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Ever since I was a small boy people have been telling me how ill-advised I was for pursuing a career in the creative field. My Uncle Frank would tell me, upon looking at a drawing or painting I had done, "You have a good hand, but don't neglect your arithmetic. You'll need that for getting a real job when you get out of school." My parents encouraged my pursuit of art but, always with the caveat that if I wanted to get into college and have a "real" profession like a lawyer or a doctor, or a school teacher, I should improve my grades. "A real job." "A real profession." Obviously none of these classifications had any room for artistic endeavors. Funny thing. By the time I was 12 I was leaving the house at 5am every Sunday with a blue tool box full of Japan colors and sable hair brushes and catching the 5:45 Greyhound Bus to Huntington, New Jersey. There, at Island Dragway, I would walk through the pits, picking up work pinstriping and lettering super stock muscle cars and super-charged dragsters until the last race of the day. When I would return home, well past my bedtime, my pockets would be bulging with tens and twenties. By the age of 15 I was earning more in one day than my mother and father's combined income every two weeks. Even so, I was still being indoctrinated with the "real job" mantra. By the age of 15 I had learned that there was such a profession as a commercial artist. I was quick to make the distinction whenever anybody referred to me as a wonderful artist at family gatherings that I was a "commercial" artist. "Art that doesn't make money doesn't make sense to me" became one of the lines I used to intercept the admonishments I'd get about preparing for my future. In fact, I became downright arrogant about defending my chosen profession. Statements like, "I made $2200 last Sunday. How did you do?" shocked my well-meaning family members when their advice became a bit too overbearing. Many years later when I had become a big shot creative on Madison Avenue I can remember how shocked I was to find out how much the other Art Directors were making compared to me. My first reaction was anger. That was followed by disenchantment and finally I would just call up my headhunter to jump ship. Years later, after winning a bunch of awards, my agent, the infamous Judy Wald, asked me straight out, "Why are you afraid to ask for what you're worth?" To my dismay, I had no idea. But I knew she was right. I would create a successful campaign and the clients would increase their billings by millions, yet somebody else would be made Creative Director. For years and years I thought it had to do with my ethnicity. "There are no Black Creative Directors." I would observe. And then I would get pissed. And off to the next agency I would go where the same thing would happen all over again. After 15 years of this I just said, "fuck it" and moved to Los Angeles to open my own business. Our first client was the California Lottery. Working on the lottery and having access to their research, I discovered something very interesting. After just a few years, lottery winners almost always wound up in the same financial condition after five years that they were in before the won their millions. Curious, I asked one of the clinical psychologists who worked for the lottery why this was the case. She said that Lotto winners had "Low-money DNA" as she called it, that was set when they were young. It had to do with their parents' attitude about money or certain traumatic episodes in their childhood that revolved around money. If money was tight in the Lotto winner's childhood life, they may not believe that they deserved the riches winning the lottery afforded them. This may cause them to make bad investment decisions, poor financial moves or ill-advised spending habits. One way or another, they were destined to blow their cash. That line of reasoning started me thinking about my own life. I was my family's unfulfilled prophesy come true. "Don't neglect your arithmetic. You will need that for getting a real job when you get out of school." Nothing I had done in my 20 years on Madison Avenue had dispelled the curse. I still didn't have a "real job" to the only people who count. Consequently, I never set my goals much higher than that which would allow me to live a comfortable existence just a few notches above my family. That was quite a revelation. I was still thinking poor, not daring to think rich. Then I began to look at my company in a different way. It was no longer a shield to limit my personal liability. It was a sword to cut myself a larger slice of the American Pie. Within months my company grew from just handling The Lottery to working for Disney, Columbia-TriStar, Denny's, Coca-Cola and Sun Microsystems. Instead of just working for money I began to accept stock options. Within two years I was worth $3million on paper. Then the dot-com bubble burst and I was wiped out. So I started from scratch, rebuilt my company and made a lot of money. I got married. I had a daughter. THE BUSINESS GREW. 911 HIT. THE BUSINESS CRASHED AND BURNED. Now I just finished my first year in a new company. I have a great partner. And Advertising is about to implode from its own bloated and myopic business practices. But I'm not sweating it. I don't look at what Bob Garfield in Ad Age called Chaos 2.0 as chaos at all. I think of it as a great opportunity to turn things inside out and earn lots of money being more agile and alert to the audience then the monoliths of Madison Avenue. I would hope that you out there see the same thing that I do on the horizon. A huge wave of opportunity rushing right for you. A wave you can ride to unparalleled success. Forget the gloom and chaos. Last week I went to the little beach town of Belmont Shore for lunch. I parked, got out two quarters for the meter and got the surprise of my life. The meters all had little covers on them. The covers read, "Today's parking is brought to you compliments of Honda." Parking meters as media. Welcome to what comes after Advertising. One big idea after another. Stay tuned.
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