When I wrote this post, I was thinking about what it was like when I was too busy with email and "stuff" eating every ounce of my time. My life has changed so much since we've actually "pulled it off" – creating a machine that really does help entrepreneurs automate their businesses. Even though we've got a long way to go, the fact that we've built what we have is truly an amazing accomplishment.
I say that to my team at our office all the time. Then I go home and say it to my wife and kids. After 12 years of really, really, REALLY hard work and risk, I can hardly believe that the vision I had for what technology could do for an entrepreneur, a family man, a start-up, a going concern of medium proportion… works to help make life better, to automate, to drive business - in short to be the entrepreneur’s dream: cloning their business vision and energy into the market. I always dreamed of a system that could just do all the stuff an entrepreneur needs to do while wearing all the hats and trying to keep up with the unique abilities that, well, make me an entrepreneur.
I've always had great ideas. I'm also pretty darn good at implementing them in the early stages. But, the follow up on the great ideas and all the "stuff" has always been a challenge for me. I'm a strategy guy. As a thinker I love abstract ideas and challenges. I can see the way things could be and I've always set out to do them. The trick is to actually carry it through, from abstract idea to concrete reality. I mean, we could all just be day dreamers if the pay was there!!
So to actually see this now work in my own life - to see hundreds of doctors, pharmacists, technicians and administrators on our platforms using them - well it's a bit overwhelming. Maybe even humbling. I've been lucky just to get this far and see that it "could be done!" The next big adventure is to actually get the larger part of the world to understand what we've created.
We posted all of the users we have on Google Earth so we could visualize them. 1.8 million people. The map looks impressive when user "dots" start forming the outline of continents with their presence on one or a number of our cloud platforms. As I look at that Google Earth map, I realize what a distance we've traveled from the basement of the University where I started the company. I realize how far I’ve come from the basement in my tiny home where I lived when I first immigrated to Canada with my two kids.
Those two I'm super proud of - my son, an honors student with distinction graduated this year and headed for his masters and a Ph.D. My daughter, a straight A student in her second year at McGill. How far we've traveled together - from our little house, as a trio of three immigrants to Canada (broke but happy - like immigrants usually are). Now, to see my other three little daughters grow up and see my "big kids" as grownups - I feel like a lucky man to be here. It’s not been without many sleepless nights, and those have not stopped. However, the big “if” is no longer hanging over my head. I no longer worry “if” I could find the people to build this, to do this, all while raising kids and building a new life in Canada… the wondering is gone. Now it's all wonderful wonder - I wonder what is next?!!
Perhaps the most difficult thing to do in life is to stop for a moment and look back at what we've done in our lives and appreciate the places we've been. Perhaps the second hardest thing to get used to is a new habit of how we can keep getting better in our lives - to get used to what we do better today, as being our new normal. I think we take these things for granted too many times. I thought a lot about this when I wrote my business blog this week "Are You Too Busy?" which you can see on our 1to1ME Social Space (wait until you see this launch next week - wow!). I thought about how much my life has changed, and how busy I am now in doing the things I love to do, rather than the "clutter" I've had to do to get here!
I was inspired to write again about what I believe is true for entrepreneurs and anyone who is regularly inventing their life, by the movie Invictus. In that movie, I learned that Invictus was a poem written in 1875 by William Ernest Henley - a poem Nelson Mandela recited to other prisoners while he was incarcerated for 25 years. This poem inspired me more than any other I've read since I was a young man in my 20s when I discovered "If" by Rudyard Kipling.
The poem Invictus has touched me deeply, as poignant prose of wisdom can. I understand all too well, the "journey" of life and how hard it can be travelling alone in the dark hallways of our lives, where the only light is the strength of our own convictions.
Henley's poem is below. I hope all who read it find inspiration and feel the power of these words to help them to stick strong to their beliefs and continue their journeys no matter what their challenges are.
Challenge is the stuff of life that makes us who we are. When the only question left is "can I accept that this is my journey?" you know that it doesn’t matter if others seek to cut you down, scorn your name, or seek to break you from what you can accomplish, you know that you are meant to be.
"Invictus"
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
