Hollywood movie producer David Brown, whose credits include such blockbusters as Jaws and Cocoon, considers himself an expert on the subject of failure. Brown was fired from four jobs (including two top posts at 20th Century Fox) before figuring out that he's too much of a risk-taker for conventional corporate life.
Once he came to that realization, he formed his own production company where he's free to be as creative and daring as he chooses. But it took four failed tries as a "wage slave" to figure out that he couldn't find the solution to his employment problems in corporate America.
Of course, he'll never repeat that same employment mistake if he can help it. As former baseball catcher and sportscaster Joe Garagiola says: "Experience is mistakes you won't make anymore."
Hubris
Harry Truman once said, "The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all."
Success can be a powerful aphrodisiac, especially when ac companied by money, fame and power. It can lure you into thinking you're omnipotent: that nothing and no one can touch you.
Witness the case of boxer Mike Tyson, who didn't have the character or inner strength to handle his own success. Behold also the downfalls of Jim Bakker, Leona Helmsley, Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky, all of whom have had the opportunity to contemplate the error of their ways from inside a jail cell.
Prison time must have its pluses: Boesky found God and professes to want to be a rabbi, Tyson converted to Islam, Milken discovered the joys of public service and has been seen escorting poor kids to baseball games, while Bakker has repented for his sins and wants his pulpit back to try again. Ms. Helmsley, on the other hand, seems sorry most of all that she got caught.
The Watergate folks also seemed to find religion in the wake of their downfall. Whether these religious conversions are real remains to be seen. Being humbled by defeat (and finding out that, no, you aren't God) can motivate you to search for and discover the true source of omnipotence.
Similarly hard lessons in humility were learned by hundreds of financiers on the traumatic day the stock market crashed in 1987. That event forever altered these capitalists' understanding of their own power and place in the world.
Too much, too soon has also been the downfall of many entrepreneurs who failed, in some fundamental way, to anticipate and prepare for success.
For David Dornbush and Chad Erickson, founding partners of American Harvest (formerly known as Alternative Pioneering Systems), this flaw nearly killed their fledgling company.
The two budding entrepreneurs had the savvy to develop and mass-produce their product line, which includes food dehydrators and other food accessories. They built sales through arrangements with such catalog retailers as Sears, Montgomery Ward and J.C. Penney, but grossly underestimated what would happen when their advertising dollars paid off. Demand quickly soared, and in the rush to keep up, entire truckloads of defective products were shipped (and returned) at record speed.
A competitor saw and seized the advantage, stealing four of their five catalog accounts from under their noses and costing them an estimated $6 million in business.
Amazingly, they survived, but it took years to recover what they'd lost. In fact, they had to redesign and reposition their products to win back catalog sales.
Having learned their lesson well, the two entrepreneurs now appreciate the importance of selling a quality product and will never again go to market with shoddy materials.
