Jody Godon, currently serves as a Senior Consultant for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, a nonprofit organization in the United States who is a leader in strategic enrollment management and admissions and registrarial services. Her broad experience in the classroom, in enrollment services, and in student affairs has allowed her to lead universities in developing such retention initiatives as an Early Alert Referral system, Academic Boost camps for at risk students, a behavioral intervention team, peer-to-peer tutoring and mentoring and sexualized violence policy and prevention/education awareness programming. The five lessons she has learned about leading within a Strategic enrollment management (SEM) environment are shared and detailed in this article. The first is: Surround yourself with a strong team. The other four lessons are "count everything that moves"; "be the best salesperson ever"; "students first, always"; and "have courage with a splash of great wine."