What does it mean to go against the grain? To be a trailblazer or a maverick? To break the rules? We often celebrate mavericks in the business world for their success, but rarely acknowledge the tumultuous — and sometimes despondent — path they face when defying convention. On the latest episode of Visiting Experts, Terry O’Reilly joins host Brett Hendrie to discuss his new book, Against the Grain, exploring how mavericks have changed the world, even when the personal cost was great. From Gustave Eiffel to Taylor Swift, it’s essential listening for leaders looking to bend — or break — a few rules.
What does it mean to go against the grain? To be a trailblazer or a maverick? To break the rules?
We often celebrate mavericks in the business world for their success, but rarely acknowledge the tumultuous — and sometimes despondent — path they face when defying convention.
On the latest episode of Visiting Experts, Terry O’Reilly joins host Brett Hendrie to discuss his new book and explore how mavericks have changed the world, even when the personal cost was great. From Gustave Eiffel to Taylor Swift, it’s essential listening for leaders looking to bend — or break — a few rules.
Show Notes
[0:00] Brett Hendrie on the power of mavericks in business and society.
[1:10] Meet Terry O’Reilly, host of The Age of Persuasion, and author of the new book Against the Grain.
[2:17] What prompted Terry to write a book on individuals who break the rules, and through the process, what did he learn about shared traits they all have?
[5:18] How did Gustave Eiffel — of Eiffel Tower fame — succeed when everyone believed he (and the tower) would fail?
[8:42] Terry breaks down the important, yet tragic, story of Ignaz Semmelweis.
[12:46] Why are intuition and hunches so crucial to the maverick mindset?
[14:20] Taylor Swift may feel like she’s part of the system, but her smart approach to bending the rules has made her an unrivalled superstar.
[17:23] Terry’s own journey into rule-breaking, for work with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, shows the power of trusting your gut and ignoring the status quo.
[20:34] If everyone has their own platforms and echo chambers, can you really go against the grain anymore? Terry says sort of.
[21:52] His parting advice: “I would say this, if you don't think one person can change the world, you are wrong. That's the takeaway.”
If you enjoyed this episode, why not give some of our back catalogue a listen? If you want to learn more about dealing with disruption, check out our conversation with Karthik Ramanna on leading in a time of outrage, or Anne Chow on redefining what inclusive leadership really means.
Make sure you subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts — and please consider giving the series a five-star rating.
To explore more leadership tips and tricks from the Rotman School of Management, check out our Rotman Executive Summary podcast, featuring the latest research and thought-leadership from our esteemed faculty. Check it out on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And be sure to subscribe to the Rotman Insights Hub bi-weekly newsletter for even more insights shaping business and society.
Brett Hendrie: As a society, we often retroactively celebrate those people who broke all the rules, the people who wouldn’t take no for an answer, the ones who bucked the trends in the face of overwhelming pressure. In business, it’s often the executives who defied conventional wisdom, ignored consultants and unnerved shareholders who take the mantle of true innovators. Think of Apple’s Steve Jobs, who insisted on simplicity when the tech was getting cluttered, or Reed Hastings of Netflix fame, who went all in on streaming. In hindsight, the changes they wrought feel inevitable. At the time, they looked reckless. But what does it really mean to be a maverick? Of course, they challenge the status quo, but they’re often dismissed and doubted before they are celebrated. It can be surprisingly lonely and even personally costly trying to change the world.
Welcome to Visiting Experts, a Rotman School podcast for lifelong learners, exploring transformative ideas about business and society with the influential scholars, thinkers and leaders featured in our acclaimed Speaker Series. I’m your host, Brett Hendrie, and this episode is being recorded in front of a live audience at the Rotman School of Management.
Terry O’Reilly is our guest, and he joins us to talk about his new book Against the Grain: Defiant Giants Who Changed the World, from Gustave Eiffel to Taylor Swift. Terry shares the stories of some of the most prolific mavericks of the past two centuries, what they have in common and the lessons for leaders today. Terry is the bestselling author of The Age of Persuasion, This I Know and My Best Mistake. Over the past 20 years, he’s also hosted many celebrated and groundbreaking programs, including Under the Influence, The Age of Persuasion and O’Reilly on Advertising. This great podcast has been downloaded more than 40 million times.
Thank you for joining us here today, Terry.
Terry O'Reilly: Thank you, Brett.
BH: Terry, welcome back to Rotman. Congratulations on the book.
TO: Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.
BH: So you’re somebody who’s clearly fascinated with people who are trailblazers, who buck the trend, who challenge the status quo. Anybody who listens to your show would be familiar with those themes, and now you’ve written a whole book about them. What is it about these characters that sparks your curiosity?
TO: Well, if you listen to our radio show or our podcast, you’ll know that I’m endlessly curious, as you said, Brett, about people who buck the trend or swim upstream against society and feel they have this wonderful idea that becomes a quest. So I’m fascinated by those people, but the people I write about in this book were more than that. They were very special people because they felt they had an idea that would revolutionize their profession or their industry, and they felt it in their core that it would revolutionize their business or their profession. By trying to put that idea forward, they ran into the establishment. They ran into brick walls, the gatekeepers. They were ridiculed, mocked, humiliated and, in many cases, fired. Their credibility was completely wiped out. Some of them were even made destitute by this quest.
But every single one of them, at the end of the day, was right, and every single one of them revolutionized their industry. And I think what made them really, really special is that they were fueled by the rejection. And I think a lot of people are not fueled by rejection. I think you could easily get crushed by that much rejection when you’re being mocked by your peers and ridiculed by the press and fired by your bosses for having an idea. I don’t think a lot of people could survive that, but these people that I write about did.
BH: You have so many great examples that are from across diverse industries. You have entertainment, you have sports, you have politics, you have business and industry, science and medicine. Was there a common strand of DNA that you saw between these people, despite whatever industry they were in?
TO: I think it was being fueled by rejection. I think that was the thing, because these people are so different from each other. A filmmaker and a doctor in the 18th century and Roger Nielsen, who was a hockey coach, so disparate, so eclectic, really, on the surface having nothing in common. But as I said, I think the connective tissue, the strand that runs through each of those people is it was a hunch that turned into a pursuit that then turned into a quest, and that quest was fueled by the rejection. They put on their armour and they just ran headlong into all the headwinds and just kept going.
BH: Let’s talk about willpower, and one of the examples with Gustave Eiffel. I think we’re all obviously familiar with the Eiffel Tower. I really didn’t appreciate the history of what went into constructing it and how much it was the vision of one particular individual. So take us back in time and tell us the story of Gustave Eiffel.
TO: He was a fascinating human being, because in the 1800s he started to work with iron, and he started to build bridges as the rail system in Europe started to take off, and they needed bridges to go over rivers or chasms. And he developed this incredible technique and precision in working with iron. And in 1889, I believe it was, Paris decided they wanted to have a Universal Exposition to celebrate everything French and everything that the French had ever done. And they wanted a central piece, some kind of structure that would symbolize this incredible exposition. Eiffel came back with this structure that you can all see in your minds right now that looked like the letter A, all constructed lattice with iron.
So they chose his design, and they figured out that it was going to cost six million francs at that time, a ton of money to build it, and they told Eiffel, “We’re only going to give you 1.5 million francs. You have to find the other five million francs.” So not only does he have to build it, he has to pay for it.
The second his design is shown in the newspapers, he is attacked immediately. He is attacked by all the elites of Paris, the architects, the designers, the writers, the poets, the painters. They all attack this design. They feel it’s heinous. They feel it’s an ink blot on the landscape of Paris. Someone called it metal asparagus. Three hundred of the leading voices of Paris wrote an open letter to the government telling them that they did not want this monstrosity in Paris, one for every metre of height of the Eiffel Tower.
He has to deal with all this pushback every single day. He strikes a deal with the committee and the government of Paris. He said, “Okay, if you’re only going to pay 1.5 million francs, I want all the entrance fees for 20 years, and I want all the rental income from all the restaurants or stores or whatever boutiques would be at the base of it.” The city literally snickered and said okay, because they thought he was going to take crushing losses.
Eiffel builds the tower. He comes in two months ahead of schedule. He earns all his money back in one year and, over the next 19 years, becomes one of the richest men in Paris. He said to the committee, “After 20 years, you can tear it down if you want.” And of course, it became one of the most beautiful landmark structures in the world.
BH: So that’s an example of something that tangibly was built a long time ago and is still with us today. You have other examples from past centuries, including impacts in science and medicine, and one of the ones that really struck out at me was, I hope I pronounce his name right, but Ignaz Semmelweis, yes, and his impact in terms of really changing the game in maternity wards and women’s health. Tell us about his story.
TO: So Ignaz Semmelweis was a doctor at the biggest maternity hospital in Vienna in the mid to late 1800s. The maternity ward had two departments, one led by midwives and the other led by doctors. So whichever one was busy or not busy, women that were going to deliver their babies would be sent to one or the other. A huge percentage of women that delivered babies with doctors started to die, not in the midwives’ ward but in the doctors’ side of the hospital.
So Ignaz Semmelweis wanted to figure out what it was. He went through all those machinations, like is it the air we’re putting into that part of the hospital making people sick? And it turns out it was no different than the midwives’ ward. And when someone died, the priest would walk through the halls ringing a bell, and they thought, is that just terrorizing women when they hear that bell? Is that actually causing women to expire? Of course, it wasn’t that.
So that hospital also was a big teaching hospital, because it had a big autopsy department, because back in that day, the way young doctors and experienced doctors learned was by doing autopsies. And one morning, after a couple of years of women dying and Ignaz just racking his brain to try and figure out what it is, he has this epiphany. He wonders, are the doctors that are doing the autopsies moving right into maternity and not washing their hands? And he wonders if there’s some kind of cadaver particles that are on the doctors’ hands and then they’re transferring it to the women.
So he asks doctors to start washing their hands when they move from autopsy to maternity. And I have to tell you something, the doctors hate him for it. They are outraged that he would suggest that doctors could be capable of killing their own patients. They tried to drum him out of the hospital. They wouldn’t give him any funding anymore. All he wanted them to do was wash their hands.
He started to do it in a small clinic and that death rate dropped. But even then, they wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of proving it. The problem was this Ignaz theory was 20 years away. Bacterial theory hadn’t arrived in the medical community. It was 20 years away. So he was too ahead of the curve. He couldn’t tell the doctors exactly what it was that was killing the women, but he knew in general terms that it was germs, that it was something from the cadavers.
He protested. He got fired. He wrote letters. He chased doctors down the streets telling them to wash their hands. He became fanatical about it because he was losing everything. He started to almost lose his mind because he lost his job, his credibility, his income, he lost everything.
And then here’s the saddest part about all this. His wife sees that his mental faculties are disintegrating. His wife and his friend tell him they’re taking him to a museum one day, and they actually take him to an insane asylum. Once he realizes where they’re taking him, he tries to fight his way out, and these big orderlies kick him and punch him, and he’s got cuts and bruises. They put him into a dirty straitjacket, and he dies of sepsis, the same thing the women were dying of. And all he wanted to do was to get doctors to wash their hands.
BH: It’s a powerful story, and one of the things that really reverberates for me with it is even though it’s a field of science and medicine, intuition and gut instinct play a central role. Was that an important angle for you?
TO: Intuition is such an interesting thing, because you know before you know. So you have a hunch that something is afoot, but you don’t know why or how. It’s just this hunch you have in your gut. And I think so many things in life start with a hunch. In the advertising business, I can tell you firsthand that in the creative department, you’re always dealing with hunches. I’ve just got this feeling that maybe this might work. I’ve got this crazy little thing that’s nattering away at me, and then you try and develop it into an idea.
But intuition, I think everybody in this book is all about intuition. They all had an intuition about something. That’s exactly what it was. They just had this neat little pea under the mattress that was bugging them that there was something wrong with their industry and that it could be better.
BH: I love that line, you know before you know. I want to talk about some modern mavericks in just a second, but first to our listeners, if you’re enjoying this conversation, you might also like The Executive Summary, the Rotman School’s other podcast, where we unpack the latest research shaping leadership and business. You can find The Executive Summary wherever you get your podcasts.
Okay, back to modern stars. You profile Taylor Swift in your book, probably the biggest star today. When I first saw there was a chapter on Taylor Swift, I thought, well, she is part of the system, isn’t she? She’s supported by all these major records and marketing campaigns.
TO: Okay, let me tell you this. I had to revise the Taylor Swift chapter 20 times. Every time I thought I had finally finished it and moved on to another chapter, Taylor Swift would break another norm, break another record, and I’d have to revise the whole chapter again. She is the epitome of a maverick.
So think about just a few of the things she’s done. She lost the rights to all her master recordings. So what does she do? She decides to re-record full albums to regain ownership of them. She does things like invite her listeners into her home for a listening party. I remember watching her on Graham Norton’s talk show, and Graham is asking her, do you really invite fans into your home? And she’s like, I love it. And he’s like, that is the worst idea in the world. And you could see the faces on all the other celebrities sitting on the couch. They were horrified at the thought of inviting fans into their homes. Taylor does it all the time.
The relationship she has with her fans is unbelievable. Her big Eras Tour that she just finished going around the world, she puts out a motion picture of the concert while the concert is in motion. Who does that? Because you would think it’s going to eat into ticket sales. Why go to the concert when I can sit at home in my living room? No, no. The motion picture fueled ticket sales. People went to the concerts and the movie. Not only that, she paid for the movie herself. She funded the whole thing herself. She distributed the movie across the world herself through her own company. Who does that? McCartney, my hero, Springsteen, they would never even attempt that. That’s Taylor Swift.
BH: Because she obviously understands the art and the music, but she understands the business as well. And where she’s innovating is disintermediating the labels, the film distributors, some of the marketing agencies, and she’s just taking it all on. She publishes her own books, doing it herself. And in this moment where the creative economy is shifting, she’s planting some flags for ownership by artists as well. What was your take on her business sensibility in terms of being able to change the game in those ways?
TO:
Well, I just think she is so amazing. She’s young, she’s 34, maybe something like that. What she’s doing business-wise is astounding to me. She was able to buy her entire catalogue back because of the money she made on her Eras Tour. Again, McCartney still doesn’t own the Beatles’ masters. It’s just her business savvy and the boldness of her goals are unbelievable.
BH: Can you think of a moment from your career where you went against the grain and it really paid off for you in unexpected ways?
TO: The director of marketing for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra came into our office one day and told us that the Toronto Symphony had a problem. The problem was that the majority of their subscribers were 70 and 75-plus years old. And the problem with that, of course, is mortality. So younger people in their 40s and 50s weren’t coming in the other end of the funnel.
So he said, we need a radio campaign. We’re an arts organization. We don’t have a lot of money. We can do a radio campaign to try to attract a younger audience. And I sat there in the briefing thinking, hmm, I don’t know how satisfying this assignment is going to be. The symphony is pretty serious business, and classical music isn’t really a yuck-a-minute.
As he’s putting his coat on in my office, he’s got one foot out the door. He turns around and says to me, oh, by the way, blow the dust off this place, and winks at me. And I knew I had an opportunity.
The commercials we did were nothing like a symphony had ever done before. I’m Afraid of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra was the theme. And in the commercials, I had an announcer interviewing people saying, I never go because I’m afraid to clap at the wrong time. Someone else says, I can’t pronounce Wagner, it’s Wagner, him too. I just had gentle fun with all the intimidation factors.
I asked myself, why don’t I go to the TSO when Debbie and I have date night? Why do we never think of going? And when I was really honest with myself, I knew it was all those intimidation fears. I literally thought they were going to see my jeans and bodily throw me out onto King Street.
The campaign had no classical music in it. When the symphony asked me where the classical music was, I said, that’s not the problem. You told me the audience was out there, they’re just not coming. The ratings for the classical music radio station in Toronto were going up. They knew the audience was there.
It was a hunch. It was intuition. I had no research. And when we ran that campaign for the first 10 days, not a single response. I had a very nervous TSO client. Then the calls started coming in. One of the first calls was from a woman who said, and I quote, you can’t possibly be stuck up if you’re running that campaign.
They received more subscriptions in the first six months of that year than in the previous full year, and 80% of those subscriptions were new. The intimidation was the thing keeping them away. That was completely against the grain.
BH: Do you think it’s possible that going against the grain is becoming normalized because people have platforms now to give hot takes, and we don’t have the monoculture we once had?
TO: That’s a very good question. Everybody has a channel now. Everybody has a platform. We’re seeing a lot more points of view. I still think the people I’m talking about in this book are special people. They put up with incredible harassment and losing everything. They dare to risk it all. And I think those people are still rare, even with social media.
BH: Just as we wrap up here, is there one takeaway you really hope readers walk away with?
TO: I would say this: if you don’t think one person can change the world, you are wrong. That’s the takeaway.
BH: Well, that’s a perfect place for us to wrap up tonight. Terry, thank you so much for being here. Our guest has been Terry O’Reilly, and his new book is Against the Grain: Defiant Giants Who Changed the World. This has been Visiting Experts, a Rotman School podcast for lifelong learners, exploring transformative ideas about business and society with the influential scholars, thinkers and leaders featured in our acclaimed speaker series.
To find out about upcoming speakers and events here at Canada's leading business school, please visit rotman.utoronto.ca/events.
If you enjoyed this episode, why not give some of our back catalog a listen. If you want to learn more about dealing with disruption, check out our conversation with Karthik Ramanna on leading in a time of outrage, or Anne Chow on redefining what inclusive leadership really means. Make sure to please subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts, and please consider giving this series a five star rating.
This episode was produced by Megan Haynes, recorded by Dan Mazzotta and edited by Damien Kearns. For more innovative thinking, please head over to the Rotman Insights Hub and subscribe to our biweekly newsletter. Thanks for listening.