Our Stories of Inspiration and Perspiration

Thirty-five of my BFF and I decided last year to write snippets of our lives, reflecting on how we used our mojo to survive and thrive. Many of us escaped adversity in our home countries, including the genocide of the Killing Fields in Cambodia, the Cuban Revolution, and the brutal life in the rural mountain villages of Peru. Others in my list of BFF escaped the equally harsh demons of drug addiction, while others survived poverty, racism, war, and all forms of discrimination. However, nothing could stop any of us in our aim to lead a successful life with no sulking. None of us considered success the result of becoming rich and famous; instead, to us, success meant bettering ourselves, bettering the world, innovating where we could, and creating businesses, such as Charles Schwab, EnergySolutions, Yahoo, HBO, MTV, Nickelodeon, parts of the Virgin Group, and many others. We have accomplished our goals through passion, leadership, and perseverance without sacrificing our values, and we continue to do so today.

The book contains our stories in our own words, and just like Napoleon Hill did in his famous book Think and Grow Rich in 1937, we have analyzed our life trips and derived the twenty rules that we have consciously or unconsciously followed to achieve our individual success. The stories represent three dozen lifetimes of successes and failures, or perhaps we should call them learning steps. Through it all, we have used our mojo to the max and still do so today.