Okay, I hear you: “Jack was lucky to be in a building where a Frenchman who started an animation studio lived.”

But 'luck' had very little to do with it.

I’d packed up, moved to L.A. where I knew no one, and for years worked hard to put myself in the right place at the right time. That’s called ‘positioning’. In baseball it’s called ‘swinging the bat’.

Baseball... Yeah, so Reggie Jackson, Sammy Sosa and Alex Rodriguez – three of the greatest baseball players of all time -- have a lot in common. Reggie smashed 563 home runs during his career. Sammy pounded out 609 homers and Alex Rodriguez racked up an incredible 696 home runs. And each had over 2,000 hits – 2,408 for Sammy, 2,584 for Reggie and an astonishing 3,115 for Alex Rodriguez.

Obviously, they were tremendously talented baseball players. But there’s one other thing they share in common: all three are on the Top Ten List of players who have struck out the most times in baseball – over 2,000 whiffs each during their careers.

I also struck out a lot of times in my early career and I would strike out a lot more later in my career. But that’s how you hit home runs – you develop your talent, you put yourself in the right place, you swing the bat and you hope you connect.

I swung, and that night in Studio City I connected. I’d met a Frenchman who would animate me.

And it wasn’t luck.