front&center: Jeff Standridge

Acxiom vice president, author wants people to live abundantly

By Tammy Keith

Photo by Rusty Hubbard

Jeff Standridge of Conway, a vice president for Acxiom Corp., co-authored a book called The Abundance Principle: 5 Keys to Extraordinary Living. He and his wife, Lori, also are on the board for K-Life, a Christian ministry for students and their families.

ADVERSTISMENT

RIVER VALLEY and OZARK AREA — Jeff Standridge of Conway, who turns 43 on Monday, has figured out that his life’s calling is to “positively impact people.”

He’s finally come to grips that it’s not by being a rodeo clown, either.

The Acxiom vice president and author grew up in the small town of Glenwood in Pike County.

“My high school career desire was to be a rodeo clown,” he said, laughing.

It wasn’t too far-fetched. After all, one uncle produced a rodeo and another owned a sale barn.

But he played baritone, apparently well. He was in all-state band, and the summer before his junior year of high school he received a scholarship to band camp at the University of Central Arkansas.

Standridge attended UCA on a music scholarship and worked as a full-time emergency medical technician for Conway Regional Medical Center.

“I thought I was going to be a band director, then I really got into health care,” he said.

His dream became to work on the helicopter transport team - Angel One - at Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

He become a respiratory therapist and joined the team, where he worked full time from 1983-93.

There are two types of flights, he said, about 60 percent are neonatal intensive care patients and the rest are children who are critically ill or trauma patients.

“It’s hard to say it’s a great job, because you wish you never had to do it. It was a very rewarding job, and I have fond memories of that,” he said.

He said his fondest memory was meeting his wife, Lori,who was a neonatal flight nurse.

Standridge’s career path changed again when he joined the staff at the University of Arkansas at Medical Sciences teaching cardio-respiratory care.

He was a teacher by day and a member of the Angel One team on nights and weekends.

“Loved it. I absolutely loved it,” he said of teaching.

The S in Standridge might also stand for Superman.

He earned his master’s degree (in adult education/human resource development) and doctorate (in higher education) at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

“I really thought I would retire as a university president,” he said.

Then Acxiom came along “by accident.”

“One of the things in my professional life that always intrigued me - I joke that I crammed a four-year degree in 5 1/2 years - it always struck me that you had people who graduated college with B’s and C’s and they go on to be wildly successful and actively involved in their community. And some people with straight A’s struggled to keep a job,” he said.

The question he asked in his doctoral dissertation was “what differentiates star performers, if you will, from just average people, people who are just plodders?”

The answer he found: “Balancing two things ... the de-gree to which an individual can balance results and relationships. If I focus too heavily on results, I’m going to be very, very successful very quickly,” but people may be alienated. “If I focus on relationships and not results, I will lose the respect of those people who are my friends and will eventually lose both,” he said.

Standridge said Acxiom Corp. was asking the same questions in 1998. Skills in the IT world were changing so fast that by the time one could be identified and a training program built, it was obsolete.

He became a consultant for Acxiom in 1998 and was asked to work there full time.

“I walked away from really the only career I’d ever known, which was health care,” Standridge said.

Acxiom is about interactive marketing, he said. “We make information intelligent, we like to say. We help customers target their customers in a more sophisticated manner.”

As vice president of business operations, Standridge is in charge of the global work force strategy. He has set up service centers - employees who work for Acxiom - in Poland and China, and he flies abroad about once a month.

He went to China seven times last year, and that service center opened in October.

The second part of his job is global mergers and acquisitions, and after Acxiom purchased a company in Saudi Arabia, he had to go “usher it into the Acxiom fold.”

“I love my job. Acxiom is a great place to work,” he said.

Standridge, who graduated with 28 in his high school class, said it’s a pretty unbelievable job.

“It absolutely blows my mind,” he said.

But “travel loses its glamour pretty quick,” he added.

The economy and struggles of life are something he often addresses as a longtime adult Sunday school teacher at First United Methodist Church in Conway.

Standridge and his parents’ pastor, the Rev. Tim Kellerman of First Church of the Nazarene in Conway, meet for breakfast once a week at Bob’s Grill in downtown Conway and were talking about these issues a few years ago.

“I’ve grown up with what I call the clean-underwear doctrine -where Christianity is more about the way you die than the way you live,” he said. “As I studied more, I began developing this perspective that, yeah, once you’re in, so to speak, it’s more about the way we live.”

He and Kellerman discussedJohn 10:10: “The thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy; I have come that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly.”

“The next thing we know, we’re writing a book that was literally conceived in a booth at Bob’s Grill,” Standridge said.

Standridge and Kellerman co-founded a nonprofit organization called The Abundant Life Project and co-wrote The Abundance Principle: 5 Keys to Extraordinary Living.

“Quite frankly, we’re still looking around to how we can have the most impact; the crux is to help people develop an active faith. It’s one thing to go to church on Sunday. ... It should influence how we live Monday through Saturday,” he maintained.

“We have done a number of things. We received a letter a year or two ago from a preacher in India who had found our Web site and gotten a copy of our book,” Standridge said. The preacher told them he was traveling from village to village and had 300 people in his church and only 10 Bibles in the Telugu language.

Standridge and Kellerman sent 350 Bibles in that language to the man, who still keeps in touch with them.

The five keys to extraordinary living outlined in the book:

◊Master your thoughts and change your life. “That’s about attitude, the way you think. Emotions control our behavior,” Standridge said.

◊Plan your life and live your passion. “How many of us choose a career or major because that’s what we’re supposed to do and realize at 40 or 50 why we’re not fulfilled?

“As much as I hated to admit it, my calling was not to be a rodeo clown. I believe my calling is to positively impact people, and I have the ability to do that at work; I have the ability to do that at church; I have the ability to do that in every aspect of my life.”

◊Build and maintain strong relationships. “With instantaneous messaging ... we really don’t build relationships. We don’t write letters; we don’t communicate.”

◊No matter how much you earn, spend less. Standridge saidlast year more people declared bankruptcy than graduated from college.

◊Give more and you’ll live more. “It’s about giving and serving,” he said.

“They’re hard ... when you look at them on the surface you’relike they’re no-brainers,” but he said day-to-day life interferes.

“We (Standridge and Kellerman) say God’s not finished with us, yet. We haven’t arrived. We wrote about this topic because this topic was something we’re struggling with ourselves,” he said.

“What we really hope to do is help people reconnect with their faith and turn faith into action - to put arms and legs on their faith, so to speak.”matter of factFavorite book: The Bible Favorite movie: I don’t watch a lot of movies. I like Rudy. Inspirational movies Someday I’ll: Slow down and ... just slow down Something nobody knows about me is: That I wanted to be a rodeo clown My role models are: Certainly Christ is a role model; the apostle Paul; my parents, James and Ina Standridge; my pastor growing up, J.B. Evans My family: Wife, Lori; daughters, Katie, 17; Anna, 14 Worst habit: My worst habit is setting the bar really, really high for myself and others and expecting greatness. Always

River Valley Ozark, Pages 140 on 11/29/2009

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