Lake Minnetonka provides the course for many of the sailing races in which Joel Ronning, CEO of e-commerce software company Digital River in Eden Prairie, competes during the summer. He enjoys being on a team where members each understand their jobs. It’s more pleasurable than working solo, he says.
“Sailing is very peaceful. It’s just you, the wind, and the water. I got my first sailboat when I was 21 and sailed Lake Calhoun, then Lake Superior, the eastern seaboard, and the Caribbean. I have a Capri 25, a 25-foot boat, and a Melges A, a 38-foot boat, and still race twice a week during the summer months on Lake Minnetonka.
“The people I sail with, the really good ones, are very smart. They set a course and stick with it. They are very good at drawing in many different forms of information—from the strength and direction of the wind to the size of the waves—and using that information to make decisions. I’m comfortable at Digital River in figuring out what the next move should be and staying with it, but I still wrestle with that on the sail course.
“You have to keep your wits about you when things are not going well. You have to stay cool. You know something will change, but if it doesn’t, you might as well enjoy the sunshine.
“I’ve learned a lot more from my losses than my wins. Sometimes, we make the mistake of assuming that good luck is brilliance. You tend to make your own luck, but there are times when it’s made for you. You have to recognize when that happens so you can continue to take advantage of it. You have to dissect the information, do a postmortem on it, and learn from it. You have to spend many years doing this to get better at it; I’ve only been sailing for 30 years.”
