From Liberal Arts to the World -- October 2008 Interview (prepared by Karen Sullivan-Vance)

“In my opinion, an opinion I’ve stated elsewhere, the people who are best suited for the Internet service industry are people focused not on software, information management, or marketing only, but on the liberal arts as a whole…

Liberal arts students are able to see the forest for the trees and have minds supple enough to understand that the Internet is more than just a software development platform, more than just a vast collection of ever-changing bits of information…it is a cosmos unto itself--an economy, a library, a social network, and so much more that we can only guess at.”

Jayson Jarmon, CEO, The Lux Group, Inc.

Thinking and Doing, Lux Blog 

Renaissance Man

The definition of a Renaissance man is a cultured modern man that has developed profound knowledge in multiple fields. Entrepreneur, writer, musician, teacher and visionary, Jayson Jarmon is a Renaissance man. A product of a Liberal Arts education he exemplifies the best of the artes liberales canon. He is a graduate of the University of Puget Sound , with undergraduate degrees in English and Education and a Master of Arts in literature from the University of Washington . Jarmon is a strong proponent of the value of a Liberal Arts education.

Jarmon began his career with an editorial position at a natural history museum, and then proceeded to work for Microsoft. He served as a product manager in the Microsoft Systems group and as a project lead in the Desktop Applications Division. In the mid-nineties the potential for web site development was unrealized. Corporations were focused on networks, and initially did not see the value of internet/web site development. Jarmon’s ability to see the opportunities available with the internet was nothing short of visionary. Like something out of a fairy tale, Jarmon and his friends chipped in $500 each for the low combined start up costs of $1500 to begin their first company, Saltmine. His first account was to put together the initial web site for the global corporation British Petroleum (BP). Along with his partners, Jarmon built BP’s first web site from Seattle , never having been to England , nor meeting the clients face to face. Many people would have folded at the enormity of such a request, but Jarmon’s belief in internet development and, more importantly, his ability to see multiple connections and strands of thought mixed with a dollop of chutzpah allowed him to deliver a first rate web site, and, with it, Saltmine was on its way.

At its peak, Saltmine had offices in Seattle and Bellevue , Washington , Chicago and London . Jarmon’s energy, vision and client-centric work ethic had BP asking Saltmine to create a London office to more fully meet BP’s needs. In ninety days, Saltmine had an office up and running. The London office established a European headquarters for the company, providing existing and new clients with internet development and design services.

Saltmine was the first US internet development company in London . During Jarmon’s tenure as president and CEO, Saltmine generated close to $100 million dollars in revenue. Under Jarmon’s direction, Saltmine grew to employ over 600 people whose clients included organizations as diverse as BP, Microsoft and the PGA Tour. In 1998, Jarmon and his co-founders, Ben Thompson and Pete Gerrald, received the prestigious Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the year award. When asked at the award ceremony of what accomplishment he was most proud, Jarmon responded, “…the most important thing is being able to provide healthcare for 1000 people (employees and their families)”. In the days of obscene corporate “golden handshakes” for CEOs, it’s refreshing to actually hear one being concerned about the welfare of his employees. Indeed, Jarmon and his partners have made it a point to eschew venture capital or going public. They have built their business the old fashioned way, growing it by reinvesting operating profits. Monetarily, they could become much wealthier if only they did not have so much darn integrity.

In 2001, Jarmon sold his interest in Saltmine and started his current company The Lux Group, Inc. with business partner Ben Thompson. Lux, known for its motto creativity & technology , is a global service partner for web sites, multimedia, intranets, print design, identity work, software and database development, and content services. The Lux Group, Inc. continues the innovative visions of its CEO, Jayson Jarmon.

Jarmon graciously agreed to an interview with Karen Sullivan-Vance, Director of the Academic Advising and Learning Center at Western Oregon University , during which he shares his thoughts of Liberal Arts education. Conducted over several days via email, he talked about the value of liberal education from multiple perspectives: entrepreneur, student, man and father.

KSV: Who inspired you in college (family member, professor, writer or)? How/why did they inspire you?

JARMON: There wasn’t a particular person or a professor or a writer per se, although I did have a number of wonderful and pleasantly eccentric profs who really made the experience entertaining and worthwhile. The truth is…I had sort of an epiphany. Well that’s a pretty strong word for it I suppose, but you be the judge:

On a May evening during my freshman year, I found myself ambling past the music building at the University of Puget Sound . I had just seen a production of King Lear, and music was leaking out of the building…different students playing different parts, sort of like an orchestra tuning up. It was chaos, but a delicate chaos that floated lightly on the air. Across the quadrangle, the library was blazing with light. I stopped in my tracks to take it all in.

It was an enchanting moment: Shakespeare in my head, music in my ears, the warm light of a library. It was a very rich experience, analogous, I think, to the intellectual and sensual variety that informs a liberal arts education. Where else can you draw these varied elements together…where else can you literally walk into that kind of scene? I was sold then and there.

KSV: Did that experience solidify your belief or did it become the foundation from which others added to it?

JARMON: It was foundational, in truth. I think professors stoked that flame, bringing currency and relevance to the written artifacts on the page…collapsing the temporal differences between William Blake and where we are today, for instance.

During my college years I was also helping to put myself through school by playing weekends in casual bands around the Puget Sound . We’re talking four hours a night in every animal lodge from Bellingham to Raymond. I was as impressed by the lyrical poetry of Hank Williams as much as the lyrical ballads of William Wordsworth. It was just a great big blurry melding of all of these different things. It was weird and wonderful.

KSV: Are you a first-generation student? If so, were your parents/family supportive of you majoring in English or more concerned that you were following that path?

JARMON: Yes, I am a first-generation college student. While my parents were guardedly supportive of my choice, they were no doubt privately concerned that the study of English would lead inexorably to alcoholism, poverty, and an anonymous grave. Mom always insisted that if I were to study English, I would at the very least need to have a teaching degree so as to be useful, or, rather, employable . Oddly enough, I could never find work teaching, but it was the study of English writing and literature that lead me to an editorial position at a natural history museum, then onto Microsoft, and ultimately onto 15 years of entrepreneurial ventures. When I won an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1998, business school colleagues opined that I must have earned my MBA “on the street.” Well, I think I earned it in that blazing library…

KSV: What did you do in college that prepared you for the work world (curricular and/or co-curricular?

JARMON: I immersed myself in everything I could. It occurs to me that there must be something like intellectual multi-tasking…not tasks per se, but ideas. It’s the most overwhelming and the most important thing about Liberal Arts--you need to lose yourself in studying without regard to the structure of particular disciplines or administrative boundaries…My thinking was, “Hey, let’s get lost in all of this.” The idea of a mixed class schedule where you need to hold all of those ideas in your head simultaneously breaks down disciplinary walls and allows novel approaches to problem-solving.

You can see the effect of it in the faces of punch drunk freshmen when they arrive back home at Thanksgiving time. Within a scant two months, otherwise stable young people return to mom and dad as Marxists, vegetarians, poets and philosophers. Kids who had been talking about sports and who’s dating whom, return home talking about the “mind/body problem” and the obscenity of profit.

They are just letting go intellectually. Perhaps for the first time.

And by letting go, you come to see the value of ideas. You learn how to synthesize unlike things into newer, better things. You reconcile opposites. You see the power of language as well as the seductive beauty of novelty.

There is no better preparation for the so-called work world than by expanding the options of your own understanding and exploring the art of the possible. While I’ve never been to business school, I am reasonably sure they don’t teach that.

KSV: Do you think that the academy does a reasonable job of breaking “down disciplinary walls” which leads to creative ideas, or does it expect students to have epiphany moments such as yours in the quad? Do you believe that your life is richer because of your understanding of the Liberal Arts?

JARMON: Well, there are different types of people. In my business (internet development), there are developers who think logically, and algorithmically, moving from point to point. Then there are people who are more distributed in their approach--drawing information from many sources, culling ideas from strange places in unanticipated ways. Different ways of thinking, even different personalities. I imagine that someone who takes a linear approach to problem-solving prefers a more rigid and organized approach to things. They would see my behavior and thought processes as erratic. I think both of these modes of thought are valid and important; each approaches problems in different and useful ways. I happen to think that my life is richer from making all of the leaps and jumps, but I understand that it is not for everyone.

I believe the future lies in breaking down boundaries. As far as the academy is concerned--while I understand there are organizational realities in the university (which are also manifested in the professional world), I think dissolving the boundaries to the extent that is possible is a good thing. How does one get a complete picture of William Blake for instance? Was he an engraver? A poet? A visionary philosopher? Do I have to divide my thinking into English, Art History and Philosophy? I argue that something is lost there. If you go and look at the actual Blake works at the Tate Britain and elsewhere, you soon realize that it is the interplay between all of the elements that creates a different synthetic and important meaning is not always discernable from the parts dissected across the different disciplines.

One small professional point on this--I deal every day with clients from all kinds of industries: consumer brands, manufacturers, politicians…the whole gamut of things. I feel sometimes like we’re the corpus callosum connecting the different parts of the brain: there are practices I learned from Microsoft that are unknown to BP…BP’s way of doing things is unknown at Cray Super Computers…Cray’s practices come to bear on others. None of these connections can be made without breaking down the boundaries and muddying the waters.

KSV: If you had to do it all over again would you still major in English or change to another major and why?

JARMON: Given the opportunity to do it all over again, my major would still be English. Literature is History improved by Art, Math improved by metaphor, and Social Science improved by rich personal experience…I can’t imagine creating a business, managing people, or positing fresh ideas if all I had to rely on was a professional school.

That having been said, if I had the time and the money, I would try to knock off every subject that I could, including business school, to immerse myself even further in things. I wish there were better ways to break down interdisciplinary boundaries; that’s where the future lies.

KSV: What are the most important skills students should possess to successfully transition to the work world?

JARMON: There are so many, but let me touch on the ones I have seen to be most important:

Written and oral communication -- Business writing is the lifeblood of the workaday world. You must be able to collect your thoughts, structure your communications, and convince others. The outward flourishes are unnecessary in this, as Shakespeare used to say, “brevity is the soul of wit.”

Working as part of a team -- Otherwise intelligent and socially adept people belly flop in business when they can’t work in a team environment. Yes, that means all the things they told you about teamwork in Little League are actually true. I used to hate group academic projects where the team was only as strong as the weakest member. But now I realize that much of the world actually works that way.

Being a “Swiss Army Knife” -- Employers hire for a particular skill set, but after they’ve made the hiring decision, it is the generalists who go further within the company. Knowing your job, other people’s jobs, the price of tea in China …these sorts of things as well as varied skills (writing, speaking, being able to present in front of clients and managers, etc.) will take you much further than the initial job interview. Luckily for liberal arts students, a varied arsenal of general knowledge can go a long way after the first impression.

KSV: What do you look for in employees (qualities, experiences, skills, etc.)?

JARMON: See above. Those things as well as the particular skill needed for the position. All things being equal, the company will be healthier if it hires a SQL Developer who knows Chaucer than one who does not. Supple minds respond better under business stresses, and well-rounded people create a corporate culture that values knowledge as well as technical skill.

KSV: In what ways did your university education not prepare you for the work world?

JARMON: That’s a great question! I think that the education system in general, all the way back to k-12, does very little to help us understand entrepreneurial business fundamentals like the following:

• Reading profit and loss statements
• Balancing budgets
• Reacting to economic adversity
• Monetizing ideas, goods and services

I think that students who need strong writing skills the most (business students, for instance) are the most apt to avoid the classes that teach them. You cannot write well unless you are well-read, so the Economics majors need to hit the books. How does Marx make any sense if you haven’t read Dickens?

On a personal level, I think that Liberal Arts colleges need to rally around their students and provide them with more vocational assistance. In the same way that professors hope for intellectual epiphanies, many administrators hope their students will simply find the shining path to employment by sheer serendipity. I wonder if Liberal Arts schools have an unconscious inferiority complex they pass on to students re: the dirty business of making money…feeling superior to the business schools and fearing the “real world” at the same time. I saw this paradox in grad school where students were above all the money-grubbing, and at the same time desperately curious about how much money they would make if they bagged the whole thing and got into law school.

KSV: Do you think students should have the opportunity to develop a working knowledge of business skills that will help them in the future, along with whatever major they have chosen?

JARMON: I wonder if I would have balked at the idea of business education during my undergraduate days. It was only later, after I had been involved in entrepreneurial business, that I saw that it was creative…in some ways the most creative thing I had ever done. Knowing this, there must be some way to add these skills to a well-rounded student’s education, for self-preservation, if nothing else. For instance, there’s the business of getting through school itself: student loans, structuring debt, creating and maintaining budgets. Being a student is just like being an individual proprietor. Then there’s putting together your “brand” as it were--how you comport yourself, how you sell your ideas, how you put yourself forward. All of these transferable skills are developed during one’s time at school, but the student is, once again, expected to pick it all up by osmosis.

KSV: Do you believe that your Liberal Arts background gives you an edge in business?

JARMON: Unquestionably. It’s like learning multiple languages when you’re young—if your mind is made supple by cross-disciplinary efforts, by taking in as much of the canon as you can take in, by mentally juggling all of the diverse ideas that a liberal arts education offers, then learning the rudiments of business is just another flavor. It would probably be harder to approach it the other way…I wonder if you could take a businessman with no liberal arts background and introduce them to literature. It would be an interesting experiment. Then again, maybe they’ve lost their opportunity. I think many have been taught to devalue the humanities as the “other” and can’t fathom how that kind of education would be useful. I argue that it is fundamental. Above all, business is a social science: how do your competitors and clients behave, what do employees need, how do you innovate? It’s clear to me that there is no better way to understand humans than to study the humanities.

KSV: Does your company intentionally hire Liberal Arts grads or is it more a by product of your company culture?

JARMON: It’s probably a little more complex than that. The fundamental principle in good hiring practice is mutual benefit. Employees and employers should have shared expectations and both parties need to feel they will benefit from the relationship over time. There needs to be a blend of interests. So, companies, including mine, look for candidates that will make them money. Employees look for companies that will make them money and further their careers. The relationship lasts, thrives or dies on the basis of that ongoing equation. My goal therefore, is to find the person that is best-suited to the position at hand: if we need a database development person, we’ll look for that. If we need an experienced manager, we’ll look for that. But here’s the rub: with all matter of technical skill and background being equal, liberal arts graduates tend to be better spoken, better able to communicate, tied into the broader culture of arts and ideas, more likely to produce novel solutions to problems and on and on. Companies need people who can think.

KSV: What advice would you give your child about pursuing a Liberal Arts degree?

JARMON: Acquaint yourself with the works of Dante, Shakespeare, Dickens and Darwin: you will find everything you need to know about your future business associates there…particularly in Darwin …

Seriously--my advice would be rush forward and immerse yourself in the great Liberal canon. In so doing, become proficient in clear written communication, rhetoric, and plain logic. Observe that we create new realities by merging opposing ideas, and that there is no “right” answer, but an ongoing dialogue. Emerge from school knowing that even if you aren’t going to write the great American novel you are going to be able to talk, think and act responsibly. It is harder to create your own future than it is to follow the well-worn groove from school into law, business, or medicine…but none of those doors are closed to you either. Be prepared to face the possibility that you may need to live on Top Ramen for a while, but you will find your way, or, rather, you will make your own way.

Conclusion

Jarmon’s Liberal Arts education provided him with a solid intellectual and creative foundation to go out into the world and apply those skills to entrepreneurship. His ability to intellectually multi-task and synthesize connections between opposing ideas fostered his entrepreneurial pursuits. What is unique about him is that while he is innovative and progressive as an entrepreneur, a part of him is deeply rooted in the tradition of the Liberal Arts. After all, how many CEOs quote Shakespeare in their company blogs? Cynical individuals might consider this a pompous affectation, but they would be wrong. When discoursing with him it is quickly apparent that he is brilliant and genuinely loves literature, art, music and language. His ability to think tangentially allows him to see the possibilities that lie ahead in his field. The ongoing synthesis of diverse ideas insures that he will continue to be a visionary.

Pithy, witty, self-effacing, with a razor sharp intellect, and a charming ability to laugh at his own foibles, Jarmon is incredibly modest about his remarkable accomplishments as an entrepreneur. If we stopped right there, those achievements would be enough, but Jarmon is also distinguished in other areas. He has served as an adjunct faculty member of the University of Washington , teaching technical project management, sharing his expertise and knowledge with a new generation of student entrepreneurs. Jarmon also generously volunteers his time to talk to students about careers in his field at both his undergraduate and graduate institutions.

In addition to teaching and volunteering, Jarmon has a musical project called Vanilla, which he records and performs with. He has been a fixture in the indie pop music scene in Seattle/Tacoma since the late eighties recording first with his band Liar’s Club and now with Vanilla. The album is at the caliber that Jarmon seems to approach every aspect of his life — excellent. The current album has gorgeous melodies, with alternating hilarious, poignant, biting, questioning, lush lyrics dealing with adult issues of love, loss, regret and overindulgence. The up beat tempos, however, ensures that listeners will have a great time. It is no surprise that Jarmon writes the lyrics. They are, quite simply, poetry. The only issue is they need to produce more albums.

During the interview I brought up the idea that Jarmon was a Renaissance man. He scoffed at the notion, entirely in keeping with his self-effacing personality. To him, how he lives his life, is perfectly ordinary. As academic advisors, what more could we ever wish for our Liberal Arts students, that they live the canon, embrace it and use it in their daily lives?

Entrepreneur, writer, musician, teacher and visionary, after conversing with Jayson Jarmon, I stand by my assessment. He is, by every definition, a Renaissance man.