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Sounds like the name of a movie about a horse, doesn't it?
Well, it isn't. This story is about one of my life's most remarkable characters - Shaya Romey. I first met Shaya in 1986 when I was speaking at a seminar in Chicago - at least that's what he says. I honestly don't remember, and since it's in the distant past, my memory is pretty accurate about those things.
It doesn't matter because I met him again 11 years later, in 1997.1 had just been hired by a consulting firm and was about to go on my first job. I would be working in Cincinnati with another good friend of mine, Dennis Orthman. From the moment I got there, Orthman began regaling me with tales of this dude named Shaya. He couldn't talk about him without either shaking his head in complete disbelief or laughing out loud.
Soon I met Shaya myself and I understood what made Dennis react the way he did. 1 would describe Shaya as a cross between Grizzly Adams, Indiana Jones, Timothy Leary and George Foreman.
The first day Shaya came on the job in Cincinnati he was wearing a leather zip-up jacket and an Indiana Jones hat. I kept looking for the whip and the little Asian kid with the New York Giants baseball cap. He had a full face beard and sported a pipe. I don't know what he smoked in the pipe, but it smelled so bad that one time after he had stayed at my house for a few days, my boys pulled me aside and made me promise never to let him smoke in our house again.
Whatever it was, he bought it in Cincinnati and had been doing so...