Apr 14, 2024 · 1h 22m · founders
The Autobiography of Ted Turner
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David Senra analyzes the career and mindset of media mogul Ted Turner from his autobiography 'Call Me Ted,' illustrating how aggressive risk-taking, media synergies, and contrarian distribution built an empire before concluding with timeless hiring lessons from legendary entrepreneurs.
Statements from this episode (19)
Ted Turner's father advised setting impossibly high goals to maintain purpose
“You be sure to set your goals so high that you can't possibly accomplish them in one lifetime. That way, you'll always have something ahead of you. I made the mistake of setting my goals too low, and now I'm having a hard time coming up with new ones.”
Ted Turner lost $8 billion in 30 months after the AOL merger
“He's going to sell the company to Time Warner for eight billion dollars. And then a few years later, Time Warner is going to merge with AOL. Ted Turner stock goes up to a value of ten billion dollars, and then he winds up losing over the next 30 months, eight …”
Charlie Munger: The real challenge for entrepreneurs is staying sane
“The problem isn't getting rich. The problem is staying sane.”
Billboard company leases are highly valuable and disruptible assets
“In the billboard business, a company's leases are its most valuable assets. And if you really wanted to mess up a competitor, jumping the leases was a great way to do it.”
Ted Turner acquired a $1 million billboard company with zero cash down
“Will you finance 75% of the purchase price over seven years at a very high interest rate? He says yes. Then he goes to a bank that's actually looking to expand their investments in the south, and they lent Ted the rest of the money in return For equity in the …”
Autocratic founders who sell their businesses risk successors destroying asset value
“If you're a dictator, you want to listen to James Dyson when he said one of the most important things is retention of total control. Ted is a dictator, but then sells his company and then loses control. And it's very frustrated when he watches other people tak…”
Only two of 35 employees remained one year after Turner acquired WTCG
“Of the 35 people who were on the payroll when we took over, only two were still there a year later. The custodian and the receptionist.”
Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's early show out-earned Turner's entire station
“The only show that aired live from our studios, which was a religious program hosted by a young couple named Jim and Tammy Faye Baker. Well, before they went on to national fame, they got started with this local show. And before long, they were bringing in mor…”
Turner bought the Atlanta Braves for $10M with $1M down
“And so they're like, okay, we want a ten million dollars for the team. Could you imagine buying a professional sports team for ten million dollars, by the way? And so he, this is where he has to get creative. He's like, okay, I can give you a million dollars d…”
Turner boosted TBS ratings by shifting show start times by five minutes
“We're going to extend a program through the end of the hour and start the following one at seven oh five. I envisioned that people watching our competition would start flipping around at the end of their shows. And while the other channels would all be running…”
Turner found colorized classic films drew six times more television viewers
“I could run the black and white version of that movie. And then I can invest 200,000. Then now, now I have the color version and I'd run that exact same movie. One is a black and white. One is in color. The color one would get six times the amount of viewers.”
Turner sold his Charlotte TV station for $20M to fund CNN
“He has this local TV station in Charlotte that eight years before he had bought for a million dollars. Remember, he's always early. And now that business is valued at twenty million. So he sells that for twenty million dollars, takes a nineteen million dollar …”
CNN went 13 years without a 24-hour cable news competitor
“It would be 13 years before we faced another 24 hour news channel.”
Founders should avoid complicated deals because genius has the fewest moving parts
“This is really important, actually, because I think genius has the fewest moving parts. And I think the biggest weakness that I see in this book and one I'd want to avoid for myself is like, never get into deals that are too complicated.”
Founders are fundamentally driven by the desire for control, not money
“I really think the most important, most prominent instinct, natural instinct and founder and entrepreneurial types is the control and conquer instinct. I think What we think we want money or prestige or status, but I really think what we actually want is contr…”
Nolan Bushnell asked candidates about their reading habits to identify creative talent
“One of the best ways to find creative people is to ask a simple question. What books do you like? I've never met a creative person in my life that didn't respond with enthusiasm to a question about reading habits. Actually, which books people read is not as im…”
Max Levchin: The first B-player hired degrades the company's entire talent standard
“A players hire A players, B players hire C players. So the first B player you hire takes the whole company down.”
Oracle hired university graduates who claimed to be the smartest they knew
“When they were recruiting from universities, they'd ask people, are you the smartest person you know? And if they said yes, they would hire them. If they said no, they would say who is, and they would go hire that guy instead.”