In 1999, Excite was no.2 in search after Yahoo, and Google had just got going.

Larry Page offered to sell Google to them for, now wait for it, US$750k and 1% of Excite. Page insisted that Google would have to be the search engine running Excite, and that was where the deal broke down.

Excite walked away.

Today Google, now called Alphabet, is worth $1.9T.

So, Page wanted to sell Google for $750k!? I mean, he clearly didn’t have a clue about Google's potential.

He's worth $125bn today. Had he gone ahead with the deal, I doubt he’d be worth more than $50m, and you wouldn’t have heard of Page, Brin, or Google.

Most consider a co-founder of Google that was willing to sell it all for $750k as a tech genius, a man with extraordinary vision.

He wasn't.

Successful CEOs are not superhuman. Many of us are capable of getting there.

With hard work and a lot of luck.