Weekend in SFO, Part 2

"If you were sure you could not fail, what would you choose to do with your life?" That's the memorable line from Bryan's commencement speaker at his graduation ceremonies last May 5.

I thought about that a bit - how the line really challenges these young adults to shoot for the stars. It's a great way to encourage them to take some risks.

That night at the dinner party, I noticed that B's friends were all writing him their best wishes in his Guest Book. I decided to also put in the flipside of the speaker's comment - that often in life, we do fail. In fact, we stumble countless times and in myriad ways.

The path to success is to never give up, never despair, never surrender.

One little story I remember comes from my first meeting with Cyril Pereira, then General Manager of the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. I was just getting my feet wet in the printing business, trying to learn as much as I could from the old pros.

The SCMP presses that CP had set up were the creme de la creme of the industry when I first visited in 1996. You could walk all around the press hall and never get any stains, not even on the bottom of your shoes.

I asked CP how he had achieved all this, arguably one of the most impressive press rooms in the world. I'll never forget his response:

"What you'd don't see are the mistakes I made getting here."