“Because it’s there. Everest is the highest mountain 
in the world, and no man has reached its summit. Its existence is a challenge. The answer is instinctive, a part, I suppose, of man’s desire to conquer the universe.”
- George Mallory, English Mountaineer
This past week, I traveled to the island country of St. Kitts and Nevis to visit three amazing executives and entrepreneurs - Messrs. Scott Caines, Errol Douglas, and Denzel Crooke.
These fine gentlemen are spearheading Golden Rock - a real estate development project that will fundamentally transform for the better the lives of the island’s 50,000+ residents, along with those of neighboring islands, including Antigua, Dominica, and Barbados.
The development will be a model of mixed use, combining elements of residential apartments, commercial office space, retail, entertainment, educational, and health. It will be unlike anything ever developed in the Caribbean, and as its vision is brought to full fruition, unlike anything anywhere in the world.
The obstacles to launch and complete a project of this ambition are significant anywhere, but obviously more so in a smaller, tourism-based locale like St. Kitts.
Actually getting it done requires the principals involved to be the polar opposites of dilettantes, possessing of deep, significant financial and technical expertise, underpinned by an inspirational business vision, awesome teamwork and relentless will to win.
Scott Caines, Errol Douglas, and Denzel Crooke are all this and more.
My time with them on their beautiful island was a reset for me, re-grounding me in the truism that of all of the things that serious, talented, decent, and dedicated among us can involve themselves, entrepreneurial, private sector projects are so often the most valuable.
The very smallness of St. Kitts paints this in particularly sharp relief.
Our Golden Rockers, with their remarkable personal and professional biographies, could take on leadership roles at the highest levels of their Island’s government.
Or they could focus full-time on their numerous philanthropic and charitable pursuits.
Or, better yet, they just don’t have to work as hard as they do, and no one on their breathtakingly beautiful Caribbean Island would fault them for it!
But business-building, on this project and others, is where their comparative advantage is greatest and where their impact can be the most profound.
But it goes deeper, more metaphysical than that.
For sure, St. Kitts needs the 1,000 new, private sector jobs the development will create.
And it needs the educational and healthcare and other awesome facilities envisioned as part of its larger development.
And nearby Caribbean islands need the competitive pressure of projects like it to challenge them to “up their game” and not rely on a "beach" and "cruise stop" tourism - based economic model.
But also and oh so importantly our fine friends Messrs. Caines, Douglas, and Crooke need this project because they are cast of the same stuff as George Mallory.
They build, so to say, to put a there there.
Because they can.
And because doing so is the highest expression of their professional muse and entrepreneurial spirit.
And thus, something new, beautiful, and wonderful is brought into the world.