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