FMHero’s goal is not to be number one. Not to be “the best.” Not to be the biggest.
Our goal is ridiculously impossible, completely unattainable, and probably unrealistic.
And that’s exactly the point.
In my former life, I worked with an incredible team, the kind every leader dreams of. Together we started and built Rapid Recovery into the world’s largest refrigerant recovery company and nearly the largest reclaimer. Our tagline was “Save the Planet One Recovery at a Time.”
But privately? I had a different goal. One I never said out loud because it sounded too selfish and too ordinary and somehow too ambitious all at once. I wanted to be the biggest, the best, the most dominant player in the space.
I’ve since realized that goal describes nearly every business leader and leadership team I’ve ever encountered. It’s the engine behind most marketing campaigns and strategic plans. Be number one. Win. It reminds me of that scene in Men in Black: “The best of the best of the best, sir! With honors.” And have no clue why they’re actually there.
But as I’ve aged I’ve learned to ask a different question: What happens when you get there?
When the giant falls and you’re left standing as the “winner”, now what?
Think about K-Mart. My kids have never stepped inside one, yet K-Mart practically invented big-box retail. Today most people assume Walmart held that title all along. Why do “greatest of all time” organizations so often end up faltering or failing entirely?
I don’t have all the answers. Leadership failure is certainly near the top of the list. Narcissism plays a role, both organizationally and individually. But what I keep coming back to is this: maybe the problem isn’t the goal itself. Maybe it’s that we confuse goals with purpose.
Goals are destinations. Purpose is direction.
A goal can be achieved. Checked off. Conquered. Purpose can’t. Purpose is the reason you keep moving, not the place you’re trying to reach.
I call it the Solomon Effect.
King Solomon had everything: wisdom, wealth, power, peace. He’d conquered every challenge, answered every question, built everything worth building. He achieved every goal a person could imagine. And his conclusion? “Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.”
Solomon had goals. What he lacked was a purpose beyond them. If he had, maybe he would have focused on his kids and taught them about building a lasting legacy. His kingdom might not have split in two.
But here’s what’s harder to see: even great leaders who have purpose can lose sight of it. When they achieve their goals, they mistake arrival for completion. They think, “I’ve made it”, and stop moving forward. They forget that the goal was never the point. The purpose was. And purpose doesn’t end.
History, ancient and modern, is littered with leaders and organizations who had real purpose, achieved remarkable things, and then drifted into distraction or destruction because they conflated winning with being done.
So what’s the difference for us?
At FMHero, our purpose is stewardship. Caring well for what we’ve been given. That’s been a life purpose for me, not something we invented for this company.
When I was at Rapid Recovery, I believed recovery was the solution to the refrigerant venting problem. I still believe that. Capturing refrigerant instead of releasing it is how we stop the waste and power the circular economy that exemplifies stewardship.
But I’ve learned something since then: documentation is the key to proving it. Proving why stewardship matters. Proving that you did what you were supposed to do. And beyond proof, data unlocks insight. Which brands perform best, which equipment designs last, which regions and installers produce the best outcomes. And even then, those insights show us how to improve again.
Recovery is the solution. Documentation is the proof. Data is the path to continuous improvement.
Universal compliance isn’t our goal. It’s what stewardship looks like in our corner of the world.
One hundred percent. Everywhere. Always.
We’ll never get there. And that’s the point. There’s no “arrival.” There’s only the next step forward.
We don’t worry about which regulations come next from which states, countries, or global treaties. We believe our job is to be stewards of this planet regardless of what the rules require. Dumping used motor oil down a storm drain is obviously wrong. Not because of fines, but because we know better. Letting refrigerant escape into the atmosphere is no different.
Maybe it damages the ozone layer. Maybe it contributes to rising sea levels. Or maybe you’re skeptical of all that.
It doesn’t actually matter.
Venting refrigerant is simply wasteful. Environmentally wasteful. Economically wasteful. These are substances that can be captured, cleaned, and reused. Leaks can be identified and fixed earlier. Letting refrigerants escape is like leaving every light on in a building you’re not using. It’s just careless.
Compliance isn’t really about laws and fines. It’s about not being wasteful with something we can so easily manage better.
Our purpose is stewardship. Empowering universal compliance is how we live it out.
Not because it’s the law, even though it is. But because we can all do better.
And doing better is worth it.