Part of my duties in my new role in the state is to design the various exhibits we do overseas to promote Washington as a great place to do business. In many respects life has come full circle, since that’s what I used to do when I was in the corporate world before stepping into the alluring abyss known as self-employment.

None of my clients ever seemed to have a budget; certainly not enough of a budget to create the kind of marketing splash they really needed. So exhibit design took a back seat to other, more pressing needs.

My latest design for the state is stunning, I must say. Soaring jet wings rising above the exhibit floor with blinking navigation lights at the top; and a 30-foot  wall wrapping around in the center with the 100 year history of aviation and space in Washington State, from the first balloon flight in 1909 to the landing of Curiosity on Mars.

There was a time that this was going to be my full-time pursuit. I really loved doing trade shows and exhibits and walked away with Best of Show on more than one occasion for my crazy ideas that proved to be real showstoppers.

The coup de gras was my cruise ship. There, on the floor of the Washington State Convention Center was the deck of a cruise ship, down to the very last details of lifeboats and a daily schedule of shipboard activities that included showing movies such as the Poseidon Adventure. I love the little humorous details.

It almost proved to be the Titanic. Always one to find a good deal (the state’s exhibit costs taxpayers nothing by the way), I hired a local company in Seattle that was managed by a mother and her two sons, who I eventually came to dub the Moron Twins as they reminded me of the professor’s henchmen in the movie Splash.

The load-in was all day on Thursday. The morons didn’t arrive until 6 p.m. After loading in all their crap, they left for dinner. Two hours passed and they didn’t come back. Fearing for my job, I went into “cover my ass” mode and called in all my friends.

They all dropped what they were doing and came to my rescue. We went right to work, sorting out the stockpile of theater flats, accoutrements and what nots, figuring out what went where. This would have been easy, if we only had one booth. But no, I had created ports of call for our other subsidiaries, so we had to do a 20′ x 40′ cruise ship and five 10′ x 10′ countries in a single night.

Long story short, it worked out great. We completed them all just before the sun began to rise. Out of the ruins rose a true phoenix. We won Best of Show for the second year running.

Eventually the exhibit company returned to pick up their stuff. I had already shorted their project fee in the final payment because Mom and the Mighty Moron Twins had simply disappeared. Then they had the nerve to complain that we wrecked all their stuff. This went nowhere of course. We had a bank of lawyers, they didn’t. And we could have countersued for breach of contract.

But there was another outcome that was almost as intriguing. I had a good friend who was in the promotional item business. It turned out that her husband was something of an entrepreneur.

As I recounted the tale of the crappy customer service over dinner one night, Sue’s husband simply blurted out, “What if we buy the company? I would buy it and you could run it, Robb.”

I was 29 years old at the time. A major turning point in my life had plopped right into my lap. And I had a choice to make.

I knew nothing about running a business. I still don’t. Sure, I knew how to make theater sets out of raw lumber and muslin, largely because I desperately wanted to get laid. I know, this seems to be an ongoing theme in my life.

But run a business? How would I get clients? Who would I do all the construction since the deal wouldn’t include the Moron Twins? How would I price it all?

I thought long and hard about it. In the end, I stayed with Associated Grocers, only to leave under a cloud of uncertainty a year later. And three years later I started CommuniCreations, running a business, figuring out how to get clients, pricing projects and doing all the office paperwork and filings I was so reluctant to take on just a few years before.

It’s funny how things like this play out. I think I would have been a huge success designing sets for special events, fundraisers and conferences. I have a real knack for it. During the CommuniCreations years I even did a bit of it, creating the Treasure Room for our GENCO pirate event as well as the encampment while I was on the lam in Florida.

It was a short visit to an alternate life that never happened, largely because I was afraid to step out of my comfort zone, roll the dice and see what happens as the master of my own destiny. I could have been an exhibit magnate, creating show stopping facades and crazy themes with amazing results.

But as I step back from the romance of running a business where I could just create and build stuff, I am reminded of the fact that it really wasn’t my strong suit. I don’t come up short in the creativity department, but the workaday building thing, not my style. And I certainly would have never enjoyed the load in and load out stage, carting endless amounts of crap to and from one show to another.

I also know I wouldn’t have been able to handle those damned clients who watched me load everything in and then give me that look as I went to dinner. I would be so tempted not to come back.

In the Emerald City, wondering whatever happened to all those sets locked away in some barn in Palm Bay,

– Robb