The photo is me on New Year’s Eve 2001. I’m smiling. Why wouldn’t I be? I’m living the dream. On board our sailboat Dragonsinger living in Port Vell in Barcelona. What you can’t see behind the smile, but which I see in my eyes, is that I’m loaded.
Listen as coach, leader, legacy builder, and podcaster Lois Sonstegard interviews me on her Building My Legacy Podcast where we talk about these issues that impact your legacy as an entrepreneur:
While I was still a computer science student at the University of British Columbia, I joined a young software startup called Robelle, named for the two founders Robert and Annabelle. I was the first employee.
As a requirement of my employment Bob and Annabelle insisted that I had to write my first technical paper, submit it to the 1980 International Hewlett-Packard General Systems User Group, and if accepted travel to the conference to present my paper.
When a group of people get a sailboat to sail to its full potential, such as when you are racing, you have to come together. This is my definition of synergy–the cooperation of two or more people to create something greater than the sum of the individuals.
Thirteen years ago, we sailed from Kos, Greece to Bodrum, Turkey. It was the last and shortest crossing between two countries of the two years that we lived and sailed in the Mediterranean. Our son Kevin was twelve as we sailed across the Aegean Sea. We have seen enormous change in Kevin over the intervening years as he met challenges, changed, and grew.