I am lucky for the time and resources to take this journey. I worked hard, but luck played a big part. Call it God, Grace or Karma, luck is an undeniable force in my life, and I hope it is in yours too.
Sometimes you need to work hard to be lucky. Take, for example, the recent sale of ETQ, the company I helped start. 30 years of hustle to create a Unicorn. For sure, the work was shared with the colleagues, advisors, and customers, but working with people is work too.
Luckily I love to work, but it took some extra luck to make this journey possible. An incomplete list of lucky contributions to my business success follows:
- Discovering a knack for software programming, quite by accident
- Meeting the right business partners, trustworthy through thick and thin
- Finding colleagues that were smart, skilled and passionate… and smart
- Finding the right advisors at the right time, and listening to them
- Finding customers that believed in us, and were incredibly patient
- The perfect combination of performance, market conditions and professional representation to secure the ideal buyer, a place where company, employees and customers, will thrive
Windsurfing, and sports in general, is also an example of luck following work. That incredibly lucky move, pass, win is only possible because of the days, months, years of dedication.
I‘ll add having children to that list. Hard work to raise them, then luck if they turn out to be beautiful people. My two daughters are beautiful people, so I was lucky there too.
My journey so far has been much like everyone’s, unique and varied. Born and raised in London from a French mother and British father, studied in Paris where I fell in love with my wife, emigrated to America where I raised my children and completed my career.
I discovered early on a passion for adventure. Childhood trips were very exciting. Or in the way my Jordanian friends translate the word very, these trips were too exciting. This left me with an insatiable appetite for a challenge, which has served me well professionally and personally.
Entrepreneurship is challenging. 9 out of 10 startups fail. If you have the strength to try again, you are likely to fail 3 times before succeeding. It takes work, and luck. But it’s an adventure; perfect for me.
Which brings me to today, thanking my lucky stars and all the people that helped to bring me that luck, setting off for my next adventure, something suitably challenging, both physically and emotionally.
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