Forest Fair Mall and the Second Lamborghini

2009.02.16   prev     next

DeadMalls.com tells the tale of developer George Herscu who, around 1985, developed the upscale Forest Fair mall between two blue-collar areas of peripheral Cincinnati, to widespread claims that his mall couldn’t possibly succeed. And it didn’t. Forest Fair was a flop, and a very bad one at that. It didn’t become successful until 2002, when the Mills Corporation bought it out and converted it into a typically middle-class-oriented Mills mall — Cincinatti Mills (now owned by Simon Malls).

Before Forest Fair opened, Herscu had a ready answer to all the doomsayers:

My wife the architect’s comment upon hearing this story was, “No, if you fail they’ll say you’re a damn fool, and if you succeed, they’ll say you did your job.” She had a good point, but still there was some logic to be found in Herscu’s “great man” claim — if a mall succeeds when most everyone is predicting doom for it, then maybe there was genius behind it.

Now, you might say, “It doesn’t matter whether Herscu’s logic makes sense or not — the mall was a disaster and so he was wrong, period.” But in saying that, you actually agree with Herscu’s logic. That’s exactly what he meant: If my mall fails, no one will care if anything I said made sense; I’ll just be wrong, period. And if my mall succeeds, again no one will care if anything I said made sense; I’ll just be right, period.

Success

Now — a tale from the flip side: John Carmack is a programmer from Mesquite, Texas, who got together one day with a few friends and created a home computer game called Doom. It was a huge success, and made Carmack et al quite well-to-do. He followed it up with various sequels and spinoffs, which also did very well.

Being interviewed by a tech magazine, Carmack was asked what his parents thought of his chosen profession. His reply (as best my memory serves me) was just this:

Now, a Lamorghini is an exotic Italian sportscar. It’s a very impractical vehicle, with barely room for two, and almost no cargo space to speak of. It might not even be street-legal in the USA, or might require special mods to become so. And that’s even if you wanted to take it on a public road, park in it a parking lot, etc., which you probably wouldn’t. It costs, I think, somewhere in the neighborhood of US$300,000 to US$500,000. In other words, it’s a toy for the very rich.

Notice that Carmack’s mom didn’t stop bugging him to get a “real job” until he bought his second Lamborghini. Not his first. Nor, when he bought his second Lamborghini, did she realize that he had made the right career decision — she just “stopped bugging” him. So she likely still wanted him to get a “real job,” but realized at that point that it was pointless to push the issue.

What both of these stories illustrate is that it’s a complete waste of time, spirit, mental energy, etc., to try to persuade others that what you’re trying to do is a good idea, particularly when persuading those people does nothing to get you closer to success. Success is all that matters. If you don’t succeed, it will be impossible to persuade others that you made the right decision, and if you do succeed, you still may not be able to persuade them — people are notoriously stubborn — but it won’t matter, because they can wallow in their stubbornness while you go off and enjoy your success.