Myth 3: You must stick to your guns, no matter what
Got a great idea? By all means ignore the naysayers and go for it. If criticisms are valid, however, you'd better listen.
By Josh Hyatt, Money Magazine senior writer

NEW YORK (Money Magazine) -- "The concept is interesting and well formed, but in order to earn better than a C, the idea must be feasible," a college professor supposedly wrote in response to a student's term paper outlining the need for a reliable overnight delivery service.

But Fred Smith ignored those discouraging words. "I thought this was a revolutionary idea.... I wasn't intimidated," said the fellow who founded FedEx in 1973.

Herb Kelleher, of Southwest Airlines, has been known to bray, "If it's conventional, it ain't wisdom, and if it's wisdom, it ain't conventional." After all, has anybody ever done anything innovative by consulting a focus group?

REALITY: Yes, actually. If you're intent on creating value - from either a giant company's command center or your guest bedroom at home - you carefully evaluate and absorb feedback.

True, successful people don't change their minds easily, says the Kauffman Foundation's Payne. But they are strategically flexible when they have to be.

In 1984, FedEx launched Zap-Mail, a high-speed fax service. But then cheap fax machines started popping up. "At that juncture," Smith once told an interviewer, "we knew we had to change."

When Sergio Zyman was chief marketing officer at Coca-Cola, he learned that sometimes things don't work out as planned. Remember New Coke? Years later, when he was on his own, Zyman raised $12 million to sell business-planning software. But he soon understood that the market was murmuring bad things about the product. "We had to kill it," he says.

By the time he told his backers, he had concocted a plan for turning the Zyman Group into a consulting firm. Last year the Atlanta company raked in $65 million in sales.

"You need to have enough conviction," says Zyman, "to know that you can find the right answer, even if you don't know it right away."

___________________________________________

Myth 1: You've got to have incredible charisma

Myth 2: You must be able to see into the future

Myth 3: You've got to stick to your guns, no matter what

Myth 4: You need to take big risks

Myth 5: You need a burning desire to get rich

Plus: Secrets of success from those who've made it Top of page

YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS
Follow the news that matters to you. Create your own alert to be notified on topics you're interested in.

Or, visit Popular Alerts for suggestions.
Manage alerts | What is this?

Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.

Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.