This month marks fourteen years since Chrissy Vergara became my first staff hire. She is now my COO.
When I asked her recently what moment she thinks about most, she said: the big theme is the front row seat to the Judd show. The good, the bad, how many times I told ya so, how many times you told me so. And how so many times others have tried to push me out of the front row. And I’m still sitting there.
I sat with that for a long time.
Others have tried to push her out of the front row. She’s still sitting there.
That’s not a small thing to say. That’s a woman who has made a deliberate choice, repeatedly, over fourteen years, to stay in a seat that wasn’t always comfortable. That wasn’t always easy to occupy. That sometimes, I imagine, cost her something to keep.
WHAT STAYING ACTUALLY COSTS
Chrissy had real reasons to leave. There were years I wasn’t the leader she deserved. Years I set her up to fail while leaning on her completely. She has told me more than once that during those years, she never believed that was the real me. That she always knew there was more inside.
I find that extraordinary. Because during those years, I had lost track of it entirely.
She held that belief on my behalf when I had stopped holding it for myself.
In 2022, when things were rough enough that she almost left a few times, I got us out of the environment that had calcified everything between us. We went to the San Juan Islands in Washington. No agenda. No KPIs. Just nature. Just us being human together.
Somewhere in the salt air, the armor came off. We saw each other as real people. And we accepted what we saw.
She told me that the trip renewed her faith in continuing. That trip also showed me what leadership really looked like. Not performance. Not control. The willingness to be human in front of someone.
WHAT THIS IS REALLY ABOUT
I used to think loyalty was measured in years. The longer someone stayed, the more loyal they were.
I understand it differently now.
Loyalty isn’t duration. It’s a choice made repeatedly, often when leaving would be easier and no one would blame you for it. The people who stay through the hard version of you aren’t just loyal. They’re brave. And most of us have never told them that directly.
Chrissy, you were my first hire and you are still here. You saw something in me during the years I couldn’t see it in myself and you held it until I could find my way back to it.
What I can do is say it out loud, in front of everyone: Thank you for staying in your seat.
And for everyone reading this, if you have someone in your life who has stayed through the version of you that you’re not proud of, who held a belief in you when you had stopped holding it for yourself, that person deserves to hear it named. Not assumed. Said. Go tell them.