Cheers to 10 Years!
Following up on my founding partner, Sarah Yakel’s blog from last week, I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect and be thankful for Meridian’s 10 years of existence as well. In true partnership fashion, we did a blind draw to figure out who would cover what topic!
We are both extremely proud of what Meridian and the team have accomplished thus far, and as we look back, we are happy to report that we have not deviated from the core values that we established from the outset.
In case you can’t read them in the graphic, our core values are (with Oxford commas added!):
- Communicate openly, clearly, and respectfully
- Create fearless, engaging, and productive client experiences
- Be authentic, grateful, and generous
- Stay curious and seek knowledge
- Serve our communities in a caring manner
- Earn long-term trusting relationships
We put a lot of time and effort into formulating our values prior to starting the business, and it is nice to know that was time well spent. There were certainly a lot of unknowns (and still are!) when we were creating Meridian Financial Partners*, but we felt like if we could stick to our core values, the rest would take care of itself. It is akin to building a house from scratch; it’s hard to know if you’ve done it right until you’ve lived in it for a little while. Thus far, it feels to me like we should be very pleased with what we’ve built.
I also wanted to add a special thank you to our longest tenured Meridian team member, Sarah Irving. She is now one of our partners, and her contributions to our company over the last 7 years have been invaluable. We look forward to continuing Meridian’s mission alongside her.
In addition to formulating our core values and deciding to start our company, Sarah Yakel and I had to address the somewhat delicate task of informing our spouses of our plans. We are both extremely fortunate to have very supportive spouses, who also happen to have health insurance for our families through their respective employers. That was especially helpful when we were getting ready to quit our jobs and lose both income and benefits!
A very big thank you to both of them for all of the support and guidance over the last 10 years. We absolutely could not have done it without you.
In true Jonathan fashion, he insisted on being the picture taker!
Because Jonathan was not in the group pic above, I am including this much more flattering photo of the two of us. This may or may not have been after a whiskey tasting…
That was some strong whiskey!
Lastly, an extra special thank you to my fellow founding partner Sarah Yakel, who I am only allowed to hug every 10 years or $500 million under management (whichever comes first!)
Cheers to 10 years!
– Nathan
*Fun fact: the “original” name for our firm was Dark Horse, which was nixed for obvious reasons. Very ominous sounding!