127 - Life Lessons and an Elephant Attack: Great Stories from Great Minds

Julie Sweet today leads the North American business at Accenture, a global consulting giant. Years ago, she was a high school sophomore with the gift of gab, entering various debate and speech competitions for the prize money, building her own scholarship fund. She wasn't doing it for kicks; at times growing up in Southern California she had just one pair of shoes, or one pair of pants that fit. Her father painted cars for a living, and her mother was a hairdresser.   

One particular contest at the Lions Club had come down to a final showdown between Julie and another girl. Julie lost. Stung by the injustice of it – she felt her speech had been better – she griped to her father on the way home.   

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To say Tom Siebel has had an interesting life would be putting it mildly. He’s a billionaire entrepreneur, a tech visionary, and the survivor of an elephant attack eight years ago that, by the odds, should have killed him.   

Several doctors told him he would never walk again, much less sail competitively. But he does.  

So what do you learn about life when you’ve stared down death in the form of a five-ton elephant, been crushed by that elephant, and lived to tell the tale?   

What do you learn when you’ve invented one of the first killer workplace apps of the PC era, and sold it for about 6 billion dollars?  

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When he was 14 years old growing up in West Philadelphia, Troy Carter started promoting parties at a neighbor's house and charging for entry. He did the DJing himself to save money.  

Today he's one of the most respected visionaries at the intersection of two industries: Music and tech.   

Carter wears a lot of hats. He's been a manager, working with the likes of John Legend, Lady Gaga and Meghan Trainor. He's an investor, a general partner at venture capital firm Cross Culture Ventures. And he's a connector.