Thirty years is a long time. It’s a third of a lifetime if you’re lucky. In terms of work or career years, it’s a super long time. For many, that is how long they spend working in their chosen professions, and then they retire. But for Serenity’s publisher, this past 30 years has been a third career for him. Please indulge me while I brag on my husband, Doug, a little:
Realizing that his engineering career was on the fast track to a managerial position instead of the technical end, which he much preferred, he decided to leave that field and obtain his real estate license. To condense this due to space constraints, after 12 years of schlepping folks around to house listings (because this was the only way of doing it back then, pre-internet) and dealing with the general ups and downs of the real estate market, Doug’s engineering brain came up with a brilliant idea: What if I created a publication where I could promote my own real estate listings? Thus, Colorado Serenity was born. The following year, he had other realtors clamoring to advertise and he wanted to quit selling real estate, so Serenity grew from a small, black and white real estate publication to what it is today.
There was no way for Doug to know whether success was to be had when he first hatched this idea. And to take the kind of risk he did, twice, leaving behind a secure engineering position for real estate, and then striking out on his own in the publishing world with virtually no prior experience, shows such an amazing entrepreneurial spirit. I think that has always been my favorite quality in him, because we have that in common. I have been an entrepreneur my whole life and I have extreme respect and admiration for those who lay everything on the line and just go for it. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
I’m so proud of what Doug has made of Colorado Serenity and I have been honored to contribute to the editorial and managerial side of things for more than a decade, leaving more time for Doug to pursue his latent other career and talent… as a programmer! He takes care of all the IT work and behind the scenes technical issues that happen with Serenity as well as our building, The Stone House. And he has been creating a new operating and database system for Serenity that will be amazing once it is finished, making it easy for us all to work in real time either remotely or locally. His mind truly never stops working. Pretty sure I’ve looked over and seen steam coming from his ears at times. We have a running joke between us that all I ever see is the back of his head because he is always sitting at the computer. It’s pretty accurate, but he gets things done! There’s much to appreciate about that kind of work ethic.
All this is to say, “Happy 30 years, my love.” I’d say, “And many more,” but I really do want to retire with you at some point, sooner rather than later!
—Love, your wife.