This is a guest article from Ludvig Sunstrom, founder of the Start Gaining Momentum blog. Ludvig asked if he could contribute an article on “How To Think Big”, which I think is very relevant with the New Year being right around the corner. Enjoy!
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Let’s talk about thinking bigger.
By observing people – both in real life and in the online world – especially people that I know, I’ve noticed a clear pattern. The people who do well – and become successful at what they do – are those who think BIG.
They are able to see things from a larger context. They have a vision for what will happen in the future, not just in terms of the Internet and business. But also in their own lives.
And those who do less well?
They’re short-term oriented. They don’t see the larger context of their actions, or how they can use what they're currently doing into building towards something bigger.
Instead of me talking about this concept, let me give you a few historic examples of what I mean when I use the words “thinking big”.
Frederick the Great Makes Potatoes Popular in Prussia
It started with the Spanish conquistadors who went and invaded Peru, and also brought back the potato plant during the late 16th century. The plant slowly spread to different European countries over the course a few of decades.
But it wasn't popular — far from it.
Not even poor people wanted to eat potatoes as they were considered barbaric, foul and poisonous.
In 1774, Frederick the Great, who ruled over Prussia, realized the potential of potatoes in feeding his country. He understood that if potatoes became a staple food it could do two very important things for Prussia:
It could reduce their dependency on bread and avoid an excessive inflation on the price of bread
It could save people from starvation in the case of extreme bad luck, for example, if Prussian farmers produced poor harvests for several years in a row
So Frederick ordered a bunch of towns around the country to start growing potatoes. But it didn't work because the people had such a strong aversion to the potato plant and did not want to willingly grow it, not to mention eating it.
Frederick then tried another approach: He started planting potatoes in his own royal garden!
He purposely placed lots of soldiers to guard this section of his royal garden, as if to specifically signify its importance. Naturally, this got the attention of the people who unconsciously assumed that what is guarded must be valuable.
Next, Frederick ordered for the guards to be removed one night. When he did that his garden was quickly plundered, and all his potato plants were stolen by poor people!
This was exactly what he wanted.
He then put his propaganda machine to work and put out word that potatoes was an exclusive food, which “should” only be allowed to be eaten by the nobility. Of course, this just made the poor people – who admired the nobility – want to eat it even more.
The end result was that Fredrik had overcome the stigma of growing the potato plant, got the plant into the hands of the people and managed to make it seem fashionable to eat potatoes.
How's that for marketing?
Ted Turner Creates CNN and Becomes a Billionaire
When Ted Turner was a boy he wanted to be a fighter pilot. In his teens he wanted to be like his hero, Alexander the Great, and conquer the world. In his 20s and 30s, as a business man, he wanted to be the first at something — he wanted to be an innovator.
Ted was 24 years old when his father suddenly sold the family billboard business and then shot himself, leaving it in the hands of his son. Right before the suicide Ted's father told him:
“Son, 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.”
The pending sale of the family billboard business would leave Ted with little more than $1 million dollars. Only he did not go through with it.
He put everything he had into stopping the sale from going through and he was successful in doing so.
Ted thought that if Alexander the Great, who was only 20 when he took over the Macedonian kingdom from his father, could conquer the world, then why could not he take over the family business and conquer the billboard industry?
A daring thought. But it turned out he was correct.
In 1979, when he was 41, he decided to launch the Cable News Network (CNN). By this time Turner had already become a successful entrepreneur, first in the billboard business and then expanding to the media business with his company Turner Broadcasting Systems (TBS).
But he was no longer interested in just making money. He wanted to be an innovator.
The big — and revolutionary — idea with CNN was to challenge the three existing big broadcasters — ABC, CBS and NBC — who pretty much dominated the market at the time. CNN would do this by being the first station to show only news (without opinionated commentary) — and do it all day long, 24/7.
But there was a slight problem. CNN had nowhere as much money as the big broadcasters had. The big broadcasters had budgets of $300 million a year and more, as Turner explains in his biography Call Me Ted:
“Clearly, the companies for whom the economics of twenty-four-hour news would have made the most sense were the Big Three broadcasters. They already had most of what was needed—studios, bureaus, reporters, anchors—almost everything but a belief in cable. “
Fortunately, Ted Turner and CNN had that belief.
When CNN was launched in 1980, it only had a budget of $30 million a year — and for one year only. And that would be the end of it without more financing. Most people in the industry thought it was completely impossible. This was a huge problem, but Ted went ahead with the idea anyway:
“The CNN launch phase was particularly intense for me because I knew we were breaking one of the golden rules of start-ups—we were launching a business without sufficient capital to see it through to profitability.“
Intense indeed. Turner would work 18 hours a day for the coming 20 years while sleeping on a pull-down Murphy bed in his office. (Later when he got rich he built a private floor on top of his CNN office to sleep instead.) The reason he slept in his office was because he couldn't afford to waste time commuting. He even wore slip-on shoes to save time.
The first year of launching CNN was about as risky as it gets in business. To borrow a phrase from Sun Tzu's book The Art of War: the army was on death ground several times. Fortunately Ted Turner was a skilled strategist:
“As a student of military history, I likened the CNN launch strategy to Irwin Rommel’s desert campaign during World War II. On several occasions, the German general attacked the British when he knew he didn’t have enough fuel to conduct an entire offensive. What he intended to do was strike when they weren’t expecting it, overrun their lines, and then capture their fuel dumps. At that point he could refuel his Panzers and continue the offensive. My vision for financing CNN was similar. If we had enough cash to get on the air and could somehow get through our first year of operation, people would see that this was a viable and valuable service. Once the concept was proven, we would have easier access to capital. Even in the worst case, I figured that if we ran out of money after launching the channel and getting some distribution, we would have created a valuable asset that we could sell to a competitor. The key for us was to get started.”
Ted established a metric for success. He realized that there was no way for CNN to be profitable at a 14 % market penetration, which is what CNN was at when it was first launched. They needed to be at 50 % — and this would require two things:
1. For more households to start using cable technology
2. For CNN to build a trustworthy brand
Both of these things required time and hard work – but first CNN had to survive!
CNN managed to survive its first year by selling off assets. But they were not as successful in generating revenue via traditional advertising as they had hoped to.
They struggled with credibility issues and were not taken seriously at all. The major broadcasters called them “Chicken Noodle News” and tried their best to discredit CNN.
Nearly two years after its launch, CNN had got the attention of important people. One such person was Fidel Castro, who invited Ted Turner to visit him in Cuba during 1981. Castro gave him the idea that it would be smart to expand the operation and televise global news. . .
… And that's how CNN eventually got its REAL big breakthrough and gained enough authority and popularity to start making serious money through traditional advertising.
East India Company: The Most Successful “Business” in History
Few people of our generation know much about the East India Company (founded in 1600) — or even what it is.
This is a shame, because. . .
… No one enterprise has had even close to the same impact on the modern world as that of the East India Company.
The East India Company (EIC) sparked the British Empire, established English as the world-language, brought us into the Industrial age and is responsible for much of our current economic and geographic culture.
What did EIC do?
They traded commodities, notably so cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, saltpetre, tea and opium.
EIC is the reason the Tea Party came into existence and why the Opium Wars began.
At one point, EIC accounted for half of the world's trade and governed most of India. Other than modern China, no other government or country has ever controlled so many people.
They even established their own college for training company administrators and military facility for training officers into their private army, as well as and its own flag (which looks surprisingly similar to the US flag).
This sounds amazing — and it was, EIC, at its peak — is and was beyond comparison to any other business or organization. Not even Rockefeller's Standard Oil can hold a candle to it.
However, the reason EIC could boast such an impressive feat was because of three things:
1. EIC basically created world trading — and established many monopolies
2. EIC had scale like no other company in the world (it was like a sovereign power)
3. Ship-building was one of the most advanced and costly projects in the world at the time…
… And even though ships were built a long time before EIC, those ships were not very durable or impressive. Also, even if another company was able to build a lot of those ships, they would still lack the comprehensive business expertise and the trading alliances of the EIC.
So, there were enormous barriers to entry for the few people who had the knowledge or ambition to partake in world trade at the time. You could compare it to that of trying to create a profitable company based on building space rockets in today's world.
The thing that's so interesting about the EIC though, is that where most other companies would have been content to just trade commodities and make a nice profit, EIC were able to expand far beyond that. How did they do that – What strategy did they use?
Good question.
The EIC realized it didn't just “make” the stuff it sold — It created a way for people to use it. They realized they had to create an environment that was conducive to their business.
When you look at it from this perspective, that EIC's “product” was mainly stability, you begin to see how great companies are built. They're built on the back of a solution to an issue.
Instead of trying to make better fabric, or grow more spices, EIC realized it was their job was to create a more stable environment to trade in India (and other colony countries) — so they could help their textile merchants (and other suppliers) make better fabric. They did this by:
- Fighting against piracy (which was widespread at the time)
- Training a private army of their own to defend against bandits
- Building large trading posts to protect traders and suppliers
An excellent demonstration of this is with Fort Williams in Calcutta. This was created by the company to protect its staff and products:
The sheer fact that the company created this fort, meant they could provide better security to their suppliers, allowing them to create more and better goods. More and better goods meant more trade, which meant more fort.
What do these examples have in common?
They all thought BIG and created something out of nothing.
Frederick the Great used smart psychological tricks to motivate the people into doing what he wanted them to do. And in doing so he created a demand for potatoes among the Prussian population and saved them from starvation.
Thanks to Ted Turner's hard work, creativity and contrarian strategies, CNN was able to be the first with many things — such as:
- Giving unbiased news without dumbed-down or overly opinionated commentary
- 24-hour televised news, both nationally and globally
- Creating different new TV channels (classic movies, cartoons, etc.,) by looking at what everyone else was doing and doing the opposite
The East India Company was not just a freakishly profitable company; it also established trading routes, built minor cities, trained its own employees and private army. It even created culture which still influences us today.
What will you do?
Don't just look to what is being done right now.
Think bigger.
Consider what has been done historically — and what could be done.
Imagine taking just a small amount of the pioneering zeal of these examples to create something new.
Imagine having the balls to go out and do something so huge that you've got to create a colony to pull it off.
Ludvig Sunström writes about practical self-development over at Start Gaining Momentum. Join his newsletter and get his popular free eBook 75 Practical Tips.