Rebirth of a salesman

For 20 years, Bob Kamm sold new cars. Now he’s selling his idea for a new society.

BY KEVIN SITES

It’s a Monday morning in the 80s. He heads outside waiting for an "up." Someone. Anyone to walk on the lot.

In those days, there was no courtesy system. Every man for himself. A barroom brawl of a business. Straight commission. Not a dime guaranteed. You lived by your wits. Bob Kamm is thankful for his. Got more than most. Still, he’s selling Fords on that strip of Los Osos Valley Road, just off the 101. A maverick who quit high school his sophomore year. Worked for a press agent, lived on a kibbutz, traveled Europe, drove hack in New York City, sang folk songs in cafes at night. If there’s a soundtrack to his life, the first cut is Frankie singing, "I did it my way."

Right now, he’s a little concerned. Freshly divorced, he’s got custody of his kid. Needs the money. Kid is his life, Ben. Spends 20 hours a week with him at Montaña de Oro. Gathering driftwood. Shells. Stones. Stories. Afterwards they glue the driftwood and shells together. Make art. But better than that–they’re living it.

Some parents, he knows, justify the short spurts of activity with their children by attaching the adjective "quality" to the word "time." Kamm knows that’s not enough. His son, Ben, he’s determined, will have what he thinks he didn’t get. The full and undivided attention of a parent. Hen warming the egg. Waiting for the wonder that will come.

This will become his defining philosophy. No, his compulsion. His sales pitch. So simple it almost doesn’t register. In the overwhelming white noise of the information age, this is his whisper from the desert: Concentrate on the kids and the rest will follow. Kamm’s personal epiphany is a small variation on the "ounce of prevention" theme. That things can get better for American society if we build it right in the beginning rather than trying to patch it up at the end.

His life thesis

"Give your children great childhoods," Kamm says, leaning in over cappuccino at Linnaea's. "Focus the resources of the culture on supporting parents in giving their children great childhoods. If you want to spend less than a trillion dollars on health care in the next year, give your children great childhoods so they grow up healthy psychologically, healthy physically."

This life thesis, culled from his time with his son, ultimately led Kamm off the curb of the sales lot and into the maze of American social psychology. Prompted him to write "The Superman Syndrome" (San Luis Obispo: 1st Books Library, 2000, 248 pp., $18.50; available locally at Novel Experience Bookstore, SLO). In it Kamm theorizes that America’s upper and middle classes have embraced a poison paradigm: the mindset that our emotions and our families are (as Timothy McVeigh would say) acceptable collateral damage in the all-out pursuit of professional success. We are, Kamm says, so obsessed with becoming Supermen and Superwomen in our careers that we give up an integral aspect of our nature. That lack will ultimately destroy us.

"Being human is about feeling. Feeling leads to insight and wisdom," Kamm insists. "If we deny our feelings we block out the greatest passions of the soul. It’s through feeling that we actually understand what’s happening in our lives."

Superman equals super achiever, but in the extended metaphor of the book, Superman may be a man of steel on the outside, but inside he’s just another tin man in need of a heart. And while sometimes well-intentioned, our myopic pursuit of professional success to provide for the material well-being of our children while neglecting their emotional needs is screwing them up faster than you can say Ritalin.

Kamm makes the distinction: "It’s not the blue-collar, poverty-stained neglect we’re used to seeing on TV–although that is part of the larger picture. We see children who in the midst of material comfort, even indulgence, are experiencing a poverty of intimacy. They are severely underparented."

A recent report by the Society for Research in Child Development bears him out. The study of more than 1,300 children in 10 U.S. cities found that the more time children spend in day care before they begin school, the more aggressive and defiant they become.

"As time in day care goes up," says the author of the study, University of London psychologist Jay Belsky, "so do problem behaviors."

And according to Child Protective Services statistics compiled around the country, neglect, not abuse, is the leading form of child maltreatment in the country today. According to the Children’s Resource Center, a child-advocacy group, 70 percent of young people in juvenile court have a history of abuse or neglect; 70 to 80 percent of prison inmates have a history of child abuse or neglect; and maltreated children are more likely to become pregnant during their teen years, abuse drugs and alcohol, earn a lower grade point average, and have mental health problems than non-maltreated youth.

More examples from recent headlines: two more incidents of kids shooting other kids at school, plus a 14-year-old Florida boy sentenced to life in prison without parole. His crime? Killing a 6-year-old girl by copycatting wrestling moves he saw on TV. All reasons, Kamm believes, for business to create work environments in which parents can focus more time on their children.

Additionally, the Superman archetype sets up a win/lose situation for society, according to Kamm. Along with the parent-to-child domino effect of emotional sublimation, there’s a darker side, he says–we’ve become a nation of warriors.

"Nature becomes an adversary. Other people become adversaries. It becomes about conquering rather than connection. When that basic paradigm of our consciousness is about defining others as adversaries, what results is war."

He cites an example: the problem of illegal drugs.

"We define the problem as a war on drugs. We mount an army. We can only win when other people lose. We define the users of these substances as losers rather than embracing them as our brothers and sisters who are suffering and need our help. Instead we throw them in jail."

Primal therapy

Bob Kamm is an empath, no doubt about it. Desperately wants to be understood. A big guy. Fit. Eats right, runs a lot. Could bully you into change it if he wanted. But he knows that wouldn’t stick. Instead, he hugs you. Has no problem telling you he had a good cry at the end of a bad day. But it was a long journey that got him here. And definitely not an easy one.

If you look for psychological clues as to why people choose the paths they do, start here, but it’s more subtle than you’d imagine. No poverty. No abuse. No smoking guns.

At 15, just a sophomore, Kamm decides to drop out of school. He’s getting good grades but he’s bored silly. Besides, he doesn’t like his new high school. The family just moved from New Jersey to New York City, when Kamm’s father, Herb, a newspaper journalist, gets a new gig. Father and son nearly come to blows. But Kamm is firm. Sits out a year. Watches TV, reads, learns outside the norm.

Through Herb’s connections he gets a job at Rockefeller Center working for a press agent, Alan Sherman. He writes press releases and radio copy for comedians like Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healy. Gangly teen working under the same roof as the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes. This isn’t high school, it’s real school. Not the kind of stuff you learn in geometry class. After a year of this, Kamm goes to night school. Finishes three years of high school in one year. Graduates with the highest score in the Regents’ Program history. Tries college, Rutgers first. Drops out after a year. Then Bard College. Lasts another year.

"I knew how to learn already," Kamm says, "I wanted to live." He works construction long enough to sock away $2,000. Then he heads to Europe. "I wanted to be in an environment where I could be saturated with information." Travels. Lives in France for six months. He visits an Israeli information office there. Signs up to live on a kibbutz in Galilee, along the Syrian border. Here he digs ditches and fish ponds, plants avocados and picks grapefruit. At night he sleeps in a 6-by-9-foot shack. The hardest work he’s ever done in his life. But here he also learns the value of community. Families living and working together, rearing children together. A sense of simplicity and peace despite being surrounded by enemies.

After 20 months there, he faces a dilemma. As a Jew, he can accept Israeli citizenship, but would then have to join the army. The year is 1970. Things are volatile in the Middle East. The Vietnam War is still on. He’s also getting draft notices from the U.S.

He returns to America and some lengthy negotiations with the Army. Kamm will say only that an agreement was reached that he was not a good candidate for military service.

Instead he drives hack in New York City by day, performs as singer-songwriter in the clubs at night. He’s living a creative tornado. Writes 60 songs in two years. Between the cab and clubs he tries to process what kind of life he’s made for himself. Unorthodox by anyone’s standards. The strain of marching to a different drummer takes its toll. At the age of 26, Kamm has a nervous breakdown. Depression. It’s the 70s. The Rolling Stones are singing about "Mother’s Little Helper." Medicating would seem the easy answer. But Kamm’s not a guy to take the easy fix. There’s work to be done.

He heads to California to find Dr. Arthur Janov, the architect of primal therapy, which entails the celebrated emotional release known as the primal scream. But there’s more to it than that, Kamm insists.

"I was a macho guy. I didn’t know how to cry at the time. [Janov’s] Primal Institute gave me permission."

For the next two years Kamm works odd jobs in Los Angeles so he could actively focus on what he calls the "grieving process," learning how to feel again. The lost opportunities of childhood. While there, Kamm meets Linda at the Institute, a woman who’s doing the same thing. He gets her pregnant. Steps up to the plate. Marries her and begins a family. All quite by accident.

What can a man who’s lived on a kibbutz, driven hack and sung songs for a living do to provide for his family? Sell? Yes, sell. like his life (and others) depended on it. He sells his personality. Sells his ability to listen and empathize. At the Volkswagen dealership, cars fly off the lot.

Here is a seminal moment. The place where responsibility forces him into dark corners he believed were the repose of more ordinary men. Here reality and idealism meet headlong. From the ashes emerges a Phoenix of sorts. A Phoenix of improbability, rationalization, and opportunity. Here Kamm learns he has a gift.

"For the first time in my life," Kamm says, "I’m making real money." At the end of his first month he’s made over $1,000. By the end of his third, nearly $3,000. This gift provides a life for his family. Money in the pot. But more than that, for a man addicted to the examined life, Kamm, from his place on the curb, learns more about dreams and desires–the front-line human condition–than any Freud wannabe could from years of therapy. His couch is a showroom. He takes notes in his head. Sure to make a sale, but there’s more to it than that.

Bob Kamm, student of life, is not just another floor jockey in a polo shirt and comfortable shoes. His id is in overdrive. He feels for his customers. Trying to assuage life’s disappointments, trying to affirm life’s successes with the new car smell. They move to San Luis Obispo. Closer to Linda’s parents. Kamm takes the the selling Fords. Now comes the turning point.

The proof

The marriage goes sour. Problems of a young couple. Lots of them. That is how it ended. Kamm’s marriage. That is how it started. Kamm’s plans for a new society. Linda hits some rough patches. Kamm gets custody of 4-year-old Ben.

"I knew I couldn’t be both a mother and father to Ben–so I resolved to be the best father I could possibly be. "

He’s determined to give him an inconceivably good childhood, to make up for the wounds of divorce. What he calls a lyrical childhood. Filled with creativity, exploration, curiosity. Ben is not an obligation but an avocation. Bob is still selling cars to pay the rent, but the energy of his mind is going into rearing his child.

This isn’t the "Courtship of Eddie’s Father." There’s no Mrs. Livingston to nanny in the off-hours. It’s Bob and Ben. They’re tighter than a Bert Bacharach love song, closer than LA rush hour traffic.

"We spent a lot time outdoors," Ben says of his childhood. "A lot of time hiking around, discovering the natural world around us. Also reading. He read to me. We read to each other. Because of that, I don’t think I experienced a lot of the emotional and family problems that [my childhood] friends experienced. "

The proof? Today 26-year-old Ben lives in Northern California. He’s turned his love of the natural world, first nurtured by his father, into a business. Ben is self-educated expert in medicinal botany and the uses of native plants. Has a mail order business called Sacred Succulents. Also has a child of his own–a son named Shannon. Spends an enormous amount of time with him.

"I feel very happy and content in my place in life. I’m following my interest. I get to spend lots of time with the people I care about the most."

And this is the key. Simple in form, difficult in execution. A child reared not just with love but the full and undivided attention of a parent.

Selling cars. Selling plants. Like father like son. Finding time to make the world better by finding time for family.

The Storm

T.S. Eliot said of writing, "When the demons become unbearable, than you compose." For Bob Kamm, "The Superman Syndrome" started as a simple essay. He had moved from car sales into consulting. His success in the automobile industry led him to create the "LeaderOne" seminars, which one participant described as "the place where an individual’s emotional and professional life meet for the first time."

Kamm sent the essay to participants in the LeaderOne seminar as prep. A way to get them thinking about their lives. The response was overwhelming. The topic should be examined more completely, he was told. Make it a book.

Kamm listened. He wrote the first draft of "The Superman Syndrome" during one the great storms of the century, El Niño. Rented a house in Cayucos for a month just to write. Perched on the cliffs, 20 feet from the Pacific. Kitchen window looking over a flurry of wind and water. For him a flurry of type and thoughts. Storm out there, storm in here. In 28 days, 100,000 words. In a month, 400 pages.

"I was flying across the page. At that moment, during that time, I was the smartest I’ve ever been in my life."

All that had been stored inside him for his lifetime came rushing out in compound sentences. He wanted others to know what he knew. What he experienced. I have the answers, he said to himself. I understand. More timid men would keep it to themselves. Manufacture a nice life. Subtle smiles on their faces–happy at unlocking the subtle secrets of fulfillment.

Bob Kamm is different. Needed to make sure others knew what he knew. He was born to sell and now he’s ready to close the deal.

Life Lab

The Superman Syndrome is part memoir, part manifesto, part blueprint for a better planet. But what gives him the right to muse over such weighty universal truths–an ex-salesman who worked in the industry that gave us one of the greatest commercial fibs of all times–the sticker price? Where’d he get the moral authority, the clarity of vision to tell us what we’re doing right or wrong? Kamm doesn’t have that kind of sheepskin on his wall. No Ph.D. In fact, didn’t even finish college.

Judge Judy or even Dr. Laura, at least on paper, seem eminently more qualified to tell us how to manage our affairs. But Kamm argues that while others were doing what it takes to get their degrees, he was doing what it takes to get a real education. Student of Life. Rearing his son as a single dad. And despite the background snickers, yes, selling cars.

He learned a lot from watching people kick tires and shop for dreams in new car showrooms. He sold those dreams for 20 years, but never believed that, alone, they’d bring happiness. Today he’s off the curb but still selling, this time his ideas. It won’t guarantee a better life, but Kamm is positive it will get us closer than a new set of wheels ever could.

His ideas are not completely untested, either. In addition to his own experience with Ben, many LeaderOne graduates believe that the core principles embodied in "The Superman Syndrome" have not just changed their lives but perhaps saved them.

David Britton was working 65 hours a week as sales manager for North York Chevrolet/Olds, in Toronto, before taking Kamm’s seminar.

"Everything I defined myself with was based on achievement," he says. "That’s how I defined my success in life. It was not the enjoyment of doing something, it was how I could be the best."

Britton’s emotional repression had deep roots. His mother died of cancer when he was 17. His sister was murdered a year later. He says he put his emotional life on hold for 13 years.

"I completely shut down after these events. Lack of happiness. Strong societal mask, where I always felt I had to be more outgoing. Pretending like everything was wonderful. But I actually felt nothing."

After taking Kamm’s seminar, Britton says he felt liberated, felt he had permission to examine his life and feel. Not weakness, but strength. He cut back his hours, spent more time with his kids. In fact, Britton’s evolution led him to ask his employers to create a new position for him. Culture coach. A sort of ombudsman on the car lot, dealing with employee complaints, personal problems, etc. And that kind of progressive management has not just made employees happier in their work, but had a direct results on the company’s bottom line. The dealership doubled its sales in five years.

Mantra

If there’s a mantra in the book, in Kamm’s life, it’s this: You can’t live at depth if you live at speed. The challenges of the information age, the electronic leashes of cell phones and pagers, and being plugged in 24 hours a day can suck the emotional energy out of even the most dedicated Superman until there’s nothing left for family or self.

"We begin to live an outer life," Kamm says, "hollow and unfulfilling. There’s no introspection. No sense of self."

But the challenge of selling his message isn’t lost on the salesman. More than 50,000 books are published a year. Kamm’s isn’t easily classified. So difficult in fact, he’s more comfortable defining what it’s not rather than what it is. It’s not a business book. he claims. Nor self-help, nor exclusively memoir. One reader said the book’s thesis was almost an antithesis to business guru Harvey McKay’s best-selling book, "Swim with the Sharks." It could be aptly titled, "Swim with the Dolphins," said the independent marketing consultant.

"You write a book like ‘Who Moved My Cheese,’ a little allegory about change–it’s easy to promote and you can read it in about a half hour. My book has a texture of complexity. And to compound the situation," Kamm says, "I don’t have an obvious credential. I was concerned that some would pigeonhole [me by] saying, ‘This guy’s a car salesman, what could he know?’"

But maybe that is his credential after all. The hard sell, the close, still within his grasp, especially for something as important as this. Bob Kamm may have learned to swim with the dolphins, but he knows this is still a world full of sharks. And in a win-lose world you still have to know the local dialect.

"When people say, ‘you’re being a Pollyanna,’ one of the responses that might come out of my mouth at any given moment is, ‘hey, don’t talk to me about Pollyanna. I was in the car business for 20 years. I know what reality is. I know what it’s like to have your teeth kicked in and to have to pick your ass up off the floor and go to work without the promise of a dime being made without sweating and twisting it out of people. So don’t talk to me about the fucking real world. I live in it.’"

And with that, Kamm is still waiting for an "up." But this time he believes that if he can just keep you on the lot, keep you there long enough to hear his pitch–what he’s selling now will really change your life. Æ

Free-lancer Kevin Sites teaches broadcast journalism at Cal Poly.