PPI #1: Personal Stories from the Trenches

You might think you haven't gotten to where you want to get in life because things haven't gone your way. You might think that you haven't had as many lucky breaks as someone else. You're thinking about it wrong if that's the case. Because until you appreciate the value of hard fought and won experiences, until you appreciate the need to work and live in the trenches and what that really means, you probably won't progress more than you have to this date. Hi, I'm Eric and I want to tell you four stories, four stories from my life to illustrate what it means to be in the trenches and how if you embrace this mentality, how it can create an absolute shift in the trajectory of your life. And I'm going to take you through four stories in my life from my childhood to where I am today, from the age of 10 to 44, from when I had a completely full head of hair to when I have now this shaved head. And I hope that from there you'll pick up a few gems that you can apply to your own life. So we go back in time to 1985, also the date that Stranger Things have set in, if you've seen that on Netflix. So 1985, and I'm 10 years old and it's school. School. I went to a school called St. Isaac Jogues in Illinois in the US in Chicago. And there's a charity event going on at the school and so they pass out all these charity flyers to all the classrooms. And it's essentially a charity contest where the kids are all going to sell chocolate bars. And there's different prizes that you can get depending on how many chocolate bars you sell. The little magazines get passed out with the prizes that all the kids can win. I immediately go to the back of the booklet to look at, well, what can you get in the top prize category? And there, right before my eyes, is this amazing BMX bicycle. I had a bicycle already, but we grew up. My parents didn't have a lot of money growing up.

I had nice things from my parents, but not always the coolest things that the other kids had. And I certainly didn't have a top end BMX bicycle. I had my trusty Schwinn bicycle at the time, which I loved. It was actually called a Schwinn Stingray. I vividly remember it had this long banana seat. Wouldn't look cool today, but it was all right back then. But anyways, I wanted this BMX bicycle. I set my eyes on that and I thought, I need to get this and I looked up and I remember to the top left corner of that page in the magazine and, and it said that you had to sell 20 boxes of what was called World's Finest Chocolate. I still think that the brand exists, actually. World's Finest Chocolate. You had to sell 20 boxes. 20 didn't seem like many. What I didn't realize is that there was 30 chocolate bars per box. So I had to sell 600 chocolate bars and they were $1.50 each. I had to sell $900 worth of chocolate bars as a 10 year old and I had one month to do it. Now remember, I don't, you know, I can't do this full time. You know, I'm in school, I'm 10. But I was absolutely determined to get that bicycle. And so what I decided to do was to stand outside of this grocery chain. I don't think the chain exists anymore. It was called Dominic's at the time. And I stood outside of Dominic's, this grocery store from. It was from 4 o' clock to 8 o' clock every night, Monday through Friday. I rode there on my bicycle with the chocolate bars for the day. And I stood outside the door and I said, world's finest chocolate, $1.50 to every single person that went in and out. I think after a while, the sales weren't great in the beginning, but I think after a while doing this over a four week period, people are doing their grocery shops. It's the olden days, so people aren't getting their food delivered. Remember, everyone's going to the grocery store. So I think after a while people started to feel sorry for me. And so suddenly the chocolate bar sales started to ramp up and I started selling quite a few boxes, box after box after box. And I was getting very, very close to the end there and getting close to those 20 boxes. And I remember riding home one night and then I also, by the way, I also sold chocolate bars eight hours a day, Saturday and Sunday. So four hours a day every Monday through Friday. And then eight hours a day, Saturday and Sunday, I would ride back home at the end of the night with the chocolate bars that were unsold. And one night in particular I was riding home. And in Chicago, where I grew up.

The weather.

Can be crazy. So we can have these incredibly hot summers. And then at the same time the winters can be brutally cold. I'm also half Norwegian, so I can totally relate to brutally cold winters as well. But it can also rain and when it rains, it rains hard. And I remember I Was riding home with my bicycle that day or that evening. And these boxes. When you started to sell a box of chocolates, you broke the box in half. And it had, like, this handle in the middle. And so I was riding home with the unsold chocolate bars, one hand on the steering wheel holding the box, and it starts to pour rain. And so what happens? The box starts filling up with water. So I'm terrified. Riding as fast as I can to get home, worried about the chocolate bars. And then suddenly, as I'm going across the street.

The bottom of the box just splits open, and all these chocolate bars just spill out onto the street. And I jump off my bike. And as I go to pick up the chocolate bars, I remember this car coming to a screeching halt, like, literally right in front of me. I. I hadn't seen it could have been lights out right there. And all I remember is looking up and seeing the pelts of rain through the headlights of the car, and then seeing a pair of trousers and legs come up to me and a man saying, can I help you? Are you okay? And he helped me pick up the bars, and I used my jacket as a bit of a cradle on the handlebars, and I continued to pedal home. And I got home and I was completely distraught. Dumped all the bars onto the floor, and my mom and dad looked at them, had a word with each other. I was in tears because I thought, there's never, you know, way I'm going to get to the 20 boxes now. And then they said to me that they would buy that box of chocolate. We didn't have a lot of money, so for them to buy that box of chocolate bars was a big deal. And that gave me the hope to keep going. And I just kept that eye on the prize. And eventually I got there by putting in the hard work, the relentless sales effort day after day, no matter the weather. World's finest chocolate $50 would not give up. Why wouldn't I give up? Because I had my eye on the prize. And the first thing that I want to tell you about being in the trenches is just that power of having your eye on the prize and how it will help you get stuck into whatever you're doing, really go for it and not give up on that dream. The second thing I want to tell you about is.

So this story goes back to university. So I'm sitting in class at University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. We have a visiting professor from Stanford University. To be honest, I only took the class because I thought, well, here's my chance to be taught from someone from Stanford. I'll never get that opportunity. So I took the class, and frankly, I wasn't even paying attention as I sat in the class one day. But then I heard the professor say, if anybody in this room were to get a job at the company about to profile next, I'll fall out of my chair. Now, I've always been competitive, and that did it for me. So I perked up. I listened. And the company that he profiled was McKinsey and company. And he talked about it as this amazing place to not only work, but to get a fantastic business education and how it could literally be a door opener into a myriad of other job opportunities later, later in your career. And so I became absolutely determined to figure out how can I get my way into McKinsey? And the first thing I did was talk to that professor, learned more about the company there. The next thing I did was I asked my family if they knew anybody or knew anybody who might know somebody at some of the top MBA programs in and around Chicago. And sure enough, through our network, I ended up being connected with the director of admissions for the University of Chicago, which is a top MBA program. And I spoke to the woman, woman who's director of admissions. And she put me in touch with a guy who led the Management Consulting club. Kind of a funny name for a club, but Management Consulting Club at the University of Chicago, which is essentially a club that was set up to help people get into top strategy consulting firms like McKinsey, for example. And I spoke to this guy, and basically he agreed to let me participate in their club and basically practice the interview style that McKinsey used to screen all their candidates, which is a pretty grueling case interview style. And so I did it. I must have done between, I don't know, 20 and 30 practice case interviews as an undergraduate with these graduate students at the University of Chicago, driving up from the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign up to the University of Chicago, weekend after weekend to practice. The other thing I did was I ended up joining the Finance Club down at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign because I needed to get something more extracurricular on my resume. And as in my position on the Finance Club, I had the opportunity to create a field trip for the group. And So I contacted McKinsey to create a field trip to go and visit them up in Chicago. And through that process, I ended up meeting McKinsey's head recruiter. And when we showed up on that day for the field trip, of course I introduced myself. I. And then later I was able to send my resume to that recruiter. And I had that personal relationship already established together with the power of all the other relationships that I had assembled through the various graduate students that I had done the practice case interviewing with. And sure enough, 22 analyst roles were offered that year by McKinsey & Co. To over 2,000 applicants. 20 of the positions went to kids from Ivy League schools. Only two, including me, were from kids who didn't go to Ivy League schools. And I got in, I got that job. And it was a real game changer moment for me. But it all came down to being in the trenches once again and doing the hard work, but through a slightly different lens this time, through the power of relationships. So that's the key takeaway I want you to think about here is how can you, through your relationships, connect yourself to the right expertise to either prepare for that next experience or help get your foot in the door for that next experience? Okay, so first. First story was about keeping your eyes on the prize and having that fuel you even through your low moments. Second story was about the power of relationships to help you connect your way into the right expertise to get. Get where you want to be going. The third story I'd like to share with you is how I completely transitioned from a world of management consulting with absolutely no tech background into joining Skype in its infancy. We are about 30 or so people in the London office and helping Blitzscale that company. We grew from 30 people to 500. And during that period of time, we had an exit to eBay for $4 billion. Now, how did that happen for someone who had no tech background? Well, it happened through just absolute relentless persistence. And I first came across Skype and I thought I was using the technology, and I thought, this is going to be huge. This is going back to 2005 now. So this is like 15 years ago, even further, actually, it's about 2004.

And I sent in an application and the application was rejected. And they said that they didn't need somebody with a business background at the time. And so I sat back down, I waited a little bit longer, and I wrote an application again. And I sent that second application in. I said, well, I think maybe now that the company's grown a little bit more, maybe now you could use someone with a business background and my sort of expertise. Could I please have a shot of coming in to interview? And I was finally given the chance to come in after chasing them a second time around and just relentlessly pursuing them. And on my way out from that interview process where I was finally invited in, the recruiter came to me and said, I can't believe you wrote your application on Christmas Day. And I said, what do you mean? And she showed me the date of my cover letter with my resume that I had set in, sent in, and sure enough, it said on there December 25, 2004. It was at the time, and I was so determined to get that job that I hadn't even realized that I was writing that application on Christmas Day. And that relentless persistence, that relentless chasing them to kind of get in that door and even give me the chance to interview, that's another example of, you know, a hard fought and won experience of being in the trenches and to get what it is that you want, what you think you need. So key message there is, you know, again, relentless persistence. Never give up.

That's how you know you can get some of the things that you really want and that you think you deserve. The last story I want to tell you is about the chain of Mexican restaurants that I built in the UK called Chilango. Once again, I had gone from management consulting to tech. With no tech background, I had no experience whatsoever building a quick service restaurant chain. I mean, who's ever born with that experience, right? Nobody. But I was determined to figure out the way to do that and to get that started as well. I was missing Mexican food, frankly, having grown up in Chicago at this time, I'm in London now, and, and that started by me and my business partner. We just had, we did whatever it took and we worked on all positions in the restaurant ourself to.

Get the chain where it needed to be. So let me give you an example. When it came to buying the meat for the restaurant, we would wake up three days a week at 4am to get to the meat market and buy the, the meat that we needed and go to the fruit and veg market and you know, buy the produce that we needed to cook and prepare everything that was required to serve food that day. We didn't have to do that on our own, but we insisted on doing it that way. We also took turns working through every position in the restaurant. We weren't great at it at all and there was lots of people right from day one who are much better at doing it. But again, by being in there and working every single position, we had a much better perspective on what was required to build the restaurant chain and make it succeed. And ultimately Chilango, through its highs and lows, became an award winning chain of Mexican restaurants in the UK in a very short space of time.

One of the critical things that I recognized along that journey though was that it's one thing to start a company as a founder and, and it's another to scale one as a CEO. As a founder, you can get away with being a jack of all trades, much as I was just talking about. And you're literally a master of none. But as a company grows, you need to transition. You need to become better at coaching others, working through others and helping them to deliver the results, rather than you yourself delivering every single result, getting the team to win more games. And that required me to dig deep and confront a lot of deficiencies and realize that what had gotten me to where I was at that point wasn't going to be what I needed to get to the next level. I voiced these concerns with my coach. He said, well, you should set your sights in the CEO of the Year award, which I thought was ridiculous. But sure enough, that type of massive goal was what I needed to prompt massive action. And I ended up interviewing so many different CEOs, understand what drove their success, did 360s with, you know, my team and board to uncover my blind spots and where I could improve. And that all culminated in that CEO of the Year recognition. But only because I recognized once again that what had gotten me there wasn't going to, you know, get me, get me further, you know, what had gotten me here wasn't going to get me there and really worked on that and confronted it and, you know, wasn't afraid to shy away from it.

So in summary, what I'm trying to tell you is that if you really want to get to that next level in life, if you really want to break through your barriers and reach your full potential, then you have to embrace the concept of being in the trenches. You have to embrace the concept of, you know, acquiring all of your experience in that hard fought, hard won way. And those are four examples of ways I've done it. By keeping my eye on the prize, recognizing the power of relationships, being relentlessly persistent and never giving up. And all the while recognizing your own deficiencies and realizing what got you to where you are today is probably not what you need to get to where you want to go. And so therefore you have some things to work on and you need to identify those things. So, so I hope you found that helpful. If you are interested in picking up some more high performance insights, becoming a better leader, building a better company, or simply becoming all that you're capable of becoming, please head over to my website@ericpartaker.com where you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter.