Sometimes the theme of a day shows up before you have a name for it. Today I did. Coming home.
A few different parts of my life circled back to where they started, and I kept bumping into the same idea. Going back is not always a step backward. Sometimes it is progress.
People interested in coming back
A former teammate reached out this week. Years ago, during a hard season, this person built real relationships for us. That was no small thing.
I expected a catch-up call. What I got instead was something I did not see coming. This person is interested in coming home.
It made my day.
I want to be careful here, because nothing is decided. We are talking. There is still a lot to work through, and I am not writing this as an announcement. I am writing it because the fact that someone would even be interested in coming back says something I do not want to miss.
We have seen this before.
A college intern left after a season with us, then came back. That person is now a growing leader, and a real part of the future of our company. Coming home works here.
Could this become that kind of story too? I hope so. I also know that hope is not the same thing as a decision. I am going to let this one unfold at its own pace.
The work is coming home too
There is a second homecoming in front of me, and it has been a long time coming.
Our very first piece of software was a back office reporting system for a national association of franchise licensees. We built tools that helped a large group of business owners, spread out around the country, run their operations a little better. That is where we started.
And here we are again.
TruckStock is a tool for serving large groups of companies around the country. After nearly twenty years away from that kind of work, we are back at it. Different industry. Different product. Same instinct: build something useful for operators who are trying to do the work well.
I did not plan the symmetry. I noticed it after the fact, the way you notice a familiar road only once you have been gone long enough to miss it. We left that early work and spent a long stretch doing other things. Now the work itself is coming home.
Going back to our roots does not feel like we ran out of ideas. It feels like we finally got clear on the ones that were ours to begin with.
Coming home takes humility on both sides. It takes humility to leave, and it takes a different kind of humility to explore coming back. You have to admit that what you left still matters to you. You have to be willing to start a new chapter in a place that already knows you, which is not always easier than starting fresh somewhere else.
It also takes humility on the receiving side. You cannot treat a return like a trophy, or like proof that you were right all along. People come back because of the relationships, the work, and the kind of place you have tried to build. If you make it about your ego, you miss the gift.
When someone is interested in coming home, it is one of the quiet compliments a company can receive. Culture is a word that gets used too loosely. I trust it more when I see it in a person who already knows what we are like on a hard day, and is still interested in coming back.
The same is true of the work. It would have been easy to treat that first chapter as something we outgrew. I do not feel that way now. I feel like we are picking up a thread we dropped, and that the years in between taught us how to hold it better.
Progress is not always a new direction. Sometimes it is coming back to the thing you were built to do, with more patience than you had the first time.
What I want to keep building is simple to say and hard to do. I want a company people would want to come home to. A place where the work matters, the relationships last, and leaving is not the end of the story. A place that can welcome someone back without making them prove they were wrong to go.
I want the work itself to have that same quality. I want us to be the kind of shop that can go out, learn, wander a little, and still find its way back to the thing it does well.
None of this is settled. The conversation with a former teammate is just beginning. TruckStock is out in the world, and we are still early in this next chapter. I am just paying attention.
Could this be that kind of story too?
I hope so. And I hope we keep becoming the kind of place that makes a question like that feel possible.
