CEO Night

“TO BE ENTHUSIASTIC, YOU GOTTA ACT ENTHUSIASTIC! BOY!!! AM I ENTHUSIASTIC!!!!”Walter Levine starts another successful CEO Night with one of his favorite mottos. The lecture room was nearly a full house, filled with eager students from diverse backgrounds. The speaker for the night was Ray Joslin, a cable television pioneer and a corporate entrepreneur. He discussed his lifetime lessons in TV and Entertainment.
Joslin notes that one word stands out from conversations with his kids: “choice”. This seemingly small insight has tremendous implications. As Joslin explains, making the right choices leads to great success. Furthermore, Joslin believes in the fact that good things in life happen to people if they place themselves in good arenas, and bad things in life happen to people if they place themselves in bad arenas.
He went on to illustrate this by using personal experiences from his childhood, such as choosing the right friends. Joslin talked about how his life actually started at the age of nine. He came from a big family, but by that time his parents were separated. He made a choice then and there to be the best father. Since he was raised in a big family, he made the decision to start supporting himself and achieved this by having many part-time jobs to pay tuition in college. Grocery store, radio, florist and a heating oil company are some of the places he worked at to produce income. In college he flipped burgers and fries in the cafeteria. By the end of three summers during college he was able to net $34,000. He also benefited from his past employment by receiving a little education on merchandizing and marketing and by winning the Eastern Division Award for Sales.
He finally made the right decision that made him become one of the most successful entrepreneurs. He decided to go to New York and move into cable television networks. He joined the Hearst Corp., a cable communications group. During the 1960s, television had just come out and was only used for the news. The business he had entered was very risky. There was no chance of knowing whether cable television would become a huge success or a major failure. Still, he showed no fear.
He would hold meetings every night to advertise the franchise. He took the idea to numerous companies but was rejected. One company likened the cable television idea to Hitler visiting the Pentagon.
Joslin had minimal options on the operation of cable television. He learned that Hearst was working with ABC (a television network), that they had actually been partners for a long time, and that they would never compete with each other. After speaking Frank Benic of ABC, discussion on ways to start cable television finally began. By June of 1981, Hearst and ABC launched the first Daytime Television. Later on he brought in the History Channel, presently shown in 65 countries around the world, and the Lifetime Channel, television network for women. He also launched ESPN, which is now one of the largest sports television networks in the world today. Talking about good decisions, these ones allowed Joslin to become one of the most successful entrepreneurs today.
He doesn’t leave out other critical choices like becoming friends with Walter Levine, asking his wife Alicia to marry him, and giving back to the community by providing scholarships to operate cable television.
We all know that once we hit the real world, we are certain to be challenged with making the right decisions. As Joslin stresses, making one right choice leads to more good choices, and likewise one bad choice leads to more bad choices. Also remember to Show No Fear! If Joslin had any fear he would have not taken any risks and become the person he is now. With that said, I would like to end this article with one of Ray Joslin’s favorite quotes: “If I’m not myself, who will be me . . . if I’m not only for myself, then what am I for. . . and if not now, when”.