A Number of Distinction

Yesterday was no normal day at the Off-Campus Dining Network. Yesterday we were recognized as a winner of the Philadelphia 100. The Philadelphia 100 are the one-hundred fastest growing companies in the Philly metro area as measured by top line revenue growth. The average age of the companies on the Philly 100 is 7.5 years.
The evening started out normal enough with the whole team placing bets on what number we would place at. The picks ran the gamut from 94 all the way down to 38. I thought we would be 82. The event began in Center City with free drinks and networking followed by the main event, the announcing of the winners.
Dinner began with the presentations counting down from 100. Every few moments, in between bites of my salad, I would glance up at the screen to see our ranking. Alas I was wrong in my choice of 82, in fact the whole team was wrong. The presentation went from 100 all the way to 11 without one mention of the Off-Campus Dining Network. Could it be, that we were in the top ten? Perhaps they just forgot about us...unlikely, but possible.
Everyone around the table was now tense. Were we number ten, nine, eight, seven, six? Nope. Now I was looking around at the other nine people at the table I could tell everyone was on the edges of their seats. How in the world were we in the top 5 of the fastest growing companies in Philly? Five, four? "And then there were three," the awards presenter proudly accounced. "With a two year growth rate of 1,507%, the Off-Campus Dining Network is the third fastest growing company in Philadelphia!" Our table absolutely erupted in applause, hand shakes and back-slaps as the CEO, Ken Schwenke accepted our award.
The night ended with a few more drinks, and celebration of our accomplishments.
Reflecting back on this, I thought to myself: six months ago I was a senior in college rapidly approaching graduation, without a job offer up until 3 days before graduation. Fate had it that a one of my favorite professors happened to mention that he met this great entrepreneur at a local meeting where he was pitching his company and I should meet him. That entrepreneur was Ken, and I guess as they say, "the rest is history."
At the time of graduation, naturally, I was nervous about what was to come. However, it is times like this that I am reminded of the advice that Steve Jobs gave to the graduates of Stanford University this spring:
"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."
While I can't say that all the dots are connected nor do I know where my life will lead, but I can take solace in the fact that the dots will connect at some point.
[PDF of the write-up in the Philadelphia Business Journal]Download 3_ocdn_article.pdf