Lessons learnt
I’ve been catching up with my Campaign reading. And with Adland currently welcoming its new breed of graduates, the 25th September 2009 issue is dedicated to the great unwashed.
I wish I’d known that advertising was for me back when I was a spotty 18 year old with a trio of okayish A levels. (Looking back, it should’ve been obvious: I liked business, media, art and psychology. Honestly, where was a good Careers Adviser when I needed one?)
Alas, I didn’t go to Watford or Central Saint Martins to learn about great advertising. No, I got a job at an American diner on a retail park on the edge of Ipswich. Not a brilliant decision. But to cover up such an arse-about-face choice, I’m going to tell you that regrets are silly things to have, and instead look on the positive side of life.
Here’s two good lessons I learnt whilst surrounded by microwaved meat and cheap salsa:
Sometimes you need to make a decision. Even if it’s the wrong one.
Because you learn a lot more about things when you make a decision and start. Thinking is fine. But doing is better. So start and, if necessary, adapt. And if you can’t adapt, just learn. And apologise profusely when everything goes tits up. Which occasionally it inevitably will.
If give you give people the opportunity to say no, they probably will. So don’t give them the opportunity.
“Do you want to wash up?”
“No.”
“Do you want to dry up?”
“No.”
“Do you want to do the ironing?”
“No.”
“Do you want to take the rubbish out?”
“No.”
See? It’s really, really easy. No. No no no. Oh it might be negative. But who cares? No. No no no.
Consider this rephrase: “Would you rather wash up, dry up, do the ironing or take the rubbish out? Choose two.”
You don’t always get the perfect result. But you get a result that isn’t “no”. Which is a good start, I think.
* * *
Of course, I could’ve probably learnt these pithy lessons from a business book at university. But at university you don’t have to empty freezers after a sixteen hour shift. And you don’t have to drain the dirty fat out fryers and then scrub the things so people can eat cleaner chips.
So, graduates to Adland: your qualifications make you the chip leaders. But when it comes to motivation – the motivation to not go back to that rather miserable existence where everything comes with a side order of onion rings – I’m all in.