I have enjoyed Terry O'Reilly for a long time. I remember listening first to his show The Age of Persuasion years ago (thought I would have sworn that was longer ago than 2006) and now I regularly listen to Under the Influence both on Thursdays and Saturdays (sometimes you need to listen twice to catch everything). Because I have always found him to be a great storyteller I thought this book would be good for a light bit of reading. I was right.
However one of the reasons I so enjoy O'Reilly's work is not just because of the (well researched and well told) stories. It is the way he uses the stories to share key understandings of how the world (particularly the world of marketing) works. In the stories and the reflections I often find bits of wisdom that apply to a variety of settings.
Nobody likes to make mistakes. Naturally enough, most of us avoid it at all costs. But in this book we find people whose lives would have been very different, and arguably much less profitable, if they had avoided making a key mistake. The cover art tells the whole story. Does it say biggest mistake or best mistake? Or possibly both?
I suspect that for each person whose story is told in this book the line between biggest and best mistake is only truly discernible in hindsight. I wonder how many of us can say that in our own history? These are great stories in and of themselves. But looking deeper, should we maybe be more willing to make mistakes because we are taking risks? After a catastrophic mistake (or even a minor mistake that feels catastrophic at the time) many of us are tempted to just give up. Maybe the aftermath of the mistake can in fact lead us to a new way of being, a new resurgence?
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