lot of fun, use sunscreen, it’s gonna be hot tomorrow so make sure you’re using sunscreen both at work and out of work. About every 30 or 40 minutes, you should be applying it. Another PSA announcement because you do not want to get skin cancer, trust me. God bless you guys, I’ll see you next week.