Atlantic BT - An Open Thank You Note

The Incredible Lightness of Being
Life was hectic and unsure in the fall of 2011.  I was responsible for why life's wobble was dangerously close to a personal red zone. In March 2010 I left my position as Director of Ecommerce to ride a lifelong dream. Riding a bicycle across America seemed cool in my twenties.

In our minds there is little difference between our twenty-year-old impulsive selves and our north of 50 year old pre-Martin's Ride mostly sitting at a desk self. Our minds play wicked tricks. I couldn't WORK and WORK OUT. Energy management, post diagnosis, was a full time job. In the spring of 2010 I quit my job with its life sustaining and 401k preserving medical benefits taking the risk of my life.

I didn't quit my job lightly, but with a firm grasp on important values including:

• Dreams deferred are dreams lost.
• Things that appear safe often are not.
• There are a few ideas that define your life.
• Change those life defining values and it isn't your life anymore. 
• Risk and reward are tied together and not inversely related.
• Betting on generosity of others is a good bet.
• No time like the present to do what you love (trite but true).
• Family, friends and connection is what every life is really all about.
• Love, to quote Tim Saunders, is the "Killer App". 

There are good things about having the Big C. I have Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. One of those good things is an immediate reordering of priorities. Strange that it takes something so dramatic to teach a simple lesson - time isn't infinite so use what there is carefully and with full recognition of trade offs every life requires. Try to be conscious is the other, shorter way to say this.

I had a few other goals for Martin's Ride To Cure Cancer such as: 

• Create a poll my family could wrap around (we Smiths are spread across and all over).
• Find out how much was in my tank in tough situations.
• Recover some joy and magic lost somewhere between cancer diagnosis, divorce and the creation of 4 companies, a handful of products and millions of dollars in OPP (other people's profits). 
• I wanted to serve some greater idea. Curing cancer even if only in myself and for the sixty days seemed a worthy goal. Curing me, even for such a small window, meant together we could cure it all. 

The trip was a magic carpet ride of challenge, the abundant kindness of strangers, support from my great team, seeing every member of my family, raising money and awareness about cancer and getting to LA exhausted and by some miracle in one piece. Despite many days feeling like the mountains never stop and LA was a place we couldn't reach, after a long last day of climbing in the Angeles Forest we arrived where there was nothing left but water, horizon and ocean (Santa Monica Pier).

A little over halfway I knew it was back to the Duke Cancer Institute for chemotherapy. I was "lumpy" again with half a tennis ball under my right arm and ping pong ball growing on my neck. Cancer is many things sneaky is not one of them :). My UNC Oncologist proved true to his word. I'd ask if he could treat me as if Martin's Ride NOT longevity was the most important idea. "I can do that," he said simply and was true to his word.

Mark Foulkrod, then Atlantic BT's COO now its President, and the person who introduced us, my friend John Kean, were Martin's Ride supporters. Martin's Ride met up with John and his son Smitty in Asheville for one of our best weekends. John, Smitty and the Martin's Ride team watched fireworks at the foot of the Great Smokey Mountains feeling America's ritual greatness and the ever expanding kindness of strangers.

I'd vastly underestimated many things (lol), including:

• I'd underestimated the impact of climbing MOUNTAINS on a bicycle. 
• I'd underestimated the physical shape needed prior to leaving. 
• I'd underestimated the courage and resilience of the ad-hoc team I tossed together (thanks Brian and Jeremy:). 
• I'd vastly and I mean vastly underestimated the cash it would take to realize such a dream (all donations to Martin's Ride went to cancer research, the ride was all on my savings). 
• I'd vastly underestimated the impact of such an adventure PLUS more chemo immediately after on my now improving health and deteriorating financial situation. 

Paying the untrue "everyone can have health insurance" $1,257 a month in post-cobra health care meant there were at least, oh gosh, weeks before the For Sale sign was pounded into my front yard (lol). My friend John Kean came by to check on me and ride a bicycle together. We had done everything but ride bicycles when Martin's Ride rolled through western North Carolina. "Come on let's go see Mark," John insisted after our ride. Tired and hungry I was about to decline, but then I remembered my lunch with Jon and Mark (when they ate all the squid and then tried to joke about it LOL). I thought Mark and Jon might know a company looking for a slightly used Internet marketer. After Mark's following Martin's Ride I owed him a story or two.

Funny how our lives often turn on such tiny moments. You know the end of the story. I joined Jon and Mark's Raleigh web development company Atlantic BT not long after and got a chance to fall in love all over again. I've fallen head over heals, again, for the crazy art as business as art mess that is Internet marketing. One lesson the Big C teaches is to say THANK YOU NOW. This note is my Thank You Note to Jon, Mark and the entire Atlantic BT family/team for a bunch of things including:

• The courage to create a company based on simple core values.
• The greater courage to walk the talk of those values.
• The special courage to take a risk on a cancer survivor. 
• The greater courage to be as demanding of that cancer survivor (me) as everyone else (the value of this compliment is beyond my ability to explain).
• The amazing courage to, despite nearly every other company's trend in the other direction, IMPROVE the health insurance offerings for Atlantic BT team and their families despite its staggering costs.
• The greater courage to create a values driven company and be uncompromising yet flexible in how those values are lived. 

Quality is so much more important in your life than you realize or than anything else. Ashamed I lived, all too often,  as if quantity was the most important idea. Quality, I'm learning, is the art and science of what you do and who you do it with. Where one idea (who) starts and the other (what) starts or stops is an impossible distinction, a paradox wrapped in a mystery not worth solving.

Courage, I discovered on a bicycle right around 50 MPH, is matching the willingness to not use the brake no matter the consequences. I work with a special team of people who are smarter than me. It took me up to 30 years more than many of the members of my extended Atlantic BT family to learn their lesson half as well. Live those things that make you who you are and consequences be damned and somehow everything will be alright, everything will work out. 

I rode 3,000 miles across America to come home and learn love is the killer app. Love of the work, love of our customer's and love for and respect of each other. To Jon, Mark and Teresa, the team responsible for doing what no other company is doing - improving the health care offerings for their employees, friends and families - I say Thank You. 

Thank You for this life in this magic time and very cool project with one less worry. I don't mind if, despite all of our best efforts, the Big C wins in the end. Being claimed by the evil C due to lack of insurance or money woud leave a bitter taste. Even if that taste was only consciously present for a minute such a minute would be an unacceptable and unfair end to a great life. Due to the generosity of others, my life is rich in what matters: purpose, meaning, value and friends. I have one message for the evil C - I WIN!

Thank You.

Marty

---
Martin Smith

Cancer Survivor
Founder Martin's Ride To Cure Cancer

Director Marketing

Atlantic BT