Matthew Egan Rochte - My Story

My Story

These stories are here partly to speak the truth, partly to share wisdom, and partly to inspire others. Enjoy!

Story of ALH - Doing Business Right
Story of Awakening - Living In The Future
Story of Expectation - Living In The Present
Decision To Become A Coach
Story of Simplification - Getting Rid of Half My House

If you want to keep up with the current stories, musings, poetry, and learnings read along at Matthew's Blog

Chief Thought Provoker

In 1994 I had the opportunity to co-lead a small manufacturing company in Milwaukee, WI. It was a start up manufacturing firm called Advanced Liquid Handling, Inc We made syringe pumps for the precision liquid handling industry. Beyond its product, it was quite an unusual company due to the three guiding principles of our mission/values/purpose statement.

This value system allowed us to coach, lead, and build a tight-knit, fun, growing company. Our method of leadership and management were very much coaching in nature:

• Treat people as people.
• Give them the tools they need,
• Give them the time they need
• Give them the respect they deserve

and they will work miracles.

In case I didn't say it enough "THANK YOU ALL!"

In 2000 my partner and I were approached by one of our customers to purchase the company. We presented the opportunity to the employees and asked for their opinions. When we sold the company it was with the consent, permission and blessing of the employees.

At the end of 1999 I was serving on two board of directors, three committees, two leadership teams, tripling production at our small manufacturing firm, buying/converting/zone petitioning a duplex, learning about being a landlord, attending a biweekly leadership training program with its sub meetings, adjusting to two new cats, and unsuccessfully trying to go on first dates with people - 100 first dates, 0 seconds - I wondered why. I was oblivious.

I was a man living in the future.

I was a HUMAN DOING

Everything I was doing was planning, coordinating, adjusting, facilitating in my life so that I could have the life I wanted - someday.

Did I know what life that was? No.

But I kept planning. I refused to live in the present. I did not want to live in the present. I hated the present (with the odd exception of work, which was about creating a present and treating people right - funny how the world works)

I was a professional in the realm of HUMAN DOING. There was nothing about BEING in my life.

So in December of 1999 when one of our customers approached us to buy our company, I looked at it in my usual fashion and said, "Great, I'll do some consulting for 6-18 months, then go off to get my MBA, perhaps start another company, join a consulting firm . . ." - more planning, more doing. . ..

Life came to a screeching halt.

My plans were put on hold.

I was no longer in control.

The sale of the company required a temporary relocation to Sonoma Valley, California for the Winter and Spring of 2000. This move forced me to unplug from the "projects" that I had been working so diligently on creating, structuring, and controlling in Milwaukee. I was now in a situation where I was not in control but rather out of control. It was no longer my company and I was only there to provide knowledge transfer. A very awkward situation.

This new role in Califonia left me with an abundant amount of "free time." I worked 8-5, not 7-6 as I had been before. I had no obligations other than showing up at work, where I was tapped for what I knew, not what I could do. "Free Time" was a new experience for me, last time I had "free time" I was a kid in elementary school. Adults can't have "free time" can they?

My windows faced a field of mustard grass and vineyards (Sonoma Valley is Wine Country). Nature started to creep into my life. I was being faced with its incredible power as Spring leapt up around me. Something was stirring inside, long forgotten thoughts and feelings. I started to wake up to to how disconnected I was from the world, life, and most importantly myself.

I now had free time. I was alone and had an enormous amount of time for thought, time for reflection, and time for exploration. I explored the wineries, the valleys, the ocean and San Francisco (this time as an adult - I grew up in the Bay Area). I watched the seasons shift from late winter through to summer. I Watched the mustard pop up and the vineyards green.

I felt my experience expand and became empowered by the beauty and strength of all that was going on around me. I was connecting once again to the greatest cycle of the world - nature. I was slowing down and expanding at the same time. Such a reversal from the speeding up and contracting that had been my life 6 months before.

I was waking up to the present.

Living In the Present

Upon my return to Milwaukee, I took a year of sabbatical. It was a time for visiting people around the country and world that I had neglected to visit while I started the company and was living in the future. I started reconnecting with people and with some really connecting with them for the first time.

Still in the orchestrating my future and part time living in the future phase, I was investigating International MBA programs to further my study of cross-cultural-communication in the business arena. In my exploring I met up with a student at a Wharton Business School, Robert Bigler. In our discussions about international business and language he shared an experience and a tip with me for learning Spanish quickly. "Go to Quetzaltenango. It's a non-touristy place in Guatemala known by the locals as Xela (pronounced Shay-lah); it will change your life." I looked into it cursorily and haphazardly purchased a two month ticket down to Guatemala.

In my usual style, of that time, I finished up at the last minute and literally mailed my MBA applications to my top four international business schools from the airport. I had pulled an all-nighter. I was oblivious to the weather, so in the middle of a snow storm I drove to Chicago where I abandoned my car for friends to pick up - - sometime. (control - meets out of control, kind of like the expression of he who deceives only deceives himself)

This became the beginning of the end
of my living in the future.

I arrived a dozen hours later at night in Guatemala City. I was in for a shock. I knew ZERO Spanish. I had NO PLANS for the night. All I had was a guidebook which I find ultimately to be useless. Putting my faith in a taxi and an overheard conversation I got deposited in a hotel in the middle of town. It was clean and simple with few amenities. I crashed. I had been running on adrenaline for approximately 72 hours. I slept for nearly a day.

When I awoke - I discovered something. The only shoes that I brought with me to a tropical country were my pair of snow boots. That was just another indicator of how disconnected from reality I was.

Through the kindness of strangers, and by god's will, I think, I found my way to Xela (4 hours by several chicken busses) by pointing and saying Shay-la all the way. I hadn't a clue where I was going. I had put my trust in the world and the people around me.

It was like seeing the world for the first time. Everything was new to me. Everything old was new to me.

My whole journey was one of surrendering the need to plan and coordinate. I found that every time I tried to make something happen - it didn't. Every time I built up an expectation - it wasn't going to happen.

Latin America is famous for getting people to slow down and to release expectations. It is not an issue of giving up. It is an issue of realizing what is really important. It is an issue of giving up this artificial belief that we have that we can control our lives and those of everyone around us.

When I finally released control of my path (as I did when I first arrived), my journey became magical. I was no longer spending my time planning, debating, and frustrated - instead I was observing, listening, being curious and engaging life first hand. I engaged with people. I played with children. I sang danced and laughed out loud. I started to remember the ancient path, the one that our soul's know - that the journey is far more enjoyable and monumentally important than the destination.

I heard Margaret Wheatley give a presentation a few years back about people's relation to time. If you ask a typical cosmopolitan South African how long it will take to get to the airport, you will get a pause, a calculation and an answer such as 45minutes. If you ask a tribal South African the same question they will respond with, "It depends on who I meet on the way"

I spent two months in Guatemala under the pretense of learning Spanish. I did, however the greatest lesson that I learned was to stop expecting things.

Let things happen - you never know who or what you are going to meet on the way.

Slow down and you get to live your life

Source:
Merriam-Webster
Online Dictionary
http://www.m-w.com

Part 1) A New Man

Upon my return from Guatemala I was a different man. I found myself fully living in the Present and becoming aware of the joy, passion and power that comes with working with whatever presents itself - TODAY.

I paid a visit on a dear friend of mine, Mohamed Boumedian, who owns a Cigar shop in Milwaukee. One look at his face told me he needed to go home. I mean home, home as in Turkey.

He said he couldn't. I said I would watch over the shop for a month while he went home to be with his family. Our philosophies of doing-business-right and how to treat people discussions over the previous years had drawn us together and we had become fast friends. Therefore, he felt comfortable with me taking over for a while.

This opportunity for me was one of slowing down even further. Learning to enjoy place - where ever it is. Our enjoyment of place is ultimately a matter of who we are being in the place- not the place itself.

The cigar shop was an opportunity to connect with people who floated in and out of the store - to converse, to share stories, to connect with the way people really were. I didn't want anything from them. I had no expectations. My only agenda, which was certainly amenable to change, was to be present and enjoy the magic of who and what came that day. Its not about me.

Part2) Toward the end of my stay at the cigar shop a little voice in the back of my head said that I should check out seminary. After I laughed it off, it returned even stronger, so on a trip out to San Francisco to visit my new godson I visited Starr King, the UU Seminary in Berkeley. I fell in love with it. I felt right at home.

What was I to do? Was this what I meant to do? Most people would agree that this came in direct conflict with my previous week's plans of attending an international MBA program. I had even put down my deposit.

Part 3) My experiences in Guatemala, my time at ALH, my time working with the customers at the cigar shop woke me up to a greater understanding of what I was here to do. I am here to connect people, to lead people, and model a way of leadership that has been misplaced and/or forgotten. My experience with Unitarian Universalism and my visit to the seminary reminded me that we cannot separate our soul from our work.

As I walked out the door of the Star King Seminary in Berkeley I asked god - "Is this what I should be doing?" The answer was clear loud and immediate "NOT YET"

Shortly thereafter I decided that I was not going to go into seminary and that I was not going to go get my MBA. A wave of awakening as well as relief washed over me as I went on a short holiday.

Upon my return I realized that I was on the right path for me.. When I said no to both of these my world opened up. I now had 7-8 doors and avenues open to me that previously had been hidden from view. All of these doors all led to leadership and life coaching. .

I have been in love with my decision ever since and I soon realized that I had been steering my life toward this since the day I was born. My parents were my first coaches. Geno Johnson was the first one I hired 12 yrs ago (see mission statement). That is when I started coaching - he taught me how to be with people and be curious. Everyone I meet these days are my greatest teachers

I purged half of my house and now live in a world that honors clean, simple and elegant. I live in the present. I live life intentionally. I love my life and what I do. I love my clients.

I am bringing Living Intentionally and Working Intentionally to the world. .

Note on restaurant wall -

Good Morning,

this is god,

I will be handling all your problems today.

I will not need your help.

So have a good time.

I Love You

In the Spring of 2000 during my stint in Wine Country, I had been living quite comfortably. My worldly possessions consisted of two suitcases, my computer and a growing case of wine. I was happy - really happy - what more did I need? ~Really.

When I returned home to Milwaukee. I took a look around my flat and said - what is all of this STUFF. My house was filled with STUFF. I was living downstairs in my duplex, a nice modern and cozy flat but limited in light and space. Upon venturing to the upper unit - I saw it in its full glory: skylights, large pane windows, open space, green tree limbs, bright sunny colors, fireplace. I decided then and there to move upstairs. With that decision also came the decision to simplify.

I first moved upstairs only the things that I absolutely needed. "Have I used or had a need for this item in the past 12 months?" That applies to everything - clothes, pots & pans, books, files, etc. This allowed me to move only the things that I really wanted. Suze Orman's 3 trips of 20 helped me get a handle on this one.

When I had moved to the house 6 months earlier, I had 5 guys and 3/4 full moving truck and it took all day for them to move me. When I left the house to move to Minneapolis - I moved myself in one trip with a rental truck 1/3 the size of the original moving truck. My new home in Minneapolis is twice the size of my previous abode with 1/2 the stuff. Only what I want and need. It is light, spacious and freeing.

Clutter and STUFF fills not only our world, it fills our minds, our thoughts, and unfortunately can dictate our lives.

My life and my environment these days are

Clean Simple and Elegant.

These three concepts keep me in integrity and are a part of my core values.