By Scot Kersgaard, JVA Consulting

If you’re my age you remember the playground ritual of choosing teams, with each captain (the two best players, presumably) picking one by one from all the kids gathered around.

To be picked first or nearly first was a joy that knew no bounds. To be picked last or nearly last or not at all if there were more kids than the teams required, well that was sorrow and shame that knew no bounds. (OK then, I’ll just go swing.)

For better or worse, this ritual has been all but banned by today’s more enlightened schools, who wish not to scar the young with the possibility of not being good enough.

At JVA, some of our business comes from responding to RFPs (Requests for Proposals). Sometimes we get a boilerplate email saying we were not selected. Other times we get a friendly phone call saying they really thought our proposal was first rate but they are going with another firm.

And sometimes, things go the way we always dreamed of on the playground, and they pick us. What joy.

More than two-thirds of our business comes from past or ongoing clients. We love that. The fact that someone wants to work with us again and again is a sweetness all its own.

When we get a new client through an RFP, it is the joy of being picked first by a stranger—someone who doesn’t even know how cool we are yet. I can’t say that first dates are always sweet, but at JVA they tend to be pretty nice. We usually hit it off pretty well with new clients. When they ask us to help them with a second project without going through the RFP process, well, that’s when we know they think of us not just as a consultant or a contractor but as a friend and partner.

So–with Labor Day just around the corner–here’s to first projects with new clients and second and third and tenth projects with old friends. Here’s to all the people who are making the world a better place. At JVA, every day at least one client makes me smile. Often they don’t even know it. I smile when I work on a strategic plan for a client I believe in. I smile when a new client I really want to work with sends us an email saying “when can we get started?”

Thanks for the smiles.

To all of you who have jobs that make you smile, Happy Labor Day.

To you who would love such a job, join us for our inaugural Tuesday Schmoozday, a chance to visit over drinks with JVA staff and local nonprofit leaders.