When I first decided to write this book in 2013, life was normal. Liquidnet was coming out of the mess ignited by the financial crisis, and I was confident the company would survive. All the battles won and lost came with lessons learned, tactics improved, and stories to share. Anne, my partner and soul mate, was radiantly alive and we were dreaming again about our future.

It turned out that Liquidnet was far from out of the woods and I could never in my worst nightmare dream of what was yet to come. After Anne’s accident, I had nothing left. Work was incredibly tough, but home was worse—there was no respite. There was no escape, and then there were the projects that Anne had been working on, especially the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village that I had to make sure continued to thrive through what would be a very difficult transition.

In the weeks following the accident I knew I had to go to the Village in Rwanda. The kids living in the Village were worried that without Anne, whom they called “mother” or “grandmother,” the Village would close and they would again suffer the loss of their home and their new family. The Village that began as just a thought and became a reality through Anne’s sheer will and perseverance absolutely had to continue. The kids needed to see me and hear me tell them that I would make sure the village would always go on. When I arrived and spoke at the most beautiful memorial service I had ever experienced, I told them that as their father I wanted to hug each and every one living there. Before I finished speaking, they started lining up—500 kids and 300 house mothers, cooks, gardeners, volunteers, and all the other people who worked there. It was amazing, and I needed their hugs as much as they needed mine.

The name of the village, Agahozo-Shalom, is a combination of a Kinyarwanda word and a Hebrew word that means “a place where tears are dried” and “peace.” Anne knew it was the perfect name from the moment my daughter Jenna came up with it, but I never once imagined that it would be a place where my tears would be dried. That’s what happened. In seeing the miracle that Anne created in every one of the kids’ faces, I couldn’t help but feel so proud.

Everyone deals with grief differently. I turned my attention to work and staying incredibly busy from that point on. It was too hard to go home, so I searched for ways to keep myself occupied. As if fixing Liquidnet wasn’t enough of a challenge, I started three new businesses: a biotech investment fund, which raised $40 million to invest in promising cures for monogenetic diseases; a pharmaceutical company I started with my father that looks for bioactive compounds in Israeli desert plants; and, to complete Anne’s vision of creating businesses to help the village become self-sustaining, a solar company in Africa that installs solar panels on people’s huts to provide electricity to their homes for the first time.

Based in Rwanda, but serving all of Africa, it will employ graduates of the ASYV to install and maintain the panels and run the call center. The Village will also get a portion of the company revenue. The solar business will be the start to making the AYSV sustainable and enable it, hopefully, to outlive us all.

Two years after Anne’s accident, working constantly, boarding a plane every other day and out to dinners every night, time and fatigue caught up with me and I realized I was tired of being sad all the time and I had to deal with the pain. I began therapy and slowly over time, I am starting to find ways to enjoy life again.

Liquidnet celebrated its 15-year anniversary and everything we have done to turn the company around continues to pay off. The big banks continue to retrench, and I have never been more optimistic about our prospects of taking market share and expanding into new businesses. The AYSV continues to thrive and the kids continue to excel at everything they do from scoring at the very top of the country in their matriculation exams, to winning national sports and debate tournaments. I’m thrilled that one of the first graduates of the village interned at Liquidnet this summer.

I’m traveling less, but not slowing down. I am extremely excited about the opportunities that we have created for ourselves, and I’m eager to start fixing some of the huge problems that still plague our industry. The prospects for positive destruction never end, and in this I’ve found a renewed purpose.

• • •

One month before her accident, Anne told a friend that if she died that day she would have lived a very full life. I believe that those who have the opportunity to live a full life have the obligation to do so—that can include working to invent a new future in a company or industry to helping to make the world a better place.

Positive destruction is just what it means. It is breaking things down to put them back together better. It improves productivity, jobs, companies, industries, economies, and the lives of all the people who benefit from those improvements.

What’s happening in your company, in your industry, in your life? Pick something you’re excited about and define a very large problem, then figure out the one, two, or three things that, if you really solved for, would give you an unfair competitive advantage and your prospects would be stupid not to buy from you.

Think about ways you can incorporate philanthropy, about ways you want to give back. We all own the obligation to repair the world, and if every person and every company took on some of that responsibility, the world would indeed be a better place. I can tell you from experience that dedicating yourself to something bigger than money, more important than power or prestige, is what will sustain you and give you purpose when times are tough. Success and happiness can be mercurial, but finding meaning and doing good for others is a gift that keeps on giving and what will keep you going.

Use the tools in this book to help you detail your tactics, design your plan, stack the deck in your favor—and win. You can benefit from knowing that most people don’t spend the time and energy to figure out their company’s unfair competitive advantage and unique selling proposition. Simply being better prepared than your competition helps stack the deck in your favor.

I’m now living in a new and altered world I would never have designed, but we all live in a world that alters itself every day and makes it hard for us to keep up. We must adapt to these sometimes unbelievably difficult realities. The pace of change only seems to increase, and that means that more companies, business models, and industries will be disrupted faster.

I started and completed this book for those of you who are excited by the opportunity to make a difference, to change a company or industry and make it better. I believe that every bit of positive destruction makes the world a little better. Good luck following your passion to find your problem, create your opportunity, and invent a better future.