Transcript From America to China and back!

From America to China and back!
WHAT EVENTS IN MY LIFE
LED TO CREATING P.E.A.C.E.?
After leaving the US Air force in
1970, my first career was running a
desk for Sales and Management
Recruiters in Wilmington DE,
helping upcoming professionals
move up to better positions with
their competitors.
MOVING OUT OF A BIG CITY
AND INTO A SMALLER ONE.
I enjoyed the work but did not like living
among superficial people climbing the
Dupont social ladder. I had grown up in a
small town where people knew each other.
A former employer from my days working
part time in college had moved to Reading,
PA, found my old job application and
invited me to meet his boss and coworkers.
Culture Shock & Job Change
My first introduction to culture shock was
seeing coal region row-houses, but loved
the down to earth people.
So I immediately quit my job in
Wilmington and moved to Pennsylvania in
1971. Here I soon met my wife-to-be in
Schuylkill County and learned a new
language – Pennsylvania-Dutch!
During my new store expansion career one
partner quit to join Mutual of Omaha.
He talked me into following him into the
insurance business saying how easy it was to
sell disability income protection and without
having to handle physical merchandise. I had
been skeptical until going on a call with him.
Seeing was believing.
His boss drove to my home to seal the deal.
My first introduction to the word mission
outside of church was here. He pulled
out a presentation binder with a young
red-head like me on the cover in a bluegrey suit. The words below said,
“I never met a man with a sense of
mission who ever failed in this
business and, conversely, I never met a
man without a sense of mission who
ever had any lasting success”.
Before this career I had focused on the GOAL of
making money for myself. My mother’s love, my
father’s examples, church sermons, The Boy Scouts
of America, vacations to America’s historical sites,
art classes, ballroom dance lessons, orchestra and
chorus, secondary and university schooling all
taught me skills I would need to succeed. But Goals
are about Me. Missions are about having a
purpose that is greater than yourself.
Many Sales Masters Roundtable conventions and
awards later Mutual of Omaha has proven to be a
mission oriented company. Helping people plan
financial security for their families was a mission I
identify with. God had clearly put me where he
wanted me to be.
Introducing the next mission.
In 1986 an acquaintance called and said, “I am over
my head. Please drive over to my office and meet two
guys from DC and Oklahoma City who are seeking
corporate sponsors for only the second trade show in
the United States for the People’s Republic of
China!” My curiosity was too high to ignore this.
We were shown newspaper clippings of the first trade
show done in Washington DC that had made four
billion dollars in business in 1985, and proof that these
two had obtained the rights to a trade show originally
destined for Los Angeles that was now going to be
done in Oklahoma City! I was impressed with the
people I met, including a Chinese-American partner.
BUT, My first comment was that any clients in
PA would be reluctant to put money into a show
in Oklahoma. I would have to be at the signing
entourage in China with my video camera. We
were told that if we could buy our own plane
fare they could get us in the group.
$2000 shorter I was soon in China.
During our 10 days there we attended China’s
main trade show building that is a global event
twice a year since 1956. Following are some
photos of events and places we visited.
We went to a modern container port built for them by the Japanese.
I said, “haven’t you been enemies for 1000 years?”
The engineer giving the tour said,
“Business turns enemies into friends. Welcome to the new world.”
Factory Tour
We were taken on factory tours of low and high
end goods – a piano rivaling a Yamaha, for
example, was being made in another factory.
Attending Nixon style banquets
Our interpreter is saying to me, ‘sometimes you
should taste thing before asking what they are!’
Toasting our guests at signing banquet
(on the right) Meeting head of the
Communist Party in the
Guangdong Province (off the
coast of then free Hong Kong)
U.S. Cultural Attache beside me.
PLANNING FOR THE YEAR
AHEAD IN OKLAHOMA CITY
When I got home, we saw an ad in the local
newspaper seeking host families for exchange
students. We applied to host a Chinese student
to gain some vital cultural understandings and
language of our new clients to make ourselves
more valuable to the Oklahoma company.
But, the exchange program had no Asians left so
we hosted a Mexican. Surprise! Karen
Herrera, our first Latina daughter, was the
niece of the president of Coke-Mexico and her
father had been a buyer for Sears in Japan.
SPEED BUMPS
• An introduction to attend a meeting planners
‘superfamiliarization’ tour in Atlanta with Karen
in tow got us to the executive suites of Coca-Cola
to gain a big player in the next trade show.
• But soon after, Tiananmen Square temporarily
delayed our effort to put any show in Atlanta!
• Google was next banned in China June of 2014.
• The clue to the future back in 1986 was when we
asked our translator what her religion was:
• Her answer took no time for thought.
She exclaimed “Freedom!”
How profoundly prophetic that was.
• FIRST: Fax Machines cut governments out of
controlling the flow of information and ideas.
• THEN: The Internet made it free!
• Thomas Friedman’s 2007 best-seller “The World is
Flat” talks of amazing things as entrepreneur’s ideas
began to fly around the world freely.
• Walmart efficiencies are flattening the world;
• Fedex is flattening the world in the same way;
• Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of the East, is
flattening the world.
• Japanese high tech companies hire cheap Chinese
engineers to lower business costs.
1946: Following WWII an early
world flattener was Diplomacy
• The catalyst to what we do now is due to
teenagers who proved able to do what adults
had failed at for centuries – acculturating.
• As young adults they began to run families,
businesses and even government differently than
their parents. In only 35 years Japan & Germany
had changed so dramatically that President
Reagan proclaimed teenagers to be the most
effective form of diplomacy the world ever saw!
• My classroom PowerPoint shows how & why.