Zach Selch watched the 1976 Entebbe raid as a nine-year-old and learned that failure is not an option. He draws a line from that Israeli military operation to what it takes for companies to scale sales internationally: bold plans, flawless execution, and refusal to accept defeat.
Chapters
I'm at the old Entebbe— Hi. I'm at the old Entebbe Airport in Entebbe, Uganda. Behind me is a scene of the 1976 raid on Entebbe, where Israeli paratroopers came and rescued more than 100 hostages that were being held by terrorists. And for me, this actually was a really cool focal— cool time in my life. I was 9 years old, July 4th, 1976, and I remember this like it was yesterday. We were having a barbecue and then we heard about this and we were just amazed at the audacity that Israeli paratroopers could fly thousands of miles with no real solid information into the unknown to get involved in this gunfight to rescue terror— rescue hostages. It really was a turning point in my life. I decided then and there that I wanted to be a paratrooper. And of course went through, became a paratrooper, and leveraged that later on in life to do other things with my life. But think about the mission facing somebody at this point where they were faced with the idea that they had to come up with a plan to travel thousands of miles to rescue people that were being held up, that were being held up. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. held by terrorists. Imagine having to come up with a plan like this, having to execute, having the lives of all those hostages as well as the lives of all of your soldiers in your hands, and failure not being an option, coming back and saying, I can't do this, simply not being an option. And they got it done. And we're faced with things like this sometimes in our life where we look at something and we say, wow, this is really a very difficult task. I'm not sure that this is possible. Sometimes, especially when we work for smaller companies or we work for high-tech companies, and really sometimes the very expansion of the company, the very lifeline of the company is based on our ability to execute what seems like an almost impossible task that's been given us. And when I take a look at these things that people have achieved over the years, these virtually impossible things where people have said, well, failure isn't an option. Saying I can't do it isn't an option. I'm just going to have do it and gone ahead and done it. And to me, Entebbe is a fantastic example of that type of force of will actually getting something done. Remember, when you're ready to grow your international sales, reach out to us. We can help.
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