The Best Friend Award Goes To
Hey team,
All right. So hey, today’s Monday. We have our core values—Be Valuable. Nothing Less Will Do—being our core purpose. Today I want to give a quick little shout out. I usually start with a pithy quote. I guess today’s quote for me would be: The Best Friend Award goes to… drum roll… JT WRO.
Now why am I saying that? My son, earlier this year, we had some time and JT was getting ready for fifth grade. If you can remember back to fifth grade, adolescence starts to get brutal—fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade—and then you kind of get into your own. Then you graduate from high school, and it starts all over again: college, your job, or whatever.
Ultimately, JT started out his year saying that he didn’t have any friends, that nobody liked him at school, and he didn’t want to go to school. Some of you are sitting there going, “I can’t even believe that. JT is such a great kid.” He gets good grades, but for whatever reason, he was feeling that he didn’t have any friends. He didn’t have anybody close. So we were praying for him and hoping to get him into the right relationships—hoping that he would find opportunity to build some of those relationships and not continue to regress.
At the end of the year, they had their Oaks Park extravaganza where all the fifth graders go, and teachers hand out awards. JT won the Best Friend Award. The kid that is super likable, that everybody likes, that everybody wants to be around and thinks is funny—that’s JT. He went from, in September, “I don’t have any friends,” to being the best friend in the class.
That doesn’t happen without effort. Being valuable—nothing less will do—means being a good friend in lots of different ways. It doesn’t mean being the class clown, though JT probably is to some degree. It doesn’t mean you have to be the loudest, which JT probably could be. He’s got a lot of his dad’s character traits in him.
The important thing is that Jonathan grew from “I don’t think I have any friends” to being recognized as the friendliest kid. Earlier in the year, he invited a bunch of friends to go roller skating at the end of 2024 on New Year’s. Fell in love with it. Went and bought a pair of skates. Then wanted to go again, scheduled a time, got me to say yes, and then turned around and invited all of his friends. Like six or eight kids who had never skated before went and tried skating because of JT.
So he’s also a great leader. He’s a good friend, and he’s a great leader. He can talk people into doing something they’ve never tried to do before. That’s because he’s a good friend. He shows kindness and generosity.
Just yesterday at the pool, a lady walked up and said, “You’re so good with my kid. If I give you five bucks, could you keep an eye on him for 20 minutes?” And JT—because money is his love language—he’s like, “Sure!” He made five bucks just to go play in the water with the little kid. He’s walking around, hanging out with a two- or three-year-old kid for 20 minutes because he’s such a good friend. He’s such a good leader.
So I’m bragging on my son a little bit, but I want this to hit each and every one of you. Your kindness, your generosity, your enthusiasm at work and for life can be contagious. You can be Eeyore and talk about how it’s going to rain, or how something’s going to go bad, or “life isn’t all that great—it looks good today, but it’s probably going to fall apart later.” You can have that mentality.
Or—you can grab life, reach for the stars, do your best, and have an enthusiastic, friendly attitude toward everything and everyone. And you too can have the Best Friend Award.
So go be valuable. Nothing less will do. Be a good friend, be a good coworker. Be a good client relationship leader for Northwest Enforcement in everything that you do—with a smile. Even when it’s tough. Even when it’s hard. Do those things, and you will find yourself as the Best Friend.
And who wouldn’t want to have a best friend? I can’t think of anybody. I love best friends.
So, as I am your friend—God bless you. Have a wonderful week. It’s going to be awesome.
All right. I’ll talk to you next week. See you.
