10 Profiles of Instinctively Successful People l Instinct the Book l TD Jakes l Instinct

Jennifer Hudson

Grammy Award-winning singer and Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Hudson clearly knows something about following her instincts in order to achieve her goals. After placing seventh in the third season of American Idol, Hudson could easily have disappeared from popular culture like so many other talented, hard-working performers on the show. But her instincts led to more creative risk-taking.

Hudson beat out hundreds of professional singer-actresses, many with Broadway and Hollywood experience already under their belts, for the role of Effie White in Dreamgirls. Already immortalized on Broadway by Tony Award-winner Jennifer Holliday, Effie performs one of the most challenging, emotional numbers of any musical, “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.” Hudson not only killed the song but also owned the role with a ferocious tenderness that garnered every major acting award—including the Oscar, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Steve Jobs

Pioneer of the power of technology, visionary of instinctive leadership, and innovator of entrepreneurial business models—these convey only a few of the many amazing accomplishments of Steve Jobs. While he’s most famous for co-founding Apple Inc. and leading the company to its iconic status as the number one most recognizable corporate brand in the world, Jobs did not experience an easy path to his many revolutionary achievements.

Part of what makes Jobs such an inspirational instinctive leader is his ongoing willingness to take enormous risks. After leaving Apple amidst dissention with his colleagues, Jobs’ name could have disappeared into the history books of the late twentieth century. Instead, Jobs turned his adversity into opportunity.

President Barack Obama

The authenticity, intelligence, compassion, and strength readers discovered in his writing helped spread the word about this maverick up-and-comer determined to do things differently. Although he lost his first major run for office, for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama would not be deterred. Two years later he formed a campaign committee to run for the U.S. Senate and was elected to represent Illinois in 2004. From there, he demonstrated his beliefs by putting them in action and instinctively utilized popular cultural technology, especially social media, to build a grassroots platform that carried him to become our nation’s first African-American president.

Cathy Hughes

Cathy Hughes forever changed the landscape of talk radio, multi-media corporations, and the roles of women in business. Like the dynamic but mellow R & B-infused radio show she created at Howard University’s WHUR-FM in the mid ’70’s, Hughes’ instinctive leadership style reflects the strength, beauty, and intensity you might expect from the creator of “The Quiet Storm.”

Within two decades, Radio One’s holdings included over seventy radio stations in the nine major urban markets in the U.S. As its CEO, Hughes became the first African-American woman ever to lead a publicly traded corporation when Radio One entered NASDAQ in 1999. Her instinctive success has continued to expand with involvement in the Black Entertainment Television (BET) and TV One and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. As an entrepreneur, innovator, and radio and television personality, Cathy Hughes continues to model the kind of instinctive leadership that inspires all of us.

Emmitt Smith

Few people would debate the fact that Emmitt Smith remains one of the greatest running backs in NFL history. His long career (from 1990-2002) with the Dallas Cowboys will never be forgotten. Smith remains the only running back to ever win a Superbowl championship, the NFL Most Valuable Player award, the NFL rushing leader, and the Super Bowl MVP Award—all in the same season! His record-shattering athletic accomplishments, which began as an All-American at the University of Florida, are almost too numerous to list.

After his retirement from professional football, Smith followed his instinctive rhythm to become a successful businessman, philanthropist, and ballroom dancer—not to mention husband and father. While his agility was obvious on the field, Smith transferred his aptitude for rhythm to the dance floor, much to the delight of millions of screaming fans on Dancing with the Stars. This same rhythm obviously enables him to run from philanthropy meetings to construction sites to ballet recitals without missing a beat in any area.

Walter Mosley

Like many instinctively successful writers, Walter Mosley did not begin with such an aspiration. In 1997, Mosley made headlines for foregoing a big advance with a New York publisher and instead following his instincts to go with a small independent publisher Black Classic Press, started by former Black Panther Paul Coates. Cited by President Bill Clinton as one of his favorite writers, Mosley has enjoyed success on the big screen with The Devil in the Blue Dress, starring Denzel Washington.

While critics debate whether Walter Mosley’s work should be considered literary or popular, Jewish or African-American, he’s made it clear that he simply wants to be known as a writer and novelist. In light of his many awards as a bestselling author, it’s clear his instinct to switch from computer programming to writing was right on target.

Joel Osteen

Joel finally agreed to step in to the pulpit and fill in for his father, who died one week later. With over 7 million viewers worldwide in more than 100 countries, Joel Osteen’s instincts clearly proved that he only needed to be himself, not his father or anyone else. Joel’s unique, encouraging style of preaching echoes God’s truth to a mainstream audience hungry for experiencing a new kind of church, both on the screen and in person. Faced with his rapidly growing church outgrowing their facilities, Joel led a movement to purchase the Compaq Center, former home of the NBA’s Houston Rockets. It was a bold, instinctive move and required renovations that cost over $100 million. However, it was clearly the right move as the church continues to thrive and advance God’s kingdom in creative and instinctively successful ways.

George Washington Carver

Famous for coming up with over a hundred uses for the peanut, Carver also championed the sweet potato and soy beans as diverse, multi-use crops. He also innovated educational techniques by literally taking his students out in the fields to study crops firsthand. In addition, Carver outfitted wagons as “mobile classrooms” that he took throughout the countryside to the farmers themselves, since he knew that the people who needed his findings the most probably would not have time, money, or inclination to go to college. But Carver knew changes had to be made, and he wasn’t afraid to take the power of knowledge to others.

After retiring, George Washington Carver enjoyed two decades of being a semi-celebrity and unofficial ambassador for Tuskegee, peanuts, and American farmers. He donated a considerable sum of his life savings to establish an educational museum at Tuskegee that would honor his work and share it with the world. Carver remains a true pioneer, a man undeterred by circumstances and committed to following his instinct for success throughout the course of his life.

J.K. Rowling

Rowling has shared that seven years after graduating from Exeter, she felt like the world’s biggest failure. No job, no money, no marriage, no real hope of anything changing. Once the first Harry Potter novel was completed, Rowling’s troubles were far from over. It was rejected by a dozen publishers before finding one that paid her a small advance and agreed to publish it. With a humbling first printing of 1,000 copies, J.K. Rowling’s first novel was the snowflake that started an instinctive avalanche of success that she could never have anticipated. It won awards and gained a readership by word of mouth. The book after it also won awards and sold more copies. Then it was picked up by Scholastic Books in the United States, which had paid a six-figure advance in a bidding auction.

The rest is publishing - and film-making - history. The seven Harry Potter books and corresponding big screen adaptations have produced a $15 billion dollar empire and broken all industry records. Joanne “J.K.” Rowling turned her most despondent period of discouragement into a launching pad for unimaginable success. She said, “Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy to finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one area where I truly belonged.”