"You get out of it what you put into it."

The quote above was what stood out to me at my first Future Leader event. Like most others, I received the email from my sponsor company letting me know that I had been selected to be their current year, 2016 for myself, representative for ECC Future Leader Program. I had the luxury of knowing others who had already gone through the program so I knew that it was worthwhile, but I still did not know what was ahead of me.

The Liasons were speaking during my first event, the Mid-Year, and the quote above is what stood out to me. "You get out of it what you put into it." That quote resonated with me because it is absolutely true. You can just attend the events and conference, listen to the speakers, and have a good experience. In my opinion, if you do that you will be missing out.

There are a lot of programs like this, but there is something different about ECC. They get total buy-in from everyone...owners, consultants, engineers, and construction companies. You can sit together in the same room with all of facets of our industry to talk about the issues that affect all of us. Talk about possibilities for improvement and try to leave the industry better than the way you found it. Take on a leadership role with one of the future leader teams and work on soft skills and see the inner workings of planning for a conference. None of this is even getting into the fact that you will create relationships with colleagues from all over the industry. There are so many opportunities. "You get out of it what you put into it."