In 1978, unemployed sportscaster Bill Rasmussen hatched an idea to launch the world’s first around-the-clock television station and to devote its programming entirely to sports. Roughly a year later, the Entertainment and Sports Network (ESPN) made its initial broadcast, and in just a few years the station rapidly transformed the way Americans watch athletics. Whereas the major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) of the time televised only a few main events on the weekends, ESPN offered nonstop, 24/7 sports coverage. Sports enthusiasts flocked to ESPN in droves, and the station steadily expanded into the global media empire it is today.

Growth always increases your capacity—that’s the Law of Expansion. The explosive growth of a business happens only because a leader has greatly expanded his or her capacity to think. Such was the case with Bill Rasmussen, founder of ESPN. How exactly did he broaden the scope of his thought?

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Expansion Requires Pruning Away the Good to Give Space to the Great

Roxanne Quimby had fallen on hard times. The single mother had been laid off from three part-time waitressing jobs, and she needed a steady source of income to provide for her twin girls. In an effort to make ends meet, she scoured local yard sales for bargains and then resold her purchases at flea markets. In a good week, she could make $150. However, not all weeks were good, and living in Maine, cold weather restricted yard within a narrow season.

Quimby’s friend, a beekeeper, offered his supply of beeswax to her in the hopes that she could use it to make and sell candles. She accepted the offer and after some experimentation, Quimby arrived at a final product she liked. She then loaded up the candles she had made and set up shop at a local craft fair. In the course of a day, she sold $200. Encouraged by her success, she decided to make another batch of candles. They quickly sold out as well. She kept making the candles, people kept buying them, and in short order she had a thriving business. In honor of the friend who had encouraged her to get into candle-making, she named the company Burt’s Bees

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EXPANSION

“The need of expansion is as genuine an instinct in man as the need in a plant for the light, or the need in man himself for going upright. The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion.”

~ Matthew Arnold

“You can do little about the length of your life, but you can do much about its width and depth.”

~ H.L. Mencken

“If you put yourself in a position where you have to stretch outside your comfort zone, then you are forced to expand your consciousness.”

~ Les Brown

“People who exercise their freedom day after day, little by little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers until they are literally ‘being lived.’ [That is, until] they are acting out scripts written by parents, associates and society.”

~ Stephen Covey