On top of the world on 9-11. A light still shines

Twenty-five years ago, I got up and went to work like I did every morning. Work is what I know best.

I was 35 years old, with kids who were 2, 4, 13 and 17, and heading into my third year as president of FutureSource, the company where I had spent the previous decade growing up professionally.

And growing was what was on my mind every morning.

Who on our team needed help? What decisions were we contemplating on the technology or service side? Where did we have potential we were not leveraging yet?

FutureSource had about 180 people, five offices in the United States and others around the world, providing financial market information to traders 24 hours a day.

Much like today, my greatest passion was growing people.

That was partly because other people had done it for me. Kurt Klein, Rex Wilmore, Hal Rich and Doug McIntyre each saw something in me beyond what I could see in myself at the time and put me in roles I wasn’t yet ready for. Even a hard-driving entrepreneur like Merrill Oster trusted me to lead his team.

I wanted to do the same for others.

A Diamond Named Ari

One of the first young talents I had the privilege of developing was a spirited sales rep in our Los Angeles office named Ari Jacobs.

Ari went from sales rep to wildly successful regional leader and ultimately became our charismatic national sales director overseeing our five U.S. regional offices.

He was a diamond eager to be refined, while being so strong in spirit that you knew you were lucky to be the guy who got to work with the gem.

Ari was incredibly kind while also being a driven executive who wanted to exceed every standard you could set for him.

More importantly, he was just fun to be around.

He was quirky, energetic, funny, soulful, sarcastic and witty as hell.

I watched him be an absolute savage in a sales presentation, and I also watched him personally take a spider outside rather than squash it like a bug, which I probably would have done.

That was Ari.

I got to spend a handful of years “growing” him, though that really meant trying to harness all that energy while knowing his mind and spirit were always racing toward whatever was next.

Eventually, what was next was big.

Ari landed the opportunity to become CEO of a Wall Street company serving institutional traders, where his contacts, competence and charisma made him a natural fit.

He was a young CEO for the first time. He had recently married Jenna, and I was blessed to attend their wedding. Around his family and friends, I saw the same thing I had seen professionally.

Ari had kinetic energy.

There was a spark.

That word gets used a lot, but with Ari it was real. His family and friends knew it long before I did.

And so did his wife.

September 11, 2001

On that morning 25 years ago, with Jenna expecting their first child, Ari was literally on top of the world.

He was attending a conference at the World Trade Center.

I can picture him there, undoubtedly dazzling whoever he was talking to, because that was what Ari did. Sometimes brilliance, sometimes bullshit, but always dazzling.

We will never know those final conversations.

Ari was among the thousands of people whose lives were taken that morning. Thousands of good hearts, good souls, parents, children, spouses, friends, colleagues and sparks within their own families and communities.

I did not know yet that we had lost Ari.

When the first images came across the television in my Chicago area office, my immediate focus was somewhere else.

We had an office of 10 people just a few blocks from the World Trade Center. We had salespeople and technicians who were in those buildings regularly.

Like everyone else in America, I had no idea what was happening.

Would there be more attacks? Would other buildings be hit? Was it safer for our people to stay inside or get out? If they left, where should they go?

I just knew that I had people in harm’s way and, as their leader, I was supposed to help answer one question:

What the hell do we do now?

We accounted for everyone and ultimately made the call for our people to leave.

But “go home” sounds much simpler than it was.

For some, going home meant moving as fast as they could away from a storm of soot, debris, fire, panic and gridlock. It meant hours trying to get across a bridge, hoping to reach family while having little idea what had happened or what might happen next.

Once we made the call, there was absolutely nothing more I could do.

Wait.

Pray.

Watch the screen.

I was built for problems I could personally take responsibility for. Give me something I can work harder at and I will work harder. Give me an obstacle and I will stubbornly find a way around it.

But at 35 years old, filled with all the passion, drive and determination I could muster, I was completely helpless when it came to protecting people who had been put in my charge.

Thankfully, every member of our FutureSource New York crew made it home.

Geralyn, Charlie, Luis and the rest of our team survived physically, though none of them emotionally walked away from what they had experienced.

I Needed to See Them

As soon as flights resumed, I flew to New York.

I needed to see my people.

I needed to hear them.

And I needed to try to understand even a small fraction of what they had just experienced.

That trip changed me.

I listened more carefully than I probably ever had before because, after walking the streets myself the night I landed, I understood how little a telephone call or email could possibly tell me about what they had lived through.

The neighborhood around Wall Street had become almost unrecognizable.

There was debris, destruction and a massive operation running around the clock. Trucks lined the streets waiting to haul away another load from what seemed like an insurmountable pile of concrete and metal.

And people.

The rhythm of the recovery effort is something I will never forget.

It was absolute intensity. Go, go, go.

Then suddenly, everything stopped.

Complete silence across blocks of New York City as rescue dogs and crews searched for any sign of life.

Then the machinery would begin again.

Thousands of people were working with an extraordinary combination of urgency and delicacy, desperately trying to uncover someone without harming anyone who might still be alive.

I had never seen anything like it.

I hope humanity never has to see anything like it again.

What 25 Years Taught Me

Twenty-five years later, I think less about what I saw on television that morning and more about the people.

And I think about what they taught me.

Develop your people nonstop, even when you know they may eventually leave.

Ari left FutureSource for an incredible opportunity. I was proud of him. If you help light up enough people, they are going to shine plenty of light for everybody.

Appreciate the goofballs who stand out.

Ari was different in almost every aspect of what he did and how he did it. Some portion of the time, he drove me crazy because his spirit simply could not be contained.

What I wouldn’t give to have that whirling dervish back in my life today.

Everybody is going through something deeper than you will ever learn from a phone call, text or email.

Look at people when you talk to them.

Listen.

And when it matters, go see them.

Now is the right time for everything that matters.

On September 11, 2001, Ari was on top of the world at a conference on the 106th floor of the north tower of the Trade Center. A building that I had been in dozens of times and our people were in dozens of times a week. So were thousands of other people who went to work that morning, many of them making things happen in the financial center of the world.

They had plans.

Families.

Meetings.

Dreams.

Things they were going to do tomorrow.

Then there was no tomorrow.

Twenty-five years later, I will never forget Ari. I will never completely understand the impact that day had on my FutureSource teammates in New York, or on the millions of lives connected to the people who were lost.

But I understand something today that my 35-year-old self was still learning.

Leadership is not just about growing companies, solving problems or making the right call when everyone is looking to you for an answer.

It is about people.

Seeing them. Growing them. Believing in them. Showing up for them. Appreciating everything that makes them different. And understanding that none of us gets to know how much time we have together.

Ari’s time was far too short.

His light wasn’t.

Twenty-five years later, I can still see it.