The photo below is of a trophy case in my house. The trophies are a mix of academic and athletic awards. They are not mine. They were earned by my daughters.

I intentionally use the word earned because they are trophies of merit, not merely participation. Participation is laudable and essential, but it is not the win. The win is the win. Merit is a requirement of a win. Else it was not a win. It might have been a gift, but not a win unless it was earned.

Before their birth, Gayle and I planned that our children would learn the value of “earning it” – whatever the “it” happened to be. Further, we wanted them to have the deep understanding of something called “heart knowledge.” I learned that term from my faith. It is a good term.

Our eldest daughter, AbbyGayle, graduated high school valedictorian. It is hard for murmurers to deny that was earned. After all, 13 years of A-plus’s is difficult to discount. I intentionally typed “plus’s” because that was exactly what they were. Nevertheless, the murmurers tried. Such was the nature of the human heart.

With athletics petty jealously gets bold in the face of success. How many times have you heard, “I would have been great had the coach liked me?” Or “They didn’t beat us. The refs cheated.” My personal favorite, “I would have practiced as much as she did but for (insert excuse here).”

All three girls earned MVPs. Our middle girl, Sara, earned several. She had as many murmurers as trophies.  As with her two sisters, she worked – and then worked some more – to achieve her athletic successes.

In 1989, in the ninth grade, I won All Conference as a cornerback. At 5’ 7”, 110 pounds, glasses, braces and bookish, I was as unlikely looking a football awardee as they came. Yet it was my slight stature and introverted countenance that required that I outwork everybody. Most recognized that. But there was a murmurer because there always was and always will be.

Within minutes of receiving the award at our school assembly, the requisite murmurer made a bee line to tell me, “You didn’t deserve that award, Pete Jernigan. My friend V should have gotten that award.” Yet neither he nor his friend worked for it. I did.

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In 2005 a business competitor called upset that my construction company, TEP Design Build (a.k.a. “TEPDB”), had beat him on yet another bid. Angrily, he yelled; “You don’t have to do it all. Leave something for the rest of us.”

My engineering firm, Tower Engineering Professionals (a.k.a. “TEP”) had steadily increased market share since its founding in 1997. The caller was aware of that because he was among the many construction companies building the designs that TEP produced. Now that TEPDB was performing construction too, I was “taking work from him.”

When Andy and I formed our first general contracting company in 2001, it was a colossal failure, but we did not quit. The lessons that we earned from that painful failure I called “heart knowledge” because it was deeper than head knowledge. Pain goes deeper.

Using our heart knowledge as precursor; in 2005 we formed the second construction company, TEPDB. It immediately began winning bids.

Hence, I got yelled at over the phone.

But I had earned my wins. There was no inheritance of money nor company from an ambitious dad. TEP/TEPDB was created from nothing. No hand up. No handout. It was done stone cold start up that painfully birthed from my loins.

There was no external source of money. No benefactor. No investor. No private equity. It had all been boot-strapped with two second mortgages on my house. Besides all that, Andy and I paid dearly for the mistakes made with our first construction company.

Winning those bids with TEPDB was the product of risk, stress, and work. Then more work. Then work again. From 1995 until 2005, I averaged 358 working days per year. It was the decade of my thirties, when I had that energy.

TEP and TEPDB were winning because I risked my life on solitary tower climbs. I risked my home with second mortgages. I risked my career by leaving a safe job at KCI to create TEP. Then Gayle and I risked our personal checkbook to make payroll.

To get TEP/TEPDB to critical mass, Gayle and I delayed our comfort while living in a junk house for the first decade of our marriage.

Indeed, I had done the hard things that murmurers will not.

Calling me to vent and to communicate was good because communication is always good…

…but what he really needed to do was outwork me.