I love real life examples of goal achievement tips, and I came across one more the other day, so in this article I’m going to show the revealing consequences of Simon Cowell’s mistake…
Simon Cowell. Massively successful, massively egoed TV producer of talent shows, which have made him a fortune and turned him into one of the most recognisable faces on TV. Was it easy for him to get to that position? Well, no, and one error of judgement he made gives some great lessons.
This mistake came when the genres of reality and talent show were combined on television. Producer Nigel Lythgoe had seen a show in Australia, where the behind-the-scenes side of the audition process was included in the show. He said he had never seen anything like it, and bought the rights to the show.
When he set about launching it in the UK, he wanted record company executive Simon Cowell to be on the judging panel. Cowell decided he didn’t like the idea of showing what happened behind the scenes, so declined the offer, despite repeated requests.
The show launched as Popstars in the UK and was a massive ratings success. People who knew Cowell in the music industry used words like ‘gutted’ and ‘furious’ to describe his reaction to missing out on the show, and Cowell himself has said that he was ‘not happy’.
So, that was his big chance gone, right? He’d made the wrong decision, and that was that, right?
Er, no.
Instead of sulking, wishing things had turned out differently, he took a proactive approach and made the decision to take the formula and run with it himself. He came up with a show called Pop Idol, which looked for a solo star instead of a band, and put himself centre stage in the judging panel.
He tweaked the format a little bit, but not much, because he had seen how successful Popstars had been. The result was that Pop Idol became even bigger than Popstars, and Cowell had hit the big time.
As it happens, he continued to ride that wave with shows like Popstars The Rivals, The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, but that is a different lesson – the lesson I want to focus on here is that of reacting to a setback.
Cowell’s setback was a pretty big one, but he used it as motivation. He didn’t blame anyone, he took responsibility for his decision, and responsibility for doing something about it, and boy did he ever do something about it!
There are many quotes in the self improvement field about the importance of getting up after a fall being more important than the actual fall, and if you want a real life example of this to relate to goal achievement, you need look no further than this Simon Cowell story.
By the way, if you want to find out more, then why not grab my free 8 step goal achievement formula!
You can also read about how I came back from setbacks in my book ‘Transform Your Life in 21 Days!’ which has been described as ‘motivational magic!’
