ABOUT
I help organizations turn great stories into growth that compounds.
Twenty-four years finding true stories in ninety-nine countries. What I learned had less to do with cameras than with rooms: who is in them, what gets asked, and what happens after everybody goes home.
THE BEGINNING
What over two decades in the field does to someone's vision.
When I started 4:Minute.Media, racing had already taught me that you can carry pain if you know how to set it down. If you don't know how, it doesn't leave. It keeps the score.
I spent twenty-four years photographing people in life's hardest moments. Nobody lasts at that being tough. What kept me useful was something I learned on the track: take the weight, carry it the whole way, then put it down. Not deny it. Not swallow it. Set it down and heal.
What comes out the other side is growth. It's the only kind I've ever seen hold, in a person or an organization. That's where the best stories are, and the best images. That's where the magic happens, if you'll let it.
This work has taken me to the hardest places on earth and into the donor rooms and boardrooms where the money that answers those efforts gets decided to create its own growth. It is so important to engage in this process that there is even a spiritual mandate behind it.
The work has evolved this: I come alongside a CEO or a board, find where growth is lacking, and build the story, the strategy, the relationships, and the next steps that powers it forward.
CLASS OF TIME'S "PERSON OF THE YEAR" · THE EBOLA FIGHTERS · LIBERIA, DEC 2014
WHAT I CARRY FORWARD
I learned what happens after the emotions run dry.
The people who can materially change what is possible are not moved by volume, or by polish. They are moved by the invitation and the relationship — being asked well, by someone they already trust. It all comes back to relationships, which is at the heart of everything I do.
FILMS SHOWN AT EVENTS WHERE AN ESTIMATED $200-400 MILLION WAS COMMITTED
WHAT THE LEDGER TAUGHT
I learned that an emotional story is not the outcome.
Emotion has a half-life. Without an owner, a next step, and a deadline, the best night your organization ever had becomes a story you tell about the year you almost grew.
Running my own books through the downturns of 2008 and 2020 taught the same lesson from the other side of the ledger. Growth that does not compound is just a good quarter. We want to compound growth. Period.
OWN P&L SINCE 2002 · THREE ECONOMIC SHOCKS · $100K+ NET-INCOME TURNAROUND WHILE CUTTING OVERHEAD 15% IN 18 MONTHS
THE RECORD
WHERE THE WORK SHOWED UP
The evidence, briefly.
SELECTED WORK
The Road Ahead, Bill Gates — concept origination, specification, team assembly, content leadership, and marketing plan contribution for a product carried by 2.5 million copies of a #1 New York Times bestseller
PUBLISHED
Journey — Twenty years in the making.
Testimony Africa — the terrible beauty of AIDS, genocide, and hunger.
Business @ the Speed of Thought, Bill Gates — promotional strategy
Wahl STORY — on the graffiti artist Erik Wahl.
Athletes in Action — a film that reached more than 300 million viewers during the 2010 World Cup
EDUCATION
B.S. Journalism, William Allen White School of Journalism, University of Kansas
EDDIE: The Untold Story of How Upside-Down Leadership Changed the World — shot and produced
RECOGNITION
TIME magazine "Person of the Year" — among the Ebola Fighters, Liberia, December 2014
Works shown on the main stage of TED
FEATURED IN
CNN · Good Morning America · USA Today · The Seattle Times · the cover of The Washington Times
SMITHSONIAN · Fast Company · Food & Wine · Science · GOOD · The Daily Beast
AT HOME
Grounded, and still curious.
I live in Colorado with my wife, Linette, and our four kids. Faith, family, time outdoors, and curiosity about what is happening around the world and its people are what keep me going.
Trail, boardroom, or a village at the end of a bad road. Regardless of where I find myself, the question is the same:
How can I mend the road then create a flywheel that compounds growth?
LET'S TALK DIRECTLY
Start the conversation.
If your organization is good at what it does but you are not sure what comes next and are in need of fuel for your mission, that is the conversation I want to be in with you.
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO
719.229.8559 | SEAN@SEANSHERIDAN.COM