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The art of sustainable success


Anyone can achieve success, but at what cost and for how long?

Once upon a time I was even 30 years old.

At the time, I was trying to build a name and reputation in the advertising industry. I created an online persona – alliterate – and styled myself as an anti-orthodox voice in a world of the unthinking and complacent. An Enfant terrible that matched the energy of the 2000s and the ethos of the agency I worked for.

He served me well. But as my 30s turned into my 40s and finally my 40s into my 50s, I wasn’t a kid anymore.

I was becoming part of a smaller and smaller group of people – the seniors in advertising. A business that has a habit of hunting down its veterans and making it clear they are no longer welcome.

But so far the advertising mower hasn’t worked out for me, so I wanted to unpack why that might be. And in doing so, what advice can I offer to those who wish to achieve sustainable success in whatever career or passion they choose.

To be clear, this post is about sustainable success, not overnight success or nosebleed altitude success.

Sustained success is different. It may be slower and may not reach quite the same peak in status or pay. But my experience is that it is a happier place. And it’s no cop out—it’s still about success, just success that can last you for decades, rather than one that slips through your fingers like sand returning to the beach.

Of course, I write this knowing that a large part of why I got a job in advertising, moved up in business, and survived so long at the top is because of my privilege. I’m male and I’m white and both have always been a big helping hand if you want to get to the top of something and stay there. So take my advice with a grain of salt, and with the unconscious bias it is almost certainly imbued with.

Be good

Sorry, but there’s no escaping it. To survive you must progress and to progress you must be good. Really good.

Of course, there are plenty of average people who are successful, but they will mostly be heard about. They can find success, but rarely sustain it, not in this industry. If you’re going to spend a significant amount of time enjoying something, you need to be good at it or get better at it.

If I had remained an account manager, which is the discipline I started in, there is no way I would still be continuing in this field. I just wasn’t good enough. When I found planning, something I could excel at, that’s when things changed for me.

So, be honest with yourself, are you really good? Do you have a passion for the endeavors you are engaged in? Or at least bags of tenacity and endurance?

Because you don’t just make it to the top and then get patted on the back until you retire. No longer. Even for old white men like me. You have to stay good and be as good as those who come through the ranks who aspire to the position you are in. And while a reputation or profile is a huge help in maintaining your success, you need to prove that you’re still good. what do you do when it matters

So be good and be good

Be kind

Being an idiot is a great strategy for success. That cannot be denied. I saw a lot of them zooming around me on their way to greatness and wealth.

But it is not a sustainability strategy. Because if you’re playing this game — and that includes driving upward at the expense of the people around you — you’d better stay on your game. For all the asses that flew past me on the way up, there are just as many that come rushing back down again. And the funny thing is that when they do this, there is no one to support them, give them a second chance or soften the blow, suddenly they seem to lack allies.

Of course, every career has its ups and downs, and sustainable success requires people to want to support you and help you when you hit a rough patch. They want to forgive and forget rather than use guns to make sure they never have to work with you again.

So be kind. Not soft, calm, harmless or bland, but kind. And kind to everyone, your bosses, colleagues and reports. And for God’s sake be kind to the leavers. The measure of success is that they can say goodbye to people, whether it was their choice or not, and still be humane and kind.

Find your spiritual home

If we are lucky, we will find our spiritual home. A place where we just fit in, that we love and that seems to love us back. You have to find that place and spend some time there.

It’s not like it’s going to be your forever home – although it could work that way – it’s just a great place to be and where you’ve been.

In many ways, my spiritual home was HHCL, somewhere I left 15 years ago and no longer exists. In your spiritual home, you create muscle memory for what it’s like to work in an environment that seems perfect to you. And that’s incredibly helpful in figuring out what you need from future employers and how happy you are in any particular place. Time in your spiritual home calibrates every occupation.

It also means that when you run somewhere, you can help it become a spiritual home for the people who come to work with you. That’s what I’m trying to achieve at Saatchi & Saatchi, to create a place that works for others as HHCL does for me.

Build an independent reputation

I don’t mean to create a reputation for independence, although that can be incredibly helpful. The point is to create a reputation that is distinct from the reputation of where you work – though hopefully the two should rub off on each other.

This is because you won’t always be working in a place that is at the top of its game. In fact, sometimes, whether through bad luck or bad management, the place you work can have a reputation that goes down the toilet. Being able to go into the market with a profile that is perceived to be different from a given employer is therefore incredibly useful. It’s even better if your brand is bigger or at least different from where you work.

When the spin-off agency from HHCL, United London, was about to close, I had already started building a reputation online through this blog. So when it finally hit the UK Advertising Central Booking in 2007, I was able to leave and secure other, more rewarding work on the back of the reputation I had built up. My reputation was different from the reputation of the agency, not just its product.

Let yourself be controlled

I believe this is how you build your reputation. Yes, in part it will be work that you have been associated with and have been awarded for, or at least is recorded on your CV. But it’s also the voice you have in the industry you love.

And having a voice means sharing everything you think and do with the world. Letting it all go rather than defending it with the gusto of Gollum obsessed with his ring.

This is super scary because you are literally giving away thoughts and ideas that you should by right be paid for. But in doing so, you will find yourself building influence.

This is a basic philosophy for me, which has subsequently proven to be validated by the influencer economy.

But what happens when you decide to come off as Gollum.

There is a cautionary tale I remember from when I was a junior planner. By the mid-1990s, planners were all obsessed with the Henley Centre. We especially liked the news about “planning for social change”. We would unwittingly rip them out, copy them, share them and quote them all day long. They were as famous then as Google Trends is today.

But the Henley Center was outraged by the ruthless theft of their IP and the way they made a fraction of the money they should have. So they stalled and became just a consulting service. If you wanted their wisdom, you had to pay for it, as is right and proper. The problem was that their influence was evaporating.

No one in our world talks about the Henley Center anymore. So guess what, we don’t think about them when we want what they do and are prepared to pay handsomely.

So leave it. Let it all go.

Stay childish

You can be anything but a baby. You can also have children. Really grown children. But one of the most important qualities for sustainable success is to stay childlike and even a little childish. Childlike enthusiasm, childlike wonder and childlike naivety.

That’s the only thing that keeps you fresh and holds back the tidal wave of exhaustion that sweeps away many talented people. People who just can’t help themselves and project that tired wisdom that makes them tired and irrelevant.

That doesn’t mean jump on every shiny new train as soon as it pops up on your timeline—you should know better. But it means being really open to the enthusiasm of the times. And whenever you find yourself at odds with the current fashion and ask yourself “but what if I’m wrong”.

Children keep you young, but so does being a child.

Do not fly too close to the sun

This is about burnout.

High achievers tend to have terrible boundaries. They often don’t realize that their mental or physical health is being compromised by their commitment, diligence and determination. And the risk is that they will do short-term and long-term damage to themselves and the sustainability of their success.

This is not to take the blame from employers who put people under pressure or fail to recognize warning signs in people’s behaviour. But ultimately you have to police your own boundaries. And that means saying no more often than you’d like.

I’m pretty terrible at it, so it might be a case of doing what I say and not what I do. But the truth is that in 35 years I have never burned out, not from work. The mental health issues that have caused me significant problems in my personal and professional life are not the result of my work. They influenced my work, but they came from a completely different place.

I truly recognize that I work in an industry and an agency where people are sometimes called upon to work beyond a sustainable pace, and they certainly won’t stop there. And maintaining productivity while reducing churn is a huge challenge for anyone running a business. But you can’t rely on your employer to know what’s good for you and police your boundaries. You have to know yourself and demand what you need.

Of course, that power comes mostly from being good at what you do, but as I’ve made clear, that’s non-negotiable.

Be authentic

Being you sucks. Being someone else is a total nightmare. And yet many believe, and as many are forced to believe, that there is a version or type of you that you must present in order to succeed.

Adapting to your work culture is a powerful coping strategy, but it’s no recipe for sustainable success. Ultimately, it has to be you.

Now, I say this as a white, straight, middle-class male, and an authentic version of him, thought differently from the image I thought I had to conform to, was easily accepted. For people with other backgrounds, it can be increasingly challenging to be truly authentic in a corporate environment.

But it will always be true that authenticity is the path to happiness and sustainable success.

And it’s getting stronger too. Co-workers, employers, employees and clients can recognize authenticity today. And they much prefer it to the nude. Even in adland, the crafty nonsense has been pointed out and we are making some progress in adapting our cultures to our talent rather than forcing them to adapt to our culture.

Because authenticity eats pretense.

These are my eight guidelines for sustainable success. I hate that there are eight, I always prefer seven or nine. But adding or removing one wouldn’t be very authentic. They are all guidelines or rules that have helped me maintain a very long career in the field that I chose and to some extent chose me.

And who knows, they might help you.

If I were to call those who are most likely to cling to your heart, they are undoubtedly the first and the last.

Be good.

And be you.

But above all, don’t be a dick.

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