Lesson #1: “Persistence is the single most important thing for success"

"Why is it that I can start up 60 companies and only ever lose two - and even the two that I lost, the technology went on to be a part of someone else's success?" Matthews once asked himself while giving a keynote speech to a large group of investors. "I am truly an angel investor and I'm not a passive investor. As a passive investor, I am awful because I cannot put funding into a company and leave it to other people."

Matthews' success has been marked by his unwillingness to participate in the "pumping and dumping" he sees many of his competitors doing. Of the many companies he's been behind over the years, both Mitel and Newbridge Networks have grown to be worth more than one billion dollars. That is a direct result of his refusal to get into a venture only to pump up the valuation of the company and make some fast money.

Instead, Matthews likes to take his time with companies, get involved in their management and operations, and make sure he has a thorough understanding of the industry - however long that takes. Even outside of the world of IT, Matthews has become well known for his twenty year fight to bring golf's Ryder Cup to his home country. Equally passionate about golf as he is IT, Matthews worked for over twenty years to try and make that a reality. Finally, he was able to make it happen.

"It's a good win," he said at the time. "I've been working on it for 20 years, understanding how it works, how the Ryder Cup board works. It's all about persistence."

Some may see Matthews' persistence as a vice - that he takes too long to achieve results. Matthews, however, knows that it is the time he puts into making something happen, that actually gets the results.
"I don't think I'm stubborn," he says. "I just focus on the task at hand and do what it takes. Persistence is the single most important thing for success."

Persistence to Matthews also means believing in his gut instinct when nobody else is willing to. Such was the case when he announced that 15 years after selling Mitel to BT, he would be buying back the struggling systems business. "It wasn't clear to anyone when I signed that agreement what was on my mind but I knew in my gut that there would be a technology change in enterprise communications."
"Last year it didn't look a particularly good thing to do but in my gut I was absolutely convinced that convergence would happen this year. Now I know I'm right."

In 2007, after negotiating a successful merger with Inter-Tel, Matthews' new Mitel emerged twice the size of the original company. It withdrew itself from the IPO process and, as Chairman, Matthews is now sitting atop a company that earns revenues in excess of $850 million.