He Co-Founded James Cameron's Studio. At 25, He Bet His Job on a War Movie.

Terminator 2. True Lies. Dirty Dancing. Mortal Kombat.

Larry Kasanoff is the producer or studio head behind every one of them. He co-founded Lightstorm Entertainment with James Cameron.

When he sat down with me on The Comeback Chronicles podcast, I asked him what to do when something you bet on blows up.

You've been there. The deal falls through. Your boss calls it nuts. The room picks your idea apart. And every instinct you have, every fear, says: play it smaller.

Larry says the opposite.

Don't shrink it. Go bigger.

He's been living it since he was 25, with his job on the line. And the Oscar-winning song from his Dirty Dancing? Everybody wanted it changed.

The bet

Picture it. You're a year out of school, running production at an independent studio called Vestron. There's one rule: "Don't lose money or you're fired, kid."

A Vietnam War script lands on your desk. Your boss says, "You're nuts. This isn't what we do." You fight for it anyway. So he hands you the call: do whatever you want. But if you fail, you're fired. And he fires people all the time.

Larry made the call. "I didn't get into the movie business to play it safe," he told me. "I decided to greenlight Platoon."

Platoon won Best Picture.

He didn't play it safe. He went big.

When it blows up

Not every bet lands. Larry told me about the time he couldn't sell an animated movie. He'd spent his whole career in live action, and nobody was buying this one.

He knows exactly what the instinct says: "I'll just… repackage it now and I'll try a smaller version."

Then Larry: "No, no, no, no, no, no, no."

So he thought, "if I can't sell one, maybe I could sell 12." He packaged a whole slate, found the financing, and it worked.

"When you think, oh, my God, they're beating me up… Go bigger. Attack when they tell you to retreat."

When they pick it apart

Then he told me the Dirty Dancing story. Music producer Jimmy Ienner and music supervisor Michael Lloyd re-recorded "Time of My Life" and sent it around. The record company, the directors and the managers all had "a million comments."

Jimmy didn't water it down. He sent the same recording to radio stations. If the stations had hated it, Jimmy and Michael would have been screwed. Then he sent it back to everyone labeled version two, with a note: the radio stations seem to like it. Everyone loved it.

What did he change? "Nothing. Not a dang thing. He changed the label. He knew what he had. He doubled down."

That song won the Grammy and the Academy Award. He didn't shrink it. He went bigger.

Your turn

See, having fear isn't the problem. We all have fears. I have fears. You have fears. Letting fear stop you is the problem.

Shrinking feels responsible. It feels safe. It also drags you to the middle, and Larry has a warning about the middle: "you'll be eclipsed… maybe you'll do okay, but you'll never do great."

So what in your world just blew up? Here's what I'd do Monday morning.

1. Name it. Write down the one thing that just got shot down.
2. Draw the 12-movie version. Before you shrink it, write what bigger looks like.
3. Make the call you think is out of reach. Larry wanted Cher for an animated movie called Bobbleheads. People told him there was no way. He asked anyway, and she said yes. As Larry tells it, she later told People magazine, "I never did an animated movie before because no one ever asked me before."

Somebody out there is waiting for you to ask.

Don't shrink it. Go bigger.

What's the boldest move you ever saw a leader make after a setback? One line is plenty. Tell me in the comments.

If you got something from this, share it on LinkedIn. The post is already written for you: "There's some great stuff in here I thought you'd like to see."

Until the next comeback,
Terry

P.S. Next edition: how I ended up on a prime-time survival show, after swearing I'd never be on one. It lands in two weeks; a new edition comes every other week. Subscribe so it comes straight to your inbox.

From my conversation with Larry Kasanoff on The Comeback Chronicles podcast.

My new keynote: The Down Day Decides

Every team has the day this edition is about. The deal falls through, the month starts slow, the room picks the idea apart. What your people do on that day decides the quarter.

Stop losing good people to bad days. That's the keynote. See the full keynote, or watch the trailer:

Watch the 2-minute trailer →