I’ll be back in 2 weeks

The true secret to success is hiding all your failures. But appearance of success pays the bills in the same way that hiding failures makes it seem like they never happened. So this blog, however raw and ugly, is about learning from failures and avoiding them… or as Confucius says:

“The faults of the superior man are like the sun and moon. He has his faults and all men see them.”

This bit of eastern philosophy is not about arrogance.. rather, self motivation. As Confucius saw it, all normal men seek to be better than their present and past self. Man up to your mistakes, apologize for them and move on

So I’m taking some time off

I’ve worked very hard to straighten out the mistakes I’ve made in my professional career. I have built an enormous international business and a management team that can easily run all aspects of the business without me. While we have ways to go to perfection, we are about 90% there and it’s been a long, frustrating, painstaking road. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’ve worked very hard to fix the mistakes in my personal life. I’ve married well – hey if you can’t be good at least be lucky! I have two wonderful kids that like me and have become little mirrors of me. I have lost the weight – from obese to normal. I have traveled for something other than work. I have picked up some new hobbies, made lots of friends and managed to get some sense of diversification of work, hobbies, fun, social activity and some well rounded activities.

Now I’m taking two weeks by myself

I’m flying to Rome. Heading to Firenze, Bologna, Venice and Milan. Going to enjoy the museums, good food and of course ride it out on a Ducati and a train here and there. Mostly to Paris. For more food, more museums. Then on to London.

I won’t have access to my email. I am not taking my work phone with me. I have transferred literally everything over to my staff and I intend to think about business very, very little.

Why?

This is where it gets ugly. Unsuperior.

Frankly, I am tired. Beyond tired really – I’m between lethargic and unable to drag myself up to the level of energy and enthusiasm needed to run the next stage of the evolution of our business. The IT today is much different than it was a year or 15 years ago when I started this journey. I’ve been lucky and I’ve been at the right place at the right time a lot.

I am hoping that taking some time off recharges the batteries and gives me some perspective on how hard I need to work – not how hard the people around me need to work (because honestly, they have knocked out every metric I can measure) – and now it’s on me.

The brave new IT world of apps is here. We have everything we need to rock it: all it needs is a leader.

So folks, see you in a little bit. Peace.