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As entrepreneurs we are expected to be visionaries. To always look forward and create ideas and products that are far advanced for the future. It is expected of us. It’s almost in our blood. We move forward, we see the future, we create, we envision new innovative ways of doing, perhaps, the same thing. Except at Christmastime.

At Christmas, we dig through old pictures and look for things that make us feel nostalgic. I remember the days when my Grandpa Schoenborn would run to the window and tell all of us grandkids that he just saw Santa’s sleigh flying through the sky. And we would all run and look and I swear to God we would see it. I remember my Grandma Armock baking the most spectacular Christmas cookies and me eating them until I literally could not stuff anymore in my mouth. I remember going to my Aunt Janet’s every Christmas Eve and often there being a snow storm and we would all worry about “getting home before Santa comes”. I remember Christmas Day with the Armocks, and my Grandma & Grandpa Armock giving us $5 in a special envelope from Old Kent Bank. I still have one.

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I love being innovative. I love looking towards the future and all that it can be. Yet Good Lord, I miss those days.

I look back at times long past and remember wanting a typewriter (YES, a typewriter), that you had to replace the spool ink. You know, the kind that made your fingers get all black with ink because you could never get it in right? And perhaps, where you learned your first curse words? And my brother Rob wanted a record player, and it only played 45’s. And we would listen to those same 45’s over and over and over. And my brother Fred wanted a racetrack that my dad had to put together and it ran on batteries so the cars only, literally, went around the track a few times before the batteries wore out.

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Entrepreneurs need to be visionaries and look to the future, yet we also need to be reminded of our past. Christmastime is reflective, and meaningful, and reminds us of who exactly we are. And who we are meant to be. Let’s always look to the future, with a keen, and loving, and reflective eye on the past. Merry Christmas.

With love from Grand Haven,

Julie