The Big Event

“I’m an evangelist,” he says. “I want to tell people about Jesus.” He differentiates an evangelist from a witness: “All Christians are to be witnesses, but only a few are evangelists. A witness tells a jury what he knows.

An evangelist is the prosecuting attorney. I have to confront people.”

Ridgeway considers it an obligation. “If you were a doctor, and you didn’t tell me I had cancer, shame on you! I have good news that can save you for eternity. I have an obligation and a desire to tell you. This is the most important decision anyone will ever make.”

He won’t sell to someone who’s not in the market, though: “I never witness to people without asking their permission.”

“It’s Just as Easy to Think Big”

Ridgeway knew early on that he had an affinity for events. While he was enrolled at St. Cloud State University, he took an $80-per-month job as one of four grassroots political organizers on the 1970 campaign of Democrat Terry Montgomery in Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District. Montgomery lost, but Ridgeway’s ability to recruit and motivate volunteers, and his knack for creating big events with little lead time and even less money, had caught the eye of Hubert Humphrey’s people. He joined Humphrey’s 1972 presidential campaign, organizing students on college campuses.

From there, he went to work for several years as a traveling aide to Wendell Anderson, both while Anderson was in the Minnesota governor’s office and in the U.S. Senate.

Ridgeway spent a couple of years on contract as an advance man planning presidential visits and logistics for Jimmy Carter’s White House. But he declined a chance to work there full time, and in 1980 took a job heading government relations at the Carlson Companies.

Working with Marilyn Carlson Nelson, he says, “I learned that it is just as easy to think big as it is to think little.” Ridgeway helped Nelson organize a nine-month-long Scandinavia Today cultural celebration in 1982–83, a project backed by the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts. The culminating event included seven heads of state and was the first nonsports event to sell out the Metrodome.

He also honed his ability to meet the demands of an exacting executive. “[Curt Carlson] was a true visionary. I loved working for him,” says Ridgeway, adding, “My doctor told me I had aged three years for each of the almost seven years I spent there.” In 1986, he left to start Ridgeway International. Curt Carlson offered to triple his salary if he’d stay, Ridgeway recalls, but in the end said grudgingly, “I knew you would leave. I knew you were an entrepreneur.”