And his name is Wrigley.

Wrigley Bear Ellis III, to be exact.

And his name will always be a reminder of my husband and I successfully negotiating a compromise. 

After growing up in Chicago, Hunter always wanted to name any puppy we welcomed into our little Ellis family "Wrigley."

But with both of us as such passionate alumns of Baylor University, I couldn't help but latch on to "Bear" ...and even had my front-runner as "Griff" in honor of Heisman Trophy Winner Robert Griffin, III.

Griff got the boot, but "III" stuck, and with Wrigley and Bear as the final first-name contenders, I couldn't stand the thought of my husband not getting to name his dog what he always wanted.

And there you have it, along with a little guy who is absolutely worth abandoning my typical late-night work habits for a few weeks to obsess over his puppy cuteness.

Now, if I could only get him to create PowerPoint presentations, sit on conference calls and/or code web applications....

 

 

Even this tightly-wound girl does take a vacation every once in awhile... And this December that was in Beaver Creek with my husband and his family.

Colorado is where I spent my summers growing up, and it's where I've skied since the age of 3 in what was at the time one sweeeet army green onesie.

I love this place more than words can describe, and until the day I die will continue to spend as many days of the year in "Colorful Colorado" as I am blessed enough to be able to do.

God Bless the Rocky Mountains.

-SKE

-SKE

Just came across a few quotes worth sharing after I was lucky enough to spend time with some of the inspiring exceptions to my Gen Y rant from Monday. They/We DO exist, thank God. 

And as a holiday gift, a colleague & I gave them "survival kit" of sorts for the corporate world: Wine + Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us by Seth Godin.

And after skimming through before I dive in for my 4th go-round, I discovered 

three quotes that have just now caught my eye for whatever reason at this point in my career, and I wanted to share them with each of you.

 

#1: "WHEN YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH 'THE SYSTEM', YOU LOSE THE ABILITY TO GROW."

Often I find myself managing a delicate balance between my reverence for the rich tradition & wisdom that are ever-present at a 50 year-old company...and my irreverence for the bureacracy & sometimes crippling addiction to comfort & stability.

And the knowledge that a lack of disruption could birth the demise of any established company in a dynamic vertical such as travel keeps me up at night, even though I see myself subconsciously easing up in challenging our methods, our models and our vision by the end of each exhausting year. That leaves me needing to throw myself into a concrete wall of competitive reality punches-to-the-face to snap out of it every December.

I've yet to fall in love with the system, but I do find myself making people less uncomfortable than I used to. That means I'm not pushing our thinking to as uncomfortable of a place as I should be.

And to be clear, it's not that the system hasn't worked. It has, quite well in fact.

It's instead that the reason I'm here today is to ensure the system evolves enough to work in the future... and the easiest way to fail at just that is to fall in love with the rehab patient I'm trying to help shake an addiction to a life of risk-averse comfort, stability & respectable success.

To those familiar with my hot-opinion-prone mouth:

If I start to show signs that I've tragically fallen in love with my cozy system, the one it's my job to shake-up for the good of its future, I beg you to slap me. Hard. And Twice, if needed, please.

Because if I do, I'll be doing no one any favors including my colleagues, myself and my company that only gets stronger when challenged.

There's a looming battle in our industry that will require every ounce of sheer strength, bravery and perseverence from energy-filled heretics to lead the way. But inside of any company's walls, so many of us all are just trying to get by, to hope someone else is battered & bruised while taking on the beast we'd prefer to avoid in favor of working our way up to popular & promoted.

But here's the problem with popular:

Popular is often mistaken for leadership. It's not. Popular our companies don't need their leaders to always be. Passionate, disruptive visionaries speaking truth they critically do.

It's time to get uncomfortable... to get information to those who need it most, to take one for the team, to risk your reptuation as someone who "gets how big companies work" (yes, that's a good thing around here)... it's time for it all, even if you get screwed putting your organization's best interests first. That's the point.

And you don't deserve to run that same company in the future if you don't have the balls to cause a risky ruckus today.

This may challenge conventional logic, survival & standard corporate politics... but if you're as good as we know you are, then why the hell would you want to politick your way into a top-level career at a company that sucks? 

People love companies. Companies love money. And the end result sucks for us all. Get over it.While I know you always have to look out for yourself and be smart, my point is this:

Who wants to be CEO of a lemon? I don't. If you do, raise your hand & I'll be right over with your cardboard box.

Those content with lemons are rarely capable of anything more. We must sniff them out, just as we must with those capable of much, much more.

#2: "GREAT LEADERS EMBRACE DEVIANTS BY SEARCHING FOR THEM, AND THEN CATCHING THEM DOING SOMETHING RIGHT."

I feel like we need so much more of this in every organization. But the challenge is finding the time to differentiate between pointless distractions disguised as deviants and the value-rich, inspiring deviators from the norm we are so lucky to have retained, many times unknowingly... and then reinforcing their behavior.

We never have enough time to do these extra things... to seek out these individuals and foster their growth as much as we should. I'm equally guilty, as I struggle to find the right amount of time to mentor & develop younger talent.

The most depressing part is I know I should do it even more, but I'm already doing more than 90%. Yep - depressing. Why don't we throw ourselves into retention like we do into our boring-ass PowerPoint presentations? Because we're too damn comfortable, lazy and flat out stupid to not continue taking our people for granted every day.

NO more. It's unacceptable.

Othewise, we simply MUST take intentional time to mine these hidden nuggets of genius in our organizations... We must do better to find & retain those gems that are truly what differentiate us more than any business model ever could.

And holy hell, we even more critically have no choice but to open our eyes to the fact that you need a strong bench, and yet you have done nothing to ensure that bench is the right fit for the people you need to put on it. Today, the bench literally is repelling my generation. Literally.

Instead, trying to retain the top new wave of young leaders the same way you have the mediocre middle-60% masses for decades exhibits unprecedented levels of recklessness with your future.

 As a recent article in HBR stated profiling the new Gilt Groupe CEO's philosophy on hiring & retaining top talent stated:

A people hire As. Bs hire Cs. Why? As don't take jobs under Bs & Cs. As seek out As, & retaining mediocre B/C managers poisons your talent pool leading to a slow, painful death.

At a minimum, I am personally eager to be watchful for this type of "deviant" and to constantly be an A on the lookout for other As so that I am equipped to reach out to them one day, encourage them, do what it takes to retain them... and pray they have a few peers equally "devious" looking for a place to cause a ruckus.

#3: "AS SOCIETY GETS MORE COMPLEX & OUR PEOPLE GET MORE COMPLACENT, THE ROLE OF THE JESTER IS MORE VITALTHAN EVER BEFORE.
PLEASE STOP SITTING AROUND.
WE NEED YOU TO MAKE A RUCKUS."

I could personally die a happy woman if the legacy I leave at any company is that I ignited a meaningful ruckus on our tiny ship of order... That I was a disruptive heretic of the highest order.

We need more heretics. We need more people stirring up a ruckus.

Yet, heretics are rarely welcomed because they bring with them the discomfort that begets more work.

At any large company where stability & comfort are obvious, yet unspoken perks...

...more work - no matter how important or interesting - is the last thing the middle 60% of your squishy bell curve wants.

They're just simply trying to find an ergonomic chair in which they can comfortably coast down the smooth road to retirement... but for the love of all that is good, profitable & EBITDA-holy... take your choke hold off of our 2020 revenue potential, our emerging talent and in the most respectful way possible, get the HECK OUT.

If there's anything I'd relish accomplishing for my own company over the next few years, it's inspiring a significantly important ruckus, or encouraging another talented individual to do so themselves... that would mean more to me than anything I've achieved career-wise to-date.

And even more importantly, I'd use that opportunity to shift our recruiting strategy to focus on hand-selecting & going hard after a few ideal young heretically-inclined leaders across the travel industry with the passion, intellect, healthy understanding of our history and fundamental courage to challenge just that.

I think we often, at every company, underestimate how healthy it is to seek out powerful new perspectives, dissenters of sorts, to help companies evolve into their next five decades of unexplored opportunity & potential success.

I personally can only imagine the resulting quotable moments if this dream were reality, as these new hires began to challenge the unchallenged, while the newly challenged have to defend the never before defended. 

Don't you just love awkward moments? I do. And we need more of them.

A recent article in Harvard Business Review agrees. It's time to get all kinds of risky & accountable in each of the formerly ruckus-free companies we call home.

So, starting tomorrow, I plan to rest up, read a Godin classic over the holiday, & prepare for the year ahead.

You bring the popcorn. I'll bring the ruckus.

Happy New Year to All!

Oh, and don't forget the butter.

-SKE  

Lately I've observed an increase in my Gen Y peers rebelling vehemently against the idea of working in a large corporation.

That sentiment is mostly shared from the middle 70% I refer to as the mediocre masses, who are too lazy to reach the top 15% where the brightest young Gen Y entrepreneurs reside, and conversely too parentally-helicoptered to drop to the bottom 15%.

They are the ones throwing stones at the idea of Corporate America without knowing even a paragraph's worth reason behind why. While I certainly don't believe the path I've chosen is the "best" or "correct" one for everyone, I know the least qualified individuals to count out a corporate career are the youngest, most inexperienced Y'ers with little to base their decision on.

Newsflash, new grads: While you're busy raging against the corporate machine via Occupy, you should also know there's absolutely nothing sexy about working for an over-funded, underperforming startup. 

Not even close to every startup achieves the success of Zynga, or can make it look as easy & fluid as Hipmunk. And those that will won't be hiring anything other than the most talented few among us.

Despite the natural glamour that lures many into startup shantytown where every day is a SXSW afterparty, the % of those who will succeed is in the low single digits. And your early years spent seeking "fun" at a sub-par company versus substance could damage whatever opportunity could have been in your thirties.

Suffice it to say, my generation is missing a piece of their puzzle. We're making decisions based on whimsy & ego versus logic & humility.

Thus, from the "evil, dark corporate abyss" I'm writing this post to offer my thoughts on the 2 things I believe will help fill that void.

1) A chance sooner than later in their careers to be humbled 

and

2) My renewed commitment to ensure the enemy of Gen Y's mediocre masses, large corporations & all they stand for, will thrive, remain profitable and, most importantly, be as despise-able as ever to fuel the anti-establishment fire.

Why? Every good story needs a villain. 

Every ill-founded movement needs something to blindly oppose. Corporations give them that. But as of late, the youngest of my generation are starting to live up to negative stereotypes we've battled against for years and their competitive spirit has morphed into misplaced arrogance.

So, despite my birth year falling squarely into Y territory, I've temporarily lost that Gen Y loving feelin.

I can't help the fact that I'm disappointed.

And today I'm ready for us to stop making excuses. I'm ready for us to reach our full potential.

We should be emphatically, as a generation, knocking it out of the park. Instead, we're barely making contact with the ball & some days we even forget to bring the bat.

Personally, I define "knocking it out of the park" in a different way than those holding signs & camping out in major cities protesting in front of buildings they will one day likely walk into and apply for a job.

I define it as DOING something. Proudly kicking our own asses, burning midnight oil as a regular practice and collectively yanking our economy up from the doldrums.

Most of us don't have families yet.

That's why NOW is the time to get a head start. TODAY is when we have the blessing & opportunity that time presents, not tomorrow.

Doing more by sucking it up after college and opting to send a check to a landlord even when it's hard versus BestBuy for that new flat screen TV or Starbucks for overpriced coffee habits all while skating by on free rent under our parents' roofs.

While every other generation moved out of their parents' homes at 18, our generation has decided instead to selfishly act like the leeches we were prophesied to become on the US economy.

20 somethings living with parents well past college are taking lower paying jobs because without rent, they can. And thus their contribution to the economy vs. previous generations is abysmal. They make less, spend less & thus are suffocating our economy into a slow, depressing, ambition-starved death.

We've been lazy & our parents have enabled it. Shame on us both.

It's time to be something more.

Be better, smarter, more humble and more grateful than ever before.

But can we...

The immature & borderline laughable career expectations of my generation are now paired with an over-inflated sense of self, leaving nothing but an overwhelming gap where questions should be asked... where learning should happen.

We think we should get a promotion after 6 months of mediocre work as if owed something, while we have yet to be proven capable of executing our way out of our high school bedroom, much less executing on greater responsibilities at work.

It's sad, really. I used to defend us against all of these criticisms, but our recklessness has finally broken me.

We're embarrassing ourselves.

And out of this cycle has come the perfect storm of lazy douchebag-tastic talent pools from which companies are forced to choose, causing most to naturally lose interest along with any desire to increase bench strength with talented Gen Yers.

We're killing our future opportunities where we sit today.

Swift Kick in the Shorts = A Gift

I believe part of this Gen Y crisis could have been averted with early-on swift kicks in Gen Ys professional shorts.

The majority of my gold star generation has never been humiliated due to oceans of protective parental praise and "you can do anything, be anything, demand anything, and you deserve everything" mantras ingrained into their millions of US households.

What's missing today is the balance needed by pairing that confidence with humility & hard work.

Everyone needs to experience once the sinking feeling of screwing up royally. If this generation already has, then they weren't given the gift of honest feedback.

Their actions are crying out for someone to tell them "Hey, that sucks.You half-assed it. Do it again, and do it significantly better than before."

The helicopter parents deprived this generation of complete self-awareness and perpetuated their attitudes today manifested into a waste of potential.

That has left most ill-prepared to work in a collaborative corporate environment with those who have been, & thus why the corporate path I've chosen isn't crowded.

We all remember the days in each of our own careers when these kick in the shorts-moments happened. You never shake the memory of the feeling you had when you first screwed up on the job. And how you could have corrected it played out in your mind, and continues to do so throughout your career as it has been one of many great experiential teacher

So, why have we selfishly deprived this generation of that feeling we each remember from our own mistakes, and that has helped us become who we are today?

The most important future need for today's middle 70%

If we can figure out a way to give them today what their personal career development has been deprived of,to-date, that's only half the battle.

They then should start praying even harder that I and others with similar interests are actually able to turn this boat around with those they've jaded on the hiring side of the equation.

I believe the most critical need the middle chunk of the Gen Y masses won't be the villification of Corporate America... instead, a company, any company, in 2020 willing to hire lackluster talent.

Corporate America needs more mediocre talent just about
as much as the American diet needs more sodium.

So... yeah... good luck with that. But I truly will be rooting for you... from a safe distance in my cube, of course.

In all seriousness, to the youngest in my generation, I hope to see us all blossom into our full potential one day soon. Because the moment the Boomers finally start retiring, our generation will have no choice other than to rise to the corporate occasion.

It's time to get to work.

As for me, I'd like to think I'm living proof that a few "swift kicks in the shorts" early on can teach Gen Y'ers lessons critical to their future... and that a future when my peers will seek out corporate careers involving large-scale complexity just might be possible after all. 

It's time for my generation to pull up its big girl britches, sinch them tight, and for the love of all that is evil, good and holy, go toe-to-toe with your potential.

All my love,

-SKE

The past 160 days, and really the last 8 weeks, have had my team focused on delivering a small new product for which we've had start-to-finish responsibility since the Social Solutions team was formed last year.

And today, we launched.

I'm tired. And my team is likely even more tired than I am.

We finalized the concept, business case, project scope, key requirements, database architecture, back-end development, front-end development, user experience design, market launch plan, marketing communications plan all in under 160 days... and today we continue marketing, technical maintenance/support and phase 2 development.

But even more than I am tired, I'm proud of my tiny, yet incredibly talented team.

They amaze me every day with what they are capable of despite our extremely small size, in addition to the vast array of responsibilities we carry beyond the norm for most teams.

When crap hits the fan, we're the only one holding the red bat phone.

 

When something breaks at 5am, we're the ones sending red-exclamantion mark-laden emails to... well... ourselves because from start to finish, from business case to critical bugs, it's all us.

In a large organization where 99.9% uptime is simply table stakes to exist, we have uniquely been given the blessing and curse each day of working in an undefined space with less sleep and fewer resources than almost everyone else... but greater freedom to own and deliver something groundbreaking, or even capturing fast-follower status in the growing area of social.

But growing areas tend to be long slogs on the way up... and the main reason I think our team has trudged through them with success is our persevering sense of humor.

We don't take ourselves too seriously, especially during the toughest parts of a project, and had I ordered it early enough, I would have worn the below shirt to work this week just as a reminder that with as little sleep as I've gotten lately, I'm basically a walking Ruby error.

For those of you who have been within 100 square miles of me over the last few weeks, I've likely forced you to watch this video... all 5 minutes of it.

After obeying my demands and accepting that you might have to sit through another boring video some annoying co-worker told you was "SO FUNNY" and that you "HAD TO WATCH" ... most of you quickly realized this was one of the rare gem's that viral videos all aspire to be.

And you thanked me, right after you forwarded it on to everyone you know.

What's important is that somehow a brand, as quickly fading into history as @KSWISS has been over the last decade, more than resurrected itself in such a bold fashion that I basically sent them an $80 "Thank You" note for all of the laughs. And as a perk, I happened to get some sweet new Tubes out of the deal shown below.

Even while I was entering my credit card information, I felt like I was sending them money I owed them, or that they somehow deserved, for taking the time to grace me with such copywriting genius. Granted, I have an affinity for great writing stronger than most, but I know I wasn't the only one whose bank account made a donation to the Kenny Powers #MFCEO campaign... and the best part is, the shoes are actually pretty great.

My last setence is probably their optimal use case in this campaign. Glad to help out a marketer's metrics any way I can.

More than anything, I want to shake the hand of the ballsy CMO who had to sign-off on the entire shebang, along with his or her job security in the process.

These are the kinds of decisions very few marketers are capable of making without seflishly watering it down in the name of job security or risk of stunting their speed up the corporate ladder... but for this person, holy crap did his or her gutsiness pay off.

All I have to say is thanks and kudos to @KSWISS & it's ad agency @72andsunny for creating memorable... and offensive, sure .. but still, most importantly, memorable and effective work this year.

What's up dog? KSWISS just killed you.

{To start... if you don't know what "pwned" is, go here. Moving right along...}

There are certainly many days of my career when I have wondered how amazing it will be to look back at the past 5, 10, and hopefully no longer than 15 years of Powerpoint misery to "brag" to the then youngins about how hard we used to have it when we were forced to trudge through proverbial 5 ft. of SmartShape-esque snow to and from meeting hell.

But I've been waiting for that day for now 7 years and it's nowhere in sight, thus my lovely artwork below from early 2010.

The problem is when we depend so much on PPT to communicate in every mid-size+ company in every industry (as I wrote about here just last year), that many of us end up spending EVERY DAY of our lives working in that God-awful inefficient posterboy of a mediocre-at-best presentation software program.

Why PPT Turns This Positive Patty into Cathy Cranky-Pants.

Over the last two weeks, I've created three different 20 slide+ presentations from scratch all with at least 75% brand new content.

Personally, I know I need at least two solid days to work through the creation of any 5 minute or longer PPT presentation... and whenever I present, it's to sell someone on something or to rally support around idea that will eventually be "something" and thus also need to be sold.

In Powerpoint, no doubt.

So, because I know presentations are immensely important, I build every single one from scratch to ensure I at least give myself a shot in hell to hold the attention of my ADHD audience and never waste their time.

I hate templates. I hate text. I hate fonts created before 2010 (other than maybe Lobster, or as @marcelosomers calls it, the "new Comic Sans" - Ouchie. :)

I hate people who spend more than 10 seconds on any slide other than a financial forecast in 11 point font. And even then...

And to make matters worse, I am a perfectionist.

So usually two days of effort turn into three... filled with font-embed trainwrecks, Photoshop marathons and stock photo editing circuses that all come together to tell a decently interesting story that the average observer might mistakenly think was built in Keynote.

Even if I fool a few for a slide or two into that notion, I feel like I succeeded. 

But once it's all over, one might assume the competion of a successful presentation would make the time invested 'all worth it' after.

Even Cupcakes & EBITDA-Pooping Unicorns Can't Turn This Frown Upside Down

Yet no matter how well things go, how much money/resources are thrown my way or unicorns given to me that poop cupcakes & EBITDA, I'm left feeling like I just wasted three precious days of my life I will never get back... and now I'm three days further away from putting the actual solution into the hands of customers.

I happen to love my job right at this moment, and I have an incredible team working hard toward a set of strategic goals I'm sure I typed in a PPT presentation somewhere along the way.

So, I understand better than most that without selling our experimental ideas & concepts to tough customers and putting it through the test with those who really matter, our work is about as relevant as one of the hundreds of "Social Media is the Next Big Thing" .ppt files we all have somewhere in the depths of our hard-drives from 2006.

If we can't sell it, then we are just useless, renegade cowboys begging to be shot down or drowned into the black hole of political churn... and that threatens the one consequence I respond to most adamantly - the potential to waste even MORE time vs. throwing down the binary 1s & 0s with our customers.

He's Staring At Me Right At This Second... This Is Getting Awkward.

With that said, I can't waste any more time typing - or even reading this again to ensure my writing above is even moderately coherent.

That's because my "buddy" Powerpoint is standing right here, tapping his rigid, slow-moving feet dressed in ugly shoes that haven't been in style since 2003...

While it drives me up the wall that he doesn't understand how "blog", "facebook" or "Tweet" are actual, properly spelled words, the worst part is he's still sporting that friggin t-shirt to the office Every. Single. Day. that reads: "Sarah is my SmartShape Biotch"

So, back to work. I know who butters my animated .gif bread.

Saved As & Closed,

SKE

Some of you, including even my closest friends, may be surprised to know I've turned nearly 180 degrees over the last year or so into a legit, fascinated fan of IndyCar and naturally the entire business that surrounds it.

I can now easily sit and enjoy watching an entire 500 mile race on any given weekend, while explaining to my husband the rules I've apparently memorized related to qualifying, along with random 'hot sports opinions' on what drivers I just can't stand. 

While I'm sure he's a nice young man, Will Power's cheesy name and Opie-esque persona annoys the crap out of me. Guilty as charged.

Moving along...

Combining the precision required in both driving, engineering and mostly the business to support it all (the logistics alone of getting all of the mechanics & equipment from city to city gives me heartburn)... the sport is mind-blowing as much as it is purely awesome.

The reason I initially became so interested is thanks to a few friends of ours - Sulli & Bunch as they are known to us - who are now the proud owners (I guess technically SH Racing is the proud owner with S = Sulli), of an IndyCar that ran its first race last weekend at the 100th Anniversary of Indy.

And in its first showing, their car ran as close to the front as 2nd with less than 30 laps to go, then finished 8th in the very first showing of the #07 Redline car driven by Tomas Scheckter.

While it may sound naive to over-celebrate an achievement that, by its very nature, has to be preceded by immense amounts of success... thus making that achievement just one after many, many that had to come before it...

It is stories exactly like this that inspire passionate people to get out of bed in the morning.

I know there were likely countless years of painstaking work, failures, learnings and sheer determination toward a goal that pushed Sulli & his family to a place where that hard work is now manifesting itself as an amazing opportunity with continued blessings.

And I would also have to assume that the terrifying, yet calculated risks one has to take to get this point in business and in sport are risks that not everyone in the world is capable of taking. Some have the passion, some also have the work ethic...

But I believe very few have all three.

Yet, for those lucky & talented few, with risk comes reward... and reward for SH Racing is another day, another race... another chance to stick it in the fence or in the show. The picture below of Sulli says all you need to know about exactly how much passion this guy has.

Personally, the very idea of a car, for which the average IndyCar engine alone is leased for around $1 million or more per year, and for which the annual tire expense is likely more than I make or will make in any given year, the idea of a split-second mistake sending that car head-first into a concrete wall made my stomach turn as I watched them reach speeds of 230 into every single one of those ridiculous turns.

All 800 of them.

Yet, the instant you hesitate as a driver, a race strategist or an owner to make a decision in this sport, with not a one in the bunch that isn't risky, then the more likely you are to put your team and your business at even greater risk when nanoseconds matter.

That's why they have no choice but to be the best at what they do and hire those who can do the same. Outside of racing & I guess maybe space travel, there are few scenarios in the world when precision matters more.

With all of that said, I came away from last weekend with one quote that has stuck with me from the unexpected source of Marco Andretti.

Never really taken the time to form an opinion of him one way or the other. He could easily be an idiot or a genius... all I know as fact is that the kid can drive. 

On the final qualifying day, Marco was the headliner in what this sport would define as a quite dramatic, just barely making it onto the track at 5:59 after being bumped out of the field with minutes to spare. He was 50 seconds away from not qualifying for the 100th running of the Indy 500, and his run would determine whether or not his teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay, who was then on the bubble, or Marco made it into the race.

And he nailed it.

While hurling himself and his car around a track at 224-232mph, he executed flawlessly & didn't hestitate to use every inch of that track - including the inches closest to that looming fence - to make it happen.

The quote he shared as he crawled out of his car is probably one his father and his father's father have said over the years.

"It was either stick it in the fence or stick it in the show." 

Whether you are an IndyCar driver or a mid-level manager in travel technology, even though the stakes in racing may be just a teeeensie tiny bit higher than for me, the passion we all carry with us into our careers translates.

We each get out of bed in the morning and make a decision to be okay with the in between or decide to use every inch of the track with the only options being the fence or the show.

While I plan to stay away from the literal fence personally, I hope I can put that type of uninhibited passion that SH Racing exhibited to work every day in my career, even in the smallest way, and give my customers, colleagues and my business every inch of the passion required for us to not finish anywhere other than whatever is defined as our 'Show.'

And with that said, this 'Johny-Come-Lately' IndyCar Fan taking life lessons from Marco Andretti obviously needs some sleep...:Because without my 2 full REM cycles, the only place you will find me tomorrow is in the fence. 

Congrats again to SH Racing on an incredible debut.

-SKE