Fat. It’s a word Chris has dealt with from the age of 5. And it wasn’t just him, his entire family has yo-yo dieted for years. “I went to weight watchers with my mom when I was 9. I went to doctors and nutritionists. Both of my parents were on different diets…” But nothing was working. Or it may have worked briefly, but he and his family struggled to maintain any positive results.

The gray overcast sky made Deer Creek Coffee seem even cozier. Easily identifying each other, Chris and I sank into well-worn, high backed chairs with steaming drinks taking the chill off our hands. After explaining that he’d found my blog through Tim, from coffee #68, Chris told me how he was inspired to change his life and keep the weight off for good.

By most standards Sarah's life has been anything but ordinary. At an age where many of us are just settling into our careers she was receiving phone calls from people like Harrison Ford and JFK Junior, she was a respected authority in animal training, and she had published several books on animals. Despite her obvious passion, it took almost dying to figure it all out.

Near the large street-facing windows at Starbucks, Sarah and I sat at a table for two, the whir of the coffee grinders providing a pleasant hum in the background as we talked. She sat back comfortably in her seat and listened as I regaled her with the story of this blog, until finally, I asked about her story.

Jennifer was a part of the team that recently launched Spark!, a startup incubator for high school students at Parkway schools. As the Coordinator of Career and Technical Education for the district, she has already helped begin this and numerous other successful programs to give students real world experience.

We met on a chilly morning at Bread Company on Olive and squeezed into a small table in the middle of the restaurant. The morning rush was in full swing as we leaned over the table to better hear each other above the hustle and bustle.

Michael Peters originally decided to run for State Representative because of his grand-kids. With four of them living in the city he was concerned for their education and decided it was time to step up. Of course that’s not the only reason… “It’s a real anomaly to have a strong community with lousy retail. It hurts the school systems because they don’t get tax dollars. Crestwood mall… the last time it was fully operational, it generated 1.7 million dollars in sales tax for the community. Now that’s made up for in property taxes.”

Watson Road as a Thriving Destination

At Starbucks one morning Michael Peters and I hovered over a small table in the corner, our drinks clutched tightly in our hands as we discussed politics and his run for State Representative of the 91st District this year.

Since Crestwood Mall’s decline and official closing in 2013, things have changed in the areas of Crestwood, Lindbergh, and Webster Groves. Tax revenue from retail has declined substantially, property taxes have increased, and it’s hurt...tourism? I was surprised to learn that Route 66 is still a huge draw for tourists as far away as Europe, and although Watson Road was once the heart of this cultural attraction, we no longer have much to offer these travelers.

Michael Peters believes there’s a solution. “I want to talk to the Mayor of Webster about marketing the Watson Corridor as the heart of Route 66. I was amazed to discover that tourists spent over 4 billion in St. Louis last year and 22 million came from Europeans and Canadians. One of the real reasons they come here is for Route 66, but people just drive past us! We really lost our identity, so we need to brand ourselves.”

More than just the marketing, there are many small things that can be done to increase tourism and sales in the district, for example removing the concrete lane dividers on Watson Road. “Those dividers on the road, they encourage the subliminal mindset to keep driving.” Michael has even asked an employee at the Harley store if someone could be trained in half a day to ride a motorcycle. This would be a major draw for tourists because they could rent a Harley and drive from Ted Drewes to Mile 277.

The Elderly Could Lose Their Homes?

Most people are busy going about their lives when Michael shows up on their doorstep. Usually they take a flyer, thank him, and go back to their routine. But the older members of the community are concerned and will engage him with questions about how to fix the problem of rising taxes.

As the lights slowly went out in Crestwood Mall, the property taxes for many homeowners in the district increased. For Michael, that has meant a $1,000 bump in annual taxes. For seniors on a fixed income a $1,000 a year increase is unthinkable and this change is close to driving some long-time residents from their homes. Tapping his cup on the table for emphasis, he explained “If we can raise retail, they won’t have to worry about rising property taxes because our school funding can come from businesses rather than homes.”

When I asked Michael how he would legislate some of the changes we had discussed, he told me that 2.5% of Missouri’s budget goes to economic development, and he would attempt to increase that. “If you can promote jobs, you can build a community.” While he doesn’t want to take money away from education (30% of the budget) or medicare (33%), more tax revenue from economic development projects will mean lower property taxes and larger budgets for both of these in the future.

The Failure of Education

Statistically less than 50% of college graduates find a job in their field after graduation, so… “we need to take a hard look at what kind of degrees are being offered.” Michael is hoping to be assigned to an education committee, if elected, so he can begin affecting change.

First and foremost, he says we need to make sure public schools are making students career-ready. Michael wants to see young adults go to college with their first years worth of credits already under their belt. Before they even arrive on campus they would have a basic foundation in fields like healthcare, data, or business management.

His education agenda in a nutshell: “If we can get education with a career focus, young adults won’t be moving back home with mom and dad, they’ll be getting jobs and moving out. And so to start this, you must have a vision, what to do with business, education, and people and you have to put those three together and so that is my goal.”

His Favorite Thing About St. Louis

“The whole thing is that St. Louis is not a city, it is an overgrown town. It is a patch quilt of communities. You take the 3 communities that make up the 91st district… Shrewsbury, Webster and Crestwood, they're very much alike but they are also different. I live in Crestwood, I’m pastor of a church in Webster, and my brother lives in Shrewsbury. They are all different but they are very much alike, when you go all around St. Louis and have that… that’s really the strength of St. Louis. And we have that in our heritage, as well. You have that in The Hill, the Italian Section, you’ve got Dogtown, the World’s Fair stuff. That’s what I like about St. Louis.”

While Michael likes our patchwork of communities here, he’s comfortable saying that the 91st District takes the cake. “These are the best communities in St. Louis. I’m biased on that, but they are.”

Kaori had lived in St. Louis for years but didn’t know anything about the city. Intending to rectify this and explore the growing startup movement, she quit her job as a change management consultant with Deloitte and began helping small companies for free. What she has learned about her new hometown makes her proud to call STL home.

The bell above the door at Washington Post was tingling consistently, giving us a melodic clue that the store/coffee shop was busy that day. We sat next to the windows looking out on the street, the smell of Kaori’s mango passion tea slowly waking us from our still not-quite-awake stupor. After I dove into a 15 minute long explanation of my work and projects, she excitedly explained her decision to leave her company.


A Realization and Transition

Over 4 years ago, Kaori and her fiance moved to St. Louis from Pittsburgh. He had grown up in the area and still had family here, but she knew very little about her future hometown. At the time, it didn’t really matter to her where she lived, as long as she had an airport nearby, because in her role with Deloitte she was traveling most of the time. This constant traveling was taking a toll. Not only did Kaori have no knowledge of the city, she also admits that for 3 years she didn’t know a single person here.

However, there wasn’t much time for her to be lonely. In addition to constant traveling, she was often beginning her work day at 6am and leaving the office after dark. Despite it all she enjoyed her work, but she didn’t love the types of companies she was consulting for, like big oil companies.

So, when she learned about local schools struggling to maintain accreditation, she decided it was time to get involved somehow. Not long after coming to this realization, Kaori met Jake (coffee #71) of Project IDWIL at a 1 Million Cups event. “That catapulted me into this whole entrepreneur space,” she said thoughtfully drumming her fingers on the table.

Somewhere In The Middle?

While quitting a job is never easy, it was a piece of cake compared to what Kaori was trying to do next. Her goals were defined from the outset: figure out what was going on in St. Louis, determine how she fits into the community, and decide on a new career.

First, figure out what’s happening in St. Louis. After learning about the startup movement and seeing the energy of these companies, she realized this was the answer. Second, determine how she fits into the community. Shortly after leaving Deloitte she began networking and volunteering her time and skills to new companies in the area, making her reflect, “How can I be part of leaving a legacy for St. Louis as it turns into a more entrepreneurial hub?”

The realization that she wanted to be a long-term, integral part of the entrepreneurial community here, was an important one for Kaori. “If you had asked me 4 or 5 years ago if I’d ever live in St. Louis, I would be like, ‘where’s St. Louis again? Somewhere in the middle there?’” But now… “I absolutely love it here. Definitely love being here. All of these little stores… there’s so much character and life in it.”

She continued to volunteer her time to these companies, offering to help with 2 to 3 week projects for free. In the end 10 companies benefited from her expertise and ultimately she even found her next career move with the new Venture Cafe at the CIC! “It’s been a really fun way of learning about organizations and how startups work and learning about the ecosystem with the startup scene.”

A Unique Perspective of the City

When she told me that she enjoys working in the yard, I asked Kaori if she would like the strawberry plants in my garden. Her face lit up as she accepted my offer and told me this was one of the reasons she has come to love our city. “Out of this experience and I’ve never done this in a different city, so I can’t say it’s unique to St. Louis, but I think it is, it’s the willingness of people to help out and even have a conversation. Even you! Offering your strawberries!”

For example, when Kaori first started her project everyone tried to help her find a job. It took some explaining before they understood she wasn’t ready for that, yet. “I’m serious about figuring out what I want to be when I grow up!”

Conclusion

Gathering our cups and belongings we reluctantly prepared to leave the warm, inviting atmosphere of The Washington Post. We continued our conversation out on the sidewalks and then said our goodbyes. However, Kaori’s adopted love of our great city stuck with me throughout the past several months and has turned what was a casual coffee meeting into a burgeoning friendship.

Dan was diagnosed with testicular cancer four months after he met his future wife, Stephanie. When he made the phone call to tell her the news, her response surprised him and sealed their future together.

The Diagnosis

On a very hot day Dan and I met at The Market at The Cheshire. After ordering we pulled out chairs at a corner table and took seats opposite each other. As condensation from our cold drinks left dark circles on the wood table, he told me about being diagnosed with cancer at 29, how he knew he would marry Stephanie, and why he started a nonprofit.

At the age of 29, intense back pain had become a normal part of Dan’s life, but one that he just couldn’t get used to. He dreaded waking up in the morning because sleep was his only relief. Even the 16 Advil he popped everyday weren’t enough to dull the excruciating ache. Suicide was never an option, but Dan certainly prayed that he wouldn’t have to live another 40 years this way.

After trying injections and everything else he could think of, Dan’s chiropractor friend recommended that he lay on his back and slowly bring his knees to his chest. Ok, no problem. He started with the right leg and that was just fine, but when he tried to lift the left leg he realized something was seriously wrong. Gently touching his abdomen he located a golf ball sized lump and thought, “Wait, that shouldn’t be there...”

Immediately he consulted with a doctor and learned that he actually had a tumor the size of an NFL football. It had atrophied his left kidney and was pushing sideways on his spine. Within 8 days of locating the tumor, Dan was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Not a happy diagnosis by any stretch, but one of the most curable types.

The Number Four

One fateful night just four months before he got the news, Dan joined a group of friends at a bar. It was here that he was introduced to Stephanie, another member of the group and they danced together most of the evening. As the night wore on they shared their first kiss and connected over their twin four leaf clover tattoos.

Just four months later Dan picked up the phone to tell her about his diagnosis. When he finished there was silence on the other end of the line. “If you don‘t want to be here for this, I understand,” he told her, trying not to hope. Her response took him by surprise, “No. We’re going to fight this every step of the way together.”

When he hung up the phone, he looked at his parents for a moment before telling them. “I’m going to marry that girl. I’m going to the jewelers this weekend and getting her a ring and I’m going to marry that girl.” On St. Patrick’s day he popped the question and started chemo the following Monday.

Diffusing Cancer

Imagine (or remember) telling someone for the first time that you have cancer. The anticipation of their reaction, the ‘I’m so sorry’ look they’ll give you, and even worse the tears. Dan coached me on the best way to react when you get news like this.

“There’s not a single platitude you can say that’s going to make a cancer person feel better, but if you can diffuse it… believe it or not, that helps.” Rather than the ‘I’m so sorry’ that comes naturally, he advises asking more questions. “If you’ve never had cancer, no one close to you has had cancer and the elephant in the room comes out, usually a person’s first reaction is ‘oh my god, I’m so sorry’. You know and that’s… that’s nice. But if someone ever lets it out of the bag, ‘Oh I had cancer’ or ‘I have cancer’, I never say I’m sorry. My first question is, ‘what kind?’”

The questions that follow aren’t easy, but he explains that they really help diffuse the situation. Do you have to have chemo? And, are you going to lose a part? He smiled, “I lost lefty. Shit happens.”

The Friends Who Weren’t There

“Some friends… and they’re true friends, I’m not saying they’re not true friends because it does affect everybody, but some of my friends kind of disappeared when I got diagnosed. And I’m ok with that because everybody handles stuff differently.”

It’s unfortunate that some of his friendships went away, but he wants to educate cancer patients and the public that just because you don’t know how to handle it, you don’t have to hide from it. So, he started a nonprofit called The Half Fund.

“After cancer, I found that I made a lot of really stupid mistakes. And I mean there were some things I could have avoided and there were some things I really should have avoided. I even saw them coming and I still couldn’t get out of the way of my idiocy, so I wanted to help others to not make the same mistakes.”

The Half Fund

The idea was initially born because a screenplay was the only way Dan could think of to share his experiences. But… the first version “sucked ass”. He didn’t give up, though and eventually wrote something that cleared the entire bureaucracy of the American Cancer Society in 2 hours. The national office called him and agreed to let him use their name and logo and help with the marketing of the film once it’s made.

The ACS also suggested that Dan create his own nonprofit to generate money for filming and thus The Half Fund was born. The way it works is any artistic project (art, film, literature, etc.) that gets funding from The Half Fund, must split their profits in half. One half must go to a cancer charity and the other half goes to back to the Half Fund. Every year they’ve raised between 10 and 15 thousand dollars this way.

Cancer is definitely not something you ask for, but in a way Dan is thankful because it gave him his life purpose. “The whole reason why we’re doing this is, we HAVE to tell our stories. They honor the people who come before us and they help the people who come after us.”

“Chemistry just like, explains life. I mean, everything is made up of what you can describe with chemistry.” Paul was a chemist at Covidien before he took the leap and co-founded a solar energy company here in St. Louis. What gave him the courage to take this bold step? Two things. First, he had some terrible experiences working at a local pharmaceutical company (including being directly exposed to carcinogens). Second, he re-connected with a college buddy who was also frustrated with his job. 

A Second Meeting

It had the kind of day that makes you feel guilty if you’re not outside, sunny and warm with just the slightest breeze. I took my time walking from the office to the Washington Post, where Paul held a table for our 7pm meeting. This wasn’t the first time we’d met. At an SBA (small business administration) talk a few weeks prior we exchanged cards with the promise of a coffee meeting in the near future, and here we were! 

I chit-chatted with the barista as we waited for our drinks, then slipped into the booth opposite Paul. Immediately he began telling me about his experiences leading up to becoming an entrepreneur.

A Rough Start

Freshman year, Paul attended college in Jacksonville, Illinois at a very small private school. After only one year he realized this small, rural school wasn’t his M.O. But, before he transferred to Carbondale, he met Kyle. The two quickly became friends and stayed in touch after Paul left.

Even after the transfer, Paul struggled to decide on a major, changing it four times before finally settling on chemistry simply because he’d done well in high school. Thanks to Breaking Bad, he had some strange people approach him when he made that decision. “When I was first getting into it, you’d always get those people like, ‘oh, you can make acid, right?’”, he said using a dopey voice. His response: “I’m like, ‘No. Get away from me.’ They really thought that like, I had the ability to like… do that. Which, I mean… I guess. But most things are specialized.”

After graduation he was lucky and easily found a job at Covidien, then Sigma-Aldrich where he did quality control for different chemicals. The work involved significant risk because he was working with very serious chemicals. One of the most dangerous things that Paul discovered during his work here, was a lab that wasn’t set-up properly and had been blasting carcinogens into the space where he and other employees worked. So he swabbed a wall of the room and found dangerously high levels of the chemical. “Stuff like that happened occasionally,” he said shaking his head.

“Obviously one of the reasons I wanted to get out of the whole industry was because, when you’re at that level you’re like a peon. You do what they tell you to do. You put your health and everything else at risk for them to make an extra buck. You get a decent salary, but at what cost? Not to mention the environmental cost and everything else they don’t even consider because it has nothing to do with the dollars in their pocket. It’s just totally against everything I believe.”

It Was Kismet

One day at work, Paul decided to take action and sent an email to HR about a supervisor that had been giving him a lot of trouble. This was his last resort, as the situation had been escalating for months and had left him miserable. He understood the odds of anything being done about it and he knew that sending this message was basically writing his own death note, but he didn’t know what else to do. Within minutes of sending that email, he received a different email from a former employer asking if he was interested in interviewing for a position in this smaller company, called Dynalab.

“I started crying, I was so emotional at that point. The next day I was interviewing there.” The rest is history. Until Kyle and Paul started EFS Energy and eventually, it couldn’t be contained. The company was growing so quickly that he had to say goodbye to the team at Dynalab after a relatively short period of time and devote himself to the solar company full-time.

The Energy Proposition

The passage of proposition C, or the Clean Energy Act, in 2008 paved the way for companies like EFS Energy to crop up all over the state. Publicly owned utility companies were required to pay a rebate to anyone who installed solar, forcing companies like Ameren to add solar to their portfolio. Practically overnight the sun-powered energy industry began to boom in the state.

While installing solar is still cost-efficient, the rebates from Ameren dried up in December because of a loophole. Their attorney’s interpreted the language of this act to mean that rebates could be capped at 1% “of something”, Paul said indignantly. Initially the program was to be stepped down over a period of 6 years, but instead it was just gone and many new solar companies and jobs were lost. Don’t worry about EFS, though, they were one step ahead. “This kind of came at an ok time because we’re gonna use this as a platform to expand into other areas of energy efficiency.”

The Awesome, Excellent, So Good, Very Great Year

The life of a small business owner is always an adventure, but Paul is loving it. He looks forward to the future of solar energy and how it could lead to more sustainable communities. “That’s what I want to be a part of, and that’s why I left my chemistry career.”

While things are sailing along for EFS Energy, it’s not the only great thing to happen for Paul this year. He and his wife are now parents! Photos of his adopted son Mitchell have taken over his phone and he proudly stretched over the table to show me. “He looks so…” I started to tell him how alike they look but he cut me off. “Jedi?” Not exactly what I was going to say, but hilarious! As we scrolled through more than 10 pictures, he commented on each one. “It’s really good when I can get him to laugh.” “He looks like a little Obi-wan.” “Almost every picture on my phone is him now.” 

No Brainer

Despite an interesting conversation, we were both eagerly anticipating that first step out into a perfect summer day. So I made my routine query,“What is your favorite thing about St. Louis?” The question had barely left my lips before Paul blurted out his answer with a smile. “City museum.”