24 Business View Magazine - July 2016
Game-changing advice from a savvy CEO
By Lorie Steiner
“You can be successful without an original idea,
there are no original ideas, it’s all about the imple-
mentation.” J. Estill
Jim Estill started his wildly successful business ca-
reer accidentally, in 1979, as a university student
designing circuit boards in his spare time. He would
buy a couple of computers for parts, then buy two
more and sell the surplus from the trunk of his gas-
guzzling Oldsmobile Cutlass. (Today, he’s eager to
distance himself from the ‘Olds days’… “I’m an en-
vironmentalist now,” Estill says, “I drive a Prius.”) By
2004, his self-made computer distribution start-up,
EMJ Data, had reached $350 million in sales.
Later, under his leadership as CEO of Synnex Can-
ada, that company’s sales grew from $800 million
Fail
Often.
Fail
Fast.
Fail
Cheap
