YouSaid · the spoken record

Ted Turner

lines on the record: 40
first: 2023-11-14
most recent: 2023-11-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“World. I wish my father could have seen what we'd accomplished with the business that he'd left. I'm sure he would have been proud And that is where I'll leave it. Highly recommend reading the book if you're interested in building a media company. I think there's a lot of ideas actually here that are transferable outside of media, including this just really smart way to combine assets in a way that your competitors can't. It is unbelievably dense. It is easy to read, but there's so much going on on every page. What I would do is, one, take your time with it. And two, I would go and highlight and do a lot of notes. And then what I would do is I would read, there was so much going on, even like a single page or maybe two or three pages. I'd have to rewrite out what actually is happening to understand. So I would definitely take your time with it. If you want to buy the book and support the podcast at the same time, there'll be a link down below. That is 337 books down, 1,000 ago, and I'll talk to you again soon. Okay, so what you're about to hear is this question I was asked a few months ago. I actually recorded this a few months ago. They asked, how did history's greatest entrepreneurs think about hiring all the answers? People think I have a better memory than I actually.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In James Dyson's maxim that retention of total control never relinquish total control. And I think the loss of total control being exhausted and flat out running for three decades and then also somebody offering you $8 billion leads to why he sold to Time Warner. The final reason I agreed to do the deal was a simple one. I was tired. It was now more than 30 years since my father's death and had been running the company on my own ever since. Thirty years of long weeks and eighteen hour days would get to anyone, and by this time I was flat out exhausted. I made the official announcement in September of nineteen ninety five. The little billboard company that I struggled to hold together had grown into a diversified entity that was being acquired at a value of more than eight billion dollars. I would now be the largest shareholder of the biggest communication company in the world.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His dad killed himself because he thought he overvoished himself and he was risking everything else. Ted Turner actually does that and he over leverages himself in this deal. Kirkorian, who I did a long time ago, I'm going to reread that book. So many people ask me to do another episode on it. I think it's like episode 65, so probably, you know, five or six years ago. This book called The Gambler, a lot of people know it. It's an excellent book. It's the biography of Kirk Occorian. So Ted Turner is actually buying MGM from Kirk Corian. He winds up screwing himself and he actually has to call on John Malone and John Malone saves him. And as a result, then he has like some veto power. So this is like the first step where Ted Turner actually kind of has a boss, not a complete boss, but hey, over a certain amount, he can't just go and like buy and do deals anymore without approval from his board. This is really important, actually, because”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Money, but I have to do this deal. And so it says one of my top financial advisors reasoned with me that fighting it out with them, with Westinghouse and ABC, was costing me right now $4 million a month. So for the cost of about six months or more of fighting, we could buy them out altogether. We decided to settle for the $25 million. Now, this is, that's interesting. That's fine. This is the crazy mind-blowing thing that I can't understand. The next sentence blows my mind. CNN obviously gets a large viewership. It's obviously working even though he's going to bleed a couple million dollars for a few years before it becomes wildly profitable. We know that 24-hour super station, because his TBS super station is printing money, right? I think they were making around the time 100, I want to say 160. Let me see if I can find it real quick. Sorry, 177 million in revenue and 66 million in profit.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe in this idea of CNN so much. I'm going to sell off all my other assets to fund this unproven idea. And so this is where it gets really crazy what he was willing to do to make this dream happen. He says, listen, we're breaking one of the golden rules of startups. We're launching a business and we know we do not have sufficient capital. It's not going to be profitable enough on the money we have. So he's like, okay, I got to figure out what the hell I'm doing. And again, like I said before, he's always so far ahead. There's no lenders or investors. They don't understand what he's doing. So he's like, okay, my only option is like, I got to sell assets and I'm going to put all these profitable assets that would make me a very rich man if I just did that and I'm going to sell them all, take that money and maybe light it all on fire if CNN fails. This is pretty wild. So he has to go to these like very difficult, almost like loan sharks. They're highly collateralized. They're very high interest rates. He wants to take...”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's like, I'm often asked if we ever did any formal research on the viability of a 24-hour cable news station. And my answer is no. I had spent over five years thinking about it. Henry Ford didn't need focus groups to tell him that people would prefer inexpensive, dependable automobiles over horses. Alexander Graham Bell never stopped to worry about whether people would prefer speaking to each other on a phone. If viewers liked watching news on television, why wouldn't they want the option to do it any hour of the day? And so when I say that I think the highest order bit is his belief in cable, and I can prove to you that he believed it because you have all these people saying that Turner was like literally jumping up on desks and people were like, literally like screaming that people didn't understand what he saw. But his actions show this. And he's like, you know what? I don't have enough money or experience.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because over and over again in the early days of his career, they would call he's like Ted Turner's nuts. This guy's crazy. He's not nuts. He's not crazy. He's early. He sees something that you don't see. Listen to this. He's 38 years old, and this is how much he has a belief in cable, in cable TV. He's on a plane and he's like, I'm going to be a billionaire. He's saying this in October of 1976. He's 38. So it says the guy's telling the story that sitting next to him. We managed to get seats together on the plane. He pulls out a copy of the Delta Airlines magazine and he turns to the map of the United States and starts explaining to me how he's going to be a billionaire. Make sure you buy my stock. I'm going to be a billionaire and here's why. I'm going to put this station up on a satellite and I'm going to get a news thing going. Sports, movies, and news 24 hours a day all over the world. He said that in 1970.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd go all out during the day working on sales, distribution, regulatory issues, whatever the battle happened to be, and I'd work right up until it was time to fall asleep. I had a pull down Murphy bed in my office, and I would literally work until the point of total exhaustion, then I'd put my head on the pillow at night, worried about problems, then I'd wake up and spend the entire next day trying to solve them”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Hollywood Studios, the sports leagues, the broadcast networks, and the local stations all over the country. And so he has to fight this actually in Washington. There's going to be a bunch of lawsuits, a bunch of regulations. This is what I mean. He's going to describe this is one of the most difficult periods of his life, but this also speaks to this obsessive workaholic nature that he has. There's a bunch of stuff in the book about his childhood, which was crazy, about the way he went through multiple divorces, talks about, you know, wasn't really around when his kids were there. If you're interested in that, I'm going to skip over that. I want to focus on really how he built his business. But there is a lot of that in the book, and it's well worth reading. But this, he's describing the hardest part of the period of his life. These issues were all uncharted territory. All of us, the regulators, the broadcasters, the program suppliers, and the leagues, the sports leagues, were sorting things out on the fly. I was working as hard as I could.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Content usually like to sell it by, again, they're geographically constrained. He's like, no, no, no. Not only am I don't want to just put in like one little city or one little state, I'm going to broadcast this all over the world and people flip out. So I'll get there in one second. Now, this is also interesting. And it is John Malone's take on Ted Turner at this point in Ted's career that he was impervious to roadblocks that would stop people from even starting. So he says, this is John Malone. Remember, John Malone describing Ted Turner. He always had this kind of basic, almost childless logic about him that refuses to accept artificial impediments. I think one of his biggest secrets of success over the years is that the things that most of us would sit there and ponder all these regulatory and legal reasons why it might not be something you could do, and Ted would just say, oh, hell, you can overcome those kind of things and he'd just go and do it. And so he's making enemies everywhere. He's fighting with, he's like, we managed to alienate.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And here's the thing this is again he's always proving his concept. He knows that TV can be an incredible distribution channel because back when nobody was watching his station, he saw Jim and Tammy Fay Baker make all this money. And it's the same thing that's happening now when he expands to this region. He's like, of course, the bigger the market, of course you're going to increase your sales. So he says we managed to sell a lot of merchandise. Direct response revenue would prove to be vital for us while we work to convince traditional advertisers that we were well worth considering. And remember, I said he was inquisitive. He sees this article and it mentions that there's this brand new company called Home Box Office, HBO, that is going to be a new pay for movie channel that's going to distribute their signal not by antenna, not by cable, but by satellite. This is going to be both one, a massive opportunity and a big headache because he's buying content from other people, those people, they're selling the”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They call it a superstation. So he's credited with creating the super station concept. He was the first person. This is actually going to be TBS. What we know is TBS. And he's always on the forefront. He's usually so far ahead of other people that whether it's financial institutions like banks don't understand how to loan them money because they don't understand what he's doing. Or in many cases, advertisers, they're not comfortable. And so this was fascinating because he couldn't convince traditional advertisers to buy ads, he finds small companies with products to sell and then gives them distribution. So the thing that saves his ass until he can bridge this gap is the fact that he does direct response. So think about you've undoubtedly seen these. Let's say you are a manufacturer of steak knives and you're a small company and you go on TV and you sell your steak knives in like a two minute commercial like Billy May's style, right? These are the small companies that he chooses to partner with.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A first look chance to buy the franchise. And this is another example where Ted does not have the money. And this is what he says. It's like, it doesn't matter. I don't have any money. I have to do this. The Braves were a key asset and I had to go for them. By owning the team, I could control its long-term TV rights. They were too important to his TV station. And so they're like, okay, we want $10 million for the team. Could you imagine buying a professional sports team for $10 million, by the way? And so this is where he has to get creative. He's like, okay, I can give you a million dollars down, and then you give me nine years to pay the rest at a high interest rate. And they say yes. Another smart thing Ted does. So he understood, this is very fascinating. We're going to get into literally the invention of the cable TV industry. The best book I've read on this is actually Cable Cowboy.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Games, and so he's like, listen, the ratings for the local Land of Braves games, I think, is the highest thing, highest rated show that he has on his TV network, or his TV station rather, right? But the problem is that fluctuates whether the team is winning or losing, team wins more games, obviously more people tune in, right? And so he goes to the president of the club. His name's Dan. He's like, Dan, I consider us to be partners. We need to add some more excitement next year. What are you going to do to get the team on track? And Dan tells them, well, I'm not going to do anything because I'm going to sell the team. And Ted's freaking out. I was like, what are you talking about? Who are you going to sell it to? And Dan says, I'm going to sell it to you. And the reason I say relationships around the world is because, one, it's in these books over, you see this in these biographies over and over again, but it's also something that his dad told him a long time ago. He says, my dad taught me early on that long-term relationships with your customers and partners are very important. You never know how the guy who you're friendly with today might be able to help you tomorrow. And so what's happening? He's like, they're offering me.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Any of the talent, so that means that any revenue that is generated by selling these old movies to Ted drops straight to their bottom line. And so as a result of this, he's able to get great pricing. He buys about every single movie they can get his hands on, and he strikes long-term deals whenever possible because this isn't going to this series of events, like this advantage is going to change as soon as there's another bidder in the market so that the long-term part of that is actually really important. And he's doing business with MGM, Warner Bros., Paramount, MCA, all of them. And then he also has sports. What he realizes is that now that we're in the 1970s, that local sports is huge. And so he winds up being the one he bids on and he winds up broadcasting all the Atlanta Braves baseball games. And so this is an idea that you and I have talked about over and over again. The fact that relationships run the world. This is how he winds up buying the Atlanta Braves and why. Remember, his channel is the one that carries the braves.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On syndicated programming from, say, MGM, right? MGM Studios for Atlanta, unless you own a station in Atlanta. So there's only two previous bidders. Now the other bidder is gone. And so he's the only buyer in this entire market. And so what TEDs are also really good at is he happens to understand. He spends a lot of time thinking about and understanding the financial incentives of the person that he is buying from. Again, he understands the financial incentives of the person he is buying from. And so he's like, well, if the other station's gone, no one else is in Atlanta is buying old movies. And why is that important? Because there's thousands of old movies and thousands of TV shows that no one else is competing to air them on in the market that right now he finds himself with a temporary monopoly on, right? And these old films were long since fully amortized by the studios. And they don't have to pay.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That happened, but this is multiple decades before that happened. And listen to this. The only show that aired live from our studios, which was a religious program hosted by a young couple named Jim and Tammy Fay Baker. Well before they went on to national fame, they got started with this local show, and before long they were bringing in more money in a week than the entire station made in a month. Okay, so at this point in Ted's career, he is, he owns one. There's only two independent TV stations in the Atlanta area. He owns one of them. The other one is going to go out of business. Remember, he said they're lousy businesses, especially when there's almost no financing. So when you get in a jam, it's really hard to get financing. But what happens here is a blessing because he's like, okay, well, it helps if I can be the only one bidding because you're buying content and at this time it is restricted by your geographical location. That means that you can't bid.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the most important things about Ted Turner and understanding his career is that he believed in the power of TV, specifically if you could have a 24-hour station or if you could reach people all over the world. If you were not constrained by just this small being in one small city, right? He believed in the power of television more than almost anybody else. Remember, he built a media company. All of his money is going to come from ads. And so this is the first hint that he gets that TV can be an incredible distribution channel. And so one of the people that are paying him to do a show on their TV is these televangelists that are going to wind up becoming infamous many decades into the futures. Jim and Tammy Faye Baker. Jim is known for, he becomes one of the largest televangelists in the world and then gets caught, I think, with a bunch of hookers and he like cries on TV and stuff. This is like a very well-known.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Does not exist. This is all like an antenna. So he does the exact same thing here. He's like, okay, well, I still have this, you know, 15% of the billboard inventory. It's going to go unsold. So I'm just going to put ads for my TV station on these billboards just like I did when I only had radio stations. And when he says that these are lousy, right? These are lousy TV stations, he means it. Listen to this. This is the first channel that he buys, the first station he buys. The more I learned about TV stations, the more I realized that ours was a disaster. Of the 35 people who were on the payroll when we took over, only two were still there a year later. The custodian and the receptionist”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he's also good at taking ideas that worked in one industry and transferring them to another. He doesn't even like, like, if you really think how crazy this is, right? 90%, maybe not 80% of the book is his career in TV. He says, I never developed a patent. This is why I never develop a passion for radio the way I later would for television. This is why he's going to start getting into the TV business. He thought the TV business was way more exciting and he says you should always bet on the medium that looked like it would grow the fastest. And obviously TV is going to grow a lot faster than radio is from this point in history. And so he's like, well, listen, if it comes down to buying a lousy radio station or a lousy TV station, then the choice is easy because I want to bet on the medium that look like it would grow. And so when he buys this local TV stations, you're only watching if you're in and around the Atlanta area. This is before, remember, we're decades before the internet, for God's sake, but this is before cable and satellite TV that did.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Anybody all over the world can listen to it. You're listening to it in a specific geographic, you're constrained by a specific geographic location. So therefore, it is a much more zero-sum game. So I want to take listenership away from the people because we're fighting over, let's say, all the residents of Atlanta. And I want to beat the other radio stations. And so what happens is like, okay, well, you have a radio station. I have a radio station. We're competing against each other. But guess what? I have the biggest billboard outdoor and outdoor advertising company in this area 15% of my ad sales or my ad inventory on my billboard company every month goes unsold. Guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to put ads for”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People own a bunch of radio stations and also own a billboard company. And so this idea what he's about to do here, he also does when he gets into TV, which we're going to jump into in a minute. So he starts buying up these radio stations. He's like, well, I'm just not going to, if I'm going to buy my first radio station, what is the advantage that I have that other people don't? I should buy a radio station in the same market where I already have billboards. So there's two things that happen here. One, he benefits from an efficiency in sales and promotion because he's selling ads. It's the same thing. Like if I'm selling ads on a billboard, right? My sales team can sell ads on billboards. My sales team, the same very same sales team can also sell ads in a radio station. So that was fascinating. But even better is what he does. So let's say on a radio station, right? And I want to compete, what do you want? You want more listeners than the other people? This isn't podcasts, right? It's not like, oh.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Company around, he wants to get into new and exciting industries. So the first thing he does, he's like, okay, I want to go and buy a bunch of radio stations. Now, this is very important because he repeats multiple times throughout the book that when you own an asset, your job is to maximize its value. And what Ted is really great at, this may be the most important idea other than he failed to, he's a dictator. And if you're a dictator, you want to listen to James Dyson when he said one of the most important things is retention of total control. Ted is a dictator, but then sells his company and then loses control and is very frustrated when he watches other people take $10 billion of his assets and drive it into the ground. And so that was another big mistake. But other than that, I think the most important idea in this book for me is that he's really great at combining his assets in a way that his competitors can't. So you could think about this as like you find an advantage by doing only what you can do. And so there's a bunch of people that own radio stations. That's great.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and they lent Ted the rest of the money in return for equity in the Chattanooga Company. So this is another important thing that he learned from his dad. His main company, right, is Turner Advertising. If you're going to go and acquire another company, don't just fold that into Turner advertising. You want to keep that as a separate entity. He says, my father always maintained many of the different Billboard businesses as separate legal entities. And so in this deal, this is important. Why? For two reasons. He could offer the bank the equity in the Chattanooga company without diluting his ownership of the main entity, which is Turner Advertising. Okay. It also allows for periodic reorganization to offset potential capital gains liabilities, and especially at the time, this is still important to this day, but it's really important when your top marginal tax rate is 90%. So he continues to expand by acquisition, but he's not content being the biggest bill.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Bob's like, okay, I accept that offer. So I want to jump to another example where Ted always has to get really creative when he's financing these deals. And something to know about him, he's acquisitive by nature. If he has billboards in Georgia, he wants to expand into Tennessee. If he has billboards, he wants to get into radio. If he has billboards on radio, he wants to get into billboards, radio, and TV. If he starts buying the Atlanta Braves, then he wants to also own the Atlanta Hawks. This is something he does his entire life. He's very, very acquisitive. At this point, he says I'm eager to expand. I found a very profitable billboard company in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but the price was a million dollars. Great, I'll buy it. Here's the problem. I didn't have that kind of cash. So he convinces the seller, this is how he makes the acquisition of no money down. He's like, will you finance 75% of the purchase price over seven years at a very high interest rate? He says, yes, then he goes to a bank that's actually looking to expand their investments in the South.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To see how creative people can be, and with a 90 day clock ticking, so Bob gave them 90 days to come up with the money, we had to get really creative very fast. So now this was very interesting. He realized, well, Bob's a very rich guy. He makes a lot of income at this point in American history. The top, he was at the highest bracket, like income tax bracket. And so at this point, he's like, well, if I pay you 200 grand in cash, that's taxed at a 90% rate. So you wind up with, what, $20,000. And the government, the US government gets $180,000. Obviously, you don't want to do that because this is being treated as a short-term capital gain. And therefore, it's taxes, ordinary income, right? And so he goes, well, what if I actually give you stock in Turner advertising, which is the company that he inherited from his dad? And then that way you can hold the equity as long as you need to to shield yourself from any heavy tax that you would get on a short-term game.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All of these leases. And a matter of a few weeks, he did significant damage to these assets that Nagel wanted to acquire. And so finally Nagel figures out what he's doing. And so he comes up with a deal. He's like, okay, if you pay me $200,000, then we can cancel the deal. And Ted's like, okay, great. I agree right away. Here's the problem. Ted doesn't have $200,000. This is another main theme from his career. He's constantly agreeing to deals. Then he realizes, oh, I don't have that money. And so he's got to constantly get really creative on how to raise the funds. This gets really complicated later on. This is like a more simple idea. So he had this idea where he's like, okay, we have this agreement. I'm going to pay him 200 grand. I'm going to keep all the assets that my dad was trying to get rid of the day before he committed suicide. But I need to find a creative way out. And so this is what Ted says in the book. Let me read this part to you. I learned a lesson that would stick with me throughout my career. When the chips are down and the pressure is on, it's amazing.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Go around to people that own a bunch of land next to highways or high traffic areas. They go knock on the door and say, Hey, we'd like to put up a billboard here. In return, we'll pay you. This is 1950. So it's like, we'll pay you $25 a month or $50 a month. You can enter into these agreements with us, but guess what? If you change your mind, you can always cancel a lease within $60 to 90 days. And so Ted's like, okay, so I'm going to jump all these leases. I'm going to use the exact same people. So the exact same group of people that signed up the leases are now going to contact these people again, but from a different company and say, hey, I know you can cancel in 69 to 90 days. You're getting paid $50 a month or $25 a month. Guess what? We're going to pay you $75 a month if you'll switch that lease to our company. So for the next few weeks, all Ted Turner and his team do is they go and work the phones and they're feverishly just renegotiating and jump.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Likes to fight. He just does. He doesn't back down the giant conglomerates that this guy takes on in the early days of the cable industry and the satellite TV industry is incredible. He's involved in multiple lawsuits. And so he's like, okay, well, this guy thinks I'm just some snot-nosed 24-year-old rich kid. He thought, oh, like I'm going to threaten his son. His dad's not here to save him. He's going to back down. Ted doesn't do that at all. And so Ted's like, okay, let me go and actually read all of like this very informal agreement. And what he realizes is that Bob Nagel made a giant mistake that he did not actually call for a non-complete cause for the employees of Ted's dad's company.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Himself in the head. So not only did you lose your best friend, but now you have to try to save his company. And what he's realizing is he had signed this deal to sell off these assets back to Bob Nagel the day before he killed himself. And he actually wrote it. It was a handwritten note. And so from Ted's perspective, it's like, okay, well, my dad and Bob Nagel were friends. My dad was obviously not a sound mind when he entered into agreement considering that he signed it one day and then popped his top the next. I'm going to get out of this deal. But now he's a 24-year-old inexperienced entrepreneur going to a 60-year-old man that has built an incredible company saying, hey, how can we get out of this deal? And Bob's like, listen, I admire your father. I'm very sad that he died, but I'm not, I have no intention of letting you get out of this deal. This deal will continue and go forward. And so this is the first time in the book we see some traits that Ted's going to have his whole life.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And how proud he was of me. My father was very sparing with his praise, and nothing he ever did before or after that day ever made me feel as good. Within three years of that letter his father would be dead, and so as I go over all the notes of this complicated deal he put together, the fact that he was abusing drugs and alcohol, the fact that he was out of rehab, there's a line that I heard from Charlie Munger one day that I've never forgotten, and it's something that he's realized with human history with a lot of like really successful entrepreneurs and executives. And he says that the problem isn't getting rich. The problem is staying sane. The problem isn't getting rich. The problem is staying sane. Ted's father got rich, but he was incapable of staying sane. So imagine you're Ted Turner at this point in the story. You're 24 years old. Your father, who was your best friend, didn't say anything, didn't leave a note, went into the bathroom and shot.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But at this point, when you're 21, he's like, I'm my own man too. And so he's actually having a conversation with his dad because it's just reaching a boiling point where his dad's just trying to control every single decision, personal or professional that Ted is going to make. And this is what he says to his dad. Dad, it gets tough when you're involved in every aspect of my life. You tell me where I should live, who I should date. I'd like you to consider letting me be myself a little bit. In my business life, I'll do anything you say, but please try not to bug me so much about my personal life. When I want advice, I'll ask for it. But if not, please let me try to work this out for myself. And the fact that Ted stood up for himself told his dad exactly how he felt and what he wanted happen was really important because this was what happens next. He actually gets a letter from his dad. Well, first he's driving him to the airport and his dad tells him, son, you're starting out where most men finish. Meaning here I was 21 years old running a business. A few days after, I got a letter from him telling me what a great job I was doing.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We see a hint that Ted is definitely a workaholic. Many times he never leaves his office, he sets up a bed, he sleeps there, he wakes up, gets to work, he works all the time, and he does that later on in life, but he's also doing this as a 21-year-old. I was trying to do my best to do everything right. I would work the hardest, follow every rule, and seek excellence in everything I did. As the boss's son, I made a point to impress the other employees by being the first one to arrive every morning and the last one to leave at night. And so there's probably about 50 pages that just deal with the relationship that Ted had with his father. There's a bunch of stuff in here. It's interesting that we're still, we haven't got to the point where his dad shoots himself. And then Ted's response is that he lost his best friend because frankly, there was a lot of times. It was like, man, I wouldn't want my son to describe me this way. They had a very complicated, contemptuous relationship. His dad is definitely a control freak because his dad is definitely a dictator. Ted's own kids would describe Ted that way as well.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In college, he'd punctuate his lessons with funny stories or memorable expressions. Once to drive home a point about the difficulties of attracting good, loyal employees, he told me heck, Jesus only had to pick twelve disciples and even one of those didn't turn out well. One of his favorite mottos was one that I've used for myself ever since early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise. That's a great line. It's funny, actually, that Arnold Schorsenker actually adopted that as his motto as well, he would repeat in his biography, early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise. And so one thing that sticks out about Ted Turner's in his early life, his dad sent him to a bunch of like Christian military academies, and he was really trying to teach us on self-discipline and a fierce work ethic. Ted is clearly being groomed to take over his dad's company. He's going into the company and he doesn't want people to think that he's getting handouts. And this is the first time.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Per week are nearly 10 million per day every day for two and a half years, losing that much money so quickly might have been a record, but it obviously wasn't the kind that I was hoping to set. So his merger or his sale to Time Warner actually happens about 37 years in the future from where we are. His dad is still alive. He's around college age. He'd been working for his dad's billboard company every summer and every year since he was 12 years old. So he's like, okay, I have a very complicated relationship with my father, but I need to stop delaying the inevitable and I'm actually going to work full-time at the Turner Advertising Company, which at this point in history is just an outdoor advertising company. They're a soul focus is they have a bunch of billboards. And so Ted describes the education that his dad is giving them once he comes to work with his dad full-time. There were many days when he'd drive me to and from work and the entire ride, he'd only talk to me about the business. It was almost as though he gave me the business degree that he didn't get.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When it was clear I wasn't getting anywhere, my shock gave way to anger and I said Dad, all my life you taught me to work hard and not to be a quitter, and now you're the one who's quitting. What happened to you? How could you do this? Dad remained surprisingly calm and unmoved. Just a few days later, I got another call, but this time it was my stepmother. Dad was dead. After having a relaxing breakfast, my father walked up to his bathroom, climbed into the tub, and shot himself. I never thought it would come to this. I had lost my best friend.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Were big, and the company needed large capital investments to continue its growth. The Billboard business was doing well and he shouldn't have had trouble meeting his obligations. This was an irrational fear of losing everything and it began to consume him. He tried to get his addictions under control by checking into rehab. They managed to curb his drinking and his smoking, but then he was also prescribed a variety of medications. My dad basically swapped alcohol and tobacco for prescription drugs. After years of grooming me to succeed him, all of a sudden he seemed in a panic about the company's future. It was the middle of the week and I was in Atlanta working. My phone rang and it was my father calling. He said that he was calling to tell me that he was selling a large chunk of the company. I couldn't believe it. I was stunned. I tried to talk him out of it. I told him that the company was doing well and there was no doubt in my mind that we could make our debt payments.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mom, when I grow up, I'm going to work really hard and I'm going to be a success. I'm going to be a millionaire and I'm going to own a plantation and a yacht. He had achieved all three of these things. He said that now having checked off each of these goals he was having a really tough time reevaluating things and coming up with a plan for the rest of his life. He then told me something that I've never forgotten. He said, 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. In addition to achieving all that he'd ever hoped to, this new acquisition seemed to trigger other insecurities in Dad. Seeing his parents lose everything in the depression created a deep seated concern about going too far into debt. His post acquisition interest payments”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of a collapse. Almost overnight his behavior became significantly more erratic and unpredictable. One day he'd be high as a kite, and the next he'd be in a state of abject depression. He had always been a fairly large man, but now he was putting on more weight and growing a big pop belly. After years of smoking two or three packs of cigarettes a day, he had developed a bad case of emphysema that, combined with his drinking and his weight gain, took a heavy toll on him physically. It's clear to me now that reaching new heights in business and material wealth actually undermined his mental state. He told me a memorable story on this subject. His parents lost nearly everything, and they struggled to tell him that they could no longer afford his tuition. At that young age he consoled his mother, saying”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Turner, advertising company, was already one of the largest billboard companies in the South. When my father put together a deal that would make it the biggest, my father had developed a close relationship with a successful billboard operator in Minnesota named Bob Nagel, and together they hatched a deal. They would go in, purchase General Outdoor, and then split it into two pieces. Nagel's company would take the properties in the north while my father would own the markets in the south. This merger would quadruple our revenues overnight. To afford the deal, my father had to finance nearly all of the purchase price. When the dust settled on the general outdoor acquisition, my father moved into our new headquarters as CEO of the biggest outdoor advertising company in the south. Dad was elated. This was the most energized I had ever seen him. Unbeknownst to all of us, this upbeat behavior came just as he was approaching the brink.”
2023-11-14 · Founders · #327 Ted Turner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source