Super-John!

John Styers was a joyful and benevolent tornado…..if tornados loved punk rock and had precise opinions on how their english muffin should be toasted. 

With all due respect to the bearded man from Dos Equis - John Styers WAS the most interesting man in the world. He didn’t just light up a room, he electrified it. His charisma, intellect, and boyish charm would simply overwhelm everyone within a 100 foot radius. Rarely was John ever anything other than intense and gregarious and the sooner you came to terms with that, the better. To bottle John’s energy and enthusiasm for life would provide enough mojo to colonize Mars - and fuel the rocketship to get there.

John was also a royal pain in the ass. And if he was here he would likely just throw his head back and belly laugh if you’d just told him so. He was a complicated man. He was so good natured for everyone but was so larger than life that he didn’t seem to be affected by the human condition the rest of us deal with daily. At the exact same time you knew he would go to bat for you and loved you deeply and yet couldn’t possibly empathize with your position. His energy just steamrolled the obstacles that hounded and confounded the rest of us. And that was the frustrating part - you couldn’t have a normal relationship with John because he was abnormal. But he was also good. And he was kind. And he loved to serve those with his considerable powers. But he would have also just rolled his eyes at the fact that I just started two sentences with “And” as that’s not grammatically correct, after all - “It’s the only language we speak - might as well do speak it correctly.”

John was just as comfortable in a tense business meeting where million dollar decisions were on the line as he was crawling under, over, or into a beat up car. As CEO, his willingness to jump in and help was as startling as it was inspiring. And that’s one of the primary bylines of John’s life. He was willing to jump. Perpetually ready for “the action”, John was game for almost anything, anytime. When I’d walk into his office and say, “Hey John I’ve got a really crazy idea for you.”  - without fail his response would be “I love it! What have ya got?” That was how he treated every aspect of life. He was ready for the action of a new taste, trip, or experience. John squeezed more of the nectar out of life than anyone I have ever known. He found things that brought him joy and dove in head first without so much as checking the depth of pool he was diving into.

John had this knack for arriving just in time, and I mean within seconds of being late he would walk in the door and be ready to rock and roll. It was uncanny. He squeezed every bit of life out of every day. And that is one of the greatest lessons he taught us all. Enjoy the day and live it large, for none of us is promised tomorrow. John approached so many different interests and was fully invested in them  - depending on which circle you were in, you could think he was a car guy, a mobile guy, a theology guy, or a music guy. The truth was he was a mosaic of them all and many, many more. I loved that about John. He was a jack of all trades and master of most of them.

One time he was over at my house when I was installing some custom speakers my friend had built. John suggested some rocking songs to play that would really test the sound quality. He then asked my friend multiple detailed questions about how he built the speakers and what parts he used, and asked why he didn’t do a different strategy. When John left, my buddy looked at me, astonished and said - “Is John into speakers too?” I shrugged and said, “Honestly, I don’t know - he could have built his own back in the day or he could have been BS’ing...you never really know with John”. 

Many people were impressed by his considerable intellect and knowledge, but at his core he was a softie at heart. He was a teddy bear that would correct your grammar if you dared to end a sentence with a dangling preposition. But who he was - deep down - was quite tender. John would move heaven and earth to help someone in need and would do so on a regular basis. And he truly didn’t expect anything in return - he would do it because he wanted to help. His was a life of gratitude of perpetually “paying it forward” - he’d had a helping hand offered to him and wanted to reach out to assist those who were just needing one break to prove themselves and level up. 

John always, always wanted to help. It rarely even occurred to him to do anything OTHER than help anyone who needed a step up in life. He mentored countless individuals, including myself, and was always happy to have people tag along on his many adventures and then share his perspective. 

Getting to know John could be difficult, as he was almost always at least 3 steps ahead of everyone else in the room. For a guy built much like a bulldog, he was one of the most mentally agile people I’ve ever known. He could anticipate where the conversation was headed and steer it in an alternate direction without missing a beat or breaking a sweat. If I wasn’t so completely convinced of his desire to love and serve those around him I would certainly be wary of his considerable social prowess and power. The guy was damn near unstoppable. He’d ask you to do something that was crazy, and someway somehow you just couldn’t tell this teddy bear tornado….no. It was almost impossible - and yet most of the things he was asking of you would ultimately better you and many others.

With all of those powers, his kryptonite was emotion. Or rather the expression of emotion. With all of this love and care for those around him and that bald noggin of his smarter than the next 5 people combined he struggled mightily to understand how people made decisions based off of emotion. He couldn't fathom that someone would just need to feel and then make their choice. Even though he did the very thing regularly. It made it difficult to get intimate with this moving orb of energy and enthusiasm because he struggled to validate and walk through the emotional side of those he loved. It was something he was working on in his final years, becoming self known in that regard. 

On one occasion during a particularly brutal couple of months with our struggling tech startup that he founded and was CEO, he was a bit off for the better part of a month. We went out to breakfast as our way of trying to problem solve and find a way out of the mess we were in with the company. He was trying to articulate how he was feeling, and he said that he ‘felt like there was some sort of poison or something in his mind and heart’. He was describing mild depression - but even in depression he was somehow endearing. He looked befuddled as if Superman somehow couldn’t muster the strength to fly and couldn’t comprehend why. And yet, as always, he found a way to get his cape back on and leap tall obstacles in a single bound..

John also had this interesting glitch that many high powered people have - his brain moved much faster than his mouth ever could. It made him an awful communicator at times, for he thought about saying things and never got them out of his mouth before he bounded to the new topic in his mind. On more than one occasion he would look at me quizzically and say, “Did I tell you that or just think it?” - that boyish charm yet again kept me from wanting to ring his neck for calling an audible on me.

In spite of some of his glaring weaknesses, John impacted my life and countless others by simply being willing to step into the batter's box of life and swing. Even if he had struck out dozens of times in a row before - he was convinced that if he didn’t figure it out immediately he would do so eventually. That was one of the greatest gifts he could give all of us that knew and loved him. The willingness to get up after you’ve failed and try, try again. 

John will be missed but it will be a long time before he is forgotten, for his impact was so great. He taught us to grab life by the horns or whatever appendage we could get ahold of and go for one hell of a ride - and doing your darndest to help those who come along with you. It was a life not only well lived but lived for a greater good. He showed us that we didn’t have to live the perfect life in order to live a damn good one, and that sometimes by being willing to accept what twists and turns life throws at you any of us can live a life extra-ordinary - just like my dear friend John did.

-Andy Vaughn