As ol’ Blue Eyes once said “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but all in all, too few to mention”. And there is very little I regret about Exetel. But one thing does play on my mind.
The year of being CEO after taking over from John was without doubt the toughest year of my professional life. At the end of that year, having brought the company back to a sound financial footing, and secured the future for not just my own and my business partner’s family, but all our staff, the relief I felt was huge. Achieving the goal of handing a financially solid company over to Annette was the hardest, but also most satisfyingly thing I had ever done.
So what is to regret?
Well, I didn’t do it alone. I had exceptional people working for me. The network engineering team, Vitek, William, and Jing, System Admin Andrew, Support Manager Ahad, And Raymond, who’s database and software coding was as immaculate as it was reliable. Just could not ask for better people. And that is just on the technical side. Pyumi, who single handedly managed 60% of the companies sales revenue, a total rock. Rukshani, general manager of 200 people with utter stability. Theje, the number one ‘go to guy’ that solved any problem and handled any issue. Brendon was without doubt the best financial controller I have known, and exactly the right person to get the job done in that year. I could easily list all our 280 staff and not one of them would be lacking some outstanding quality.
At the end of the year, I was done. The months of lots of travel and little sleep had taken its toll. I really should have put more thought and effort into thanking the fantastic people I worked with for their own sustained effort in support of my CEO role. Sorry for that guys, you deserved better. If any of you read this and are in Perth or Bangkok, look me up, the least I can do is buy you lunch and say to you first hand what I am saying here.