Establish Your Principles
Sarah Dusek lives in South Africa today and runs Enygma Ventures, an investment firm that is providing financing to women who are striving to create economically stable lives in sub-Saharan Africa. Sarah is a force but more than anything else, she is deeply connected to the principles that guide her life.
When I first spoke with Sarah as one of my life designer interviews for One Life to Lead, I was struck with this dichotomy between someone who didn’t really have a business background on one hand, but on the other hand, proceeded to build an enterprise worth $100 million by living her principles.
It is really the magic of what made Under Canvas, the nation’s largest outdoor hospitality and events company, offering safari-style accommodations just minutes from some of America's most popular national parks and monuments. Here is a brief share from Sarah on how she dealt with an early financing partner.
It was one of those really heart-wrenching scenarios. We had bootstrapped our business through our own sweat and tears with our own cash, which was virtually nonexistent, and were trying to do more than we had the capital to do. I had knocked on probably a million venture capital doors and heard the common refrain “You’re not a tech company.” I wasn’t well connected, so when we finally got a term sheet from a high-profile firm I was excited. But the term sheet, despite our best efforts to negotiate, was very one-sided. It gave so much power and so many rights to the investors, even though they were buying a minority stake. When I questioned the term sheet and tried to negotiate, the response I received was “If you don’t take this term sheet, you won’t be getting money from anyone, because this is the deal that venture capitalists do. We have the money, and therefore we have the power.” At which point, I thought to myself, If I had any doubts about doing this deal before, I certainly cannot do this deal now. I believe that money doesn’t have to mean total power, and I don’t think that that means you have to treat the little person with disrespect.
When Sarah shared this story with me, I got it. She wasn’t going to create a life that would leave her under the control of someone whose principles were fundamentally misaligned with her own. And it got me thinking how many times I had compromised my principles because I just assumed I would work it out later. But I never worked it out later. It always ended so predictably.
Sarah stayed true to her code without fixating on the outcome of their need to raise capital. She wasn’t going to compromise. The result was an extraordinary relationship with a new financial partner that resulted in the company scaling to soaring heights and giving Sarah the freedom to pursue her next chapter at Enygma.
In One Life to Lead, Sarah features prominently in a number of stories. She asks provocative questions about determining what you really want. She talks about the power of making empathy your superpower. She is one of twelve designers that contributed their experiences to share how they navigated to design the lives they wanted to lead.
To learn more, check out One Life to Lead today.
Russell Benaroya is an entrepreneur, coach, speaker and author of One Life to Lead and Free Yourself to Work on Your Business. To learn more, visit www.russellbenaroya.com.