Ted Leonsis, owner of five professional sports teams – including the Washington Wizards, Washington Capitals, and Washington Mystics – joined me on Episode 211 of Thirty Minute Mentors.
A serial entrepreneur who played a key role in building AOL as a member of their senior leadership team, Ted is the founder and CEO of Monumental Sports & Entertainment and the co-founder and partner of the venture capital firm Revolution.
In his mid-20s, Ted thought he made it in life. Growing up, he was expected to be a grocery store manager. Instead, he became an entrepreneur – a very successful one very quickly – and cashed out for $60 million.
“And then I got on the wrong airplane,” Ted told me on the most recent episode of Thirty Minute Mentors.
“I was on a plane – Eastern Airlines leaving Atlanta – that developed all sorts of technical issues and lost our flaps. We thought we had lost our landing gear and the plane had to make an emergency landing.
As the plane was circling, burning off gas… you have your reckoning. I had my reckoning. It’s like a bad joke. It’s like really now… I just got here. And people are weeping and crying and they’re moving people around.
I started to pray, even though I wasn’t that religious. And during my reflection, I started laughing. Because all I could think of was if God was listening, God saying, ‘Oh, I got it. Now you need me, right? Everything’s cool. Now you’re sending up the bat signal and you need something from me.’
And so I tried to come up with my sales pitch. It’s like, let me live. Let me get through this. How am I going to fill in those dots?
And I said, ‘I’ll leave more than I take.'”
Listen to the full conversation here or on your favorite podcasting app.
