From baggage handler to successful CEO in only 5 years, Josef Azam talks about the key to success. By sharing his inspirational story, Josef proves that ordinary people can achieve extraordinary things.
“Everybody sees me today in the position I am in, a fast growing company. They really don’t understand the story and the struggle behind my success and where I’ve come from and really what it takes to achieve success. My story starts like many others around this world, it starts unfortunately growing up in a poor situation. I grew up in a pretty wealthy area being poor and I think there’s nothing worse in life than growing up poor in the face of people having everything. It makes you really realize what you don’t have. When you grow up in an area where nobody has anything, you are kind of all on a level playing field. But when you grow up in a wealthy area where everyone seems to have so much more than you, you know you don’t as much, you know your parents don’t have as much money. I realized what I don’t have and I realized what I wanted and I made sure from a very young age that I would succeed at every goal I ever dreamt of. Seeing my parents work and struggle inspired me to work. I didn’t have the money like everyone else did when they went to university where their parents paid for them and they have the nice cars. I worked three jobs to put myself through university. I graduated. Till this day I am so thankful i had to go through those experiences. Because it’s those struggles and those hardships that defined me as a person. You need to sacrifice almost everything to achieve your goals. So when people say ‘you’re lucky’ they don’t know what they are talking about. And people that say that will never achieve their goals, because luck has NOTHING to do with it. Because if I was that lucky, I wanted have fallen on my face so many times. I wouldn’t have failed so many times. I wouldn’t have had so many sleepless nights. Perseverance is the key to success And then when you succeed, people are going to try to justify to you in a very simple way why you succeeded. I know what I’m capable of. I know what I’m going to do. And I know where I want to be. And nothing is going to stop me. I look at myself and I say, ‘well what else do I want to achieve?’ And that answer is still the same from when I was a kid, I want to achieve greatness. In many people’s eyes I’ve achieved success, but in my eyes, it’s not enough. I want to achieve greatness. That is my story in life. It was my story in the past and it will be my story in the future. The ability to never give up. And to always know where I want to go. I will not let anyone deter me from that goal and I will never let anybody discourage me from achieving my goals.” –Josef Azam