I love being the underdog. No expectations.
When you work at the flagship location, you have more opportunities and new technology to take advantage of. I knew when this worldwide competition was floated by our leadership team that we could do something special. We had a killer team that we were beginning to put together and it would take all of us performing at our individual bests to pull off this humongous feat as the Dr. Phillips team.
The goal was to get people moving and focusing on their own health. As a facility, we would be competing with clubs all over the US and internationally to record the most moves over almost a month long grind. The reward would be winning new equipment for a sister facility. A bigger purpose.
The key was coming out of the gates strong and we had a great strategy on paper. But could we execute? Day 1 at 5am opening we came out on fire and were comfortably on the leader board in 2nd place in the entire US from the onset. We never looked back. Surging on day #2, we opened up a huge lead over last years’ winner and even had local leaders cheering us on knowing that maybe we had a shot. There was a crazy, new electricity in the air that was palpable. Members rallied together and staff felt a part of something bigger than themselves. It was refreshing. We bonded one and all.
My team were rock stars. We pulled 15-20 hour days, slept on my office floor, survived on jolts of caffeine and pulled off an unreal feat…..
- #1 in the US
- #13 in the world
- 19 days
- 21 countries
- 513 facilities
- 581 DPY participants
- 122,000 participants worldwide
- 3.9 million moves at DPY
- 402.5 million moves worldwide
- DPY won $20,000 in equipment for the Blanchard Park YMCA
We were gifted a special ceremony as a thank you to our membership, where we catered a healthy luncheon, gave out surprises to our top 10 performers, were presented a check for new equipment and just celebrated this amazing turning point in our DPY history. I vividly remember sneaking away to the back of the room during a few of the speeches just to have a moment to myself. I started choking up just peering out over our room of supporters and had an overwhelming sense of pride in seeing how this challenge had changed us all for the better.
We then bonded one last time as a group loading the moving truck with all the new equipment that was heading straight to the BPY for installation. One last group hug sealed the deal and a special speech that I’ll keep secret and reserved just for that amazing group of individuals.
And guess what? We came back in year #2 to defend our title and won it again! And I’m most proud that for year #3, I had moved to my new home location and these tremendous leaders ran it back again all on their own, so I got to be their biggest cheerleader. #backtobacktoback
FearlessAdventures 