Like those excess pounds around his middle, the reasons for change had reached critical mass. He wrote in his electronic diary:
I need to redesign myself, my outlook and goals. I have gone over the mountain. I have achieved the summit. What next? Where do I put my energy?
Here was the master inventor, the creative guru that America's biggest corporations turned to in a pinch to remake a product, in need of his own professional makeover. What did he want?
Hall's first thoughts on the subject weren't terribly original. Countless others in his place have sought salvation in adventure travel, charitable work, or retirement to family and hearth. In 1997, Hall pondered them all -- and turned to two.
In January of that year, Hall had gone on a dogsledding vacation in Minnesota, mushing from lodge to lodge. One night, while watching videos of explorer Paul Schurke's expeditions to the North Pole, Hall decided that he, too, might want to travel by dogsled and on cross-country skis some 200 miles and then stand on top of the Earth.
That idea was rattling around in his brain, when, a few months later, he read in the alumni magazine of his alma mater, the University of Maine, about the work of Russ Quaglia. Hall, a father of three, noted a considerable overlap between his own beliefs and those of Quaglia, director of the National Center for Student Aspirations, who'd identified and championed eight classroom conditions that motivated and educated students. (Among them: curiosity and creativity and fun and excitement.)
Like many successful entrepreneurs, Hall had previously tried giving back some of his newfound affluence. He'd donated Eureka sessions -- his company's idea-generation sessions -- to nonprofits, only to find that the organizations rarely acted on the ideas the workshops yielded. But this could be different, Hall thought. What if he worked with Quaglia and threw his marketing savvy behind the national education program?
Soon, Hall and Quaglia announced a campaign called Great Aspirations to promote Quaglia's center. The duo coauthored a syndicated newspaper column and got a designer to create a new Great Aspirations logo featuring a figure, telescope to his eye, following the path of a shooting star, standing atop the Earth. Never one to shy away from a big idea, Hall decided to link his two current passions. He'd sign on corporate sponsors and make his North Pole quest a fund-raiser for Great Aspirations. That way, he'd really have to go.
At about the same time, Hall also considered simply retiring -- shutting down the business and spending more time with his wife and kids. But not for long. "I'm not ready for the press box," he told himself. "I still want to play down on the field." He knew the field intimately. His cleat marks were all over its turf, and in his brand-everything-under-the-sun mentality, Hall would soon trademark the title on his next playbook: Capitalist Creativity. That was what he planned to call his new business niche, which involved turning everything he'd learned about generating and testing ideas into a systematic process that companies of any size could use. But he still faced his biggest, hairiest challenge to date: reinventing his own company from the inside out -- without squandering its solid reputation.
I am going to redesign this company. It will never be the same, Hall wrote in his diary.
Hall needed to significantly remove himself from his Eureka enterprise, stop operating it as a practice, and transform his take on Capitalist Creativity into a business. He didn't know it then, but shedding 40 pounds, increasing his stamina, and cross-country skiing with a 50-pound pack on his back across frigid ice fields would seem easy compared with his upcoming business odyssey: recasting an entire corporate enterprise. Especially his enterprise, which ran through him like blood through a heart.
Hall guesses he carried 80% to 90% of the Eureka new-product sessions and client stress. His employees agree.
Hall caught a couple of breaks, but as with much of what passes for good luck in life, he effectively set the wheel of fortune spinning himself. As it happened, at the time he decided to overhaul his life, he was getting ready to relocate his operation. The initial plan: move his family into the 29-room, circa 1840 Mansion, and -- just a Frisbee toss away -- create a Eureka Ranch. The new facility would have better lighting, better office space, an enormous great room for inspiring great ideas, and unifying southwestern decor to help set the maverick mood necessary for breaking new conceptual ground for clients.
I intend to make dramatic changes. The new building will be the starting line, Hall wrote.
The move, in late June 1997, was all of 82 steps, but it offered a helping hand: it set the company in motion and created a clean break to delineate the old days and the new ways. The Mansion, what was being left behind, was The Doug Show, where Hall called the shots and, he admits, "we sort of just did stuff." At the Ranch, he promised, everything would be different.
