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.

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.

MOVING OUT OF A BIG CITY AND INTO A SMALLER ONE.

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!

Culture Shock & Job Change

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.

“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”.

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 blue-grey suit. The words below said,

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.