The 7 Biggest “Jaw Dropping” Mistakes of the World’s Best
OK, now I’m officially impressed…
I believe you’ve made some pretty huge mistakes in your life. Mistakes that could have been life threatening, or mistakes that could have cost you a lot of money.
We are going to look at some of the biggest “blunders” that made the headlines. Mistakes that make your “jaw drops” and make your own mistakes look like nothing compared to them. Mistakes that cost them over millions upon millions of dollars.
Some of the best and most successful athletes, politicians and entrepreneurs have made some of the biggest mistakes that get worldwide condemnation. Mistakes that either bring out the best in them because they knew how to learn from it or have destroyed their reputation for good.
#1. Steve Jobs: Hiring John Sculley Who Later Fired Him
Steve Jobs is a name synonymous with all the impressive Apple products that truly revolutionized the world. Marked with his brilliant knack for people and products, he was key to Apple’s early success and led it to another glorious era starting with the iProducts between 1997 to 2011. However, he was not only known for all the really smart decisions he made. One dumb thing he did was hiring the wrong guy to become CEO at Apple.
This decision proved to be a life-changing event for Jobs. John Sculley destroyed everything Jobs had worked for in the past decade and started by ousting Jobs himself.
In the beginning, Jobs made the legendary pitch of trying to bring John Sculley over from PepsiCo to Apple:
Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?
Steve Jobs was quoted later on that being fired from Apple was the best thing that had happened to him. He said:
The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
If Steve wasn’t kicked out of Apple after a decade of glory flying the flag of Apple, he would not have found the way to unleash his innate ability inside of him to create NeXT, Pixar, the Toy Story, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. He would not have put a dent in the Universe.
Then again, if you’d looked back at what he had to bear with the consequences of being kicked out of the company that he founded is a very bitter pill to swallow which only a Maverick can endure….
Maverick Lesson:
Stick to your passion and keep working on it, the passion never dies even after you face adversity. The best way to find out whether you have strength in your character is to let anger, frustration and regret flow through you without letting it affect the clarity of your decision making. If Steve decided that his road had ended when he was fired from Apple, he would not have founded NeXT or even Pixar.
You have to think like a Maverick to be an entrepreneur. Don’t ever buy into the being mediocre and following conventional wisdom. Only Maverick’s believe they’re going to succeed while most don’t. Only people who think differently believe they can solve some of the world’s biggest challenges. Only Maverick’s believe there is nothing that's going to stop them from achieving their life’s goals. Only Maverick’s like Steve Jobs fail over & over again but simply never stop. So my advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, defy conventional wisdom, defeat the odds, ignore naysayers and always Think Maverick!
#2. Michael Jordan Playing …. Baseball?
We all know Michael Jordan was dubbed the Greatest athlete of all time, doing what he does best in the court. His leaping ability, shown by slam dunks that started at the free throw line, earned him the nickname “Air Jordan“.
So after winning 3 NBA titles and a couple of MVP’s, why did he call it quits and play baseball instead?
Was it because he was bored at winning?
Did he feel, he could dominate another sport just like he dominated basketball?
One of the reason surfaced by the media was because of his dad’s passing and playing baseball was the only way Jordan could reconnect with his dad.
I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”
-Michael Jordan
After trying long and hard, Jordan still did very badly in baseball and finally made his comeback to the game he truly loves and dominate.
His decision to play baseball might not be one of his better judgments, but it is the attitude in which Michael Jordan possess that make him the man who doesn’t give up until he tries and tries again. This same character is what made him great in basketball.
I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot . . . and missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why . . . I succeed.
-Michael Jordan
#3. Tiger Woods Sex Scandal With Multiple Women.
Throughout history, we have known influential women who were able to bring down entire empires with their beauty and seduction. If anything, Tiger Woods was one of the all time great who deserves to be mentioned in the 7 biggest “Jaw dropping” mistakes for his weird and uncouth sexual desires that triggered the collapse of his game in Golf.
In a candid interview with Newsweek, woods opened up about his life revolving around the scandal:
But this much is obvious now: my life was out of balance, and my priorities were out of order. I made terrible choices and repeated mistakes. I hurt the people whom I loved the most.
And even beyond accepting the consequences and responsibility, there is the ongoing struggle to learn from my failings.
Woods attributed his recent loss of control over himself because he started to think of himself as being “Invincible”. Winning so many major Golf tournaments, signing million dollar ad contracts, getting his own brand apparels with Nike and the pundits comparing him to the legends of Golf had all gotten into his head.
It made me think that if I was successful in golf, then I was invincible. Now I know that, no matter how tough or strong we are, we all need to rely on others. Slowly, I’m regaining the balance that I’d lost. My healing process is far from complete, but I am beginning to appreciate things I had overlooked before. I’m learning that some victories can mean smiles, not trophies, and that life’s most ordinary events can bring joy.
-Woods
This lesson reminds all of us to stay humble and tactful even after we have achieved greatness in our lives. The strength of our character will always be tested even-though we think we have climbed up to the pinnacle of our lives.
#4. Bill Gates’ Lack Of Vision And Billion “Dollar-less” Moves.
Bill Gates, the most powerful man in the world? He is still topping the charts in the Forbes billionaire list. Also, widely adored and admired for his part in philanthropy. However great this man could be, he is still human, and some of his amateurish mistakes as an entrepreneur caused Microsoft to miss out of billion dollar opportunities.
Well, you might think, does he need more money?
Bill Gates might have proved himself visionary in the early years of 1975 when he founded Microsoft, pioneering the Windows operating system and bringing in the internet with internet explorer. But he missed out on a Gold mine when he ignored the search engines and allowed Google to dominate the scene.
Google kicked our butts
- Bill Gates
(Speaking at the World Economic Forum as he referred to Google’s supremacy using open source as a gateway to monopolizing the internet search engine business)
Before the emergence of Google, Microsoft was ignoring search engines and just focused on overthrowing Netscape Navigator. This ignorance proved to be painful when Gates finally realized that they had missed a huge billion dollar opportunity.
In order to try and compete with Google, Microsoft launched Windows Live Search and then later introduced “Bing” costing them more than a billion dollars more than what it was earning them.
With Microsoft’s early advantage and leverage, they could have dominated the internet search engine space. Instead, they allowed two fresh graduates to create a fast, simple, innovative and efficient way to deliver relevant results to users without lifting a finger. Google’s algorithm proved to be second to none, Bing and Windows Live Search was no where near its mastery in delivering searches that impressed users all around the world.
Earning huge respect for his success in dominating software early on, success according the Bill Gates is “a lousy teacher”.
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
— Bill Gates.
Maverick Lesson:
Sometimes you have to let the ego inside deflate from all the success you have been getting if you want to reach your FULL entrepreneurial potential. (Thomas Edison explored every possible way he could innovate and improve people’s lives.) Sometimes you need to walk away from everything you ever did, in order to gain insight into into far greater heights unimaginable. Sometimes you need to lose who you think you are or already achieved. Sometimes you need to expose yourself to vulnerability you’ve never felt before and get out of your comfort zone. Risk and rewards behind that MYSTERIOUS door is always possible, to maintain that entrepreneurial spirit, you need to be willing to RISK it all including what you already have in order to see what’s on the other side.
#5. Google Losing Out On The Social Aspect Of The Internet
Google had grown in leaps and bounds since 1998 when it was founded by both Larry page and Sergey Brin. Since then, they have expanded their services to include Google Maps, You Tube, Ad words, Gmail and much more. But when the social wave started to dominate the scene, Google simply didn’t put in much consideration into developing their own social network.
They had offered over 30 million dollars to buy the popular social networking site “Friendster” in 2003, but the deal failed. It wasn’t until 2010–2011, Google only started to roll-out Buzz and then later Google Plus.
I clearly knew that I had to do something, and I failed to do it. A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.
-Google Chairman, Eric Schmidt.
At the moment Google Plus is playing catch up to Facebook’s gargantuan user database of over 850 million active users. Eric Schmidt admits that they have let in Facebook into the picture into one of the “Gang of Four” tech companies that are experiencing exponential growth. (the Gang of Four includes Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple)
Maverick Lesson:
Once you are locked on into a project or a goal, you must surface those assumptions and figure out a way to test your ideas ASAP. A lost opportunity to jump onto a trend is always a problem for entrepreneurs who lack vision and creativity. As the world continues it’s rapid technological progression, IDEAS are becoming more and more competitive. If you are slow to react and manifest those ideas, you are going to lose out of the Golden Opportunity.
#6. Rupert Murdoch’s $1.7 Billion Divorce Settlement.
Rupert is the founder, Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, the world’s second-largest media conglomerate. He turned a small time Australian newspaper in 1952 into one of the biggest and most well-known media conglomerate.
By 2000, Rupert Murdoch had acquired more than 800 companies in over 50 countries, having a total net worth of over $5 Billion.
This Jaw dropping mistake deserves to be mentioned because it is the biggest divorce settlement in history.
After more than 3 decades of marriage, and having 3 children, Rupert and Anna finally call it quits in 1999. Rupert settled it for a fee of $1.7 Billion with $110 million in cash. In just 17 days later, he married Wendi Deng, 30 with whom he had an affair while married to Anna. Source — Business Insider
Maverick Lesson:
If you have assets worth billions, make sure you don’t let your wife know that you are having an affair.
#7. Alan Greenspan’s Mistake That Brought On The Worst Recession In 1970s
Greenspan’s 18 and a half year reign as Fed chairman saw the longest economic boom in the country’s history. He was viewed as a free market icon of wall street and an oracle who likes to speak in riddles about the economy.
Greenspan’s mistake was believing that banks, operating in their own self-interest, would do what was necessary to protect their shareholders and institutions. It turned out that there was a flaw in the model that he believed in.
Thinking that there was no way the 5-year housing boom could turn into a speculative bubble that would harm the economy when it burst, Greenspan maintained that home prices were unlikely to experience further decline because housing was a local market. — Source: msnbc
A critical pillar to market competition and free markets did break down,” “I still do not fully understand why it happened.
-Greenspan.
Sorry, seems to be the hardest word…
Congressman Henry Waxman: My question is simple. Were you wrong?
Greenspan: Partially … I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organisations, specifically banks, is such that they were best capable of protecting shareholders and equity in the firms … I discovered a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works. I had been going for 40 years with considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well. The overall view I take of regulation is, I took an oath of office when I became Federal Reserve chairman. I’m here to uphold the laws of the land passed by Congress, not my own predilections.
This is a classic example of a leader who didn’t learn from his mistakes…
This article was originally posted on Think Maverick.
