How to Create Your Own Luck

[Music]

what would you do

if you had to reinvent your life right

now

in 2020 many of us were forced to

suddenly confront

this question my wife virginia and i

faced many life-changing moments while

steering our company through the various

challenges

brought on by the coveted pandemic today

i’d like to share how we embraced

uncertainty

saved our business and helped protect

thousands of people

let me start by sharing a personal

belief that has helped me throughout my

life

and prepared me for the challenges of

this past year i believe that the term

human beings is misleading the word

being

suggests that we exist in an unchanging

state or singular moment

but we actually experience reality as an

ongoing series of moments or perpetual

state of change

for this reason we are more accurately

described as humans becoming

once we reframe our existence as a state

of becoming

we can see the importance of the present

every moment

is an opportunity to either grow or

remain the same

i’ve always found pursuing growth to be

a reliable path

towards a better future if we decide to

remain the same

we not only fail to grow but begin to

fall further

and further behind as the world changes

around us

but growth isn’t easy it requires

sacrifice

and dedication to achieve we all lead

busy lives

and adding the additional burden of

growth can seem daunting

but it’s not impossible with this in

mind

let me take you back to the year that

virginia and i decided to put our desire

for growth

to the test 2017

was the busiest year of our lives we

took ownership of our first company

we bought our first house and we were

expecting the birth of our first child

our families thought we were crazy for

simultaneously

taking on so many of life’s biggest

milestones

virginia and i had an ambitious plan to

improve our company

but it was hard to see how we could

balance that growth

with our other life events it would have

been much easier

to put off the shop renovations for a

couple years while we caught our breath

but that idea never sat right with us we

refused to stop growing just because

life got

harder and more complicated we embarked

on a three-year renovation plan to gut

our entire manufacturing facility

bring in new machinery and modernize the

business

during the day i worked with our crew to

serve our clients and project

commitments

at night and during any downtime we had

the renovations continued

forging ahead with these improvements

while learning to be parents

and repairing our home was the most

difficult juggling act

we’ve ever attempted but the sacrifices

we made during this time

would ultimately become the reason we

are still in business today

while in the final stages of this plan

reports of a new virus called kova 19

started to appear in the news literally

in the hour of finishing our renovations

right here at this table we got the

order

that sonoma county our county was going

to shut down nearly all businesses

like many others affected my employees

and i were devastated

we had no option to work remotely since

our business requires us to be here

in this building to make things as we

left

to frantically buy groceries and at home

to our families

i couldn’t help but wonder if we would

all be coming back

i went home to my family disheartened

knowing that virginia and i had some

very difficult decisions to make

my response to the challenges of this

past year

has a lot to do with my background i

am of eu mian descent and one generation

from living as part of a hill tribe in

the southeast asian country of laos

my parents lived there in a village with

no electricity

they sowed their own clothes and

survived off the land

until coming to the united states as

refugees

so being born and raised in america i

figured things out on my own

and through countless challenges i

managed to avoid many wrong turns

with a simple role that i followed from

an early age

i decided that i would not let fear

guide me on my path

as fear is a roadblock to opportunity

and achievement

although fear is a necessary survival

instinct

beyond that need fear can become

stifling

i believe too much of life is shaped by

fear

causing many of us to live our lives

unfulfilled

we don’t take necessary risk for fear

failure

and don’t make meaningful changes for

fear of the unknown

all of which often leads to regret and

lost opportunity

so when fear finds you don’t let it

define you

when blake came to me with the

unexpected turn of events at the company

initially i was crushed i had just spent

that afternoon

making plans for our first family

vacation since we had our three-year-old

daughter

but that disappointment quickly shifted

to concern for the business

and the negative impact the county’s

orders could pose to our future

and the future of our employees it was

at this point

that i recognized the roadblock in front

of us which led to a choice

between despair or fortitude looking at

it in this light

the way forward became clear to me we

would meet this challenge head on

and never let fear determine our actions

after speaking with virginia i felt

clear and certain we were on the right

path

we had made the decision to change

rather than shut down

the only thing we were authorized to do

to keep our business

open was make personal protective

equipment for healthcare workers

something that we had never done before

i looked into what we could make using

our manufacturing strengths

and within a few days my crew and i had

designed our first

face shield virginia got to work

contacting every hospital in our

area and going through the staggering

amounts of red tape

it takes to get set up as a vendor to

them her

efforts led to our first order from

kaiser permanente for twenty

thousand shields and a future for our

business

but there was a catch they needed all

twenty thousand

delivered in three weeks a nearly

impossible task for a product that we

had never made before

everything had to go right at that

moment

i was reminded of a quote i have always

liked

luck is what happens when preparedness

meets opportunity

all the renovation work we had done over

the past three years

set us up perfectly to meet this

manufacturing challenge

our preparedness allowed us to seize an

opportunity

which would have otherwise been out of

our reach

we had made our own luck less than three

weeks later

we delivered twenty thousand face

shields

we went on to make tens of thousands of

these shields

and have donated thousands more to

people and organizations who couldn’t

afford them

after that shortage ended we pivoted the

business again

this time to make thousands of acrylic

barriers and social distancing guards

for other essential businesses

and we are still making these today i

can tell you with absolute certainty

that had we put off improving our

company and acted on fear during the

pandemic

we wouldn’t be here today giving this

talk

our family-owned business would be gone

just like

thousands of others across the world but

you don’t need to be a business owner to

learn from our story

we all have defining moments in our

lives

when you come to your next crossroads

remember every moment

is an opportunity to change the future