Seek to Misconstrue + a
Failure: The Blog 
October 2012
- 'Goldeneye' Creators Had Almost No Experience
- Flushing Away an Enormous Problem
- The Little Lie About the Biggest Mountain
- You Should Unfriend 10 People on Facebook
- Inventor of Most Popular Guitar Could Not Play Guitar
- TV Show Star And High School Dropout
September 2012
- In Praise of Mediocrity
- The Failure to Patent a Billion Dollar Formula
- This Bus Stop is a Fake
- [VIDEO] A Hollywood Camera Move Made From Junk
- Productivity Through Self Denial?
- Harvard Business Review: Get Ready to Fail
August 2012
- The Innovative Power of Lying
- [VIDEO] You're Not That Great
- The Failure of a Great Singer
- James Cameron was Homeless
- Something Worse Than Failure
- Jackie Chan and the Plan to Fail
- On Failure and Baseball
July 2012
- Failure on the Radio
- Complaint Calls Can Be Useful
- The Terribly Useful Terrible Movie
- FedEx's Big Gamble (No, Really)
- Positive Fail, Dot Com
- How Boring Attire Wins
June 2012
FedEx’s Big Gamble (No, Really)
Of all the rules about what you’re not supposed to do with company money, going to Vegas and gambling has to be high on the list. But that’s what saved FedEx. Seriously.
The story appears on the website ImmatureBusiness, but is well-sourced. They explain:
[In 1973] the company was about to go bankrupt; until [CEO Fred Smith] decided to go to the city of sins, Las Vegas. There, he made $27,000 at the blackjack tables and wired the winnings back to Federal Express, saving the company from going bankrupt. The result of betting money in Las vegas: Fred saved the company and helped it to stay afloat for a few more days, enough days to collect $11 million from more investors.
Okay, sure, Failure is the secret to success. But this has to be one for the record books.
By the way, this wasn’t the only time Fred Smith took what most people thought would be a failure and turned it around. As an Entrepreneur.com article explains:
While attending Yale University in the mid-1960s, Fred Smith wrote an economics term paper on the need for reliable overnight delivery in a computerized information age. His professor was less than impressed and responded: “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C’, the idea must be feasible.”
Fred Smith wasn’t going to let a bad grade deter him. Or, being down to his last few thousand dollars in capital. What are you going to let stand in the way of your own success?
Related Posts
- Can’t join em? Beat emThe man who joined Ticketmaster and built it into an empire left the company in 1998. Now, he plans to launch a startup that will destroy it.
- Aaron is a Big FailureAaron Craig bought a copy of Failure: The Secret to Success. Then, he lost it. Now, he’s proudly discussing his mistake.