Michael Davis (13)

[from Barnes & Noble website]
I was born in Tennessee and owe my love of storytelling to my father, who would tell stories of his life in the rural South to anyone who would listen, until his death at 92.

When I was nineteen I moved to California with all my worldly possessions in two cardboard boxes to study with a spiritual teacher who was forming a new age religion that eventually spread all over the world. Many within the group thought I would be the heir apparent, but in 1979 I left the group, disillusioned by the psychic tethers my teacher kept on his flock.

After wandering for a while in the wilderness of doubt and skepticism, a friend called and asked me to join a consulting firm that combined personal growth and leadership training. Over the next few years I learned to coach and train executives in communication, conflict resolution, and vision management.

Eventually I left the firm and started my own company and developed programs for adults (On Course), corporations (Communication For Results), and teens (Step Into the Future) that combined spiritual principles and commitment-based practices that produced real world results for thousands of people in the US and Canada.

I retired in 1995, and moved with my wife to a small farm in Northern California. One day the phone rang and it was an old friend who had taken our courses, and whose company we had worked with before he sold it. He asked us to join him in making the next big idea come to life. The idea was candles and everything related to living by candlelight. We called it Illuminations, and it grew into 80 stores, and eventually was sold to Yankee Candle.

At Illuminations I designed and wrote copy for some of our most successful products, including a line of Intention candles that Oprah featured on her TV show as one of her favorite gifts. I also wrote a book and candle set called Rituals: Light for the Soul, which was published by Chronicle Books in San Francisco and sold a respectable 30,000 copies.

I am now in my third retirement, although it doesn't feel that way at all.

My motto is this: Awareness itself is the teacher.

I live today in the mountains above Santa Barbara, California with my wife Paulette.