Jon Simmons, a successful Denver technology entrepreneur, drove his Toyota Land Cruiser along a dark, two-lane road in rural Wyoming with four or five beers sloshing in his belly.
“I thought I was this young, creative guy – a leader who was capable of rallying people around an idea,” he said. “All of a sudden, I find that I am capable of killing someone.”
Simmons was cutting loose on a fishing trip with friends that July night in 1995. At 11:30 p.m., a group of teenagers strolled along the road. He clipped one, ending the life of a 14-year-old boy.
Simmons, then 34, spent a night in a county jail, posted bond and went home to his wife and kids. At the time, he was founder and CEO of Interactive Planet, an Internet startup planning a merger and an initial public stock offering.
“It was a terrible tragedy,” recalls Lou Rubbo, who worked at Interactive Planet and is now a partner at a Centennial- based Internet security firm DirSec. “Everybody was very supportive of him.”
The promise of the Internet seemed limitless then. Interactive Planet’s planned merger would soon form a larger company called Navidec.
Perhaps if Simmons hadn’t been drinking, the accident might have been seen as the teenager’s fault. Maybe he stepped into the road at just the wrong moment.
“It became absurd to argue about those things,” said Simmons, now 45. “The point was that the boy was gone, and I was the person who caused that.”
Simmons grew up in Colorado and graduating from Heritage High School in 1979 and Regis University in 1992. His first job was working on computer systems at US West. He later worked as a sales executive at Tandem Computers. During his career, he accrued a valuable mix of skills in technology, sales and operations.
At Interactive Planet, he was a hard- charging entrepreneur, developing software and cutting deals. He was also a Christian who tried to walk a straight path. His lapse put blood on his hands.
“I needed to do everything I could that was right for the situation,” he said.
That meant pleading guilty to aggravated vehicular homicide. In court, he apologized to the victim’s parents. But an insurance settlement they received would not bring back their child. He served a year in prison, ending in 1996, and spent six months in a halfway house.
Simmons’ faith deepened in prison. He became a Catholic. He kept his job. And he helped complete a merger and an IPO from a prison pay phone. After serving time, he returned to the office at Navidec. Then in 1998, he became a high-ranking sales executive at Oracle.
One day, he met a young man who fell asleep at the wheel and killed his bride. “Every day, I wake up wishing I was dead,” the man told Simmons. Simmons confided that he felt that way too.
He left Oracle in 2003 to sit at home trading his stock portfolio. It seemed meaningless. In 2004, he started a business consulting practice, which appears to be a part of his ongoing penance.
“The real tragedy,” said Simmons, “would be not trying to turn (the accident) into something positive.”
This month, Simmons and business partners launched Cardo (www.cardolife.com) to provide business consulting services, executive coaching, seminars and self-help programs for consumers. He’s studied many popular self-improvement gurus – including Tony Robbins, Ken Blanchard and Stephen Covey – but finds them lacking.
“They’re all good, but they’re all wrong,” he said. “They talk about achieving goals, but they don’t ever say anything about taking the hard road.”
Cardo is a Latin word meaning hinge. For Simmons, greatness begins with one’s character – an idea from ancient Greek philosophers and the Bible. Fulfillment does not come from achieving goals or attaining material success, but from acting rightly.
What Simmons has learned, he hopes to teach to other business executives.
“The night of the accident created a challenge in me to act rightly, even in the smallest of situations,” he said.
Every moment presents another chance to make a right decision.
“We can teach you to be fulfilled when you stop at a stop sign,” Simmons said.
Al Lewis’ column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Respond to Lewis at denverpostbloghouse.com/lewis, 303-820-1967 or alewis@denverpost.com.
