Eric Partaker has one of the fastest growing accounts on LinkedIn.

Eric Partaker:

• “CEO of the Year”

• Peak performance expert

• And Ali Abdaal’s business coach

Here’s his story:

In 1985, Eric was 10.

While at school, he was handed a booklet for a charity initiative.

Whoever sold 20 boxes of chocolates would win a brand new BMX bike.

Eric wasted no time.

He set up shop outside his local grocers, Dominick’s.

He greeted every single person who entered the shop with the “World’s Finest Chocolate for a buck-fifty.”

At first, he sold nothing. 

But as the day wore on, sales picked up.

Eric sold chocolate every day after school from 4 to 8pm.

And for 8 hours on both Saturdays and Sundays.

A month later, he’d sold all 20 boxes – 600 chocolate bars in total.

He made that BMX his.

Fast-forward to 1998…

When one of Eric’s college professors says, “If anyone in this room gets a job at the next company, I’ll fall out of my chair.”

The company? 

Global management consulting firm, McKinsey & Co.

“That’s it,” Eric thought, “I’m getting a job there.”

Problem was McKinsey tends to hire graduates from top Ivy League schools – and Eric went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (a non-Ivy League school).

But that didn’t stop him.

Through joining the university Finance Club, he organised a field trip to McKinsey.

Once there, Eric walked straight up to the recruiter, looked them square in the eye, and introduced himself.

Now he was no longer just another piece of paper, destined for the “no” pile. 

He was a name and face they’d recognise.

Step one complete.

Next, he asked friends and family whether they knew anyone at other top schools.

Sure enough, he was put in touch with the head of the Consulting Club at the University of Chicago.

Eric did 20 practice interviews with him and other club members.

So when the day came, he was prepared.

Over 2,000 applied for 22 positions. And only two of those applicants were non-Ivy League – Eric being one of them.

His preparation paid off.

He made the job his.

Three years on, in late 2001, Eric moved from McKinsey’s Chicago office to their office in Oslo, Norway.

At the time, he was an early adopter of Skype.

“This is revolutionary,” he thought. After researching the company some more, he applied to work there.

But got rejected. 

“We’re not looking for someone with a business background,” they said.

Eric gave it 3 months and re-applied.

Again, his relentless persistence won him a job.

When he joined, he knew next to nothing about tech. Through asking tons of questions and reading everything he could get his hands on, he quickly got up to speed.

Over the next 2 years, Eric helped Skype grow into a multibillion-dollar success story that sold to eBay for $4B.

Post-sale, Eric made a pact with friend and Skype employee, Dan Houghton: 

“Whoever had a business idea would tell the other and whatever that idea was, we would start it.”

Soon after, Eric came up with the idea to start a chain of Mexican restaurants, inspired by his time working in hospitality and his love of burritos. 

So the pair quit Skype to launch what became the Mexican chain Chilango, in the UK.

The first few months involved:

• 4am wake-ups 

• Getting ripped off in the meat markets, and

• Doing everything from finance to ops, and branding to marketing

It was exhausting. But Eric’s dogged nature got him through. 

Until one evening, in 2010, on a flight back from Spain to London.

Eric’s left arm went numb.

His chest felt like it was caught in a steel vice.

Cold beads of sweat rolled down his forehead.

He turned to a friend sitting next to him, “Luis, feel my arm.”

“Oh my god!” he replied. “It feels like it’s been hanging in a meat locker.”

A flight attendant rushed over.

“Is there a doctor onboard? We have a passenger who’s in need of emergency assistance,” sounds over the intercom.

A doctor appeared beside him to check his vitals.

“We need to land the plane immediately! He’s having a heart attack.”

An ambulance was on the runway when they landed.

In a moment of panic, Eric looked straight into the paramedic’s eyes and said, “Please don’t let me die, I have a 5 y/o son.”

The next day, Eric awoke in hospital.

His relief quickly turned to guilt and shame. He knew he’d done it to himself. Since McKinsey, 100-hour weeks had become his norm.

He’d regularly work 2-3 days straight, building Chilango on little to no sleep. The grit and determination that brought him career “success” had been his undoing. 

Something needed to change.

He dialled in his diet and gym regimen. But things didn’t just magically get better. 

Two years later, his wife threatened to leave. Another wake-up call.

So, he began prioritising his home life.

Then in 2020, COVID hit… leaving Eric and his business partner with no choice but to hand off Chilango to investors to save the business. 

In a matter of a decade, Eric not only lost his business but almost lost his marriage and his life.

Despite all these hardships, Eric accumulated a wealth of hard-won lessons.

Lessons that can only be learned from 20 years in the trenches spent:

• Hyper-scaling a billion-dollar company

• Building an award-winning chain of restaurants

• And overcoming the odds at every turn due to relentless persistence

And today, he coaches CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs on how to operate at their full potential.

Eric’s story highlights the importance of:

• Getting clear on what you want

• Fostering the right relationships to set yourself up with opportunities, and

• Quickly learning from your mistakes, no matter how bad things seem in the moment