Follow your own instincts. Don’t be afraid to go against the conventional wisdom. Chaos creates opportunities.

Those were the lessons that two of the Tri-Counties’ top business leaders hammered home at the annual South Coast Business & Technology Awards Dinner on June 4.

The annual dinner has become an attraction for business leaders from across the region because it represents a rare opportunity to hear normally press-shy professionals and chief executives tell their stories.

In the case of Richard Compton, co-founder, president and chief executive of NuSil Technologies in Carpinteria, the hardest part might have been getting out of high school. For investor Reece Duca, it was turning down a handful of job offers after graduating from Stanford Business School and starting out on his own with $75,000 scraped together from jobs and savings.

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