Leadership from a different perspective – Deluded or What? (USA)

Naked Leader Week – 155 (w/c Monday 8 May 2006)

Uniting and Unleashing the forces for good in our world

 Leadership from a different perspective – Deluded or What? (USA)

 In The Naked Leader Experience I wrote a chapter called “Deluded or What?” – In which I listed people, ventures and ideas that were predicted to fail, and then succeeded.

Since publication I have received many, many more, and realising that my book contained mostly UK and European examples, have selected five from the USA.

With love and passion for your idea, your venture, and achieving your dream.

And when you do, it will be those who told you that you never had a chance, who will be the first to say they always knew you would!

David

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5          “The Passion of the Christ” Movie Venture:

This was deemed to be a very financially risky and potentially career

ending film for Mel Gibson by many critics. He invested $26.5 million of his own money to make the low-budget feature, and it has grossed over $900 million so far. Now, you can’t live on that, but it’s a start.

4          CNN

“No-one will ever watch a 24 hour news channel” screamed the commentators. CNN was initially scoffed at by big broadcasters who dubbed it the Chicken Noodle Network. Now, 20 years later, CNN is the global news brand. Ted Turner risked his own personal wealth because he could not find external investors.

3          Diet Coke

When this idea was suggested internal civil war broke out inside the company. Launch it, they said, but don’t call it Coke. They did and rolled it out.

The world guzzled and today, Diet Coke is the world’s number three soft-drink, closely trailing regular Pepsi which itself trails Coca-Cola.

2          Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

Known as ‘Disney’s Folly’ in the film industry during production because it went over its original $250k budget to cost $1.5M (1937 dollars) and it was thought to be impossible to earn back its costs. It ended up being the most successful film of all time upon its release and has earned literally billions of dollars.

1          Superman Comic Book:

“We are in the market only for strips likely to have the most extra-ordinary appeal, and we do not feel Superman gets into this category.’”

So Bell Syndicate told Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, co-creators of Superman. After four tough years of rejection from newspaper syndicates, they then turned to the comic-book publishers. The editor of United Features described it as an “immature piece of work, attractive because of its freshness and naiveté, but this is likely to wear off after the feature runs for a while.

Well, that “while” is still going thanks to DC Comics.