Nashville icons including the Grande Old Opry, the Wildhorse Saloon, and the Opryland Hotel were underwater.

But the street hit hardest was the one on which our dream house sat, where the water was up to the traffic light.

Fortunately for us, closing was set for five days later, so the house wasn't ours. Since our existing home was untouched,  I thought we had dodged a bullet . . . until Monday morning.

When I pulled up at my office, I discovered it had been hit by a 4-foot wave of water from a nearby creek that destroyed every piece of equipment, furniture, and vehicle in its wake.

It's at moments like this that people make choices that will affect them for years to come.

We could use this crisis as an opportunity to come out stronger, better, and more efficient than before, or we could panic and go to pieces, like many others were doing.

After owning this company for 22 years and having been through worse crises, the answer for me was easy. I actually like it when the going gets tough, because that's when you see what people are really made of.

My only concern was for my employees, because most of them had never been through a trial-by-fire like this.

Although the water had subsided, the stench of the mud left behind - some of which contained untreated human waste - was indescribable. People were vomiting in the parking lot, and I wondered if my staff would turn around and go home.

But my concerns were quickly laid to rest, as I was reminded of a sentence I wrote in How to Be the Employee Your Company Can't Live Without, "Great employees are the most valuable asset any business can have".

In the midst of chaos, while employees of other businesses were crying and puking, my team came together as if they had planned for this moment their entire lives.

Paula began taking mail home with her at night to dry out so that we could keep our seminars on schedule.

Johnny got an engineering firm to donate six computers to get us back up immediately. (Money isn't the issue with computers, it's lack of availability. Every store in Nashville immediately sold out.)

Rebecca not only got a new PBX phone system lined up the first day, but also got the owner of the company that sells it to make us first on his list. She did the same thing with the HVAC company.

Judy immediately got 48 drawers full of muddy files drying out in the sun.

Cindy was on her cell phone with every supplier from California to New York, getting new CD's, DVD's, and shipping supplies on the way so that we could continue filling orders and serving our customers.

Nancy became the queen of the warehouse, ensuring that everything was systematically washed, bleached, and inventoried by make and serial number.

Randy began ripping out muddy carpet, drywall, and taking wet doors off the hinges before we could blink. By the time the landlord came by on Thursday to inform us they would start removing all of these the next day, ours had already been removed for three days, and we were already dried out.

But what was most impressive was how each of them constantly said, "Glenn, we've got everything under control. Do what you need to do the keep the business going".

My first order of business was to put to together a teleseminar in time for the Thursday email.

I could have chosen any of the 12 programs we do each year. But for this one, it was only appropriate that I chose "How to Find Great Employees".

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