Note: This article was updated and moved to XTM+ magazine. Access it here.
James D., Ducorp X-Team Spotlight
In past business meetings, I always introduced myself starting with my engineering, legal and finance education, work history in building various businesses, and some strong points that defined my life up to then. I told myself this was necessary to make others believe I was a smart and serious guy they could trust.
After hearing all that, the listener pretty much either:
(1) had the impression that I was still figuring out what I wanted to do;
(2) did not honestly believe I could allocate my time to solve their problems (since my hands were in so many pies… at one point I held titles in 19 different businesses or projects at various stages of their growth or death); or
(3) felt threatened by all the things that I was trying to achieve, and then they probably thought that I was just another “know-it-all.”
Looking at it now, I can’t say I disagree with them. More, I think that instead of introducing myself for their benefit, that I was maybe reinforcing this message to myself.
I often thought that I wish I could say, “I’m a lawyer.”
While that would have been much easier to communicate…it is not who I am.
It took me a long time to figure out who I was, why I was involved in the work I was doing, where I wanted to go, and what I needed to do to get there.
But, for me to find out the answers to these questions, there were two things that I realized:
(a) First, I was focused on building an appearance of success to get people in the door. This approach is not unusual for small businesses or salespeople. The side effect is that you can suffer from split personality (one at work and one with family/friends) and ultimately, this can take over your life as the separation between your work and your private life disappears;
(b) Second, I had an appetite for trial and error, and risk taking. Combined with an insane never-say-die attitude that I’ve had since my track and field days, I kept iterating on ventures, business models and finding my place in this world.
Having built several businesses, failures did not bother me and investing or starting something new was a regular part of my life. However, unbeknownst to me, what I was looking for in this process was not the large exits, but rather a means of sustaining myself and my family and identifying patterns, much like a scientist!
I was looking for patterns of replicability for success (scalability) and models of resilience in various conditions. I was trying to gain experience in strategic positioning with the ability to sniff out opportunities while being in tune with the happenings around me.
I felt like I was inspiring myself to become a “superhero” of sorts at some future point in time and burning the present to get there. I believe that everyone takes a different road to get to the calm confidence and happiness that comes with knowing who they truly are. For me, I think my journey was necessary to gain the skills and demeanor needed to generate “wealth” my way, that was in sync with my personality.
The road was so long and severe that it’s a wonder why I didn’t quit my professional venture building work to practice as a lawyer or engineer professionally.
I guess, I just had to make it to the end of the tunnel, and I felt somewhat confident that I had the brains and ability to get there on my own.
During that process of self-discovery, my body, soul, and forward-path were all out of synchronization, like looking for a station on the radio, but getting static; had to have the right frequency to identify the pattern that spoke to me!
Eventually, after a very long range of static, I found my channel.
It’s a weird feeling of empowerment, where the format of your future life is known, but the outcomes that these formats enable are unknown and surprisingly, exciting.
Some of the things I discovered about myself are that:
(1) I can motivate staff and convince people, but I did not need to use boasting language to do it. It was not about me, but about genuinely helping others;
(2) I love training and coaching people and challenging them to see different perspectives and points of view;
(3) I don’t give up. I can sacrifice enormously in the pursuit of a goal and would have no problem dying to get there. I am relentless and if you compete with me, I’ll either win or die — there are no other options. I believe this can be unsettling for those competing or working with me;
(4) I am good at structuring business models and leveraging my skills to lead in their commercialization (in any industry, no matter how technical or complex they are). I can hear people talk about an unfamiliar subject and convert it into something that makes sense in my mind, and hold a conversation about it;
(5) I am very aware of my surroundings both physically, spatially and mentally — I can see things that most are not able to. I can put together pieces of information from a puzzle to get a macro and micro picture. I can quickly perform trials mentally to test out scenarios and conditions that I can use in negotiation and communication;
(6) I love when people are happy and feel special, and I am focused on generating these experiences for my customers, staff, family, etc. If I can create wealth while making people react in that way, then that would make me feel like I’ve provided output to my full potential and in sync with my capabilities.
(7) I am an investor at heart. I invest time, money, energy, and my expertise in coaching people to become what they can be, building or cultivating unique businesses (that is, those businesses that deserve my attention). I do this by being people-focused, honestly caring about them, but being acutely aware of the commercialization and productivity (there is a very specialized skill element to this, which I have repeatedly trained for over the past couple of decades).
So, back to the real question:
What does James do today?
How do I introduce myself and explain who am I today?
I am the CEO of Ducorp, my family’s investment company. We are boutique and promote family values in our corporate culture (that is, first and foremost to care for our people and help them be world class). We believe if we have a world-class team, then we have a world-class organization. All of our businesses and projects are focused on engaging people, generating “feel-good” experiences and sustaining this with a unique business model that perpetuates the growth of that network or sustains benefit to that network.
We do this by sharing #storiesthatmatter because we believe that stories matter. We are experiencing a people’s renaissance as they continue to coalesce in groups with similar passions by voicing their stories and thoughts. This will drive business models and products. Not the other way around.
This is a decentralized way of looking at the evolution of interactions between people and businesses. We focus on the power of communities, which is where the real value is. Whether an individual business yields $1M or $1B, it doesn’t matter (as long as it is sustainable) because they are driven by the value of networks; some of which have limited sizes and growth potential.
I say the above because you may have gone through a similar process before finding out what you wanted to do (in which case, it’s great to have experienced a similar thing). Perhaps you are going through it or are not even aware of that, but know something is missing.
Maybe it helps you in your quest to show yourself. It matters.
This is your time, our renaissance.
About James Duchenne
Engineer, Lawyer and Finance Guy. James is the Co-founder and CEO of Ducorp Ltd. He has built and managed several ventures and sits on Corporate Boards in Asia, Mauritius, and the USA. He was previously the Managing Partner of Sutton Stone, LLC, Hon. Rep. in the USA for the Board of Investment (Mauritius), Chief Operating Officer at Crowd Machine, Inc. He focuses on innovation and helping entrepreneurs achieve their goal.
