Learn from Kay Koplovitz, Founder, USA Networks [Interview]

Learn from Kay Koplovitz, Founder, USA Networks [Interview] 

Invisible Mentor: Kay Koplovitz, Chairman & CEO
Company Name: Koplovitz & Co
Website: http://koplovitz.com/ 

Part One: Introduction

Avil Beckford: In a couple of sentences, tell me a little bit about yourself.

Kay Koplovitz:  I’m an entrepreneur. I founded USA Network and the Sci-Fi Channel. So I’m an entrepreneur in the cable television business. I did that for a couple of decades and for the last 15 years or so, I’ve actually been a venture capitalist and working with women entrepreneurs in technology and life sciences to grow and finance their companies. Other than that, I’m on the adventure. I love the outdoor life. I like taking adventures.

Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?

Kay Koplovitz: There isn’t any daily routine for me because I do many different things today – days in the office, or travel days, or oftentimes, they involve a public speaking engagement. I also review companies that potentially could be invested in. I travel a great deal. So, every day is really quite different for me, and I kind of like it that way.

Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

Kay Koplovitz:

I think that my big break was really inspired by Arthur C. Clarke, and why do I say that? Because when I was a college student, I was in London, and I happen to wander past a poster that said there was a lecture being given on geosynchronous orbiting satellites. I thought, “This was so fascinating.” You know, I don’t think too many of my college friends that I hung around with at the time would have gone in to hear this lecture.

But to me, it sounded fascinating and I went in and heard Arthur C. Clarke, who’s a science fiction writer and a space scientist, talked about the power of geosynchronous orbiting satellites in the ‘60s when we really didn’t have the ability to communicate instantly around the Earth as we do today. I thought it was so powerful. It was an idea that never let me go, and inspired my career. So, I think that was probably the most momentous moment of my life at that point.

Part Two: Career

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Kay Koplovitz: I think mentors influence my life, mostly by example. They set good examples, and actually influence my philosophical outlook on life and how I wanted to really conduct myself. What do I mean by that? I had a mentor, Bob Rosencrans, in the cable industry, who influenced me in negotiating with people. It was very much a win-win situation when he was negotiating. I really learned how to get to a conclusion that would work for both parties, assuming you could have a long-term relationship with them. I think he set a good example for me, one that I really live by in my business career.

Avil Beckford: What’s one core message you received from your mentors?

Kay Koplovitz: To know your own values and to stay with your convictions, was something that my mentors taught me early on, something I really do believe. I already had it within my own thinking structure, but when you’re a student, and you’re going out into the world to work for the first time, I think it is helpful to have guide posts on things like that. My mentors from school, my advisor in college, Dr. Dan Ripley, and Dr. Walter Emory gave me the opportunity to think through how I wanted to conduct myself in a business world.

Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn from by observing them from a distance. In that capacity, what is one piece of advice that you would give to others?

Kay Koplovitz: The piece of advice that I would give listeners is that you really should have your own vision of yourself and where you want to travel, things that you want to learn, things that you want to accomplish, and not to let other people draw a box around you. It’s important to follow your own convictions and things that you perceive yourself to do. And if there are other people who don’t perceive that or want to draw barriers for you, find a way around them. It’s most important that you be satisfied with who you become.

Avil Beckford: What big steps did you take to succeed in your field? What is one step or action you have consistently taken that has contributed the most to your success?

Kay Koplovitz: One of the most important things I did to really launch what became my entrepreneurial career, was to work in the different industries that I would have to have knowledge of to pull together and launch a cable satellite network. I worked in the satellite business, I worked in the cable business, and I was a television producer working my way through school. I had to learn the craft in how different businesses worked to pull together the key elements that had to be implemented to launch a cable television network when there were none. There were only three broadcast networks at the time. That was really important. I mean, Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers, talks about needing 10,000 hours of hard work to get to start up. I probably did 20,000. I worked for seven years in these different businesses to really learn all the trade and meet the people in those businesses.

If I am going to pick out one element of my own career that stood me in good stead through good times and more difficult times, it was creative flexibility. There are always barriers, things that go wrong when you’re running a business as I was, and to be creative and flexible in creating solutions has always been a hallmark. I think about my own career, and it’s one of the things where I exceeded at.

Part Three: Life

Avil Beckford: Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?

Kay Koplovitz: There are many things I could pick to answer this question, but I think that essentially, at one point in time, when I was expanding my business on a global basis, it was a program business, and I needed to acquire programming to program channels for international distribution. At that point, I had two studios as partners, and I was trying to convince them to sell me certain program series on a global basis, rather than country by country, as had been done at that time, and I wanted to pay them a real market price for it.

So, what I found out was that every person that was actually selling these program products to different broadcasters around the world didn’t want to do that because it would take away products from their portfolios, and therefore, it will potentially leave them the bonuses that they can make, even though they would have been paid on the bonuses that my revenue would have given to them.

But what I learned from that experience, and I call it the Four Winds project because I could see the resistance — because the different companies were in different silos. I could see the resistance from people in a different silo. And I was going across everyone’s silo that they didn’t want anybody intruding on their territory and they were going to figure out a variety of different ways to say no to whatever I wanted to do. So, I decided that was the Four Winds project. I actually failed to launch that in that regard. Ultimately, I didn’t launch international channels, but it was much more difficult, and I had to go around these kinds of barriers.

Again, what impact that it have on me? It’s almost laughable to me in a lot of ways because I thought it was very short-sighted on their part. But it taught me that people really act in their own best interest, not necessarily the company’s interest, but their own best interest. So, it’s the lesson that I learned.

Avil Beckford: What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

Kay Koplovitz: I think that one of the most difficult decisions I made was to sue a customer of mine, which is something you don’t want to do in business. At least at that period of time, I think people suing other companies or even customers are a lot more common today, but it was not at all common back in the ‘80s and early ‘90s when this occurred. Once I made the decision, I went after it with every ounce of energy and resources I could muster. I realized that if you’re going to play a hard ball game, you’ve got to lay it all on the line. You’ve got to go all the way out. You can’t do it mild on your pathway. That’s something that taught me to have strength in the market.

Avil Beckford: What are three events that helped to shape your life?

Kay Koplovitz:

1. I definitely would say, listening to Arthur C. Clarke completely changed the course of my pursuit. As a student, I went on to write a master’s thesis on satellite technology and the potential impact on communications when we are still living in the Cold War and didn’t know what was behind the Berlin Wall or the Great Wall of China. Of course today, there is no Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China is not to keep people out, but to bring people in this tour. So, the world has changed a great deal, but I would say that that had a major impact on my life.
2. Another event was the first global television event, is a night that changed the course of television history. And that was September 30, 1975 when we brought the Thrilla in Manila via satellite, and demonstrated to Congress and senators the viability of using satellite communications for commercial use. Up to that time, it had not been approved. That was a pivotal night in being able to create the business that I wanted to create, which is a new program network still heard via satellite and cable. So, that was a broader offering for people in their home. That was really the beginning of the cable programming industry. That was quite pivotal for me.

Those are two of the most important ones, I think.

[Note from Avil: On the night of Sept. 30, 1975, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier staged the Thrilla in Manila, their final fight.]

Avil Beckford: What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Kay Koplovitz: I’m proudest of doing just what I was talking about, launching the USA Network. It created the business model for the cable programming industry that had reversed the payments of streams from television networks that paid television stations to carry their programming. We charge the cable systems for receiving the cable programming, creating a second stream, in addition to the advertising.

The real reason why cable program networks are so financially successful today is that they have two revenue streams instead of one. It completely changed an industry and that I’m very proud of having done that.

Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?

Kay Koplovitz: One learns a lot of lessons in life.

1. Family and friends are the most important in addition to your health in life. I mean, there’s nothing that is more important than having treasured times with your family and your friends.
2. Having good health is nothing that can replace the pre-eminence of those to one’s life, I don’t think.
3. Be true to your values. I mean, you run into a lot of different behaviors in business and in life, of people, the way they act, the way they respond to things. In negotiations, I’ll give you an example – some people are totally, “I win you lose.” They feel they have to grind every last cent out of you in a contract or something on that order, and get all the terms in their favor. I’ve never really felt that was the right way to go about it. I always think it’s best for both parties to get out of the negotiation, what they really need to get out. Not to say that you don’t compromise on some, but both parties have to compromise. We see that in the world, negotiations going on today, in very difficult political situations. People have very different value systems, but to get something done that’s going to be lasting, both parties have to get something out of that.
4. Another lesson I learned from running companies is to establish the culture of the company from the very beginning, and you do that by understanding your own value systems, not only your product and services and what you’re bringing to market, but how you want the people who are working with you, to represent you. To do that properly, they need to understand what your values are and your company culture. It’s very important to establish those things from the very beginning.
5. There are many other lessons, small and large, but I think that in addition to those, it’s extremely important to continue to learn new things every day because the world is changing very rapidly. And if we don’t keep learning how things are changing in the marketplace, and to move with it, whether that’s in business or in personal life, the business will be left behind. In a personal life, I think it will become dull and stagnant if you don’t continue to learn. So, those are the lessons I would bring forward from what I’ve learned so far.

Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people (living or dead) that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

Kay Koplovitz:

1. I’d like to meet Auguste Rodin because I’ve always liked his sculptures. I’d just love to meet him because he’s created so many pieces of sculpture that I really love.
2. It would be interesting to meet Catherine the Great. She was very controversial, I guess you would say, but brought a western culture into eastern countries. Well, not all the way to Asia, but to Russia, so then called Russia and so forth. It was very expansive with wanting to bring the languages and different cultural understandings and so forth. I think that would have been quite fascinating.
3. If not her, then Alexander the Great, who only lived to be about 33 years old, but had conquered many societies. He also learned and grew himself with his conquering of different countries, moving all the way from the Middle East, all the way through Asia. It was sort of a war, like perhaps conquering, but he didn’t treat people when he got to new countries as subservient people.
4. It would have been fascinating to know Abraham Lincoln. It had to be such a transition time in our country, which it was during the Civil War, and why it had to be fought, and the bravery with which he undertook it. It had to be a very difficult kind of decision to come to for a president living during his turbulent times. But I admire his ability to express his own thoughts and his desires for the country. It would have been a fascinating conversation, what we base our country on today in large part as moving forward from the early days of our constitution.
5. And I’d love to meet Pope Francis, today’s Pope. He’s a remarkable person. Having grown up a Catholic, I understand the teachings of the church and the strictness and sort of the pageantry of it. There have to be changes along with the times in a way to keep people still involved and to provide the service that you say we do in church. He’s extremely brave in making some of the movements. It would be a wonderful conversation to have with the person who has the conviction and fortitude to do what he is doing to make changes.
6. Eleanor Roosevelt would have also been fascinating to me just because of her own separate identification from Franklin Roosevelt and her own ability to speak out on issues that she thought were really important at the time. At that time, it wasn't really acceptable for a first lady to be that way. Yet, she struck out on her own, and I admire that, and probably set the pace for many to follow.

Avil Beckford: Would there be one question that you would want to ask all of them?

Kay Koplovitz: No. I don’t think so. I think that they are different. I think they reside in a different way in my mind. So, no, I don’t think there’s just one question I would ask them all.

Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?

Kay Koplovitz: To Kill a Mockingbird had a great impact on me as a child. It was my favorite book as a student in elementary school. The ability to stand up for human rights really struck me as being something we should all be aware of and something we should all strive to do.

Avil Beckford: If you were going to be on a deserted island for two years, what are five books that you would take with you? And when you were not reading, how would you spend the time?

Kay Koplovitz:

1. I would take with me The Brothers Karamazov. Wonderful thesis on why must the innocent people suffer. The characters are rich and clear and really project different kinds of people I’ve met representing mankind.
2. Trinity by Leon Uris, just because I love the characters in it and it’s so well written.
3. I would take To Kill a Mockingbird because it was the most influential book of my childhood.
4. I would take Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Peter Diamandis because I’m a futurist and I really love thinking about the exponential growth of technologies and what we have in the palm of our hands today and how powerful the computer system in our smartphones are. That could take us anywhere in the world. They have answers to questions that we have. Amazing time, and just think of what we really can accomplish, and that book really inspires me to think about that.
5. I would take any next novel by Daniel Silva (Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon Collection, Books 11 – 13: Portrait of a Spy, The Fallen Angel, and The English Girl) because I just love to read his novels.

And what would I do if I weren’t reading? I would be exploring. I’m hoping this island I would be on would have all kinds of different fauna and topography, have mountains and also rain forests. I love being out in nature. I love the wilderness and I love hiking in the wilderness and I’m hoping that my island will be a very diversified one.

Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..

Kay Koplovitz: I’m learning something new. I absolutely love learning things that are new to me and just to think about them, maybe to adapt something I’m learning that day to something else I’m doing. But it’s just a joy for me to learn new things. So, I’m really happy when I’m learning new things.

Get Started Here – I want to help you get started on your learning journey. Read The Invisible Mentor 2015 Reading Challenge, then Join the Facebook Group for the Reading Challenge today, connecting the ideas from the books you read!

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