Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL, had built an impressive career for himself in his mid-30s.
Tim Armstrong's dad gave him important career advice the night before he started as AOL's CEO
In an episode of Business Insider podcast "Success! How I Did It," AOL CEO Tim Armstrong talks about the risk of failure, and why it can be worth it.
"My dad said to me the night before I started, 'This is a burn the bridge moment. If you fail at this, you can't walk backwards, so you should figure out how to always look forward,'" Armstrong said. "I think that was a great piece of advice because that's essentially what we had to do over and over and over again [at AOL]."
Armstrong's entrepreneurial spirit forced him to embrace the risk of failure. And when weighing the decision to leave his cushy Google job, he realized something important:
"If this totally fails and it's the world's biggest failure, really who cares?" he said. "I'll probably learn more doing it."
He told Shontell:
Armstrong's risk paid off. He is set to become CEO of the combined AOL-Yahoo company under Verizon once the merger is completed.
Listen to the full podcast interview:
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