Inspiring Leaders Who Didn't Let The Naysayers Bring Them Down
Inspiring leaders capture our imagination because they didn’t let naysayers divert them from taking the road less traveled. Starbucks Chairman and former CEO Howard Schultz once told me that even his own business partners didn’t think Americans would pay for lattes and cappuccinos. I was told by Richard Branson that very few people believed Virgin Atlantic would succeed against entrenched competition. “The others had might; we have customer service,” Branson said. In an interview for one of my books, Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp said most people thought her goal “to reduce educational inequities” was nothing more than the pipe dream of a na?ve Princeton student.
At a commencement address, Hulu founder Jason Kilar told the graduating class at UNC-Chapel Hill,
Doing what you love, pursuing your own path, is often the most unsettling option at the outset." The paths that others have traveled before you, paths that have greater visibility — they appear lower risk. They play better in conversations with the aunts, the uncles, and the neighbors. But don’t fall for it.
After graduating from business school and, despite facing mountains of debt, Kilar accepted a “modest” salary for a small company in the Pacific Northwest selling goods on the internet. The company was Amazon. "My friends and family thought I was insane to go there, given the traditional opportunities that I would be forgoing,” Kilar said. Nine years later, Kilar left Amazon and started Hulu, a company that reimagined how television programming was delivered.
In the early days ahead of Hulu’s launch, both the company and my decision to build it were very publicly considered truly horrible, terrible, ideas…Most people – including the ‘smart ones’ are averse to new things. The typical human response in the face of the new is to ignore, mock, or dismiss it.
If you believe the world is broken in a certain way and you have an idea to fix it, “follow your convictions relentlessly,” Kilar added.
In Getting There author Gillian Zoe Segal includes interviews with a wide range of ultra-successful leaders, most of whom share stories of overcoming naysayers early in their careers. For example:
Sara Blakely - The billionaire founder of Spanx, Sara Blakely, faced so many skeptics when she pitched her idea for footless pantyhose she now says, “Its smart to keep a young entrepreneurial idea secret, even from friends and family.”
Anderson Cooper - CNN’s Anderson Cooper worked as a copy editor early in his television career. “You’ll never be on the air,” he was told repeatedly. To this day Cooper says he “rarely asks people for advice when I’m planning on doing something I feel strongly about.”
Matthew Weiner - Matthew Weiner wanted to be writer, but was rejected from every writing class in college. After graduation, he nearly gave up his ambition because his scripts were constantly rejected. He passed one script around for four years. Finally, it landed on the deck of an AMC executive and Mad Men was born. “You can’t set a clock for yourself. If you do, you are not a writer. You should want it so badly that you don’t have a choice,” says Weiner.
John Paul DeJoria - the founder of John Paul Mitchell and Patron Spirits, credits his experience selling encyclopedias door-to-door for his ability to overcome rejection. “After you’ve had 15 doors slammed in your face, you need to be as enthusiastic at door number 16 as you were at the first door if you want to make a sale.” When DeJoria and a business partner created a line of hair-care products for professional stylists, DeJoria was living in his car and “at least four of five salons we approached turned us down. DeJoria refused to give up because he was excited about the product line and excited about disrupting the status quo. “The key is to be passionate about what you are doing,” DeJoria says.
Authors of a famous paper titled, Status Quo Bias in Decision Making, concluded that, “a series of decision-making experiments shows that individuals disproportionately stick with the status quo.” If the status quo is the default setting in our brains, leaders who challenge the status quo are—by definition—outliers. They also play an important role in our lives: their stories force us to reframe our internal narrative, giving us the courage to override the negative signals we hear from ourselves and from others.
- Carmine Gallo
Bestselling author, keynote speaker and communication coach. Receive weekly quick tips on leadership, communication and presentation skills by joining the newsletter list at carminegallo.com.