Love at First Bite: Knowing What Will Hit Before it Hits

Decision-making skills are a leader’s bloodline. It’s estimated that the average person makes around 35,000 decisions every single day. That’s 35,000 opportunities to make choices that could either have a positive or negative impact on your day, week, month, or year. Now, imagine how much more weight decisions hold when you’re making them for yourself and an entire company. Leaders can’t be paralyzed by decisions, or else there would be no forward momentum.

Some decisions are easy, like what to eat for breakfast or where to grab a bite to eat with friends after work. But other decisions are unfortunately much more difficult to make. Should you fire that employee who has been with the company for a few years? How should you adjust your business strategy following a few unprofitable months? You can read all the articles you want on leadership, but you will never unearth the secrets of what to do in the face of these situations — that’s because there are no secrets. Every day, you will be forced to make a number of decisions. Some of these decisions will be inconsequential, others will be more profound, and some could even be career-changing.

This is especially true in the entertainment industry, where a significant portion of the job is knowing when to bet on an idea or when to pass. I remember when I made one of the boldest decisions of my early career. I call it my “love at first bite” moment, which is still how I approach most of the decisions I make today.

I was working as an executive at Fox and had just watched a student film called Hannibal the Cannibal, which was loosely based on the true story of a pioneer who ate his dead friends during his trip across the Rocky Mountains. It was a comedy — a musical comedy — and I immediately fell in love. Not with the film (I knew it wouldn’t be the next Blockbuster hit), but with the students who created the film. No one else recognized their potential, but I knew I had creative geniuses standing in front of me. I hired them to work on a few smaller projects I was working on for Fox over the years, but one day I decided to hire them to work on a short, animated film that I would send out to the company at Christmastime. The film, The Spirit of Christmas, featured four children (Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman) singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”. It was simple and endearing, until Santa and Jesus showed up and started fighting. This was followed by a slew of violence and curse words, and right then and there I knew it would be a hit with my employees. I was right, but what I didn’t expect was for it to go viral.

Once I saw how much everyone loved the video, I knew we had to harness its full potential. We made the decision to pitch the series idea to a few major networks. After a few rejections, Comedy Central finally picked up the project. That’s when Trey Parker and Matt Stone asked me to leave my executive gig at Fox to be the Executive Producer on the show. I knew I had to take the opportunity, and that’s when (if you haven’t figured it out yet) South Park was born.

And the same happened with other show ideas along the way, like The Jersey Shore and The Osbournes. At the time, no one really understood the concepts behind the shows, but I saw their potential. It was love at first bite for me. That’s not to say that I will always get it right either, but there’s something about trusting your gut (although it’s much more than just a “gut feeling”) and knowing when to take a chance on something that is a necessary skill if you ever want to push forward. And if no one believes in your decision but you: push harder.