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 I wanted to drop you a note to give you a follow-up on an email that I sent you last September. As a quick refresher, I was hired as the Vice President of Professional and Business Development at a medium sized credit union in central Illinois. My main focus since August has been to try to have our employees actually want to come to work because of an AWESOME environment not just for the paycheck. I started with “dead people working” and I thought that I would NEVER be able to breathe life back into this place. They have been used to the same old routine; no one cares and what good does it do to be happy. 
Well, after a couple of bouts of telling my wife “why am I bothering?” I am finally seeing life at work. Maybe it’s just me, but the lights seem to be brighter, the dull old walls seem to be more vibrant, and even the old carpet seems to have found a second life. We are celebrating successes, “blowing the doors off of business as usual”, and seeing a change in the overall attitude of the staff and in turn, that has an overall effect on our members (customers).
We have QI (quality improvement) teams working together to make changes in the way we do business, and we have each and every employee (including our Board of Directors) asking themselves, “How can I make difference in changing what we do?”
I owe a lot of this success to you and the philosophies/principles of NUTS and GUTS. I still proudly display my “Hire People Who Don’t Suck” t-shirt in it’s original packaging on my desk and we are incorporating your hiring questions into our interview procedures.
Thanks to you, we are no longer “dead people working”! Don’t get me wrong, we still have a ways to go, but I really believe that people are starting to enjoy coming to work. I hear it from the staff EVERYDAY!!! They tell me that they can’t quite figure out what is different, but they enjoy coming to work!
I guess the Board of Directors are noticing as well because, in November, I was promoted to Executive Vice President. Thank you for being that voice above all voices in the mostly repetitive motivational speaker world. Your books, philosophies, and attention to what is important to getting the most out of your life has truly made a difference in mine!
In deepest gratitude...
- ISU Credit Union.
Paul Gaumer
Executive Vice President
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