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.
“It doesn’t matter what size or business you’re in—when you’re starting your sales and marketing should never be separated.”
—Vik Khanna, Founder of Faronics
You can’t have a business unless you learn how to sell. Faronics has become the leader in making computers used in education safe for students to use. This is the story of how four partners came together to solve a real need, building Faronics into a multi-million dollar software company by selling their product, Deep Freeze.
Bob Graham is a classic entrepreneur who started his first enterprise mowing lawns and teaching guitar in his neighborhood. After a succession of jobs, Bob realized he only had one life to live. A chance encounter led him to found Airwaves Music and grow it into Canada’s leading DJ company.
“All businesses are people businesses.” Bob Park, President & CEO, Fincad
Bob Park is an entrepreneur who has overcome numerous challenges and changes in the twenty-five years since he co-founded Fincad. Bob and his original partner started the business in 1990 in the early stages of the modern over-the-counter financial derivatives business. Coming from the brokerage industry, they saw that there was a tremendous imbalance between what the derivatives experts in the big banks knew and what their clients, mainly non-financial companies, knew. As a result, the corporate treasurers and CFOs of those customer organizations were making costly mistakes or even being cheated. Bob and his partner set out to level the playing field by providing the customers of the banks with the knowledge and technology needed to deal in the derivatives markets in an informed way. Bob started with almost no money and has weathered stormy periods to reinvent himself and his company.
I recently returned from a trip to Nepal where I realized a long term dream. I trekked with my wife Karalee and a group of friends through the Himalayan Mountains to the Annapurna Sanctuary where we got to get up before dawn to hike up to Annapurna Base Camp and view the early rising sun paint Annapurna, the tenth tallest mountain in the world, with light. While any fit person can do this trek, it created some personal challenges for me that are among the greatest I’ve ever overcome.