Tim had life figured out. Go to school, get the good grades, get a good job, move up the ladder, get a C suite position… but something was missing. Several six figure jobs and twenty years later, he figured it out.

At Cafe Ventana, we grabbed a table near the fireplace. Tim raved about the beignets, but I went for the smoothie this time. Cafe Ventana’s beignets aren’t the only food he loves about St. Louis. In fact, when I asked his favorite thing about the city he said, “Uh, probably the food. I was really surprised, pleasantly surprised, that there were this many good restaurants here. With an asterisk. I do not understand the fascination with Imo’s. It’s… there’s…” he paused, “I’m just going to end it with that.” He laughed. “I cannot eat it. It’s not pizza to me, but that’s just my opinion. But there are just so many good restaurants around. Good food. Good chefs, good sous chefs, um… good stuff!”

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Tim finished his undergrad at Penn State. Looking back he realizes he didn’t really know what he wanted to do. Twice he changed his major, first from chemical engineering to electrical engineering, then from electrical to industrial engineering. While it turned out that this wasn’t what he wanted to do, what mattered at the time was… “I had that paper to get a good job”.

And he did. For 8 years he worked at Westinghouse Electric, which he compares to Maritz in St. Louis in that you either knew someone who worked there or someone who used to work there. He tried something different after that by working for an HR consulting company for 8 years. The experience was a good one, but when he had the opportunity to move to California and work for a manufacturing consultancy, he jumped at the chance.

That turned out to not be such a good decision. Six months later Tim had quit his job with nothing else lined up. It was that bad. But, after only six months he was recruited by an HR consulting company in Clayton and that is how he ended up in St. Louis! He worked there 2 years, then worked at a marketing agency in Soulard for about 1.5 years, followed by a healthcare consultancy. That was his shortest stint yet. His bad work experiences were affecting every aspect of his life, and looking back he saw that the time spent at each job was getting shorter and shorter. “I thought… enough! Time out! Now what?”

When he took the time to really think about it, everything in his life up to this point seemed to point him in one direction, his “common thread” was “facilitating learning in others”. So, he completed his life coach certification and here he is! He gestured as he explained that this could be temporary. “This is it for now. That’s the best part of this whole evolution. I’ve realized instead of worrying about what’s happening 2 years from now, because 2 years ago I would never have dreamed I’d be doing this full time, I’m therefore not worried about 2 years from now. So for now, it’s perfect!”

This is a message he is constantly trying to get across to his clients (mostly Millennials). Stop worrying, just enjoy the journey. “The pinnacle that we strive for is fictitious, but you have to realize it on your own. I always tell people, the best way to achieve your goals is to set them and then let them go.” This is so important he says, because we don’t know where something is headed when we begin. “We have expectations that it’s going to be X, but it could end up being X like.”

Seventy-seven percent of every communication we have by age 11 is negative. According to Tim, this has created adults who second guess everything. We think things like, ‘I’d love to do that, but can’t.’ It is possible, however, if we can overcome that thinking. “What it really comes down to is 4 or 5 things, fear, clearly, and this is everybody. Lack of self-confidence, fear of what others will think.” Coaching people helps them become a third party to their own behavior and they can practice changing it.

What he finds fascinating is the way people think before they meet with him. Almost inevitably they answer his questions with statements like, ‘well, I don’t want to be the type of mother who does this...’ or ‘I don’t want to...’ Tim immediately interrupts this train of thought. “It’s very clear what you don’t want. What DO you want?” The answer is usually silence. “They haven’t thought of it before. They finally have the chance to think what DO I want, without feeling selfish.”

I cannot agree more with Tim’s next statement. This belief has led me to try paragliding off a mountain in Switzerland, segelfliegen in Germany, and traveling to Turkey alone. “If what you’re following doesn’t scare you enough, your dreams aren’t big enough. That’s why the journey is all of it. You never stop learning.”

His first meeting with someone is a free 30 minute consultation where he assesses receptivity and asks some basic questions like, what if money wasn’t an object? what would you be doing? where? These questions are designed to help his clients start connecting the dots. Many times they see a pattern from their childhood that leads them to the career that will make them the most happy. “It’s never discovering,” Tim says, “It’s rediscovering.”

I told Tim my goals and how I get so frustrated with myself that I put my future in a box by imagining that I have to follow a certain path to get what I want. He laughed, “What’s so great about working with Millennials, is that for the first time and at a younger age, there is a group who is open and allowing and receptive to that mindset and that’s such an opportunity.” I asked if he thinks the internet is a part of that and he is sure that it is.

It was time for us to begin heading home for the evening and for Tim, home is the Central West End. This is his second favorite thing about St. Louis, his apartment. The building was built in 1929 complete with servants quarters, a milk door, beautiful archways, and hardwood floors. It’s actually one of the things keeping him here. “It just makes it a joy!”

Video games do not need to be violent. Greg has been developing them for big names like Sega, EA, and Lucas Films since 1981, so he has the experience to back that up. “If we saw anything like what a game does or a movie does in real life, it’d be horrifying. Shocking and horrifying, so why are we doing that? Why are we doing that in our media? In our interactive experiences?”

One evening after work, I waited for Greg at the Webster Groves Starbucks. Not many people are seeking a caffeine rush at 7pm, so it was relatively empty while I caught up on some work and drank a Green Tea Frappucino. About 10 minutes later Greg appeared around the corner looking slightly sheepish. We hadn’t recognized each other and had each been patiently waiting for the other to arrive. He ordered a Venti Mocha and told me that after many years of working for a company, he is currently developing his own game for mobile.

For a while now Greg has wanted to do something different from a lot of the video games that are out there, but that’s challenging to do on a small scale. It wasn’t until he took on a game development project for a client that he really learned how to program for mobile and that was eye opening for him. Nowadays… “If you have a good idea that’s original and you can execute that idea, you can do it with one to three people.” So he and his business partner are bootstrapping by developing games for clients until their company, minMOG, takes off.

Their first release (in the next few months) will hopefully create a new trend where games are more of a narrative, not short bursts of activity similar to Angry Birds. “It’s more about experiencing something. It’s possible to come up with an experience that has a sense of continuity to it,” he explained leaning back in his chair. “I’m really trying to break a bunch of cliches that have existed in the game industry for a long time. A lot of them come out of the history of board games.”

Greg is originally from California. Traditionally that’s where we think of movies and video games being created and Greg was at the center of that action for 13 years. First he worked for LucasArts where he produced the award-winning game ‘Secret of Monkey Island’. Then he started his own company and did contract work for Sega. He even won an award for “Best Producer” at a Game Developer’s Conference during this time. In 1994 he and his wife decided to move back so they could raise their 3 sons in the Midwest and that’s when he founded minMOG.

It’s not that Greg is anti-violence in games, it’s just that he doesn’t feel the need to add any more noise in that area. He would rather do something that makes people think a bit and entertains them in a different way. “The reason I feel the impulse to do things that are non-violent, is because I, I feel like there’s such an enormous contrast, disparity between what we experience in games, and modern media, movies and such and what we actually do in our daily lives. So, I’m, for my own benefit anyway and for the people I’m working with, trying to move the needle back towards a bit of common sense and normalcy and decency. This isn’t a morality thing for me, its much more about just encouraging people to have experiences and share their experiences with others.”

I’ve never been one for violent movies or games, so I asked how he thinks all of this violence came about. That question actually led us to a larger discussion about how gaming has changed and is still changing. He had four interesting things to say:

• It was much more complicated to develop games 10 or 15 years ago, now you can do it with a much smaller team
  
  
• Video games are violent because game designers were influenced by the movies they saw and as boys they were conditioned to think they were great, but mobile screens have reduced the number of violent games because it doesn’t translate to the smaller screen
  
  
• Games have eclipsed movies in terms of their ability to generate money, so soon you’ll see more movies designed after games rather than the other way around
  
  
• Twenty years ago we were relying on news networks and newspapers to tell us everything we knew about the world. Now we can customize our consumption and awareness.
  
  

Moving to St. Louis was quite the change for Greg, but it’s been a positive one. His favorite part? “Other than being centrally located, uh… I’ve heard this said before and I think it’s true, for a big city it’s got sort of small town values and that’s really pretty special. I also love how family-oriented it is. We have one of the best zoos in the country and I don’t know that everybody appreciates that. We go to the zoo as often as we can, we go to Forest Park, we go to... Botanical Gardens is amazing. We have some really special things here in St. Louis I wish more people would take advantage of. We also have an amazing library system, so you know… there are some really good things that are happening and have been happening here for a long time.”

Ben’s mom is an artist and his dad works for Edward Jones, so he got the best of both worlds. He’s creative and analytical and that comes in handy as a financial advisor. But, it’s his work ethic that has helped him build his business so quickly.

I treated myself to a peppermint hot chocolate at the Webster Groves Starbucks and grabbed a chair across the table from Ben (who had already purchased his own drink). Having met once before we gave each other brief updates on our lives before we delved deeper.

At the ripe old age of 19, Ben moved from Chesterfield to Austin, Texas. It all started when his mom tasked him with building her a website to show photos of her paintings to family. This was an interesting request because Ben had never done anything like it before, but that did not deter him. Picking up the book HTML for Dummies, he quickly built her a site and within weeks it was ranking #1, #3, and #7 on the top search engines (this was before Google).

That led him to start his own SEO business. Within the year he was handling contracts all over the country from his parents basement. One particular client, Financial Services Group, called him 3 months into their agreement and asked him to move to Texas to work for them full-time. Ben and his girlfriend (now wife) decided it sounded interesting, so they made the move!

Working there was fantastic for him. He climbed the ladder and was able to wear just about every hat in the office including, search development, running the sales team, handling business development. When the company sold several years later Ben went out on his own as an independent broker, handling credit card processing between banks and merchants.

Sure, that was a good experience too, but ultimately it wasn’t exactly what he was looking for. He was up at all hours of the night for international meetings and he wasn’t able to leave the house much. It wasn’t until he and his wife had their first son, Jackson, that they decided it was time to move back to St. Louis and for Ben to join his dad’s practice as an advisor for Edward Jones.

For sales people, it’s an age old problem. How do you quickly grow your business network? The answer for Ben was to create a networking group. Twice a month he hosts a white collar luncheon that brings together about 65 “captains of industry” and “pillars of the community”, including Michelle (Coffee #60)!

Ben has found that, for him, the best thing about working for Edward Jones is that he can run his business as he sees fit. It gives him the ability to follow his gut rather than his boss' objective. Oh and… “I’ve always run my own business, because I’d make a terrible employee…”

As I’m sure you are dying to know, I DID ask Ben his favorite thing about St. Louis! He said “Oh boy… my favorite thing about St. Louis... Until this winter I might have said the snow, but I’m happy to be through with the snow. It’s my… It’s where I grew up, it’s what I know as home. It’s family. Yeah. St. Louis is a great place, there’s endless things to do. I think you can be anybody and do anything here. so the opportunities are endless, but when it comes down to it, that’s what’s most important to me and this is where they are.”

“If I can’t go buy an affordable home in my city because I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to my child when they go outside to play, or I’m afraid I can’t send them to the institution that’s teaching them without something bad happening to them, or they’ll get a sub-par education, or the whole day being spent around discipline versus education, that is a problem. We have to change that story.” Arlo is very passionate about fixing St. Louis, primarily our educational system and the racial divide.

We trudged through the snow to the Clayton Starbucks the day after the last big snowstorm. After ordering, Arlo and I peeled off our coats, hats, scarves, and gloves, and grabbed a table. Melting snow pooled at our feet and a grande bold and black tea warmed our hands, while he told me a little more about himself.

His Background

Arlo was an NFL agent, worked for Wells Fargo, and even started his own company, before he found his happiness at State Farm helping reps achieve their goals. As a territory sales manager, much of his time is spent mentoring and coaching a 34 person sales team. It’s a demanding role that he really enjoys. When he is not at work or with his family, his time is spent at Elite Football Academy coaching kids or youth training to go pro. “It gives me a chance to kind of give back. It’s really fulfilling.”

Arlo grew up in North St. Louis and attended The Wilson School, then Glenridge, and finally Clayton High School, where his race set him apart. He was in the minority in all of these schools, and he felt lucky to find strong African American teachers who mentored him. His parents taught at inner city schools here for 30 years, but he never questioned that he was getting a better education at Clayton than the kids in the city. 

His parents were always an example to him and to others growing up. “Superficial as it is, my mom always wore a suit to school. She was always overdressed compared to every other teacher I knew, but her thing was, she always looked up to her teachers growing up and she feels like it’s her responsibility to give them an example of how to dress appropriately. She felt like the little girls, that may not have anybody else in their life to look at, had somebody.”

When Arlo moved to Mississippi to attend college at Mississippi Valley State University it was the first time he was in the majority since beginning school and that gave him the courage to take more risks. He became the executive editor of the campus newspaper, played golf his senior year, joined the forensics team and was an NFL prospect. “I really grew a lot from that opportunity.” Every time he came home to visit he set aside time to meet with his high school art teacher, Mr. Pearson, who challenged him by asking “What are you learning?” He told Arlo this was the last opportunity he’d have to really work on himself without other obligations in the way. The most important thing Mr. Pearson passed on to him was, “Humility with dignity is kind of the way I phrase it.”

Integration & Education in St. Louis

Just because Arlo felt more comfortable at a historically black university, does not mean he doesn’t believe in integration. “The south is starting to integrate, but it’s not forced. It’s through socio-economics, similar lifestyles. It’s more natural. If you force people to change their mind, they haven’t really changed their mind, they’re just forced to be in a situation. It almost creates an animosity. We have to let natural integration happen.”

Speaking of natural integration, the conversation quickly shifted to the problems with St. Louis' city schools. Arlo emphatically told me that he does not believe education is a right because that takes the responsibility for learning off of the kids. If the teachers spend half the class trying to get kids to sit down and behave, the students who are ready and willing to learn are at a disadvantage. “We can’t change the classroom to accommodate someone who doesn’t want to be part of the process. ‘Oh, we owe every kid education.’ No. We owe every kid the opportunity for an education. To get an education is the kid’s responsibility. If they’ve taken the responsibility for my growth, my maturity, off of me and put it on somebody else… It’s never going to work that way.”

“School is very simple. At the end of the day, a bunch of people who want to learn in front of somebody who wants to teach,” he shrugged. But the reality that city schools are failing while county schools prosper, is something he just can’t understand. “Why do we believe that the economic situation around a school limits the kids ability to learn?” Arlo asked. “There is a kid sitting in every classroom, in every economic environment, that can make it. I mean that really has a big dream and a big goal. Why isn’t our program sitting around helping those kids achieve?”

St. Louis’ voluntary transfer program sends talented city school kids to county schools and vice versa, but the numbers are very telling. From the city, 4,800 students are sent to county schools, while only 130 county students are sent to city schools. According to Arlo this program is often treated as an honors class for talented students. He compared it to sending all of America’s college graduates abroad. “How long would America survive?” He knows, however, that if city parents want their kids to have a good education they typically have just two options. Pay for it, or move.

The Impact & The Solution?

Another thing to consider, is the impact that our failing city schools will have on the entire metropolitan area in a few years. This leaves Arlo with more questions than answers. “We have to look at ourselves and we have to decide what we want to be as a city. Are we ok with the idea that we’ve given up on half the metropolitan area? What is our responsibility? What does that do for us? How long do we get to do this before that problem bleeds out to the whole metropolitan area?”

Whether the problem is in the politics (“We can’t keep electing mayors that allow the school system to get disenfranchised. Why are you the leader then?”), the teachers (“If these teachers can’t figure out how to teach on the salary we’re paying them, we get a teacher who can.”), or the kids (“We live in an environment where people are ultimately not responsible for the outcome of their lives.”) Arlo passionately believes it has to change.

Children & Civic Pride

One of the reasons he’s so outspoken on this point, is for the sake of his own children. Understanding that he can only do so much for them, gets him fired up to make sure they  learn how to handle responsibility at a young age. But what can he do as one person? He’s not sure, yet, but he’s working on it. “I’m trying to gather a group of young people who are open to the idea that it doesn’t have to be this way. I haven’t figured out exactly how to do it, yet, but I have to do something.”

The other reason? Civic pride. Born and raised here in St. Louis, Arlo has lived in other states, but ended up back here when his dad got sick to help his mom take care of him. Living other places has given him a different perspective on St. Louis, but he’s still proud of his hometown and wishes more people were proud of our city as a whole. He pointed out the declining population of the city and the gorgeous homes for sale that don’t sell because of city schools. Admittedly, he is angry. “We should stop making excuses and make our city great.”

Listening to his intense indignation at the problems with our city, I suggested that he run for office. He looked thoughtful as he took a drink of coffee. “I think about that a lot.” But, he has qualms about being so beholden to different groups that he can’t be honest about the decisions he makes. He’s certainly not opposed to the idea, but he thinks there is someone out there who is better for the job.

Our drinks were almost full as the clock approached 8:15am, a side effect of great conversation. In the last few moments, Arlo wrapped up our meeting relatively succinctly, “Everybody can’t win at the same level. We have to accept it at some point, without thinking we’re throwing people away.”

There are certain expectations in our culture regarding marriage, family, and careers. We go to college, finish in our early 20’s, begin our careers, get married, have kids by 30 and by about 65 we are expected to be successful in our careers and approaching retirement. It didn’t exactly work that way for Scott, and he is happy it didn’t.

Initially our meeting was a bit of a disaster. We tried to meet at The Mud House but it was closed for renovation, next we tried Sump Coffee but they were closed on this particular day of the week. Finally, we followed each other over to Park Avenue Coffee in the Lafayette area and had success. After sitting down with a black tea and an Americano, Scott told me he used to work in politics.

For 11 years he ran political campaigns of all levels. In 1996 he ran 2 campaigns, one during the main election cycle and another during the special election cycle. That year had been difficult for him in a number of respects, so when his brother approached him about going into business together he had some serious thinking to do. He took a month off to weigh his options. The new business, a manufacturer of small duct, high velocity heating and cooling systems for architecturally unique homes, had its challenges. Sales hadn’t been great and the factory was “a dump”. But, after working about 60 political campaigns he thought, “I’ve had a pretty good run, maybe it’s time to go do something else.”

So, in June 1997 Scott, his brother, and a few other partners bought Unico Systems, Inc. When they made the purchase, sales were fairly small, but in time they have managed to increase business by 1,000%. Then things got difficult for awhile. “In 2007 with almost stunningly bad timing, right before the recession hit, we built this brand new building in Jefferson County,” he told me. They slogged through some difficult years, but things turned out ok. The new space ended up being very good for the company, and it now houses 140,000 square feet of manufacturing and testing labs for their equipment.

His career wasn’t the only thing that changed when he was a bit farther along in life. In 2001 he married his wife, whom he had known for years and they moved to the UK to expand this new business internationally. When his wife was about 36 they had their daugher and at 40 they had their son. Reflecting on their ages, Scott said emphatically, “I tell you there is absolutely nothing wrong as far as I can see, with having children later in life. I mean, you have a lot more patience, you have a lot of tensions in your life resolved, you kind of, I think, have a better understanding of who you are, you have a few more bucks in your pocket, which helps a lot. Make no mistake about that.” But he does admit it was “kind of pushing the envelope”.

Life also handed him another exciting opportunity several years ago when he and his wife became partial owners (along with artist Julie Malone) of an art gallery called Soha in the Central West End. “My wife and I collected art wherever we went, traveled, that sort of thing. We would bring art back and we bought a lot local. We got to know Julie very well, the two of them are very good friends and Kat, my wife is Kat, she used to do a lot of art projects with kids and things like that so it just kind of all fell into place.” He and Kat regularly visit artist studios to meet the artists and see how they work, “It’s exciting to us. You get a real sense of the production side of it.”

Being part owner of an international company has its perks. As he listed a few of the 28 countries that Unico Systems sells in, including India, Ireland, and France, I became curious, “So you’ve traveled to a lot of these places?” He paused and appeared to be doing some mental math before he answered, “Yea, I think last count, 73 countries?” Wow. As for his favorite and least favorite places to visit, “Anytime I can spend a weekend in Paris, I’m up for it. But Pakistan, is a place I’d never go back to, quite frankly.”

At 8:30am Scott had to dash off to an important meeting, so we said our farewells over the sound of baristas calling out orders and parted ways with the promise to stay in touch.