I just had another Oprah Winfrey and OWN Network love in. Today’s Master Class was from Media Mogul and billionaire Philanthropist Ted Turner. Ted was the person who first introduced 24-hour TV news when other broadcasters said that it would never work.
Photograph Courtesy of Ted Turner.com
He went from concept, to launch of the CNN 24-hour news network in just 11 months. When you consider that this meant going from one reporter in one local station, to over 300 dotted all across the globe, that is no mean feat.
Photograph Courtesy of Ted Turner.com
Below are just a few of the gems that Ted shared in terms of his perspective on:
- Life and humanity
- How he runs his business
- His approach to decision making
- What to do when you find the woman (or I suppose man) that you want
- How he bounced back for losing it all – money, marriage, and death
- His big life goal of saving the planet, and why he has chosen a goal that he may never be able to fulfil in his lifetime.
On Decision Making in Business, Life, and Love . . . . .
Once you decide to do something and you’re pretty sure you’re right, you gotta go ahead and do it. If you piddle around somebody else will beat you to to it. Another old truism is be sure you’re right then go ahead, and maybe it should also say ‘do it fast.’ When you find the girl you want to marry, ask her then go on ahead and get married because if you dilly dally around she might marry somebody else.
On Being a Humanitarian . . . . .
If you treat people with dignity, respect and friendliness you can turn an enemy into a friend because an enemy is nothing but a friend in disguise. So I just made friends all over the world with CNN.
Photograph Courtesy of Ted Turner.com
On Losing it all . . . . .
And then there was that merger with AOL. I lost 80% of my money, I lost my job at CNN. At that same time Jane (Fonda) and I got a divorce. And I lost a grandchild that passed away. And so I was really down and I had 2 choices. One, either go down which I had plenty of excuses for but I didn’t want to go down because I still felt like I had contributions to make so I said I’m gonna come out of this. Like Scarlett O’Hara in the first half of Gone With The Wind, she was standing up on the hill as the camera went back and she said as god is my witness I will never be hungry again. I said as god is my witness I’m gonna get through this and I’m gonna make a come back.
On Saving The Planet . . . . .
From the time of my consciousness at 7 or 8 years old till today, I have always been concerned with taking care of planet earth. I was fascinated by butterflies and birds and flowers. I had all kinds of pets, you name it, I had it. I learned from a very early age that we were gonna have to take better care of the world because it’s all we have, the planet earth. If we destroy and degrade the planet earth, we destroy and degrade ourselves, and our future on the planet. It is more true today because we have so many more ways to damage the planet than we did before.
On my properties we don’t use pesticides so we have lots of insects, birds, and lots of packs of predators, including wolves, bears, and bison. It was an experiment to see what would happen if we got out of the way let the land alone to go back to before the white man came with all his technology.
We used to have 30 million bison in the world, we killed them down to less than 200, and came very close to losing them completely. I wanted to see if I could bring back the bison. There are now twice as many bison in the world today as there were 30 years ago when I started and a lot of that is down to me.
On Setting Goals . . . . . .
My dad always told me to set goals that were bigger than I could ever achieve. He (my dad) made a mistake. After the depression he set a goal to own a plantation, a yacht, and be a millionaire. He owned a small plantation, and a small yacht, and became a millionaire but then lost direction in his life because he had achieved it all.
Photograph Courtesy of Ted Turner.com
Saving the planet is a big goal and I am not sure that I will be able to do it in my lifetime.
For more information about Ted Turner and his foundations visit: www.tedturner.com
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ABOUT MARILYN DEVONISH
Marilyn Devonish is a Freelance Writer, Observer of Life, and TranceFormational Change Coach and Therapist. On a mission to understand what makes people tick and how to use that information to help people live their best life, she is committed to helping those that are ready to change and transform their mindset in order to push the boundaries of what they believe they are capable of achieving in this lifetime.
Website: www.tranceformationsTM.com
[…] woman why would you sit back and wait for her to be snapped up by someone else? (Read my previous Blog entitled Life Lessons from a Billionaire to see what media mogul and Founder of CNN Ted Turner had to say on this subject of relationships […]