I’m in Montgomery, Alabama today, but am told that they laid the carpet in our office today, so we’re almost ready to start putting things back together. We still don’t have any interior doors, or a sink in the bathroom, but at least we have air conditioning.
Next, the PBX phone system will be replaced.
An old friend of mine just sent me this email. If you know someone’s who’s interested, please post a reply in the comments section (it will remain confidential) and we’ll put you in touch with the company.
Subject: Job Oppty – Tax Manager – Nashville
Just reaching out to see if you can help me. I’ve got a corporate tax manager job opportunity available with a large company based here in Nashville, if you know someone that may be interested. I am looking for someone with a degree (master’s preferred) and 7+ years of experience. The target salary range for this one is $90-100k-ish, if that helps with the profile I’m looking for in a candidate.
Today we received this email from our landlord, which is one of the biggest industrial park owners in the world. Oddly, it’s the first timeline we’ve received since the flood two months ago.
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2010 5:45 PM
Subject: Restoration of Premises Notice
In accordance with paragraph 15 of your Lease, please be advised that (property owner) reasonably estimates that the restoration of your Premises will be completed by September 1, 2010.
This estimate is dependent, in part, on how quickly (property owner) can obtain required local government permits, but please be assured that (property owner) diligently is working to expedite the restoration of the Premises.
Please contact me directly to discuss any questions you may have about the restoration process.
Glenn, your article today is so right on target! Thanks for reminding us not to give up and to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps to get the job accomplished!!! Good luck with the pending house buying, have a great week out on the road but more importantly, have even a better time with your beautiful bride in the Bahamas! If anyone I know needs a vacation, it is you. It has been a rough two months for you and to get away and just focus on the two of you is a great thing. Can’t think of a more beautiful place to go! Just praying that no storms come that way while you are there!!! I think you’ve have enough rain to last you a while!
Take care and may God continue to bless you!
Glenn,
You are completely right – there never is a good time.
Thank you for continuing to inspire us during the disaster unfolding at your office. I would come over and help you hang dry wall if TN weren’t so far from IA. We have not forgotten what the 2008 floods did to everyone here, and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy!
And thank you to your employees for hanging in there and keeping on keeping on during the clean up. Work wouldn’t be the same without a frequent dose of Glenn Shepard common sense!
Leah Morrison
Waterloo, IA
Glen, I need to let you know that your email today made me chuckle. I just returned from a family vacation to a weeks worth of work waiting for me. Reading about how you react to adversary events is encouraging and I love the method you write about them. Congrats on the new house.
The sun is shining in St Cloud, Minnesota.
Ann
Awesome article today, Glenn. We’re facing the same challenges with planting soybeans in western Illinois. After farming for 29 years, one of the many things we’ve learned is you have to dust yourself off and keep going each day hoping for a better tomorrow. Enjoy the sunshine. Enjoy those around you.
I like this quote I recently read: “Time flies. It’s up to you to be the navigator.” Robert Orban
Sounds like you’ve got your map out and ready for the next adventure. Good luck and hang in there.
Way to keep your chin up- enjoy the much needed vacation!
Hello from Montgomery, AL. The weather is expected to be nice here tomorrow but remember that there is always a change for a quick thunderstorm. Hope you have a wonderful time while you are here. Montgomery welcomes you!
Thanks Glenn. For those of us who are phlegmatic in nature and have a tendency to “count the cost” and decide it’s not worth it, I appreciate the “do it anyway” because it IS worth it.
Terry
Springfield, MO
It’s funny isn’t it how things sometimes just ‘fall into place’. You battled trying to get that first house. But it wasn’t to be. Then your office gets flooded and you’re struggling to keep your spirits up. Everything is going wrong – or so it seems. Then suddenly, the clouds disperse, the sun coms out and you find the most perfect house on a hill?
Congratulations to you Glen and your most beautiful Bride. You guys certainly deserve it.
It feels so weird that the flood that destroyed so many homes and businesses, including mine, is responsible for us getting the house of our dreams. This morning I heard Miranda Lambert’s song “The House That Built me”, and my beautiful bride commented that we’ll have to call our new home “The house the flood brought us”. The concept in Lambert’s song that a house might help heal a brokenness inside strikes a nerve now. Guess it’s true that God moves in mysterious ways.
I’ve never seen my beautiful bride so guarded about her feelings. Even though we signed a contract on the new house yesterday morning and accepted the seller’s counter offer yesterday afternoon, she wouldn’t let herself believe it was true until we got confirmation last night.
As we celebrated over champagne, we couldn’t believe our good luck. The new house is the same square footage as the one we tried to buy earlier, and is only two blocks away. But it sits way up high on a hill (high and dry), overlooking the Harpeth River that wreaked so much devastation on May 1st.
My Beautiful Bride and her Nerdy Husband Scrutinizing the Paperwork
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The added features are more than we ever could have imagined or hoped for. The owners are both psychologists who spent $70,000 on a giant patio and Zen-like garden in the back yard (which we named The Garden of Eden), with giant Weeping Willows and pear trees, and a huge shower that’s big enough for my wingspan (my arms are 74” from tip to tip when spread out. I named the master shower Niagra Falls). It has the most majestic study/library with such a breathtaking view, that we’ve named it The Oval Office. The steps in the front yard are so long going from the street to the front door, that we named it Stairway to Heaven.
This little nook in the retaining wall was prewired for a hot tub. Yee Ha Baby!
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The Tennessee Hills on the Horizon
The list goes on and on, but the most remarkable part is that we got it for $50,000 less than what we were paying for the other house. As much as we have been cursing the rain in Nashville, we have that awful flood to thank for the home of our dreams.
Now I have a different country music song in my head – “Rain Is a Good Thing” by Luke Bryan.
Dr. Laura says that while a man’s home might be his castle, it takes a woman to make a house a home.
On February 8, 2010, my beautiful bride and I put a contract on our dream home. It was a short sale, and we waited for an answer from the seller’s first mortgage holder, Bank of America, for two months. Closing was finally set for April 15. Late on April 14, BOA called to tell us they changed their mind. It crushed my beautiful bride’s dreams, and I’ll never forget the look of disappointment and sadness on her face.
After another closing date was set and then postponed again, the house washed away in the Nashville Flood five days before the third closing date. She told me she never wanted to go through that again, and I agreed. Though she’d be perfectly happy in our existing home, I couldn’t help but feeling a little as if I failed her as a husband.
We’ve been looking over the past two months, but have found nothing.
Then last Thursday when I was in Wisconsin, she found a house online that she loved. I looked at it, and it seems perfect. We have a showing scheduled at 10:00 this morning, but I have a knot in my stomach.
It takes a special woman to love a man who spends half his life on the road, and I believe the least I can do is make our home as perfect for her as possible for while I’m gone. But I can’t stand the idea of disappointing her again, and I can tell she’s not letting herself get her hopes up.
When I woke up this morning, this Rascal Flatts song was in my head. I’m hoping it’s a good omen.
One of the silver linings in bad times is that they often bring out the best in people. We’ve certainly seen it here in Nashville, and I’ve been so very blessed to see it with my fans. Today when I got back from a 5-day, 1,846 mile road trip and checked in on my company (that still looks like a war zone), I had a copy of a special book waiting for me.
It’s titled Crisis Communication, and was a replacement for one of my over 2,000 books that washed away in the flood. The original copy had special sentimental meaning because of a life-changing conversation I had with its author, Devon Dougherty, when he sent it to me 17 years ago.
The replacement copy will have even more sentiment attached to it, because it was sent by a fan in Dallas, Texas, named Misty Gilbert, and will be the first book in my new library.
It will also remind me of how lucky I am to have such great fans, most of whom I’ll never meet.
I know I don’t say it enough, so now is a great time to do so… Thank you Misty, and to all my fans who have followed me throughout this crisis, and throughout my career.
You are what makes what I do matter.
When the wet drywall was removed from our offices the week of the flood, I discovered 4 coke bottles in the wall. A plumber explained that when drywall installers get mad at their customers or bosses, they will urinate in bottles, and seal them up in the wall to create a nasty smell.
I was in Wisconsin yesterday when the new drywall was delivered, and instructed my staff to do the strangest thing I’ve ever told them to do – watch the drywall installers and make sure they don’t leave any hidden souvenirs.
Last night was the big star studded fundraiser, Nashville Rising, hosted and organized by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.
ZZ Top, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Carrie Underwood, Michael W. Smith (who sang Paul Simon’s “Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water”), Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Leann Rimes, Martina McBride, Julie Roberts, Blake Shelton, Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan, Billy Ray Cyrus, Montgomery Gentry (who proudly sang “This Is My Town!”), Amy Grant, Toby Keith, Trace Adkins, and Miranda Lambert all came out to donate their time and talent and helped raise over $2,000,000 for the victims of the Nashville flood.
But the big surprise of the night was Sandra Bullock, who won the Oscar Award for best actress for her role in ”The Blind Side”, in which Tim McGraw played her husband.
To honor Nashville, Bullock learned to play four notes of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”. While it was undoubtedly the worst musical performance to ever take place on the big stage of Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, she brought down the house like no other performance of the night.
She is a class act.