There’s an email taped to the wall of my office at FlexScreen.

The man who wrote it probably doesn’t even remember sending it. His name is Pete DeSoto, and if you’ve spent any time in the door and window industry, you know who he is.

Pete joined Metal Industries in 1956. By his own account, he started out cleaning the restrooms when the company had about 25 employees and made only aluminum window screens. Over the next six decades, he grew that little screen company into MI Windows and Doors, and MI into the MITER Brands juggernaut it is today. When Pete talks about window screens, he has earned the right.

In Part One of this series, I talked about the “slow yes,” and how it nearly ended the FlexScreen dream. But we hung in there, and after that first local customer took a chance on us, we started seeing some success with other smaller manufacturers. What we didn’t have, though, and what we really needed, was a national account. Because when a company like MI brings you on, their sales force starts telling your story for you, and it elevates your brand in a way a local account can’t.

Then MI came to see us. The DeSotos showed up at our facility in force to decide whether FlexScreen belonged in the MI family of products. Even Pete came.

Not long after that visit, I got an email from Pete. He thanked us for our time and said all the things you’d expect. Then he wrote, and I quote, that “FlexScreen was the most innovative thing he had seen in the screen industry in his entire time in the door and window business.”

That meant so much to me; it really did. Pete had been in the screen business since before I was born. And FlexScreen was just a fledgling company with a fledgling founder. That kind of affirmation was gold.

So, I printed that email out, taped it up, and I lived off of it for a long time. When things got hard, I’d tell myself, “Pete thinks it’s good, so it must be. I’m going to live to fight another day.” Even now, I catch myself saying it.

When I told this story recently on the Clear Impact podcast, the host, Sherri Connor, asked me whether Pete knew his email was hanging on my wall. I told her I didn’t know. In all the years it’s been up there, I never told him. Sherri works at MITER Brands. She said she would make sure Pete got a copy of the episode.

There are people through the years who probably have no idea how much of an impact they’ve had on FlexScreen and on me. A lot of it was little things, like taking the time to drop an encouraging note.

You never know whose wall your words will end up on.

It works the other way, too. When we went through the sale to RiteScreen, I called Mike and Matt DeSoto at MI to thank them, because we would not have gotten there without their support.

So, write the note. Think of somebody who is grinding right now—maybe a young salesperson working a tough territory or a supplier who went out on a limb for you—and tell them what you see in them. Be specific, the way Pete was.

Then think about the people whose words you’ve been carrying all these years. Do they know?

Pete, if you’re reading this, it’s still on the wall.

This is part two of a three-part series about the years between building FlexScreen and turning it into a business. (If you missed it, Part One was “The Slow Yes.”) I told a version of this story recently on the Clear Impact podcast with Sherri Connor of MITER Brands. You can listen to my full conversation with Sherri at university.miterbrands.com Episode 255, or stream it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. Next up: The Placemat.