“Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?” – Animal House
The Boy prepares to defend Houston from The Hun.
You never know when you’re going to find opportunity. A while back, The Mrs. got invited to a dinner by her graduate advisor with the other grad school students. The professor and her husband owned a little cottage on a lake, and he owned a sailboat. He asked if anyone wanted to go sailing. I had never been sailing (and, to date, this is my only sailing trip). My hand shot up. I assumed that we would perhaps lay claim to a nearby cottage and maybe engage in some light pillaging. Sadly, it was only sailing. He looked askance at me when I had a full Viking regalia and torch (you only get to 80% pillage without the torch) that I brought for the trip.
I choked down the bitter disappointment and not going on a raid, but decided to go on the sailing trip anyway. He took us out on the lake. Making small talk, I asked what he did (since he was obviously not a proper Viking). “I have an advertising agency.”
I pressed further, asking details of how it worked and how he liked doing it and if he liked drinking the blood of his enemies while listening to the lamentation of their women. He said that was what they did in the 1950’s. I finally asked, “When did you open your ad agency?”
I’ve always been fascinated to understand that spark – that moment when people toss off their day jobs and decide to open their own place.
Him: “It was 1976.”
Me: “Wasn’t that in the middle of recessions, plus all the inflation?”
Him: “Yup. Stupid thing to do, right?” He said as he piloted his sailboat back toward his private dock by his cottage.
Duh. Obviously it was stupid. Why else didn’t he have a yacht and a private island?
And it’s easy to second-guess people who have great ideas and push for them to succeed. But flaming messes like Enron® aside, we mainly look at the companies that survived and think, “Wow! Those guys are so smart – they did everything right.”
Hey, a stock I didn’t lose money in! But I wish I could have been the guy to raid the burning building and hear the lamentation of their women.
We look at the survivors and judge their actions based upon their outcomes. Even geniuses (Steve Jobs was one) get it wrong – his board of directors had to fire him to put him into a place where he could make the biggest business comeback in history, plus redefine at least two consumer product lines, nearly singlehandedly.
But he messed things up, too. Jobs dumped all his Apple® stock when he got fired. Oh, did I mention he hired the guy that got him fired? And NeXT® computers were awesome, but no one wanted to spend $10,000 (1990 cash) to buy them. And the Apple© Lisa™. And the MacCube®. And a whole bunch of other stuff that didn’t work out.
But the ideas that he had that survived were worth over a trillion dollars.
The pattern that I keep seeing is that people who are successful don’t try just one idea and give up, they try lots of different ideas and the ones that work are kept, and the ones that don’t are thrown out.
What we look at when we see success doesn’t show the failure that success is built on.
You never know when you’re going to find opportunity. And you won’t find opportunity unless you try. And try. And try.
The Germans will NEVER TAKE PEARL HARBOR!
