Tonight I’ll walk into a room that holds twenty years of my life — a lifetime measured not in hours or quarters or headcount, but in belief, in effort, in the audacity of a group of humans deciding that the world didn’t yet have the company they wanted to work for… so they built it.
People ask me sometimes, “Did you know Instrument would become this?”
No.
I didn’t know.
But I believed.
I had faith.
I always believed Instrument would be special.
I didn’t know, but I had faith it would be this.
Faith is different than certainty. Certainty is neat, linear, smug. Faith is messy and defiant. Faith is waking up at 3 a.m. thinking about payroll and purpose in the same breath. Faith is staring risk in the eyes and shaking its hand anyway. Faith is deciding that effort and integrity, if applied consistently enough, can bend reality toward something extraordinary.
That’s how Instrument was built.
Not on inevitability — but on courage.
Not through legacy — but through intention.
Not because success was promised — but because we were willing to work until it appeared.
Laurel Burton said something recently that struck me like truth tends to — quiet at first, and then loud in your bones:
“Leadership isn’t about carrying a legacy. It’s about building a vision bold enough to become one.”
That’s Instrument. Always has been.
This place has never been about maintaining what was. It has always been about inventing what comes next. That’s the thread that runs through every era, every leader, every person who ever poured themselves into this place — a refusal to simply inherit meaning when we could create it.
The early days weren’t glamorous. They were held together with caffeine, conviction, and the kind of stubborn optimism that borders on insanity. We felt our way through the dark, trusting instinct over instruction. We worked like believers, not caretakers. We didn’t wait for approval — we earned trust with execution.
And somewhere along the way, faith became proof.
Belief became culture.
Effort became excellence.
A tiny idea turned into a place where world-class work met world-class humanity.
That — more than scale, more than success, more than the accolades — is what I’m most proud of. Instrument didn’t just do great work. It made people better. It brought out courage in others. It made room for talent to bloom into leadership, for humility to sharpen into judgment, for creativity to turn into impact.
And tonight isn’t about looking back and polishing a trophy. Because legacy isn’t something you display — it’s something you pass forward.
A legacy held too tightly becomes a museum.
A legacy handed forward becomes momentum.
And that’s what moves me most: Instrument is not frozen in time. It’s alive. It is evolving. The people leading it today are not preserving a flame — they are building a bigger one. They are thinking beyond nostalgia. They are imagining a future brighter than anything we dreamed in those first scrappy rooms.
I built as far as my time allowed.
And then I let go.
And the most beautiful thing happened:
It kept rising.
Because Instrument was never mine. It never belonged to any one person. It has always belonged to the people brave enough to believe in it at any given moment.
So tonight, I will walk into that room with a full heart. Grateful. Humbled. Proud. Not because the story is complete — but because it continues. And because the vision I believed in has been taken further than I could take it alone.
I didn’t know it would become this.
But I believed it could.
And belief — when paired with effort, truth, and courage — can build miracles.
Here’s to twenty years of faith turned into reality.
And here’s to the next twenty — bold enough, ambitious enough, alive enough to become a legacy of their own.
Onward.
If this reflection on belief, legacy, and the journey of building something meaningful spoke to you, share it with someone who might be standing at the edge of their own bold beginning.
Follow the show, leave a review, and subscribe on Substack so you don’t miss the next story, insight, or spark. I release new episodes weekly, and each one aims to remind us that purpose isn’t inherited — it’s earned, step by step, choice by choice, belief by belief.
Wherever you are in your journey, keep going. Build the thing only you can see. And remember: the future belongs to those who dare to believe before there’s proof.
Until next time — be kind, be great, and work hard.
