Jon Martin Karl – we did business together in a prior life of mine. All throughout, he had impressed me – above all – as a down to earth person. Lovely personal value system and an amazing ability to stay above the fray. I have visited his city for work later in my current job many times but never managed to meet him. Till today….

It was absolutely amazing to meet Jon again after some time. Nothing has changed. Okay, maybe he has lost some weight and he looks even better – if that is possible – and it certainly does not hurt that he is doing great in their business. But other than that, he is the same down to earth guy and our topics of discussions probably are the best indication of that.

Let’s see… we went from the true qualities of a CMO to the intricacies of how a snake behaves with equal amount of ease. He is one of the rare adults who shares my view that if you understand and study snakes – like most things in this world – there is very little to be afraid of them. As a matter of fact, they are more afraid of us than we are of them!

My story of catching a snake in our yard and letting it lick at my finger and watch the wife and kids shriek out loudly was trumped by his story of he feeding a small snake when he was a child and nursing it back to health. And I say his story trumped mine only because mine was a (non poisonous) King Snake and his was a (deadly) Copper Head, for crying out loud!!!

To be sure, we also talked about the joys and pangs of raising teenagers, the direction of identity and fraud industry, the pros and cons of Portland as a business center and many other arguably non-snake-y subjects 🙂

It was a great evening to be with Jon Martin Karl. After a long time!!