Delaney's School Night Date Night with Dad to Spurs Game

Blake's 41st Birthday, The Day We Forgot & We Realized Yet Again What An Exceptional Man You Are

The Thursday morning that Blake turned 41 was a typical busy morning in the Brown household and I will always remember it as the day that my husband showed me such grace. I went to bed that night thinking how lucky I am to have him as my partner in life. We all woke up and all got ready for a typical eventful day. Conversations were probably geared around our afternoon with Addison's UIL, Delaney's Girl Scout meeting,  Carter's soccer practice at 5:30 and Delaney's basketball practice. We said our goodbyes and it wasn't until 8:16AM when Megan Perkins group texted everyone and said Happy Birthday to Blake, that I realized it was his birthday! 

The entire day apart while working, I reflected on Blake's love, patience and calmness and above all his grace with me and everyone around him. He never said anything that entire 2 hours we were together as a family on his birthday morning and showed not one ounce of resentment or frustration with me. All day, I wondered how I would have reacted if I had woken up on my birthday and no one in my entire family acknowledged it? What deep and thoughtful moments I had and had tears in my eyes several times, amazed at how awesome Blake is and how much I can learn form him.

So in between UIL, Daisy meetings, soccer and basketball, we some how managed to surprise Blake and have a family celebration dinner together at Eddie V's. I promise this will probably be my most memorable birthday of his.

Cheers to my 41 years old amazing husband!

I love how Meme gave Blake a new back brace for his 41st birthday. For nearly a decade, he has worn a back brace proactively when working around the house and yard.

Family Rodeo Day Fun!

Rodeo is always a priority and this weekend we sandwiched in on a Sunday in-between an early Sunday morning soccer game and a late afternoon one! The kids and Blake even went back the following Monday on a school holiday and played at the fair for most of the day!

Valentine's Day

We continued our tradition of family date night over giving gifts. This year is was bowling and dinner.

Megan's Lilly Platinum Performer Year & National Sales Meeting

2018 was an incredible year professionally all around. I was able to quintuple my Taltz business in San Antonio in 2018 vs 2017, growing my territory to the number one volume producing new patient territory in the entire nation, as of the last quarter of 2018. In August 2018 I had an internal employee come out to the field for a short term sales role. Andy was a recent MBA grad from Duke and he come shadow and help me in San Antonio 2-3 days/week for 8 months which was perfect timing to come help me with the tremendous growth I already had in the first 8 months of 2018. Andy proved to be an incredible partner and it was such fun showing him how much we field sales reps manage in our normal days. This February marks my 16th anniversary at Lilly and 3rd year in dermatology and I can honestly say I have never worked so hard or felt so engaged in my entire 16 year sales career. This is the most competitive landscape I have ever sold in but I feel the most confident that I have ever been. It's been a fun 3 years building up to the place I am at, yet one filled with a tremendous about of passion and dedication to my customers and colleagues.

L-R:Heath, Andy, me, Mallory, Cally, Jared and Andi.

Looking back, I think this picture of B.O.W. 2 - Box on Wheels will bring back fun memories. The kids know that we love our free company cars for the past 17 years, as they have paid for the kid's college and allowed us to take so many wonderful vacations!

Regarding my 4.5 year old BACK2WORK and MOM2MOM network, 2018 was another gigantic year of growth. The program also evolved in January 2018 to officially add on the 2nd portion of the program called MOM2MOM to support Lilly field based moms that had older kids out of diapers, just like me. The Summer of 2018, the demand was so high, I started expanding it into the largest sales division in the country - Diabetes. It started in the Gulf coast and quickly spread across the nation, now on it's way to benefiting the 2000 plus Diabetes sales reps. With the program now in all 5 sales divisions, late 2018 called for some gigantic changes and I knew that I had to start running it more like a small non-profit business. Over the Holiday break in 2018, I created a vision for a 12 person coordinator and leadership team, instituted monthly first Friday of the month leadership calls and started delegating the tremendous about of value added tasks it takes to run this network across 5 sales sleeves that has close to 140 members, as of December 2018. I knew the first 6 months of 2019 would be lots of work training and passing responsibilities to 11 other people, but that it had to be done as there were several weeks in 2017, 2018 and even early 2019, where I was putting 20-25 extra hours in, outside of my normal territory sales job. Although this is my passion and fills up cup, I knew it was unsustainable. As of June 2019, while I am writing this, I can say that my leadership plan has overall worked beautifully. I have a team of 14 now including 2 administrative assistants and I am seeing the light, as more of the CEO of the organization and the face of the group used to help connect reps across the country. As 2018, our network is putting out 4 quarterly newsletters, hosting 3-4 mentor training calls each year, hosting 2 optional Hot Topics Calls with 100 participants dialing in each call. In 2019, we helped the field's roll out of the new Parental Leave 18 weeks paid Lilly benefit being the go to renounce for questions and to voice concerns - helping get the car time line changed from 12 weeks, to 16 and eventually for field based reps to have the car for the entire paid 18 weeks.

In the first half of 2019 - my MOM2MOM and BACK2WORK network is active all over the place with nearly 200 active participants including booths and breakfast meet ups at all area and national meetings across the nation.

Oncology national sales meeting 2019.

Diabetes West Specialty Meeting in early 2019.