100 Business Days Out: Day 70 - Jerry Levin Second Life

I'm getting my mail and magazines forwarded to me once a week here on Mondays. Today I was going through the July 14 & 21 Business Week and read with great interest Maria Bartiromo's Facetime interview with Jerry Levin. I was always a Jerry Levin fan. And I was a Time Warner shareholder before (and long after) the tie-up with AOL. And no, that didn't go well, but I still think that the vision that Jerry and Steve Case (and Bob Pittman) had was the right one but like many mergers they just don't go that well...and as we know this one didn't. But that's not why I am writing about Jerry. I am writing about him because his interview answers were right in line with that I have been writing about for the last 69 days and he summarized so many of the feelings and emotions that I have had down into some very insightful thoughts. You can read the entire article here:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_28/b4092023838656.htm?campaign_id=yhoo

What I took away from this interview is that Jerry is a real learner and that he has learned the lessons that only come from the hardest situations that we can face in life and that he is now applying those lessons into what he does now to help others who are looking to grow and change. My Southern Baptist pastor when I was growing up used to say, "we change either through invitation or situation...and most of us wait until situation". How true and how sad. We find ourselves either in desperation, forced out of our comfort zone (or off of our security blankets) before we make changes in ourselves. I am trying to do the opposite. I am trying to take this time of invited change and put to work the life lessons for the next chapter. After reading Jerry's interview through a second time, I sure wish he was heading back to run a public company because it would be one that I would invest. You can only imagine the Jerry Levin who grew Time Warner to what it was with the new found learning and skills running another company. Maybe there is a third life for Jerry as well.