What Box?^®

Memorial Day always reminds me of my Grandfather. He served in the army during WWII. I only heard bits and pieces of his time overseas fighting in the war though family members, mostly, during side conversations.

My Grandfather would never talk about his experiences. One time in Irvine, California, I was helping him reinstall a Model A engine in his favorite 2 door. Having so much extra time together my curiosity started tugging on me. After thinking about it for some time, I somehow mustered up the courage to ask him if he had any stories he would like to share with me about his experiences during WWII. Now, my Grandfather was quite possibly the gentlest man I have ever spent time with and I could tell he was more than a little uncomfortable with this question.

He rolled himself out from under the Model A where he was tightening transmission bolts and asked me to sit down on the running board. Boy, I was a nervous and excited at the same time. Then he said, “Son, my experiences during those times are locked away forever. I would not wish the terror and destruction of war on anyone, especially you. Let’s not talk about this again.” Somewhat in a daze I mumbled that I agreed to his request. And just as quickly as he had sat me down on the running board he was back under the Model A directing me on the reinstallation of the engine.

Like so many other WWII veterans, my Grandfather is dancing with the angels these days and I miss hanging out with him. He was one of my greatest teachers. To this day my Grandfather continues to influence me. What I came to understand after his death as I reflected upon his life was that his experiences of war lead him to place extraordinary value on his quality of life. Living each moment to its fullest. This understanding inspired Kristen and me to expand our thinking of what it means to live each moment to its fullest. With this expanded awareness we were able to open up to the possibility of living somewhere besides California. Only, who could have imagined it would be Zena, Oklahoma?

I will always hold the service and sacrifice my Grandfather gave to our country with great pride. We are so blessed to live in America and on Grand Lake, one of the most extraordinary places on the planet. With the current War on Terrorism taking our soldiers into new and unforeseen horrors, it is impossible to fully express the gratitude that we all feel this Memorial Day Weekend. Their lives are being put on the line in much the same way my Grandfather put his life on the line during WWII.

What stories will these new soldiers lock up?

While searching for a powerful Memorial Day quote, I found this very significant statement made by General Douglas MacArthur at the end of World War II, in his speech accepting the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Harbor:

“Men since the beginning of time have sought peace.
Various methods through the ages have attempted to devise an international process to prevent or settle disputes between nations. From the very start, workable methods were found insofar as individual citizens were concerned, but the mechanics of an instrumentality of larger international scope have never been successful. Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations all in turn failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. The utter destructiveness of war now blots out this alternative. We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advance in science, art, literature and all material and cultural development of the last two thousand years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.”

While you are celebrating with family and friends or are out in your boats on Grand Lake this Memorial Day Weekend, take the time to remember those that have served our country and have made the ultimate sacrifice. Perhaps you can take a moment of silence together or make a toast to all of those who have played such a major role in sustaining America’s freedoms so that we can enjoy them.

As my good friend Bart Montgomery would say, “Peace.”

Let me know what you think.

Dear Sean,
My sister-in-law is getting married in another part of the country. My husband has to be there to walk his mother down the aisle, but I really don’t want to go. The airfare is very expensive and I’ll have to take vacation time off work. What should I do?
Frustrated

Dear Frustrated,
Family is one of your greatest gifts in life. You know that you have to go, so why fight it? It is important to support your husband on this momentous day, because he in all likelihood will need it. The money and time you spend with him, your sister-in-law, and other family members will create the kind of memories that will last the rest of your life. You can’t really put a value on this. The wedding celebration will not be the same if you are not there. Your job and work will still be there when you return. Trust me everything will work out just fine. Let me know how it goes.
Keep on Keeping On,
Sean

Remember the only boxes that exist are the ones you create yourself.

Thank you to all the What Box? readers who attended The SpiritBank Business Resource Center Think-A-Torium at the Philbrook museum in Tulsa last Thursday. The program entitled “Reaching Tulsa’s Full Potential . . . Connecting the Dots,” was a huge success. A great big thank you to one of Oklahoma’s great assets, Kathy Taylor, for her outstanding presentation and dynamic interaction with the audience. Kathy was fantastic to work with on this exciting event and both of us were energized by the Tulsa community’s engagement and passion to reach for their full potential. Tulsa is a city about explode like a good old fashion oil gusher. A special thanks to Brian Ruth for being a Team What Box? member and sponsor of the event. You are awesome!

After the Think-A-Torium a group of us gathered at one my favorite pubs in downtown Tulsa, James M. McNellies. Any of the Lake Bums in the area would have a field day at this pub, with over 200 beers to choose from. Our group was feeling good.

Pubs always seem to have a way to inspire people to start telling stories about themselves or loved ones. This was one of those situations that you might recognize, where it is wise to put up your invisible shield so that none of those stories in the past are tempted to come out. Kristen could not help herself and brought up the “Great Balls of Fire” story. I don’t think this one is funny at all and I begged her not to share it with our large group of friends. It still affects me whenever I hear the story, but Kristen, on the other hand, thinks it is one of the funniest stories she can share.

So I thought I would tell you the story and see if you think it as funny as Kristen does. Or perhaps I’ll find out that you feel the pain and angst that I experience from this never ending story.

It was October of 2000. Kristen and I had only been living and exploring our new Grand Lake home for a month. Coming from California, we were loving the quiet and solitude of our new environment. We were, and still are, constantly pinching ourselves each morning as we sit on our boat dock drinking coffee or walking around the property.

It was during these early lake days that I was representing Felix the Cat and Bernard of Hollywood for some of their licensing deals. Late one afternoon I was on the phone with Susan Bernard, the daughter of Bruno Bernard, the photographer who is credited with discovering Marilyn Monroe. We were discussing the details of one of her new ventures, the licensing of slot machines. Susan is a wonderful Hollywood actress, author and former Playboy Centerfold who is a great example of a women with tremendous passion for her art. As such, she requires very detailed updates.

Our conversation was going along perfectly. While I was listening to her explain some of her concerns related to a deal I started to feel an itch in my gonadal region. I was sitting on my deck at the back of the hollow, and since Susan couldn’t see me, I reached down with my free hand and start scratching. Then I felt something that was not there last time I had checked. So I casually pulled down my pants to get a better look. By this time I was not really hearing a word Susan was saying because of what I saw. There it was, a big fat hairy TICK on my gonads. I freaked! I told Susan I had an emergency and that I had to hang up immediately.

I completely removed my trousers and started running toward Kristen’s office. Now I didn’t really care that she was on an important conference call because I had a major emergency going on and it seemed to be threatening my life. I ran in skin stretched out so that she could see the tick clear as day. I proceeded to stick the attached tick in her face as she sat in her chair and I was shouting, “I have a major crisis here! What are we going to do?”

Kristen was totally taken off guard and actually started laughing. I couldn’t believe her response and then, if that was not enough, she went on to tell the person on the other line what was happening. I was shocked and begged her to get off the phone and do something. It turned out that the guy on the other end had some experience with ticks and suggested that we could get the tick to pull out of the skin by drowning it in oil. Never having had a tick before I was willing to try anything.

I made a little cup out of the skin and Kristen proceeded to pour in olive oil, the best choice of oils that we had. We stood there waiting and watching for this tick to start backing out of my skin. Nothing was happening and it sure was not happening fast enough for me, I can tell you that. After what seemed like an hour, five minutes passed.

We decided that we needed more advice from her business associate, so Kristen proceeded to call him back, give him an update and asked for any other advice he might have to hurry the process along. By their laughs I knew that this was not a good situation to be in. The tick was not moving. I started to get upset and nervous because I didn’t want to have to go to the hospital to take care of this thing. I started to wonder why in the world we had moved to this bug infested place.

Kristen’s pal on the other line suggested that because the oil was not working we should try putting a match up to the tick. “Over my dead body!” I shouted. He continued to insist that the match would work and that we should try it. “No way! I just cupped a tablespoon of oil all over my skin and now you want to put flame near this delicate part of my body. This idea is just plain nuts!”

With time passing and the situation not getting any better I agreed to try the match. There didn’t seem to be a better alternative. We wiped off as much oil as we could before the flame got near me. Kristen lit the first match and slowly brought it closer to the tick. The match went out. My nerves are not doing well here. She then lit the second match and slowly glided the match closer to the tick. Then, all of the sudden, my worst nightmare came true. Whoosh! I was on fire and in total shock. Kristen saved the day by grabbing a towel and putting the sucker out. The aftermath was not funny, although Kristen is still laughing. All my hair in the southern hemisphere was burnt off and the tick was singed to death. The match worked to kill the tick, but it was still attached and buried in my skin.

I knew I was in trouble and that the hospital was not far away. Did I say earlier that I don’t like hospitals?

Kristen calmed me down a bit and hugged me. But the tick was still there and I was thinking of packing my bags for other lands where ticks don’t exist. That’s when she went and got a pair of tweasers and proceeded to pull the smoldering tick out of my skin. Ahh-what a relief. I kept thinking, “Did we get the head out?”

My skin has since healed and I have learned that ticks are a part of living in this fantastic part of the world. I never thought Jerry Lee Lewis singing Great Balls of Fire would make me cringe. However there is a lesson to be learned here. Don’t EVER mix oil and flame, spray daily with deet, and don’t panic if you get a tick attached to one of your appendages.

Got a great tick story? I would love to hear it.

We have all heard it before, patience is a virtue. As a youth growing up I rarely had patience for much of anything. When I would go to Disneyland with my family I would complain about how long the line would take for a trip through the Haunted House. When we would travel anywhere I would incessantly ask the question, “Are we there yet?” Even the time it took to finally have dinner was just not fast enough for me.

All of this changed one day back in 1996. Having been raised in what would become Silicon Valley, I was blessed to be in the right place at the right time and was able to leverage talent networks and technology know how to start a pioneering Internet company, StudioFX. Our first big client was Dr. Suess and the challenges were great. We were hired to create an electronic commerce site to sell the first wave of licensed products featuring the Dr. Suess cast of characters, along with streaming video and a collection of online games.

This was long before you could go out and just sell products on the Internet. You actually had to program custom software from scratch and only a hand full of technological experts were able to do this. We were fortunate to have one of the best in Susie Chu. Susie was a former NASA physicist who was involved in creating the Internet at NASA when it was known as ARPANET. She had the Sun servers that could host the site and the technological wisdom to create the custom software. It was a wonderful thing and our creative team could not have completed the site without her. We were certified as one of first 200 electronic commerce sites operating on the Internet. Life was good and business was growing.

When StudioFX was first started we were a small team of six people with a great vision, to be the most recognized and respected Web production house in Silicon Valley. We each had to make strong commitments to the effort and do whatever it took to make our collective dream a reality. We were on our way and were racking up Web site projects all around the country.

Then out of no where it happened. Susie came into my office one fateful day and said she was going to have to quite working with us and would be taking her servers with her. I was flabbergasted and quite confused by the sudden turn around. She was one of the hardest workers I had ever known and she had always been willing to do whatever it took to get the job done. So what happened? It turns out that her husband, who had been traveling to Asia for the past six months on business, had forbade her from starting her own business or getting involved with another. You can only imagine the look on my face. She refused to discuss her decsion to leave the comapny. She closed herself behind locked doors and all communication was stopped. Our business was about to end.

Boy if I ever needed some patience this was the day. I had to contact all of our clients, find another server farm to host the sites, and secure copies of all the sites so we would have them for future work. No small task since Susie had all the content on her servers. Susie decided to give us one day before she would turned off the servers and in the process shut down the sites from being viewed on the Internet.

I started to lose my mind. All of our hard work was going down the drain. We were on a roll and a stream of new jobs was in the pipeline. I could not think straight and had no idea what I was going to do. That is when all of the sudden I just sat down and started to breathe and breathe some more, then some more, you get the idea. I realized I needed to be patient and let the next opportunity open up. Alice Fenton, a partner in StudioFX, was scrambling around with the other partners looking for ways to break the communication barriers. I could see that we were all spinning our wheels and needed a solution very quickly.

That is when Wes Rolley showed up in my office, out of no where, just to check in and see how things were progressing for us. My story made him laugh. He said, “I can help” and proceeded to pick up the phone. In a matter of minutes I was connected to yet another computer genius formerly with IBM. He was able to copy our sites and explain to me the process of transferring domain names, electronic commerce certificates and how to do this quickly. Things started looking bright once again. Within a week we had our collection of Web sites operating flawlessly on his servers and our clients never knew the difference. It was a beautiful thing.

Susie on the other hand could not have been madder about the whole thing. She had intended to use the Web sites as leverage to secure money from the company. We finally settled and went our separate ways never to see each other again.

Now, whenever I am lacking patience I just remember my experience with Susie Chu and realize that nothing is so bad that it can’t be fixed when I am calm, cool, collected and filled with patience.

Thank you Susie for teaching me the art of patience.

What experiences in your life have taught you the important of patience? How can you apply these lessons to your life?

Let me know what you think.

Dear Sean,
My son is very creative and has never been interested in sports. My husband is pushing him to play football, but he’s not interested. How can I convince my husband to stop forcing sports on my son?
Challenged

Dear Challenged,
This is a difficult situation for sure. Our society seems to place a lot of importance on sports and athletics. I think it is important to sit down with your husband and son to discuss the situation openly and honestly. It may be hard for your husband to hear that his boy isn’t interested in sports, and would rather create art. Perhaps they can come up with something athletic that’s not competitive your son and husband might enjoy doing together. I believe that it is important to support your son’s desires and dreams. If sports is not part of that, forcing him to do it will only work to creating more challenges for the family down the road. Let me know how your discussion goes.
Keep on keeping on,
Sean

Remember the only boxes that exist are the ones you create yourself.

Imagine having an endless supply of great ideas at your fingertips.

Imagine reaching for your greatest aspirations.

Imagine becoming all you want to be.

It takes courage to push ourselves to a place where we have never gone before, to test our limits and to break through the barriers that hold us back. Think about the lion in the 1939 classic film “The Wizard of OZ.” The lion, desperately seeking the courage to face life’s challenges, is constantly looking outside himself for courage. In all actuality, the lion had an unlimited reservoir of courage already there; only he was unable to see that truth about himself.

Just like the lion, we have everything we need inside of ourselves to become all we can be. As Mike Munn, my good friend and former head physicist for Lockheed says, “You know more than you know you know” I would add, “and can be anything you want to be.” The challenge for us is to look inward for our strength to stretch and grow creatively instead of looking to the outside world for that strength. Too many times we are held back because we buy into negative outside influences that don’t encourage or support different thinking, creative ideas, inventions, or solutions.

In my life I have experienced many fears about being a writer. Growing up, I was challenged by traditional learning institutions. This challenge was compounded by my dyslexia. Writing for me has been torturous at best. As a CEO, my Board insisted that I take writing courses to improve my skills because they were concerned that my “unique” style would not be embraced by the corporate world. For the past 10 years I have been visually representing my ideas about a series of creativity books I want to create and yet have not been able to put down more than one paragraph to start the darn thing.

Writing “What Box?” is a way for me to embrace the unknown and find the courage to become a writer. What area of your life is holding you back from what you want to do or want to be? What is it that you not doing that you would like to be doing? What do you want to create for yourself?

When we find the courage to go where we have never been before it does not mean that all of the sudden insecurity, fear and anxiety do not exist. Instead we consciously make the decision to move through these feelings as constructively and creatively as we possibly can.

By taking leaps of faith and stepping over the edge into the unknown we stretch our visible and hidden skills to new limits and promote exercising our creative potential.

So the next time you find yourself saying, “Oh I can’t do that” or “That idea is way to over the top,” take time and remind yourself that hey, I know more than I know I know and can do anything I decide to do.

Believe in yourself and in your abilities and you can accomplish great things.

Tools for Exercising Your Creativity Muscles

Sketch and Doodle Your Thinking
One of the single greatest ways I have found to generate new ideas is to pick up a pencil or pen and start doodling your thoughts. This does not mean you have to possess exceptional drawing skills to draw out your ideas. Stick figures along with simple images have an amazing power to jog your brain consciously and subconsciously, supporting you to reach your goals. These doodles are for your eyes only if you choose. Let go of judgment about artistic merit and instead think of your doodles as a tool to generate new and winning ideas. We have all heard about the idea that was drawn on a napkin and became the next big thing. What idea do you have to draw out of yourself?

Take A Risk
When you are not failing every now and again you are at risk of stagnating yourself and your creativity. When you take a chance you exercise your creativity muscles and continue to strengthen it. Stop doing new things and you loose the creative muscle of risk. Go ahead, take a risk and find something new to do and see where it takes you.

No More Excuses
We have all heard the saying “Just do it!” Sounds so simple doesn’it? When I started writing “What Box?” I had to give up on all the excuses that were keeping me from reaching and fulfilling my aspirations. In many cases it takes even more creativity to remove the excuses that hold us back than it does to develop the idea in the first place. What excuses are you holding onto? How can you remove these excuses and become the creative person you were meant to be?

Let me know what you think.

A Very Special Invitation – Please join me at the Philbrook Museum of Art for a May 12th SpiritBank Business Solution Series. This Think-A-Torium entitled Reaching Tulsa’s Full Potential . . . Connecting the Dots is an interactive program that will feature a presentation by Kathryn Taylor, Secretary of Commerce and Tourism for the Oklahoma Department of Commerce along with Graphic Facilitation by, you guessed it, yours truly.

Tulsa’s success supports Grand Lake’s success. Tulsa is one of Grand Lake’s best friends and this is an opportunity to share a voice from the Lake Empire as Tulsa works to shape her new directions for the future. Seating is limited for this unique opportunity. Sign up early with Christy Gehrki at cgehrki@spiritbank.com or 918.295.7236

Hope to see you there.

Remember the only boxes that exist are the ones you create yourself.