Two weeks ago, I was invited by local contractor, Billy Owens, to speak to the Tallahassee Association of Professional Remodelers at the Ole Times Country Buffet near Lake Ella. I didn’t expect to be greeted with passionate enthusiasm, but there it was — as down-home and honest as the Southern fried catfish.

At the end of our lunch, talk, and engaging question-answer session, Steve Peppers (pictured below) introduced himself. Almost immediately, he opened up and spoke candidly about his work, his family, and his views on technology.

As he went on, I knew he would star in an upcoming post. I wanted to write down every word. In the end, however, his point of view was so unique that I asked if he wouldn’t mind offering his verbal account in an email so that I could blog about it.

I expected a paragraph. What I received (the very next day) is the honest account of a man’s enduring battle with technology you see below.

Initially I felt the need to edit edit edit, but the more I grappled with the document, I realized I was losing Steve’s voice. In the end, I decided to leave the text as Mr. Peppers sent it to me in a Word document on February 19. I’m honored to have met Steve, and feel privileged to have permission to share his story with you.

So without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to Steve Peppers:

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Before I write about my meeting with Michael yesterday, I feel it important to give some background on myself.

I’m a 46 year old father of three children making my living as a contractor (glorified carpenter). I seem to have been just ahead (or behind, depending on how you look at it) of the curve as far as technology and the computer age are concerned. Out of high school before computers were used in education (the IBM selectric typewriter was quite hi tech at the time). During a stint in the USMC the punch card was still being used. Shortly after I had quite my first civilian job with Coca-Cola the drivers were trained to use computers that were used in the truck on the delivery route.

Well, I distinctly remember one of my high school teachers prophetic statement to the effect that we all would have a computing device in our homes during my lifetime (ha, I thought).  I can remember being slightly amused by Atari and them by the game asteroids at the local Jr. Food store, but I have fought against being consumed or even amused by any digital games to come along, except the cell phone.  I was furious when my cellular service provided “took away” my analog signal and forced digital.

So hard have I tried to hide from this new age that till this day I still use rabbit ears on my television and once again am furious that just this week my analog  signal has been stolen from me.  The children have never had an Xbox or Game boy (although they do have a small carry around, game device). I have tried to keep them busy with sports, music, camping, board games and the like. And as a glorified carpenter I have been mortified that at a point they may find a way to computerize my circular saw.

My daughter Lindsey was the first child to receive a cell phone when she was about 13 or so because “everyone else has on daddy”, although I fought hard against the texting option until she reached 15 of so, although that genie is now out of the bottle as she is 16 now and driving my car and texting her ass off (hopefully not while she is driving) like the rest of the worlds young people.

Now that you have my techno resistant background, I will write of my unlikely meeting with Mr. Calienes.

I am a member the Tallahassee Area Professional Remodelers, who are a small group of like minded dinosaurs like myself who have discussed the need to come into the new age of advertising/marketing but most of us pride ourselves in only “word of mouth” advertising because our quality work kind of speaks for itself.  In our round table discussions we had really not made much headway (blind leading of the blind).  I don’t know if it was fate but it certainly was a blessing when on of our members was hired by Mr. Calienes and at some time during that relationship the deal was struck that brought Michael to me, or us, should I say.

Just yesterday at a local resteraunt, Mr Calienes addressed the TAPR group to explain a concept that he called “presence engineering” (never heard of it? Me neither), the gist of this concept is that our businesses could benefit from the use of many online tools to create a digital footprint. As he started to speak I could feel the fear creeping in as my palms started to sweat as I fought to keep my eyes from glazing over (not really, the information was fascinating). As he spoke I wrote down the various sites such as facebook and others that he suggested we use to build this “footprint”.  Up until now I thought facebook was just something to fear as a father trying desperately to protect his children from (it’s a dad thing, much information out there about perverts and the like who might want to do harm to my baby’s).  We had only one young man who was currently utilizing many of these tools to promote his business and he seemed normal to me. We had discussion on how it seemed to us all that conventional phone book advertising was nearly a thing of the past with basically no ability to track the return on investment.  Some of the websites Michael discussed even have the ability for customer feedback. To curb the fears of my likeminded dinosaur buddies he broke it down to this simple concept…it all amounts to digital “word of mouth”.  Our time with Michael was far too short and I hope to visit with him more in the days and months to come but he did give me his ear, one on one for a while after the luncheon was over and I would like to share our conversation with you all.

I told Michael that just the day before at my daughter softball game that a previous coach (an under 30 woman) had told me that she was keeping up with Lindsey via Facebook.  Well, like to many other times ole dad found out that “by committee” information about said daughter was being purposely kept from me and I was more than a little pissed. I had even shown my ass a little (as we say in the south) to the wife just the night before.  And while I was at it I even brought up the overabundance of texting being done by Lindsey.  Well, I felt a little better having gotten it off my chest (and a sharp guy like me knows when he’s been whipped). I also shared a story of how my son Austin (age 11) amazed me recently when he helped me put together a proposal using photo I had taken of a storm damaged roof.  The young man knew not only how to attach the photos to the proposal but somehow used a yellow marker circling and drawing arrows to the damaged areas of the roof. I know your thinking I’m easily impressed or a real dumb hayseed (you’d be pretty close with that assumption). Mr. Michael Calienes of the company TRANSPLANT to help jar me to several realities.

As I sit here on this computer in the corner of my living room (as my high school teacher said I would) this is the most apparent reality. I have done a great job, loving, protecting and contributing to the successes of a beautiful daughter who is now a young lady.  I have a decision to make in this great digital divide.  I can either sit back, bitch, gripe and complain or allow these beautiful bright children help me understand and even train me in the skill (because it a skill) of the text, email, digital foot printing and the like because
WE AIN’T GOIN BACKWARDS!

Thank you for the opportunity to jabber. And thank you Michael for your time and expertise.  And feel free to contact me at stevepeppers1@msn.com. I do know how to open em up.

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Thank you, Steve, for sharing your story.

Thank you, Billy, for inviting me to speak.

And thanks to everyone from the association who attended. I hope to share more catfish with you in the very near future.

1. Sam Littlefield of Gutter Solutions & Waterproofing
2. Tom Ertl of Ertl Custom Homes, Inc.
3. Norandex Building Materials
4. Steve Peppers of Peppers Contracting, LLC
5. Gary White of Dream Homes Remodeling, Inc.
6. Rigsby Jones of Rigsby Jones General Contractor, Inc.
7. Greg Hensley of Greg Hensley, Builder
8. Jenkins Brick Company
9. Robert Janus of Robert A. Janus Commercial Contractors, Inc.
10. Bill Davis of Davis Construction
11. Chase McNeill of Keith McNeill Plumbing
12. Brandon Jett of Jett Builders, Inc.
13. Sonny Phillips of HR Phillips, Inc.
14. Ken Cooksey of Franklin Insurance Agency
15. Ed Dion of Dion Builders
16. John Cunniff of Power On, LLC
17. Destry Burch of Burch Companies
18. Linda McKenzie and Trish Sowell of Capital Floor Coverings,Inc.
19. Mark Ice of Audio Video Connections
20. John Rudolph, Attorney