Success, a seven-letter word that represents a zillion different things to the billions of individuals inhabiting Planet Earth.
From being rich & famous, to possessing envious youth & beauty, success is an ideal that appeals to both individuals young, old, rich & poor. But success is a standard that only a handful of dedicated individuals are capable of achieving. So what makes this minority of successful individuals different from others who are unable to fulfill their dreams or desires? Is success a game of luck or does it involve years of hard work & planning behind the scenes?
To solve this million-dollar question on the cause for success, we will consider the life stories of three of my favorite Shark Tank investors :
ʀᴏʙᴇʀᴛ ʜᴇʀᴊᴀᴠᴇᴄ
Croatian born Businessman Robert Herjavec, moved to Canada with his family at the age of eight, with a single suitcase & only 20 dollars in cash. From the beginning, Robert’s life seems to have been “unlucky” in the conventional sense. He was a poor non-English speaking immigrant who could never achieve wealth or success for those who believe that great wealth can only be inherited from rich spouses or parents. Fast forward a few years, after a job as a waiter & being fired as the General manager at Logiquest, Robert founded BRAK Systems, an Internet security software, from the basement of his very home! Then in 2000, he went on to sell BRAK Systems to AT&T Canada for an epic 30.2 million dollars, granting Robert Herjavec the title of a millionaire. But this deal was no fluke, for Robert now owns the Herjavec Group, one of Canada's fastest-growing technology companies with $200 million in annual revenue. As Robert himself said, “Be good at one thing, then be great at that one thing.” And the journey to greatness involves practice, adaptability & the will to keep going.
ʙᴀʀʙʀᴀ ᴄᴏʀᴄᴏʀᴀɴ
At first glance, Barbra’s life seems to be one riddled with failures, she was ridiculed at school for being dyslexic & later her boyfriend (& business partner) left to marry her secretary. She then founded The Corcoran Group, a real estate firm in New York, which she sold to NRT for a whopping 66 million dollars in 2001. From selling real estate online & competing for a place on Shark Tank to rewarding employee efforts in her company, Barbra believes that her most phenomenal successes, in fact, happened on the hills of failure. As Barbra herself puts it, "I've learned to think of failure as a lucky charm, because the flipside of that is always the biggest opportunity." What matters is how we perceive & handle failure in our lives.
ᴍᴀʀᴋ ᴄᴜʙᴀɴ
Mark’s first rendezvous with business occurred at the age of 12 when he began selling garbage bags door-to-door, to pay for an expensive pair of basketball shoes. Fast forward, in 1999, Mark who was now part of Broadcast.com helped launch the first live-streamed Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Following which during the dot com boom, Broadcast.com was acquired by Yahoo! for a stupendous 5.7 billion dollars in Yahoo! Stock propelling Mark into the category of billionaires. Mark has always been open about the struggles & sacrifices faced by those who dare to become entrepreneurs & follow their goals, with hard times a part & parcel of the journey. As Mark himself says, “You gotta be willing to make those sacrifices on the road to success.”
Therefore, success is the engine that runs on hours of hard work, fueled by thousands of failures that lead to that one brilliant idea that finally works, & then the onlookers attribute your success to that imposter “luck”. I end with a quote by Zig Zeigler, “Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.” And identifying those opportunities takes hard work & sacrifice, & rarely ever is luck an integral factor.
