By Steven Pressfield | Published: February 1, 2012
Ask me what I envy most about people who have lots of money. My answer: “I’m jealous that they have secretaries to say no for them.”
Norman Mailer. The author of "The Naked and the Dead" and "The Executioner's Song" had a few more in him.
Saying no is hard for me. Always has been. It’s hard for a lot of people. Maybe we want to be thought of as nice guys. Maybe we remember people turning us down when we asked them for help, and we don’t want to be that kind of person when other people ask us. Maybe we truly have empathy for the plight of whoever is asking us for something. Maybe we really do want to help. We don’t want to turn a deserving individual away.
But you can’t be a pro if you can’t say no.
(I’ve addressed this issue before in a post, “On Becoming More of a Pr@#k,” and another called “An Ask Too Far.”)
Bottom line for me: we can do it nicely, but we have to learn to say no.
As artists and entrepreneurs, what capital do we possess? Time. That’s all we’ve got.
We have to protect that time.
I’ll tell you the truth. When some people call me and ask me to lunch, in my heart I’d like to murder them. To drag me out from noon to two is to steal my day. I know the person asking doesn’t realize this. I know there’s no way I can explain it without sounding like a total sonofabitch. But that’s the truth. I’m working! I’ve got stuff to do. I can’t sit around shooting the shit over margaritas. Forget about it.
You and I live in a different universe from most people. We’re like pregnant women. Our interior planets rotate around a singular sun, and that sun is our work—the project or projects that we are giving birth to. That work takes precedence over everything except kids’ soccer games and all-out emergencies.
Sometimes even our spouses don’t understand this.
Are we crazy? You’ve read the same articles I have in the Sunday supplements that say on your deathbed you never regret the days you didn’t go in to the office. Bullshit. That’s not my world. I do regret those days. Norman Mailer toward the end of his life was asked if he had any regrets. The interviewer expected, I imagine, an answer like, “I wish I’d spent more time with my kids.” Instead Mailer said, “I have three or four more books in my head; I wish I had written them.”
Was he crazy? No. He’s just like you and me. He had babies inside him and he wanted to give birth.
So I’ll make you a deal. If you ask me to lunch and I respectfully decline, please don’t take it personally. I won’t be offended if you do the same to me. I understand. You’re working. You’re crazy. You’re just like me. (more…)
By Steven Pressfield | Published: January 25, 2012
Here’s a concept from the world of Mad Men that has served me (and saved me) many times over the years:
The idea of “new business.”
New material can be very empowering
When I worked in the ad biz in New York many moons ago, we had to account for our hours every week on a time sheet. The creative department was divided into ten or twelve groups, each with four or five two-man teams—writer and art director—with a creative director as each group’s boss. A creative group might have four or five clients that it was responsible for. On your time sheet you’d see something like
Chase Manhattan Bank
Purina Dog Chow
U.S. Navy Recruitment
Jeep Wrangler
At the end of each week, you’d write in how many hours you spent on each client. Then there was a final row at the bottom of the sheet. It said
New Business
Almost once a month, the agency pitched some big prospective client. We’d go after Burger King or Seven-Up or Toyota, competing with other agencies who were trying to snag the same account. Somewhere between twenty and twenty-five percent of our time was spent coming up with Big Ideas for clients we were hoping to bring in.
There is great wisdom in this division of one’s working time.
I didn’t appreciate it in the moment, but later, working on my own in Hollywood or writing novels, this 20/80 dynamic became a fundamental component of the way I organized my hours, week to week. (more…)
By Steven Pressfield | Published: January 18, 2012
Advertising is a much-reviled industry (selling us junk we don’t need, etc.) Let me not be last in line to heap my own scorn and derision upon this hell-spawned profession.
My graduation pic, sort of.
That being said, my own time as a copywriter (I worked for Grey, Benton & Bowles and Ted Bates in NYC) was more valuable than a Ph.D. from Harvard. I also met some of the best and most interesting people I’ve ever known, many of whom remain friends to this day.
So what did I learn in the ad biz? First lesson (see this post from 2009): Nobody Wants To Read Your Sh*t.
Second lesson: I was a “creative person.”
Before I went to work on Mad Ave, I thought the biz contained only one type of person. That would be an “advertising man,” like Clark Gable in The Hucksters or Cary Grant in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. (By the way, if you’ve never seen these movies, do yourself a favor and Netflix them.)
To my amazement, I discovered there were many types of Mad Men. Riding to work in the elevator, the lighted panels above the doors indicated the Media Dept, the Account Management Dept., the Research Dept., and the one I now worked for—the Creative Dept.
In the Creative Dept., there were two job categories: art director and copywriter. Art directors handled the visual elements of the ads and commercials; copywriters wrote the words. The art directors were all Italians and the writers were all Jews. They worked in teams of two.
I had never thought of myself as “creative.” It seemed an odd word to apply to a human being. Wasn’t everybody creative? Were there people who were uncreative? But I soon realized that there really was such a type.
In my family, everyone except my Dad was a business type. All my uncles were lawyers or executives or business owners. I never fit that mold and it bothered me. I worried that something was wrong with me. I also didn’t fit too well into the other roles I had tried on thus far in my young life—regular Joe, military man, athlete, brainiac. I was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with me.
Suddenly I found myself among the paisans and the landsmen. I was right at home. Wow. This was great. I discovered that the particular combination of ambition and anxiety, self-doubt and self-deprecation, depression, confusion, rage, terror and inability to conduct a healthy relationship with a woman were not my own unique failings. Everyone on the floor was just as screwed up—and in the exact same way. This was fantastic! A great weight fell from my shoulders.
But I still haven’t answered the question, What Did I Learn in the Ad Biz, Part Two. (By the way, there will be Parts Three through Nine coming up in subsequent weeks in this space.) (more…)
