The Rolex North Star

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 ten of the people in the room were wearing 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 Rolex’s website on my Palm Treo 750 to find the exact model 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 was engrained as 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 by purchasing one for myself.  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 for 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 peak 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 go into a store and buy a new watch.  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 explained that there was a two year waiting list for the watch and someone who isn’t a prior client is 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 the waiting list of every Rolex distributor within 100 miles of my home. They all reiterated that it’s unlikely that I’d be selected to purchase the watch 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 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 finally purchased my Rolex Submariner.

In this video where I summarized my 2020, I skipped mentioning the Rolex because I wore it on my wrist as a subtle nod to the successes of the year.

I did it! I achieved the goal!

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!