This is a report on the life of Ted Turner including his achievements and his success factors.

1. Ted
Turner
April 2
2011
Greatest Entrepreneurial Minds Of
The Centaury
Jazib Iqtidar
01-111081-060
BBA-7(B)
Bahria University
Submitted to: Col. Manzoor Iqbal

2. Contents
Ted Turner an Introduction .................................................................................................................3
The Ascent .....................................................................................................................................4
Contributions to the Society ............................................................................................................7
Achievements .................................................................................................................................8
Analysis & Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 11
Ted Turner At Work & Success Factors ............................................................................................... 12
The Mouth From The South: Ted Turner is Born.............................................................................. 13
Lesson #1: Set Your Sights High...................................................................................................... 15
Lesson #2: Never Surrender........................................................................................................... 17
Lesson #3: Liven Things Up ............................................................................................................ 19
Lesson #4: Work Like Hell .............................................................................................................. 21
Lesson #5: Leave Your Mark .......................................................................................................... 23
Bad Boy Makes Good: Turner’s Success Factors .............................................................................. 25
References: ...................................................................................................................................... 28
2

3. 3
Ted Turner an Introduction
Robert Edward Turner III was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. From an early age, he was called Ted,
while his father, Robert Edward Turner, Jr., was known as Ed. While Ed Turner served in the
Navy during World War II, the family followed him to his Gulf Coast post, but young Ted was
left behind in a boarding school in Cincinnati. When Ted was nine, Ed Turner moved the family
to Savannah, Georgia, where he purchased a small billboard company he renamed Turner
Advertising. Ted attended Georgia Military Academy, near Atlanta. Discipline in the Turner
household was always strict. At his father's insistence, Ted worked from an early age, learning
every aspect of the outdoor advertising business, from maintenance to finance. But Ted Turner's
childhood was not all work. The family business prospered, and Ed rewarded his son with the
gift of a sailing dinghy. At age nine, he began sailing and soon developed a passion for sailboat
racing. By age 11, he was competing in the junior regatta of the Savannah Yacht Club.
At 12, Ted Turner was sent to the McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Although he
balked at the school's discipline in his first years there, he later emerged as a leader among his
classmates, winning the Tennessee debating championship. He continued to work in the
billboard business during the summers, and by the end of his teens had become an extremely
effective salesman. At Brown University, he studied classics, and enjoyed reading military
history. He was suspended from Brown on two occasions for breaking dormitory rules, but
eventually received his degree.

4. 4
He returned to Georgia and his father's business, and was
soon married. The marriage did not last long, and Ted's
life was further darkened by the death of his sister, after a
long and painful illness.
The Ascent
Ted threw himself into his work, and his father promoted
him to assistant manager of Turner Advertising's Atlanta
branch. Meanwhile, the firm took on large amounts of debt
to buy out a competitor. Ed Turner's health was failing,
and the pressures of the merger proved too much for him.
In 1963, he took his own life, leaving Ted Turner, at 24, in
charge of a growing, but heavily indebted enterprise. He worked day and night, offering
customers a discount for early payment, to increase the amount of cash on hand. Soon, he had
stabilized the business and was building a large fortune. Ted Turner married again, but continued
to devote most of his time to business, staying in the office for days on end. By the end of the
decade, Turner Advertising was the largest billboard company in the Southeast, but Ted Turner
recognized that his customers were allocating ever-larger shares of their advertising budgets to
radio and television, and he sought opportunities in broadcasting.
At the time, the television business was
dominated by three major networks, each with
its own local affiliate in the major regional
markets. Only the largest cities could support a
fourth or fifth station. Cable television was still
in its infancy, with a scattered handful of
operators providing service to remote areas,
beyond the reach of network affiliate stations. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
had opened a new range of ultra-high frequencies (UHF) for television broadcasting, but few
television viewers knew how to receive UHF transmission. After investing in a number of radio
stations, Turner purchased a failing UHF station in Atlanta. He changed the name of his firm to
Turner Communications Group, and renamed the station WTCG. He quickly added a second

5. UHF station in Charlotte, North Carolina. Both stations were hemorrhaging money, but Turner
moved boldly ahead. He began buying old movies, and TV shows, securing the broadcast rights
outright, so he could show them over and over without paying royalties. Soon, his stations were
breaking even.
In 1972, a change in FCC regulations offered Turner an
opportunity he leapt at. For the first time, it permitted
cable television services to transmit programming from
remote stations. Turner used microwave transmitters to
relay his WTCG signal to cable operators in rural areas
and found a ready audience for his programming. At the
end of 1975, RCA launched the SATCOM II
communications satellite, and Turner was one of the first
to rent a channel. From a huge broadcasting dish in an
isolated hollow, he broadcast his WTCG signal to the
satellite, which then beamed the signal to cable stations all
over the United States. At the time, it seemed an unlikely
proposition: a local UHF station beaming black and white re-runs to households thousands of
miles away, but television audiences were hungry for more choices. The following year, Turner
bought the Atlanta Braves baseball team, and began broadcasting its games live. At the end of
the year, Turner bought a controlling interest in the Atlanta Hawks basketball team as well, and
added its games to his broadcast line-up. The combination of live sports, reruns of rural-themed
sitcoms, old movies and professional wrestling won the station a national audience. Turner
renamed his satellite channel WTBS -- for Turner Broadcasting System -- and dubbed it the
world's first Superstation.
5

6. As owner of the Braves, Turner was attracting a great deal of
publicity, much of it negative, for his contentious dealings with
rival team owners and baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn.
After a particularly heated argument, Kuhn suspended Turner
for the 1977 baseball season, barring him from the team's
offices and dugout. An avid sailor who had already won
numerous races, Turner entered his yacht, Courageous, in the
1977 America's Cup competition. Although Courageous was an
older, less technically advanced craft than others in the race,
Turner handily defeated his American competitors, earning the
right to defend the cup against the world's challenger. The final
was held in rough seas, but once again, Turner prevailed. In the
midst of this triumph, Turner's public behavior was subjected to relentless press criticism.
Sportswriters, seizing on his outspoken personality, lampooned him as "the mouth from the
South." But Turner was soon to prove that he was not only a fiercely competitive sportsman, but
an unusually courageous one. His seamanship underwent its ultimate test in 1979, when he
entered a newer boat, Tenacious, in the Fastnet race. This course runs from Plymouth, England,
around Fastnet Rock off the coast of Ireland, and back again. Turner's was one of 302 boats to
enter the race that year. In mid-race, a horrendous storm broke. Numerous boats capsized and
sank, and 22 lives were lost at sea. At one point it appeared that Tenacious too would be
swallowed by the sea, but Turner refused to abandon ship, and came in first of the 92 boats that
finally completed the course. The 1979 Fastnet has gone down as one of the deadliest ocean
races in history, and Turner's victory has become a legend. The association of sailing journalists
named him Yachtsman of the Year three times, consecutively, a unique honor.
6

7. In 1980, Turner sold his Charlotte television
station and used the proceeds to launch his most
ambitious venture yet, a 24-hour all-news
channel. Broadcast professionals and the news
media dismissed the notion as hopelessly
impractical. The networks already ran news and
talk shows every morning, in addition to their
flagship dinnertime news broadcasts. Network
affiliates ran local news for a half-hour at the end of the evening. That, most insiders reasoned,
was all the television news the world needed. Turner pressed ahead with his Cable News
Network (CNN) and added a second channel, CNN Headline News, in 1982. Turner's cable news
ventures struggled, but he persevered, undeterred by criticism. By 1985, CNN was showing a
profit and Turner expanded the service with CNN Radio and CNN International.
7
Contributions to the Society
By this time, Turner was a billionaire, and was increasingly interested in deploying his wealth on
behalf of worthy causes. In 1985, he founded the Better World Society, to campaign for nuclear
disarmament. Some of the flamboyant impulsiveness of his youth had abated, but his second
marriage was over. As always, Ted Turner concentrated on nurturing new enterprises. Ever alert
to new developments in broadcasting technology, he equipped CNN crews with "flyaway"
dishes, portable satellite transmission equipment, so they could report on breaking news, live
from anywhere in the world, rather than shipping news film or videotape from remote locations
to a permanent television station.

8. The 1980s were a period of heightened international tension,
following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. After the United
States boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, and the Soviet
Union boycotted the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, Ted
Turner approached the Soviet government himself, offering to
sponsor a series of international Goodwill Games, to foster
athletic excellence and good sportsmanship in an atmosphere
free of the politics that had marred the Olympics. Turner
promoted Goodwill Games in Moscow in 1986, Seattle in 1990,
and in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1994. It is estimated that he lost
$110 million dollars on these games, but they played an
appreciable role in reducing tensions between the superpowers
8
in the waning days of the Cold War.
Achievements
CNN, long derided by traditional news sources, proved itself
a powerful force in 1989 when a million young Chinese
demonstrated for democracy in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
Turner's crews, with their portable gear, broadcast the events
live. When the Chinese army suppressed the movement
violently, CNN's cameras revealed the confrontation to a
horrified world instantaneously. CNN even broadcast the
closing of its own broadcast site by Chinese authorities. In
the summer of 1990, Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein, invaded
and occupied the neighboring, oil-rich kingdom of Kuwait.
The world held its breath that winter, as diplomatic efforts to
resolve the crisis failed, and an international coalition
prepared for war. While other networks broadcast from safety, behind allied lines, CNN crews
continued to report from Baghdad, even after hostilities had begun, beaming live images of the
attack on Baghdad, while the bombs fell around them. Hailed as the "scoop of the century," it

9. was a transformative moment in the history of broadcasting, and made CNN the talk of the
world. Later in 1991, Turner married well-known film actress and political activist Jane Fonda.
The same year, Turner's Atlanta Braves won their division title, the beginning of an unmatched
14-year winning streak (excepting only the 1994 season, when a players' strike interrupted
division play). At year's end Time magazine named Ted
Turner its "Man of the Year."
In 1992, after purchasing the animation studio Hanna-
Barbera, with its catalogue of popular children's
programming, Turner launched the Cartoon Network,
another cable offering that has become a fixture of homes
around the world. The following year, he added the
motion picture companies Castle Rock Entertainment and
New Line Cinema to Turner Broadcasting's portfolio,
further expanding his library of films and adding motion
picture production capability. Any hard feelings Turner
may have spurred among film buffs with his colorization project were more than mollified in
1994, when Turner founded a new cable channel, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), to show old
and new films, uncut, uninterrupted and commercial-free, 24 hours a day. All films are shown in
their original format: black-and-white films in black-and-white, widescreen films in their original
aspect ratio. TCM has also acquired a formidable reputation for original documentaries and for
its film restoration and preservation efforts.
By mid-decade, Ted Turner had become the largest private landowner in the United States, with
ranch properties exceeding a million acres, greater than the area of the states of Delaware and
Rhode Island. In Montana, he began a long-term project of returning thousands of acres to their
natural state, re-introducing the endangered North American bison to the plains it had once ruled.
In 1995, Turner's Atlanta Braves won the World Series. The following year brought a
momentous change to the media landscape, when Turner Broadcasting merged with multimedia
conglomerate Time Warner. Ted Turner became Time Warner's largest individual shareholder,
and served the parent company as Vice Chairman, with responsibility for cable television.
9

10. The company's share price soared, and within nine months of the merger, Ted Turner's personal
fortune had increased by another billion dollars.
Over the previous decade, Turner had played an
active role in the United Nations Association.
For several years in a row, the United States
Congress refused to appropriate funds for paying
the country's dues to the United Nations. When
the arrears approached a billion dollars, Turner
stunned the world by paying the shortfall out of
his own pocket. In 2001, Turner and a fellow
Georgian, former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn,
organized the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonpartisan international organization, dedicated to
reducing the risk posed by nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction. The year was a
difficult one for Ted Turner. His ten-year marriage to Jane Fonda ended, and in a startling
development, Time Warner was acquired by Internet provider America Online. Turner's share in
the merged company, renamed AOL Time Warner, was sharply reduced. The merger proved an
awkward one, and the company's name soon reverted to Time Warner. Turner led a
reorganization effort in the company but was passed over for the chairmanship. In 2003, he
resigned his post as Vice Chairman. In four decades, Ted Turner had transformed the world of
telecommunications and brought the nations of the world closer together, through his
broadcasting business ventures and his philanthropies. Through the Nuclear Threat Initiative and
the Turner Foundation, he now concentrates his considerable energies on defending life on earth
from the multiple threats posed by environmental degradation and weapons of mass destruction.
10
www.achievements.org

11. 11
Analysis & Conclusion
After going through the life of Mr. Ted Turner I am just dumbstruck. He is no doubt one of the
most brilliant entrepreneurial minds of the century. In every successful business of his I find one
thing common that he always did something a normal logical person would not do and even then
he came on top. He took a failing UHF station in Atlanta, and sent it by satellite to all the cable
television operators around the country, creating the first “Superstation” (as said by him). Then
he did what the old networks and news media considered impossible: he created the first all-news
television station, CNN, and pioneered the live broadcasting of breaking news from around
the globe, allowing the whole world to experience history in the making.
Ted Turner not only showed his competence in business but he was also a very competitive in
sports as he dominated the sport of sailboat racing in the 1970s, winning the America's Cup in
1977 and overcoming a deadly storm to triumph in the Fast-net Race of 1979. He continued to
make his mark on the sports world as owner of the Atlanta Braves baseball team, winners of the
1995 World Series, five National League pennants and 14 consecutive division championships,
an all-time record.
One of the most colorful and unpredictable characters in the history of American business, he is
also a philanthropist of unprecedented generosity. In the 1990s, he single-handedly paid a
billion-dollar debt his country owed the United Nations. Having achieved historic successes in
the world of business, he has now turned his attention and resources to the causes of world peace
and nuclear disarmament.
(more material added from next page and onwards)

12. 12
Ted Turner At Work & Success Factors
Here are 10 lessons learned from Call Me Ted, which might be helpful business or life.
 1. Set your goals so high that you can never achieve them in your lifetime.
 2. When faced with setbacks in life, hard work and perseverance will help you to get you
through the tough times.
 3. Surround yourself with talented people and get out of their way. Ted believed in letting
people do their jobs without interference.
 4. Find a hobby outside of work to give your life balance. Turner was a passionate and
competitive sailor, whose team won many prestigious races, including the coveted
America's Cup in 1977.
 5. Figure out where your industry is headed in five or ten years and plan to get there
ahead of your competitors.
 6. Believe in yourself. In the late 1970s, people close to Turner thought he was crazy for
wanting to establish a 24-hour cable news network (even ABC, CBS, NBC thought the
idea wouldn't work)
 7. Form cordial relationships with suppliers and competitors. You never know when
you'll need their help or vice versa.
 8. When you own an asset, your primary job should be to maximize its value.
 9. Create an atmosphere of fun and excitement at work and at play. People liked working
for Turner because he was exciting to be around.
 10. Use your resources to make the world a better place. Turner's efforts in promoting
peace, his environmentalism and his philanthropy are as inspiring as they are admirable.

13. 13
The Mouth From The South: Ted Turner is Born
Ted Turner once said, “Life is a game. Money is how we keep score.” If that is true, then Turner
is one of the best players and the biggest winners of all time. Worth an estimated $7 billion at the
peak of his career in the 1990s, Turner used his outspoken and often controversial persona to
create a media empire that would revolutionize the television industry. He also used his wealth to
become one of the most generous philanthropists in history. Although Turner’s attention has now
shifted away from the business world, his legacy endures and he remains committed to making
the world a better place.
Born on November 19, 1938 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Robert Edward ‘Ted’ Turner was a rebellious
child who had little appreciation for the rules. While his father, Edward, had made a small
fortune working in the billboard industry, he also suffered from bipolar disorder and would
frequently beat his son with coat hangers. After the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, Edward
enlisted in the navy and took his family with him to his post in the Gulf Coast – that is, everyone
but Ted, who was sent to a boarding school.
When he was nine years old, Turner was sent to his second boarding school, the elite McCallie
School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but with its military-oriented nature, he found it difficult to
flourish. He was given the nickname ‘Terrible Ted’ for his propensity to break the rules,
including growing grass in his dorm room and practicing amateur taxidermy. School rules stated
that for every demerit a student received, he had to walk a quarter mile. By the end of Turner’s
term there, he had acquired over 1,000 points and so the school struggled to find another, more
realistic means of punishing him.
Turner was a ‘C’ student and although he never excelled academically, he had dreams of
attending the U.S. Naval Academy. This, however, was not a decision that his family supported,
who instead wanted their son to go to Harvard. Rejected by Harvard, Turner got into Brown
University and, again to the dismay of his parents, began pursuing a degree in the classics. But,
Turner would not last long at Brown; he was expelled in 1969 for having a woman in his room
with him. Turner’s parents divorced that same year and his 12-year old sister developed terminal

14. 14
lupus.
While his life seemed to be falling apart, Turner met and married fellow sailing enthusiast Judy
Gale Nye the next year. Soon thereafter, Turner took on a branch manager position with his
father’s company, Turner Advertising. He proved to be so successful in sales that the branch’s
revenues doubled in his first year on the job. The father and son duo continued to expand their
operations, all the while taking on a significant amount of debt. In 1963, the pressure proved too
much for Turner’s father to handle and he shot himself in the head.
Turner immersed himself in his work and, despite the distraction of his father’s suicide, his own
divorce and a second marriage he managed to make Turner Advertising the largest advertising
company in America’s southeast by 1970. He soon began noticing the inroads that radio and
television were making into his business and it wouldn’t be long before Turner was setting his
sights even higher.

15. 15
Lesson #1: Set Your Sights High
By the time Turner had joined his father’s advertising company, it was already a modest success.
But, Turner wanted to take it higher. He convinced his father to make the biggest business
decision of his life and one that would ultimately prove too much for the elder Turner to handle.
Paying $4 million, Turner Advertising purchased the Atlanta, Richmond and Roanoke branches
of General Outdoor Advertising. It was this acquisition that turned Turner Advertising into the
largest of its kind in the South. But, Turner’s father panicked and quickly sold the divisions off
to a friend, saying, “I just feel like I’ve lost my guts.” He would commit suicide soon after.
Vowing to never take after his father, Turner continued to keep working towards high goals that
he set for himself, no matter how ridiculous or risky they appeared to others. “You should set
goals beyond your reach so you always have something to live for,” he says. Despite advice to
sell off Turner Advertising after his father’s death, Turner fought to keep the company and even
brought in enough business to pay off all its debts.
Turner’s first solo ventures came five years later, when he borrowed heavily to purchase
numerous television and radio stations throughout the South. The stations had all been struggling
financially and Turner’s advisors all agreed that the purchases were unwise. But, like most of the
business decisions Turner would become infamous for making later on in his career, he ignored
their advice and went ahead with his plans.
Turner’s goal was to have a national network and although profits were slim, he became
obsessed with broadcasting. He began to see himself as a rabbit – “a rabbit that’s small and fast,”
he said. “All my big competitors were like a pack of wolves, and they were all chasing me, but I
was fast enough to be out in front of them.” He fought Hollywood, the FCC, his critics and his
competitors and wound up with the first superstation and the first 24-hour cable news station in
history. Although it was initially both unpopular and unprofitable, CNN eventually began to turn
a profit. Turner had single-handedly popularized cable news and inspired numerous other 24-
hour cable news stations. Today, CNN is available in 88 million homes throughout the U.S. and
reaches 200 countries around the world.

16. Turner was also the first entrepreneur to really connect sports with media programming, and he
successfully capitalized on the ability to link satellite technology with cable television systems.
“Everybody thinks Bill Gates is so smart,” says Turner. “But when he started, the software field
was wide open. When we started, the three broadcast networks were thousands of times bigger
than we were. But they were so big and slowfooted to move, they allowed us to get established
before the reacted.”
Throughout his life, people had questioned the practicality of his grand ideas. Even when he
grew more serious about his ambitions and started to pursue them doggedly, he was subject to
much criticism. But, instead of succumbing to everyone’s doubts, Turner used this disbelief to
spur him on even further. “If you’ve got an innovative idea, and the majority does not pooh-pooh
it, then the odds are you must not have a very good idea,” he said. “When people thought I was
loony, it did not bother me at all. In fact, I considered that I must really be onto something.”
Turner’s sights are always aimed high; at one point he even considered running for U.S.
President, only to reconsider due to his wife’s disapproval. Today, Turner is still being laughed
at for his lofty goal of wanting to ‘save the planet’, but he continues to set aim high. “Do
something,” he says. “Either lead, follow or get out of the way.”
16

17. 17
Lesson #2: Never Surrender
“All my life people have said that I wasn’t going to make it,” said Turner. “They laughed at me
when I started with CBS. They laughed at me when I started CNN. They laughed at me when I
bought the Braves. They laughed at me when I bought the Hawks. They laughed at me when I
bought MGM.” But, the billionaire entrepreneur can now look back on the success of his 40-odd
year career and be thankful he never listened to any of those people.
The determination Turner demonstrated in both his business ventures and sailing races came
from his desire for adventure as well as his plain stubbornness. Turner thrived on competition
and knew he would be held down by those who did not want to see him succeed. But, the more
people that tried to stop him, the more Turner’s ambition to succeed grew.
“You can never quit,” he said. “Winners never quit, and quitters never win.” In 1979, Turner
took part in the biennial Fastnet race, a 605-mile course in which over 306 yachts raced to a set
finish line in the Irish Sea. But, this year would prove different than the rest. Two days into the
race, Force 11 hurricane winds struck the sea and began powerfully gusting over the waters; 25
boats sunk, almost 200 others were damaged, and 19 people in all were killed. The resulting
dispersal of emergency services became one of the largest rescue operations ever recorded in
peacetime.
But, in an amazing feat, Turner not only sailed his yacht to safety, but also to victory.
Appropriately named ‘Tenacious’, the boat that was both owned and skippered by Turner
became the victor in one of the most disastrous ocean races in history. “Why do you think my
own racing yacht is name ‘Tenacious’,” asks Turner. “Because I never quit. I’ve got a bunch of
flags on my boat, but there ain’t no white flags. I don’t surrender. That’s the story of my life.”
His achievements on the water are reflective of those in his professional life. He fought tooth and
nail to get his cable news network off the ground and continued fighting for its survival until it
became one of the most successful networks in American history. He revolutionized the media
industry by refusing to give up on his dreams. “Watch me,” says Turner. “I’m like a bulldog that

18. won’t let go.”
Reflecting on what it took to take him to the top, Turner says the secret lies in his survivor
attitude. No matter what obstacles were thrown in his way, Turner knew he could succeed if only
he kept on going. “I’ve never run into a guy who could win at the top level in anything today and
didn’t have the right attitude, didn’t give it everything he had, at least while he was doing it,”
says Turner.
In his ongoing battle against the power and control of big media conglomerates, Turner says he
has begun to appreciate more the contribution of entrepreneurs and small businesses to society.
“People who own their own businesses are their own bosses,” he says. “They are independent
thinkers. They know they can't compete by imitating the big guys; they have to innovate. So they
are less obsessed with earnings than they are with ideas.” According to Turner, it is thus crucial
for entrepreneurs to stay focused and committed and refuse to wave the white flag. “When you
lose small businesses, you lose big ideas.”
18

19. 19
Lesson #3: Liven Things Up
“I lose my self-restraint and just get up and dance sometimes,” says Turner.
Never one to pass up the opportunity to have a little fun in the high stakes and pressure-packed
industry in which he works, Turner is known for his outspokenness and his willingness to add
colour to even the most serious of situations. He operates in Turnerverse – what he calls his own
private world.
From asking for a nationwide vote on replacing the Star-Spangled Banner with a “less-warlike”
national anthem to calling Americans “some of the dumbest people in the world” to challenging
his arch-enemy, Rupert Murdoch, to a televised boxing match in 1997, Turner has created a
reputation for himself as a businessman who is not afraid of anything and who is willing to speak
his mind and poke fun at anyone or anything that, in his mind, deserves it – even himself. “I
don’t have any idea what I’m going to say. I say what comes to my mind,” he says, adding, “If I
had any humility I would be perfect.”
Turner has had to develop his sense of humour over the years in order to escape not only from
the stress of his everyday life but also from the fear that he might one day wind up like his father,
whose inability to make light of a heavy situation led to his eventual downfall. Indeed, the
numbers that Turner now deals with would be mind-blowing to his father. Watching his stock
portfolio prices stream in real time over the Internet, Turner says, “Every few seconds it changes
– up an eighth, down an eighth – it’s like playing a slot machine. I lose $20 million, I gain $20
million.”
As evidenced by his love of competing in dangerous sailing expeditions, Turner thrives on the
adrenaline rush he gets from the unknown and unexpected. And so, both personally and
professionally, he deliberately throws himself into positions of risk and possibilities by causing
stirs wherever he goes. He creates controversy not only to draw attention to himself but also to
wake everyone up and generate energy. And, he manages to have fun along the way.

20. “My son is now an ‘entrepreneur’,” says Turner. “That’s what you’re called when you don’t
have a job.” An entrepreneur throughout his entire life, Turner has maintained his sense of
humour despite all the setbacks he has experienced. From his father’s suicide to his sister’s death
to being put on the sidelines by his own company, Turner has bounced back from each
experience with the same defiant smirk on his face.
Part of his ability to have a good time lies in his willingness to embrace controversy. Moreover,
it is the fact that he has attained such success all the while being as controversial as he is that
makes Turner’s achievements even greater. Having been called everything from an idiot to a
bigot, Turner has created a reputation for himself that is almost bigger than the networks he
helped create. He is not afraid to liven things up and speak his mind no matter what the
consequences and he has thus carved his own unique path to success. “I'd rather go to hell,” he
says. “Heaven has got to be boring.”
20

21. 21
Lesson #4: Work Like Hell
When Turner was once asked what the secret of business success was, he replied, “Early to bed,
early to rise, work like hell and advertise.” With typical workdays consisting of 18 hours, Turner
was an admitted overachiever and a workaholic. The passion he had for his work, saying, “CNN
came out of my heart and soul,” meant that anything less than his best would not have been
acceptable.
Despite Turner’s passion and determination in trying to realize his dreams, it was nothing short
of hard work that helped him reach the top as quickly as he did. “In 20 short years, by all the
surveys, we became the world’s most respected news source,” he says, reflecting on the
enormous growth of CNN. “The New York Times had been there for 100 years. We did it in 20.”
And, Turner did not take anything for granted. He knew that even though he had reached the top,
it would take the same amount of hard work to sustain that position. “You can coast on that
reputation for a long time but if you’re going to hold that position, which I think would be the
most profitable position too, you have to earn it.”
In 1976, Turner saw an opportunity in television and seized it by creating Turner Broadcasting
Systems. But, timing’s role in Turner’s success was limited; the creation of CNN, a 24-hour
news channel with international coverage, demanded nothing short of a 24-hour time
commitment from Turner. Turner was bent on covering news in real time, all the time, and thus
all his time became devoted to work. He didn’t just stay up once or twice to finish a project off,
but rather he converted his office into an apartment. Turner slept over most nights at CNN
headquarters and CNN staff regularly saw him leave his office to grab a cup of coffee in his
bathrobe. He would also rarely spend more than 30 seconds with any one person, rushing off to
do the next task at hand.
Turner was not alone in his dedication; he had a solid staff behind him that was equally
committed to getting CNN off the ground. Staff regularly worked six or seven days a week
alongside Turner, with one worker claiming, “[Turner] was much more than a cheerleader. He
was the kind of guy you’d want to run through a wall for.” Acknowledging that “the best way to

22. lead is by example”, Turner inspired his staff to work just as hard as him to achieve their
common goal.
Despite the fact that he is nearing his 70s, Turner is still going strong. He has involved all of his
five children in his ventures in one way or another – most of them share his concern for the
environment and retain a position with the Turner Foundation – which allows him to remain the
committed workaholic that he is while still staying a family man. “I see what keeps people
young,” Turner once said. “Work!”
22

23. 23
Lesson #5: Leave Your Mark
“Having great wealth is one of the most disappointing things,” says Turner. “It’s overrated, I can
tell you that. It’s not as good as average sex.”
Turner never entered the media industry to make money, and now that he has it, he doesn’t know
what to do with it all. “As I started getting rich, I started thinking, ‘what the hell am I going to do
with all this money?’” And so, after making a billion dollar fortune, Turner is now spending his
time giving it all away. He has a family to support, but also feels that the greatest legacy he can
leave for his children is to contribute back to society. “The world and life have been mighty good
to me. And I want to put something back.”
With that, Turner changed the path his life was on and devoted himself to philanthropy, saying
he has gone from being a man who thrives on the war of business to a man of peace. In 1998,
Turner pledged the historic donation of $1billion to the United Nations to help fund programs
dealing with refugees, children, and health and security. Choosing $1 billion because it’s “a good
round number,” Turner also began criticizing other wealthy individuals for letting their money
go to waste in bank accounts. He promised that, “everybody who is rich can expect a
call…because there’s no reason why we can’t raise lots of money.”
Turner is an avid environmentalist, who, as early as 1973, sold his Cadillac to begin using more
fuel-efficient cars. In 1990, he then created the Turner Foundation, a private organization
dedicated to protecting the environment. In 2000, he also launched the Nuclear Threat Initiative
and endowed it with $250 million to work towards curbing the proliferation of nuclear,
biological and chemical weapons throughout the world. “Over a three-year period, I gave away
half of what I had,” Turner says. “To be honest, my hands shook as I signed it away. I knew I
was taking myself out of the race to be the richest man in the world.”
Turner has not let his wealth affect his perspective of what is important in life. He didn’t get into
business for the money and realizes that having more than he can use will not make him any
happier than he already is. “I like to do things that are bigger than me,” says Turner. He has left

24. his mark in the worlds of media and television and now wants to leave his mark on the world. “I
consider this movement part of the human rights movement,” he says. “Everybody is entitled to
an equal chance in life…I’m going to keep pressing so everyone has an equal chance in the
world.”
As with his business ventures, Turner is again taking on a bigger goal than most can even
fathom: saving the planet. But, he remains both realistic and optimistic about his prospects,
“There’s still a lot of work to do, and we’ll keep doing it.”
24

25. 25
Bad Boy Makes Good: Turner’s Success Factors
With his background in the classics, Turner had a penchant for recounting the successes of its
greatest heroes: “When Alexander the Great took control when his dad died, he was twenty years
old. He took the Macedonian Army, which was the best army in the world at the time, and
conquered Greece, got the Greeks to all join with him, and then marched across the Hellespont
and invaded Asia. They didn’t even know where the world ended at that time. And he was dead
at thiry-three, thirteen years later. He kept marching. He hardly ever stopped. And he never lost a
battle.”
Turner lost many a battle but he, like Alexander the Great, never stopped marching. How did he
rise to success?
He Set High Goals: Turner became cable before cable was cool; he envisioned television news
reporting as a live, 24-hour event when few others saw the feasibility; he purchased failing
business after business in an attempt to revive them. Turner had big dreams and he wasn’t afraid
to strive for them. “You play to win,” he said. “And you know you’ve won when the government
stops you.”
He Never Gave Up or Gave In: When ABC reporter John Stossel advised Turner to stick to
being an entrepreneur since his philanthropic donations probably wouldn’t go very far, Turner
looked at Stossel as if he were crazy. Even after he had left the business world for the most part,
people still doubted Turner’s ideas and abilities to achieve them. But, being Captain Tenacious,
Turner rode out the storm to victory.
He Was Fearless: “I know what I'm having 'em put on my tombstone,” Turner says. “I have
nothing more to say.” Never one to mince words, Turner thrived on the thrill of causing a stir in
even the highest of circles. He kept his sense of humour and his playful sense of fun throughout
his career, shocking his adversaries not only through his business ventures but also with his
outrageous comments and propositions. He created a reputation as being an entrepreneur that
was not afraid of anything and it served him well.

26. He Worked Hard: The concept of ‘pulling an all-nighter’ was foreign to Turner; for him all-nighters
were a way of life. Although the 24-live format of CNN demanded his constant
attention, Turner was the type of entrepreneur that would have devoted even more than 24 hours
to his projects if he could have. It was his endless enthusiasm for his work that drove him past
his competitors to new heights of success.
He Made An Impact: “I want to be Jiminy Cricket for America,” Turner once said. “There is no
greater legacy that we can leave our children and grandchildren than a peaceful and safer world.”
From making news around the world more accessible to everyone to contributing $1 billion to
the UN, Turner has committed himself to leaving his mark on the world. It was his desire to have
a significant impact with everything he did that made him strive for brilliance.
“I built a multibillion-dollar company, and I won the America's Cup,” says Turner reflecting on
his career. “I was the greatest sailor in the world. I ran through three wives and numerous
girlfriends, and I wore them all out! I smoked through life!” His entrepreneurial flair and his
contribution to the media industry were revolutionary. Turner may no longer be the young,
energetic and outrageous entrepreneur the world once knew, but don’t tell him that. “I’m still
going fast!”
26

27. 27
Analysis and Conclusion II
When talking about his work we can clearly see that he was a very hard working person. He
always used to think out of the box and this attribute gave people the expression that he was
crazy. But after every project he showed that his unique thinking was the reason he always used
to come on top.
Ted Turner believed in the phrase “all work and no play makes jack a dull boy” and that is why
he always kept a fun filled and active work environment and this is also the reason people loved
to be around him and work for him.
The reasons for Ted Turner’s success were that he set high goals, he never gave up or gave in, he
was fearless, he worked hard and he made an impact.
When Turner was once asked what the secret of business success was, he replied, “Early to bed,
early to rise, work like hell and advertise.” With typical workdays consisting of 18 hours, Turner
was an admitted overachiever and a workaholic. The passion he had for his work, saying, “CNN
came out of my heart and soul,” meant that anything less than his best would not have been
acceptable.
Fact:
Ted Turner was a ‘C’ student and never excelled academically.

28. 28
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