One month after graduating college, I found myself in a board meeting for one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies. These were 25 of the most senior executives representing this hundred billion dollar organization, and my colleague and I were the only two non-pharma execs in the room. How did I go from a student in “Principles of Management” class two months prior to now being seated amongst the most powerful executives in pharma?
The consulting firm that I worked for was retained to facilitate this global strategy meeting and I was selected as a co-facilitator because I typed fast enough to capture the meeting takeaways in real time. This felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity so I sat there like a sponge, absorbing everything. I captured mental notes for myself just as quickly as I typed meeting notes, but there was one seemingly insignificant observation that wouldn’t leave me.
I noticed that at least 50% of the people in the room wore the same watch. Without being too weird, maneuvered my body to get a closer look and I saw the name, “Rolex.” I took a quick bathroom break and scoured the Rolex website on my Palm Treo 750 to find the exact name of this watch. By the end of the break I discovered that it was called the Rolex Submariner and it was absolutely beautiful.
Months following the meeting, The Rolex Submariner became a symbol of success in my mind. That’s when I made a pact with myself that after I’ve achieved peak levels of success I’ll celebrate the occasion by purchasing my own. But how would I know that I’ve achieved peak success? I don’t know, I’d just know!
Fast forward to a decade later and I had some of the roughest months in my life. This coincided with the start of the global pandemic and I felt like I was at the lowest of lows. My business experienced a decline, I tried to buy a house and the deal fell apart, I had a months-long legal battle with Tesla over a defective car, I lived in a highly rural area where the neighbors shunned outsiders, and I dealt with numerous other challenges. But when you’re at the bottom, the only place to go is up.
God turned things around and I went from the midst of a breakdown to the top of a breakthrough.
I noticed that life started to get better when I was able to charter a Challenger 604 jet from Teterboro airport to Rhode Island. Two months later, I closed on the purchase of my dream house at a phenomenal price. A month later I chartered a Citation X jet to Virginia to go couch shopping. A month later I took delivery of my brand new dream car. A month later I experienced business growth in both of my businesses. What I thought would take me decades to achieve was accomplished in a matter of months. This felt like success, so clearly it was time to buy my Rolex.
I didn’t know that Rolex is highly selective with their clientele and you can’t simply walk into a store and buy a new Rolex. I walked into my authorized dealer and said “I’ll take the two-tone Rolex Submariner in black” and the employee simply laughed. With a dismissive tone, he said that there’s a two year waiting list on the watch and for someone who isn’t a prior client, I’m unlikely to get one in the next five years. I accepted his scoffing as a challenge and I spent the next two weeks putting myself on every single Rolex distributor waiting list within 100 miles of my home. They all reiterated that it’s unlikely that I’d get selected to purchase one anytime in the next few years. Two weeks later my phone rang.
The Rolex store rep called me and said, “Geremy, come pick up your Submariner.” I said “but I thought that there was a long waiting list?” She said “yes, but I moved you to the top of the list and I got you the newest model that was just released two weeks ago!” I didn’t want to mess this up, so I stopped asking questions and got dressed faster than Superman in the phone booth. I got my Rolex Submariner.
In this video where I summarized my 2020, I spoke about some of the key accomplishments of the year but I purposely left something out. I skipped mentioning the Rolex accomplishment because I was displaying the accomplishment. If you looked closely, you’d see that I’m wearing it as a subtle nod to the successes of the year.
I did it!
So use this as a reminder that if you’re going through hell, keep going. There’s victory on the other side and your time is coming…watch!*
See what I did there?! Time? Watch? Clever!