Dear Friends and Clients,
There was a time when Ted Leonsis was best known in Washington for his leadership at America Online. But these days he is a big player in professional sports, known as the guy who engineered the turnaround of the Capitals hockey franchise.
Born to parents of limited means and education, Leonsis worked his way through Georgetown University. There he became interested computers, and by the age of 27 he was able to sell his first computer-related company for $60 million. Leonsis became a highly successful serial entrepreneur, and most recently he has been in the news for attempting to take over the Washington Wizards.
As he explains in his book, “The Business of Happiness,” Leonsis has a lot to be happy about. But happiness is not something he has taken for granted. He had a “reckoning” at the age of 28, when traveling on a plane that went through preparations for a crash landing. While negotiating with God about how he would be a better man if permitted to survive, Leonsis says, he realized that he wasn’t happy, and that happiness requires more than being rich.
Since then, while building companies and fostering charities, he has worked hard to achieve and understand happiness. As he describes in the book that is half autobiography, half how-to guide, Leonsis “has actively, consciously, managed (his) quest.” Since the 1980s, he has read reports from neuroscientists, and just about everything else he could find on the topic of happiness.
Leonsis says that he also has closely observed his many friends and acquaintances. “There are those I believe to be happy, and those I believe who aren’t, and it is always my preference to spend more time with the former than the latter. Among my happy friends, I’ve tried determining what exactly makes them so,” he says. There are also happy companies, he says, and happy organizations tend to be successful.
John Buckley, who worked with Leonsis as AOL’s top communications executive, is co-author of the book. I asked Buckley about the impact that Leonsis’ theories have had on his co-workers and organizations. He said, “Ted's personality had an enormous impact on his colleagues, in many ways. His ‘Life List’ was something he talked about, urging all of us to organize ourselves around our life goals.”
Buckley says, “I've become a big believer in his theories on happiness, and now tend to look at the world through that prism. I find myself now evaluating situations through Ted's happiness tenets -- and they really work!” In this issue I will describe a few of Leonsis’ “secrets to extraordinary success in work and life,” and I hope that they may work for you.
Warm Wishes, Bev