The Person Keeping Everything Else Running

I talk a lot about JAC. The grants we win, the clients we work with, the business I’ve built, and all the ideas constantly bouncing around in my brain about where I want to take this thing next.

What I don’t talk about nearly enough is the person who is largely responsible for me doing any of this in the first place.

My husband, Dylan.

Dylan was actually the one who pushed me to start this business in the first place. He believed I could do this before I was completely convinced myself, and he encouraged me to take the leap that eventually became JAC.

Years later, he’s still the first person who hears about pretty much everything that happens here.

He hears about the wins, usually before I’ve even fully processed them myself. He hears about the losses and disappointments. He hears the ideas I’m excited about, the decisions I’m second-guessing, and an honestly impressive amount of bitching about whatever has pissed me off that day.

Frankly, the poor man probably knows more about grants than he ever wanted to.

Dylan has been supporting me like this since the very beginning, and somehow, as JAC has grown, so has everything he’s willing to take on to give me the space to keep growing it. He’s been the person quietly keeping our family afloat while I’ve been building, working, stressing, celebrating, overthinking, taking calls, staring at my computer for entirely too long, attempting to work from my phone when I should absolutely just put it down, and doing all the other things that come with running a growing business.

Every time JAC has demanded a little more of me, Dylan has found a way to give me a little more room to do it. 

Somewhere along the way, JAC grew enough that Dylan was able to become a stay-at-home dad. There’s something pretty full-circle about that. He gave me the space to build this business, the business gave us the ability for him to stay home with our son, and now everything he does at home gives me the space to keep growing it.

Although “stay-at-home dad” doesn’t really cover it. I prefer “domestic engineer,” given the sheer amount of shit he manages on any given day.

He takes care of our son, four dogs, and an unreasonable number of houseplants. He handles schedules, appointments, meals, laundry, and the million tiny things that keep a household running. He even tackles the running to-do list I keep on our fridge, often crossing things off before I have a chance to ask about them again. 

After more than seven years together, I can confidently say that “doing shit on my to-do list without making me ask twice” is absolutely a love language.

Somehow, he still finds time to take care of me, too.

He brings me lunch when I’ve inevitably forgotten that lunch exists, makes countless cups of tea, and keeps my office stocked with snacks he knows I like. Sometimes he’ll even come into my office, sit in the chair behind me, and just keep me company. He knows I’m writing and can’t really talk. He doesn’t need anything. He just wants to be near me.

It’s such a small thing, but it’s one of my favorites. 

Actually, so much of Dylan’s support over the last six years has looked like that. Not one huge gesture, but hundreds of little things done over and over again that have made it possible for me to keep doing this.

I don’t know that he realizes how much those little things mean to me.

There are plenty of big ways to support someone you love, and Dylan has done those too. I mean, he encouraged me to start the damn business in the first place, but after six years of building it, I think I’ve realized that a lot of love actually lives in the mundane stuff that comes after the big leap.

It’s paying attention. It’s knowing what would make my day a little easier without needing me to ask. It’s listening to the same stories, frustrations, wins, and half-formed ideas over and over again because they matter to me, so they matter to him. It’s making room for the version of me who is ambitious and distracted and occasionally way too deep in a grant narrative to be particularly good company.

Those things are easy to overlook precisely because they’ve become such a normal part of our life. Then I have days where I walk out of my office after being completely consumed by work and realize life has just… continued around me.

Our son has been taken care of. Dinner has been figured out. Something got picked up from the store. An appointment got scheduled. A mess disappeared. Whatever small crisis happened while I was on a client call was handled without ever becoming my crisis.

That doesn’t happen by accident.

We talk a lot about the sacrifices entrepreneurs make to build businesses. The long hours, the stress, the financial risks, and the million things business owners carry around in their heads. We don’t talk nearly as much about the people standing next to them carrying everything else.

Being a stay-at-home parent is work. Running a household is work. Being the person who keeps track of what everyone needs, where everyone needs to be, what needs to get done, and what we’re somehow already out of again is work. It just doesn’t come with a salary, a LinkedIn title, performance reviews, promotions, or many of the other things we use to tell someone their work matters.

So, I want to say it here:

Thank you for being an incredible dad to our son. Thank you for keeping our home and our lives running when my brain is approximately 97% grants and 3% attempting to remember where I left my phone. Thank you for all the things you do that I notice, and probably even more for the things I don’t.

Most of all, thank you for pushing me to start this business and then continuing to show up for me while I built it.

Sometimes I wonder if you knew what you were starting when you first encouraged me to do this. I certainly didn’t. Over the last six years, JAC has grown into something bigger than I ever imagined, and through this work, I’ve had the opportunity to help nonprofits raise nearly $35 million for their communities.

That number is something I’m rightfully incredibly proud of, but when I think about everything it took to get there, I know my name doesn’t belong on that accomplishment alone.

Your work made space for mine.

There’s a whole lot of work behind this business that will never show up on a revenue report, grant tracker, or year-end recap. It happens in grocery store aisles, piles of laundry, dinners, appointments, cups of tea, packed lunches, long conversations after a shitty day, and quiet afternoons in the chair behind my desk.

So, while I spend a lot of time publicly celebrating what I’ve built, I think it’s about damn time I publicly celebrated the person who encouraged me to build it in the first place.

Dylan, thank you for pushing me to start, and thank you for making it possible for me to keep going.

Nearly $35 million later, I think it’s safe to say that push changed a whole lot more than just our lives.