Dudley Moore starred in the 1990 comedy film Crazy People about a burnt-out ad exec who gets fed up with the typical phony ad campaigns and all their hype.
So he decides to create ads that tell the brutally honest truth.
The offensive ads don’t go over well with his boss, and Moore’s character is committed to an asylum to “recover.”
While in therapy, his ads get printed by mistake and are a colossal success. In the wake of their success, he's hailed as a marketing genius along with his band of asylum mates who he enlists in the creative chaos.
Not unlike Dudley’s crazies in the movie who out-performed the Madison Avenue ad professionals, entrepreneurs are labeled as those crazy people who have crazy ideas and do crazy things that industry experts say won’t fly.
On the flip side, the difference between Moore’s lunatic success and exceptionally successful entrepreneurs are two-fold:
Ray Kroc, Walt Disney, and Donald Trump were all poo-pooed for their wacky schemes. Lucky for all of us, they wrote books detailing all their research that explain their reasons for their maverick ideas.
Recently, one of our clients had a marketing idea that at that initial knee-jerk level seemed somewhere between genius and completely counter-intuitive. What Cheryl and I were impressed with was his dogged determination to pursue it.
By working with him and asking him the questions that no one else was asking, he dug in and did his research and ended up with a unique product that will no doubt be very successful in his niche.
The trick is to harness the craziness and get the information needed to spin gold out of crazy ideas.
If your game plan includes the need to bet on the winning horse at every venture, your success as an entrepreneur will be short-lived.
Donald Trump has survived multiple failed real estate projects. He’s been sued by investors.
Walt Disney has killed acquisitions quietly that didn’t pan out as he expected.
My own graveyard includes some misses in affiliate marketing and joint ventures that still stick in my craw. Closing the doors on my mortgage business was gut wrenching.
Each failure, misfortune, or mistake only made me more determined to forget it, rise above it, and leverage it.
Michael Jordan missed over 9,000 shots I his pro career. He lost 26 game winning shots. And he also said…
“I have failed over and over and over again in my life – and that is why I succeed.”
Gene Landrum, the original founder of Chuck E. Cheese Pizza, has studied the personalities of over-achieving and successful leaders in every field…he wanted to know what made them tick.
Check out in the video below what he says about a meeting where the head of a major hotel chain told him that the concept of rats delivering pizza would never work.
If you haven’t read any of his books, start with Profiles of Power and Success.
Celebrate the wins. Manage and learn from the losses. Minimize the risk, but never quit.
Success is messy – go ahead, and get it all over you!
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