Inspiration often turns up in unlikely places, and one of my most productive spots over the years has been our neighborhood YMCA.

One of our most successful sales account executives has been with us for more than five years because a YMCA volunteer liked our magazines, made a telephone call to someone who wasn’t really looking for a job, and put the two of us together.

Sign up for our newsletter!

* indicates required

Over the years, I’ve met some great people at the YMCA, learned a few lessons about working with non-profits, spent many Y Guides weekends camping with our sons, and all in all come away a better person and – as an unexpected benefit – a more successful business owner.

So it was a few weeks ago that I was sitting with some volunteers and meeting with Gordon Echtenkamp, the new leader of the metropolitan YMCA. He was touring the branch YMCAs he’ll be overseeing in the Dallas area, trying to learn about the people and facilities already in place.

He made his new job sound pretty simple: Work hard, enjoy what you’re doing, listen to your customers, believe in your product and embrace change.

It was, I thought, good advice to consider as our magazine goes through a change of its own.

Our editor for the past three years, Ann Davis, has moved on, and a new editor, Kris Scott, has joined assistant editor Ana Maria Castronovo. Kris is an experienced journalist, having worked at several Colorado newspapers, including the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. She’s also a resident of one of the neighborhoods we serve and, as an added bonus, an award-winning graphic designer. These attributes will come in handy as our magazines continue to grow and change to meet our 160,000+ readers’ needs, and that is the basic point of this column: to solicit your help in this transition.

Please help by telling us what you think we’re doing right and wrong, along with giving us some ideas about things we can be doing better. Send us an email or letter (our addresses are just to the left of this column in our staff box) with your thoughts and suggestions, and we’ll do our best to make our magazines reflect your interests.

One thing won’t change, though. We’ll continue to do what our new YMCA leader plans to do: Work hard, enjoy what we’re doing, listen to our customers, believe in our product and embrace change.