Ted Turner Made No Excuses

 

I just finished watching the CNBC Titans documentary on Ted Turner. Going into the show, I didn't have a really good grasp of what Ted had accomplished both personally and professionally, and had made a biased judgement as such. Another example of why not to judge anyone. An incredible story, Mr. Turner epitomizes the word entrepreneur and risk-taker. Not only the founder of TBS and CNN, but also owner of the Atlanta Braves (and World Series Winner), America's Cup sailing champion, and one of the world's biggest philanthropists. 

Through the entire show, however, one thing struck me as being very important. No matter what endeavor Ted took on, he never made any excuses about why he couldn't do it. Everyone in life goes through ups and downs, and yet the majority of people don't celebrate the ups and complain about the downs. By the age of 24, Ted's sister had passed away from cancer at the age of 17, his parents separated, and then his father committed suicide by shooting himself. Does this sound like a regular upbringing? Probably not, for most of us.

People will use any excuse in the book to not do something. Even though Ted was left with his father's one million dollar billboard business under his control, he was a 24 year old Brown University dropout. He had experience in working for the business, not running it. He had been through personal turmoil having his sister & father die, as well as his parents splitting up. Yet we know how the story ends, Ted is one of the world's greatest billionaires and philanthropists. How can this happen?

This post is not just about Mr. Turner and his path to success. It's about the principles behind making excuses and why we limit ourselves from success. His story is just a perfect example to follow along with. The fact is that many people, including Oprah, Martha Stewart, Jay Z and Steve Jobs all went through personal hardships that they have managed to battle through. All of these people were given a million reasons why they should give up, yet didn't.

An excuse is something we make to convince ourselves that the task is not worth doing. Don't feel like going for a run this morning? It is raining and cold after all. Don't feel like cooking? Take-out is just a couple of minutes away. Most excuses are small and harmless, like the two previous examples. But many excuses limit us from living our lives the way we should, and this is where we run into a problem. In entrepreneurship, there are a million reasons to just give up and become a typical person and get a job. Things take four times longer than they should, you have no money, people don't believe in you, your family thinks you are crazy, etc... There are plenty of reasons to just stop what you are doing.

Going back to Ted Turner, he had every opportunity in the book to just give up ownership of his father's company, take a working role and just have a decent life. He could have wallowed in the sadness of the tragedies that had occurred, and turned to drugs and alcohol to cure his pain. The most common excuse for becoming drug addicts and alcoholics usually trace back to "my parents got divorced when I was young". There are lots of things to write here, but every situation is unique, so I'm not going to go there. 

Ted instead grew his father's company into a much larger version within a few years. This alone is something people take a lifetime to do. He then decided that he wanted to have more of a global impact, and making sales on billboards has very little impact on the world. So he decided to buy a small television station in Atlanta. At that time, the only national TV stations were NBC, CBS and ABC. All the others were just local stations, having to struggle to get any kind of distribution. In Atlanta, the station was boring and losing money. Because things had always been done a certain way, this was yet another opportunity for Ted to just stop what he was doing and go back to the "safe" advertising business. Instead, he thought that putting the Atlanta Braves on his station would increase ratings. Not only did it explode ratings, but when the Braves came up for sale, Mr. Turner thought it would be a good idea to purchase them. (in order to understand the pure business genius behind this deal, read the article: http://www.gladwell.com/2010/2010_01_18_a_surething.html)

In 1969, Ted Turner wanted to buy a television station. He was thirty years old. He had inherited a billboard business from his father, which was doing well. But he was bored, and television seemed exciting. "He knew absolutely nothing about it," one of Turner's many biographers, Christian Williams, writes in "Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way" (1981). "It would be fun to risk everything he had built, scare the hell out of everybody, and get back in the front seat of the roller coaster."

The station in question was WJRJ, Channel 17, in Atlanta. It was an independent station on the UHF band, the lonely part of the television spectrum which viewers needed a special antenna to find. It was housed in a run-down cinder-block building near a funeral home, leading to the joke that it was at death's door. The equipment was falling apart. The staff was incompetent. It had no decent programming to speak of, and it was losing more than half a million dollars a year. Turner's lawyer, Tench Coxe, and his accountant, Irwin Mazo, were firmly opposed to the idea. "We tried to make it clear that—yes—this thing might work, but if it doesn't everything will collapse," Mazo said, years later. "Everything you've got will be gone. . . . It wasn't just us, either. Everybody told him not to do it."

The above is a quote from the article I linked to. It shows how Ted was able to shed any excuses the people around him came up with, to just go out and do what he thought was best. This style of entrepreneurship may also remind you of Richard Branson, who follows a similar philosophy.

The fact is that Ted was given multiple reasons to stop doing what he was doing and give up. He made some great decisions and a couple of very poor ones. At one point during the AOL - Time Warner merger, he was losing $10 million in stock value per day. He was once worth $10 billion, and it collapsed down to $1.9 billion. Instead of complaining and going into hiding, Ted opened up 48 restaurants serving premier bison beef. (he is also the second largest land owner in North America, having a huge % of the bison).

Most of us operate on numbers much, much smaller than this. We live out our lives for the most part through other people’s paths, not stopping to think whether what we are doing is right for us. We let other people make excuses for us as to why not to do something. The worst part? We listen. Instead of putting blinders on and doing what our gut tells us to do, we listen to others who speak from their past experiences.  

When it comes to careers, you have the choice of deciding to go into what you know is right for you, or listening to other people as to why it won’t work. You can use past downfalls as excuses for why you won’t succeed, or you can put your head down and create a future. You can blame your parents for not raising you properly and giving you the wealth you “deserve”, or you can thank them for instilling a sense of drive and an appreciation of money. Remember, the world is filled with excuses why you shouldn’t do something. The question is, are you going to let those excuses creep into your mind and keep you from being you?