ABOUT
A different chair.
The same mission.
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 SHORT VERSION
IF YOU ONLY READ ONE THING
I help good organizations turn a moved room into growth that compounds.
I started a company in 2002 with a camera and a plan to tell true stories well. I have run its P&L ever since, through three economic shocks, as the only person on the payroll.
The work took me to ninety-nine countries, most of them on somebody else's worst day, and into the donor rooms and boardrooms where the money that answers those days gets decided.
So the work now is this: I come alongside a CEO or a board, find where growth is leaking, and build the strategy, the relationships, and the next steps that close it.
I am not a coach.
THE BEGINNING
I learned how to find the iconic image and story.
A camera opened the door. Refugee camps, disaster zones, villages at the end of bad roads, and I quickly learned that the real story was never the one on which I was briefed.
Finding it is a discipline, not a gift. That is the skill I still sell. Not the camera so much, but the willingness to keep looking until the true thing shows up.
CLASS OF TIME'S "PERSON OF THE YEAR" · THE EBOLA FIGHTERS · LIBERIA, DECEMBER 2014
WHAT I CARRY FORWARD
I learned who actually signs the check.
For over two decades I made the images and films shown at major-donor events and the content that carried commercial launches. I watched a lot of rooms get moved. I also watched what happened next, which was frequently nothing.
The people who can materially change what is possible are not moved by volume. They are moved by being asked well, by someone they already trust.
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 always 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 and you are not sure what comes next, that is the conversation I want to be in with you.
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO
719.229.8559 | SEAN@SEANSHERIDAN.COM