Don’t Be Afraid of Failure

The April 2020 issue of ChannelPro magazine, an information technology and business publication for information professionals, features Will Foret (ITM ’10) on its cover. President of Spot Migration, an outsourced IT service company he founded in 2013, Foret was drawn to IT from his teenage years. Inspired by his father, who owned a small computer shop in the pre-HP and Dell days, Foret celebrated his 16th birthday by buying parts to build a computer with money he had earned through his job at OfficeMax. He went on to discover a good higher education match with a “2+2 program,” earning his associate degree at the College of DuPage and his bachelor’s degree in information technology and management at Illinois Institute of Technology. Foret held a variety of IT jobs, building his skill set at each one, before launching Spot Migration, which is “gaining double-digit growth for every year we have been around and we are already well on track this year [in 2020],” according to Foret. He credits several individuals from Illinois Tech for helping him establish a strong business foundation.

“Bill Lidinsky and Ray Trygstad were two of my favorite professors who taught out of experience, which had real-life applicability,” says Foret, “and Sean Hughes-Durkin, who was a classmate of mine and is now an Illinois Tech instructor. Having good peers to talk to and challenge me helped me fail and realize things faster. Failure is part of the learning cycle, and I was able to pick myself up faster because of it. This is a strong skill needed for entrepreneurship.”