VORLEN

How successful people think about money. Interview clips on wealth, business & the decisions behind success.

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

A plate of cold meat cost the BBC the biggest show it had. Amazon picked up the audience in a deal reported at £160 million.

March 2015. North Yorkshire. After a long day of filming, Jeremy Clarkson is told the chef has gone home. He's offered soup and cold cuts.

He punches producer Oisin Tymon, who ends up in hospital.

His BBC contract runs out that same month. It isn't renewed. Tymon later settles for £100,000 and an apology.

Here's what the BBC was giving up:

→ 2006: Clarkson and producer Andy Wilman start a company selling Top Gear's merchandise and overseas rights
→ 2007: BBC Worldwide buys just over half
→ 2012: it buys the rest. Clarkson's share pays him about £8.4 million
→ In one year, that business brings in £149 million
→ The show reaches an estimated 350 million viewers

The BBC owned all of it. Everything except the three men people actually watched.

July 2015: Amazon signs Clarkson, Hammond, May and Wilman for 36 episodes. The Grand Tour becomes Prime Video's most-watched premiere to that point.

May 2016: the BBC relaunches Top Gear with Chris Evans. 6.42 million watch the first episode.

Five weeks later: about 1.9 million. A record low. Down roughly 70%. Evans quits the next day.

A year after the split, the BBC asks Clarkson what went wrong. He says the show kept growing and "the lack of support was appalling."

At Amazon, he says, you send a film and people in Los Angeles "ring up and squeak with joy." At the BBC you never get that, "ever."

And the £160 million? He says Amazon paid "way less than all these speculations."

The BBC kept the name. Clarkson took the audience. Who really won?

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@camp32236823 Accountability should apply regardless of political affiliation.

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

Melania Trump sued a British tabloid for $150 million. She won. She got less than 2% of it.

In August 2016, the Daily Mail ran a story suggesting she had worked as an escort in the 1990s. It wasn't true.

The paper pulled the piece, but defended running it. Its excuse: the story was about how false rumors could hurt a presidential campaign.

Her lawyers went big. They said the article had damaged a "unique once in a lifetime opportunity" to build her own brand of jewelry and accessories.

In the video below, from a campaign event in that same period, she's at the podium. But she isn't talking about herself. She's selling her husband: "He loves this country, and he knows how to get things done."

In court, she was protecting her brand. On stage, she was building his.

The lawsuit drew its own backlash. Ethics experts said the family looked like it was cashing in on the presidency, pointing to Ivanka's jewelry line promoting a bracelet she wore on 60 Minutes.

April 2017. The case ended in London's High Court.

The Daily Mail admitted the allegations were false, apologized, and paid damages. The amount was never made public. A source told Reuters it was under $3 million.

Do the math.

$150 million asked. Under $3 million paid. Less than 2 cents on every dollar she claimed.

The case for Melania: a lie about her past was printed worldwide, and the paper admitted it.
The case against the lawsuit: she priced the damage using the White House itself.

Was $150 million a fair price for a lie, or a price tag on the presidency?

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@noclipepe The public apology mattered too.

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@norvex1029 Huge gap, though the exact payout remains undisclosed.

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@armouredme Absolutely, though the exact settlement wasn’t disclosed.

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@0x_CryptoFuture The amount claimed and the amount settled serve different purposes.

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@0xDianax The victims’ names deserve more attention than his escape.

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@paxmlian How does it synchronize all those cells so precisely?

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@mmoyshaa The conditions matter more than the headline reward.

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@plutyou Would love to see the full performance.

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@Archii_trades Finding news first only helps if you can verify it.

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@servo_diaries Was that reaction autonomous or part of a scripted demo?

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@0xKarmi How do brief changes propagate once animation has started?

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

Steve Jobs sold every Apple share he owned except one. He kept that single share for one reason: so he could still walk into the shareholder meetings.

He was 30. Apple had just fired him.

In 1985, the board sided with John Sculley, the CEO Jobs had hired himself. Jobs later said the focus of his entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

In 2016, Business Insider worked out what that sold stake would have been worth: about $66 billion.

So he started over from zero.

He founded NeXT. Then he paid George Lucas $5 million for a tiny computer graphics division called Pixar.

1995: Pixar releases Toy Story and goes public. Jobs becomes a billionaire.

1996: Apple is losing money and buys NeXT for about $400 million. Jobs comes back with it, and soon he's running Apple again.

2006: Disney buys Pixar for $7.4 billion. Jobs ends up with almost 8% of Disney, the largest individual stake in the company.

Do the math.

$5 million for Pixar. $7.4 billion out. That's about 1,480 times his money.

Add NeXT, and the two companies he built after getting fired sold for more than $7.8 billion.

The company that fired him had to buy him back.

In the video below, he says it himself: getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to him.

Would you have kept that one share, or walked away for good?

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@Hrundel75 What you do next still matters.

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

Steve Jobs sold every Apple share he owned except one. He kept that single share for one reason: so he could still walk into the shareholder meetings.

He was 30. Apple had just fired him.

In 1985, the board sided with John Sculley, the CEO Jobs had hired himself. Jobs later said the focus of his entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

In 2016, Business Insider worked out what that sold stake would have been worth: about $66 billion.

So he started over from zero.

He founded NeXT. Then he paid George Lucas $5 million for a tiny computer graphics division called Pixar.

1995: Pixar releases Toy Story and goes public. Jobs becomes a billionaire.

1996: Apple is losing money and buys NeXT for about $400 million. Jobs comes back with it, and soon he's running Apple again.

2006: Disney buys Pixar for $7.4 billion. Jobs ends up with almost 8% of Disney, the largest individual stake in the company.

Do the math.

$5 million for Pixar. $7.4 billion out. That's about 1,480 times his money.

Add NeXT, and the two companies he built after getting fired sold for more than $7.8 billion.

The company that fired him had to buy him back.

In the video below, he says it himself: getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to him.

Would you have kept that one share, or walked away for good?

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@HodlReaper Willing to start again, which isn’t easy.

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@nofadsec One share kept that connection alive.

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@_CryptoNotes_ His story clearly still means a lot to people.

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@KeithbmBG The comeback is a big part of that legacy.

[VORLEN @VORLEN_X]

@kuroclips0 He wasn’t ready to cut every connection.