About

It’s tempting: part of me thinks I should write this section in the third person, to make Sodcutter Communications sound like a firm, a real outfit, a dynamic, bustling organization with a cool office. But I’ve promised clarity and consistency, and that seems to require a realistic, honest presentation of what Sodcutter has to offer. So here’s the story:

My name is Tim Kern. I work out of my home in Seattle, with help from my wife. My goal is to eventually spend most of my working time writing – most likely in a genre I like to call “socially aware non-fiction humor.” The fact that I’ve decided to write, however, does not create or guarantee income, nor does it slow down the arrival of my daughters’ first college tuition bills in a couple years.

Let’s back up a bit. While I’ve long loved the idea of writing, I had a very steady corporate job for over 20 years, at Starbucks Coffee, where I had the totally unexpected treat of a front row seat, watching a little coffee roasting outfit become a global brand. The work I did there, which was a combination of operations, coffee and tea expertise, teaching / training, marketing, and communications, was for the most part richly satisfying and of the once-in-a-lifetime variety. I was present for the creation of Frappuccino® (both blended and bottled), Starbucks Ice Cream, many new coffee and tea products and the early work on Starbucks VIA® instant coffee product. I even got to work on Mazagran, the now famous-for-failing carbonated coffee drink. A large part of my role was helping the company develop programs that helped employees and customers understand these new things, primarily through dynamic training programs and storytelling.

But then, in the wake of the global financial crisis that struck in 2008, like so many others at Starbucks and all over the world, I lost my job in one of several rounds of layoffs. Interestingly, I had taken my “Career Coffee Break” (an unpaid sabbatical) during the second half of 2008, which gave me time to begin preparing for a future I hadn’t planned but for which I am now very grateful.

So to my life after Starbucks, I bring an extraordinary reputation for problem solving, personal integrity, communicating creatively and a great sense of humor. As I’ve thought about my remaining productive working years, I’ve had the luxury – thanks to good advice from great friends, a measure of financial security and an absolute fear of doing meaningless work – of defining how I want to spend my time. And that’s what Sodcutter Communications is about: there’s a lot I want to do, a lot of stories I want to tell, and I’ve come to realize that the way to do those things is to spend time working on things I care about and helping others succeed.

To learn more about what I do and how I do it, take a look at the Strategy and Pledge sections of the site. There is also a Sodcutter Blog, which will give you a sense of the things I care about and how I communicate. Or just drop me an email with any questions.