Ten days ago I left Retail Solutions to begin the next chapter in my life. After working 14-16 hour days building and running a global engineering team which delivered the SaaS solutions that made the company what it is today, I feel I have time to breathe, take stock and decide where I want to focus my energy in the future.

I was lucky to be one of the co-founders with three other smart, capable entrepreneurs. We worked well together, called each other out when we saw the need, and helped each other with ideas, plans, and actions.

I was fortunate to be able to hire, train, work with, and learn from a fantastic global team of software engineering professionals & product managers who time and again rose to the challenges that we encountered to make Retail Solutions the world leader in what it does.

I was blessed to have the colleagues I had in other parts of the company – Customer Service, Operations, Marketing, Sales, HR, Finance & Accounting all doing the best for the company – that challenged my team to come up with solutions that met industry needs and surpassed them.

Retail Solutions would not be what it is today without the customers we serve. The first few customers I worked with closely from the early days (when we were known as T3Ci – the tag tracking company!) motivated me and my team be the best with our analytic solutions.

In my last week at Retail Solutions, I was overwhelmed by the sentiments expressed in emails by my colleagues – such as these:

“I truly enjoyed working under your leadership over the past years. You showed me time and time again what it meant to be a leader. I am grateful for the many success stories that we overcame as in many occasions, it was because of your guidance and support. I never had a chance say to Thank YOU.”

“You have been an absolute inspiration. A constant motivation for me to work hard.  You might not even know but I have learned so much from you every single day- especially respect my work and give it my best shot!”

“While I’m thrilled for you to be able to take some time off and then continue with your career on your own terms I have to say that you will be sorely missed at RSi. It has been a real pleasure working with you. I’ve never worked at a company where the Chief Engineer was as involved with as many levels of the business as you and from my perspective, it was always VERY comforting to have you actually on customer calls …… when the chips were down. Thank you so much for all the passion you brought to the job! Best of luck in your future endeavors and I can’t wait to see what you get yourself into next! “

“I will miss knowing that with everything going on and the pressure and stress of customer engagements you ultimately had my back. “

I compiled the sentiments such as the above so that I can look back and read them for inspiration as I move on with what I will do next. Unlike some who might say leave the past behind, I don’t want to leave my past behind. I have gained too much from it, and am very grateful for the experience. I will cherish it forever.

My motivation for what I do next will not come from financial rewards alone – it is knowing that I will make a difference in the lives of people I work with and that I build world class technical teams which excel in what they do.

This post appeared first in LinkedIn on November 29, 2016