That is the message I took away from my visit to the Biltmore House in Asheville, NC this weekend.  If you have never visited America's largest private residence, you need to put it on your bucket list.  It is beyond description.

While the house takes your breath away, it truly is the "people" who made it come true. 

It came true because they were just crazy enough to try something different and make it work.

Listed below are the crazy ideas - all of them successful!

• In 1895, George Vanderbilt built a 250 room family home with a seven story banquet hall, indoor bowling alley and pool, indoor bathrooms, and electricity (no other homes had this at the time).

• In 1930, his heirs opened the house to the public and began to charge admission as a tourist attraction.

• In 1971, they branched into wine, opened the winery to the public in 1985, and now sell thousands and thousands of bottles of wine every year.

• In the past decade, they have created and grown the Biltmore for your Home collection, where you can purchase home decor with the Biltmore brand for your own castle.

I am positive that each of these ideas was met with resistance - the same type of resistance that you hear at work every day.

"That will never work!"

"That is not our core business!"

"Let's just keep doing what we do well - it has gotten us this far."

Granted, there are some ideas that do not work or get run over in the process, but a worse failure than actual failure itself is to not even TRY.

True leaders take calculated risks.  True leaders try new things.  True leaders ignore the status quo.  True leaders refuse to stand pat. 

True leaders surround themselves with other true leaders, and that will eventually lead to greatness!