This is a random collection of all the things I wish I could tell to those of you who are in school. But you will probably have to learn it all for yourselves‘.

Am I going to be successful?

Great question. This is a question that seems to be the hidden question behind most of the questions I get asked. And the answer is you probably will be successful but probably won‘t come in the form you’re imaging. Not even close. But when you realize it’s happened you’ll look up and it will feel good and it will be fulfilling.

Oh really? Then so if you know so much then how will I become successful?

The mad dash to be successful has probably already started for you. You’re sending your books out and you’re working to land a job in the same agencies that everybody else is trying to get into. I recently heard somebody say they had sent out 300 resumes. That’s the old shotgun approach. In school you probably learned not to take that approach but it just seems smart. Ups the odds and all. And it’s easy now with e-mail. You dont even have to lick all those envelopes. Yet I would suggest that this is the very worst way to land a job and more importantly it is ignoring the whole reason we got into this conversation. Success.

Wait. How am I supposed to be successful without a job?

I hate to answer a question with a question but what is you definition of success? A first job can be one of two things. A step toward success or a step away from success. But have you sat down to search your soul for the answer to what would be success for you? Your personal definition. A unique answer. We all get caught up with other people’s definition of success and societies' definition of success that we lose our own. This is not good.

Why do I need to define success?

Because there is really only one definition that is put forward by society at large. Money. Ass loads of money. Don’t get me wrong here i think money is great. I like it a lot. But if you have the same definition as everybody else then you’re competting directly against everybody else. If you begin to refine you definition of success you suddenly begin to compete in a smaller category. So if you define success as living in Hawaii doing wordl class work for international surf brands you suddenly have two very important advantages to success. First, you aren’t competing with 99.9 percent pof the advertsing world out there. Second, it is instantly so much easier to measure you progress. My definition of success was to live in Miami and work with people I loved doing work I was proud of. And that’s all it’s ever been. So I felt successful pretty early on in my career.

But you live in Boulder.

Yes good catch. The only change to that original definition would be to live in Boulder.

A definition like I had sometimes meant saying no to more money. Yet over the years it seems like the pursuit of something other than money has ultimately brought lots of money. I remember the first time somebody congratulated me on achieving “their” definition of success. Which usually is some mixture of fame and fortune. How does it feel? They ask. It feels exactly the same as it has always felt. Because I thought I was successful a long, long time ago. Was I wrong?

Probably, but who cares I guess.

Exactly. Maybe success for you is to lend your talents to a lot of probono work. Maybe success for you would be to have your own shop. Maybe it’s to help grow a small shop. Maybe it’s to…

I get it so how do I define success for myself?

Realize you are already making progress. It won’t feel like it but it is happening. I don’t know why it’s like that but the first person perspective of ones own career is glacier like in it’s pace. Yet at the same time when you look back it’s all happened much faster than you ever realized.

Be honest. Be respectful. Be good. Set positive goals for yourself that can benefit lot’s of people. You’ll have lot’s of support because what’s good for you is good for them. Some people think they have to knock somebody else to get into a top spot. I’ve know people that thought they needed to knock me down to get up the ladder. It rarely works that way because there is infinite room for success and you’ll just get distracted from your true goals.

Don't exaggerate. Don't complicate. Very humble versions of success can lead to a wonderful life adventure. You don’t have to make it seem grand for it to become grand as it becomes reality.

Simplify. I think two sentences should be enough to hold your life’s professional dream.

So what do I do once I have a personal definition of success and a job too?

Okay. Once you are working you are in for a great ride because an agency is a busy place and there is always too much to do. For those who have ambition that means there is always a chance to grow and learn because people are always looking for somebody to pawn some work off onto. All you have to do is be there and get it done right. Getting it right is the key.

So don't just have questions. Have answers too. This is a simple one but so many people get it wrong it’s got to be said. It is okay to get stuck and okay to not know the best way to do something and it is okay to ask questions. But it is not okay to not at least try to figure it out and have several thoughts on how you think you should handle it before you speak to your supervisor. Three options is a good rule to go by. A guy that worked for me who I always loved interacting with taught me he was doing this. Today he owns his own agency.

Don't ever believe there is only one answer. There are literally millions. It’s a beginners mistake to think there is one right answer. Or that a great answer doesn’t have an even greater solution if you keep thinking. Some people make this beginners mistake for their entire career. So have lots of ideas. And make multiple leaps of logic. And then test your theories. Be linear when necessary but remember great thinking is not linear.

Make shit up. All great things were pulled from an ass before they became accepted. All the greatest discoveries began with somebody pulling something out of their ass. Great asses. The world isn’t flat. There is a force called gravity. People can govern themselves. Great ass born ideas indeed. All the thinking CP+B was first pulled from an ass and then refined and tested and refined and tested.

Be bold and cautious in waves that last a couple hours each.

Don't expect anyone else to be responsible for who you are or what you do.

The best people in the business are really decent people. All the awful backstabbing people you hear about are not the best people. They are all very average. And that kind of thing will never take you past being average.

Advertising is rife with awardshows. I’m not sure there is any other industry so set on awarding themselves. and many of you are anxious to win one. And many of you will. And guess what? It won’t make any difference to how you feel the next day. And the next ad you have to do will not be any easier. You won’t be any smarter. Now your careers might dramatically change. Maybe even for the better. But here’s how awards ruin a lot of budding careers. Listen closely because a lot of you will face this and very few of you will make the right decision. You’re at a place that for some reason let something wonderful out the door. Something new and good is going on. Or maybe the agency has a long history of doing good work. So you win an award and right away you get lots of offers. Lot’s of offers to go places for big money. But these places haven’t done any good work since the seventies. But this is you. You can turn things around. They have a hot new CD there. So you go. And a couple years later you realize you’ve become handcuffed by the salary so you stay but you never do anything anybody cares about for the next fifteen years until you are fired as a has been at the age of 40 with nothing to show to anybody that would get you hired. This is a real story that happens every day.

Your resume and your work is your insurance policy.

Finally, have fun. If you’re not having fun you’re doing it wrong. So use your internal fun meter to alert you to the need to make changes. Lot’s of small changes are better  than great big ones. So figure out ways to have fun and stay on path wthout having to change jobs all the time. The most successful people I know are very rarely the people with a zillion jobs.

Moving around is fine but when it becomes a habit it usually means something else is probably in need of adjustment.

Here’s to your success.

An old friend of mine stopped by the office the other day to ask me about our new business process. He has a smaller agency and they’re looking for strategies to help grow the shop. The first time we ever met he was helping us with some of the work connected to launching the Florida Truth campaign. CP+B was about 60 people back then so he’s seen us go through a lot of changes and I think we were both surprised by a lot of what the conversation revealed as the drivers of growth for us. I wanted to jot them down while they were still fresh in my head.

1.       Tell other people your dreams. This was the biggie for us. For years Chuck and I had this secret understanding that we wanted to be a great agency some day. Whatever that meant. But it was one of those aspirations that you didn’t dare say out loud to anybody because it was just too ludicrous. People would laugh and they would point and they would say “There go those guys that wanted to be great!” FAIL! But to succeed you have to risk failure. So eventually decided to tell the whole agency what we wanted to become. Our mission statement. We had a friend who was at Fallon in the early days and he had been a part of creating there’s and I don’t know if I remember it exactly but it was very simple and basically said that they wanted to be, “The most awarded agency in America.” We thought about what we liked about the ad biz and it wasn’t awards it was the culture jamming. So our mission became, “To create the most talked about and written about advertising in the world.” At the time we probably hadn’t yet achieved that goal in Miami or Florida. So it was embarrassingly lofty. My friend was actually shocked to know that that was our mission statement when he first met me. I’m sure he would have laughed had he known. But in the agency we shared this mission with everybody and made little cards to tape to your monitor or desk so that during the day we could make all the hundreds of decisions we were faced with, with that mission in mind. Within weeks the stalemate between the status quo and something new had been broken and the agency began to clearly move toward this new shared goal. Out of the thousands of little decisions that shaped our future you could feel that more than half were suddenly talking us someplace we wanted to go. I wish we had had the courage to do it sooner.

2.       The clients you currently have are your true new business machine. I see so many people overlook this. “If I only had a client like this or a client like that.” It’s key to have a clear idea in your head of the new ground you hope to break and the new case history you hope to prove with each new client before you start work. What is going to be different about the agency six months after the arrival of your new account? How is this new revenue and this new campaign going to make your agency smarter and more capable than it was prior?

3.       Find some real passion in the building for the business or take a pass on it. We have a rule that says we can’t pitch a piece of business unless at least one of the partners is passionate about that business. And billings/money is not an acceptable reason for passion. It can be anything BUT money. Maybe you like that it’s family run. Maybe you love that they’re the underdog. Maybe you love that it’s a chance to build something from scratch. Whatever the reason is find it and if you can’t find a reason say thanks but no thanks. In the end you will be defined by your clients. There are no two ways about that. Such is the lot of the parasites of the business world. Agencies.

4.       Don’t model yourself after other agencies. Stop stealing all the decks from other shops to find a great pitch. Actually, steal them. read them all and visit everybody and find out all you can. Then when you know enough, forget it all and make up your own process and your own pitch. It’s like a Jazz musician finding their unique voice. At the beginning it requires a lot of study and practice and emulation. But in the end nobody should or could sound quite the same. When you find it, your pitch and your process is better than any of them because you can tell it honestly and genuinely. The way to find your pitch might take a while but there’s a real sure fire method. Spend six months to a year making a quick note of every time you’re feeling really good at work and what you’re doing at the time. I guarantee a pattern will arise and with luck it won’t be about lunch or golf.

So that’s four. There were actually a couple others but they can wait for another post and another time.