A bifurcated life sucks.
But I have ideas about the fix, no obligatory ranting here. Ok?
The binary mindset: you feel you are muddling through your current life in anticipation of the life you will ultimately lead. And sometimes you may even be more than a little pissed off that no one has recognized how very much you have to offer. If you’ve bifurcated your life in this way, I have some helpful ideas to share with you. Stay with me as I lead you through my thought-process. I’ll share here some stories backed up by some facts, because you know me, I love good data, it helps separate wishful thinking from grounded thoughtfulness. This stack will leave you feeling empowered, I know, because it dovetails with an inspiring conversation we had in our atelier last week with two women who are arguably some of the most successful women in the world and who shared their own unconventional paths.
Let me start here: I view employees and friends often through a branding lens. I can’t help it, it’s the way I think. To be clear, this is wholly different than a 16-year old gazing into their phone declaring they’re “a brand”. Rather, I view each of my colleagues as a bundle of proprietary assets where their whole is far greater than the sum of their parts. I’m going to give you a great example of what I mean by this by profiling someone who is not a team member of ours and I cringe a bit to use him because he cheats when we play Trivial Pursuit. My case study for you is my brother-in-law.
His resume: raised in Georgia (U.S), worked to pay for undergrad at Princeton and a Law degree from UGA, he taught high-school history during law school to support himself, post graduation he got a job at a small legal firm that quickly led to him working in the DOJ’s office as a Prosecutor where he stayed for 20 years and left with one of the most successful track records in the country, ever. Alongside my sister he raised two sons and coached their basketball games from elementary school until the time his youngest son received an offer to play competitively at college. He left the DOJ to become arguably one of the U.S’s top trial lawyers.
If I’m speaking both theoretically and in marketing terms, it wasn’t until Jim was in his late 40’s that he could file for his “patent” - the set of elements that on their own are hardly unique or even exceptional but in combination make him, his brand, inimitable. Do you really want to go against someone in a courtroom with the grit to grind their way through study and work to pay for their own education, who possesses the story telling, communication, patience and listening skills required of a high school teacher, coupled with the leadership and enthusiasm of a basketball coach, all grounded in the honed expertise from 20 years at the DOJ? Now you see why I’m so fucked at Trivial Pursuit - even when I have GOOGLE to back me up.
None of this is as easy as telling you to “build a resume” doing “selfless activities,” coupled with a college education and then off you go. It’s also not simply telling you to keep your head down and to keep plodding away at your job.
And it may be surprising to find that it’s not about aiming for your Walter Isaacson penned biography to open with “she always knew she would run a $5b media conglomerate one day.” You see, it’s not about knowing exactly what you want to achieve in life, tho arguably this works for many. But if you’re reading here and nodding your head thinking please tell me something different than to go back in time to my six year old self and create a bizarre fixation with (computer parts, taking apart our family television or counting leaves) then you will be relieved to read on. Success comes, not by any measurement but by your own measurement, when you have a set of principles that keep you on path as you meander, or run, through your days, your weeks and your years. I’m a believer in short term goals coupled with long term tenets and to do this requires tremendous trust in the process.
Here’s what you can do right now to add a blending pen to the hard line of demarcation between the life you want to have and the one you currently possess:
Plan for the unplanned.
I don’t mean prepare. What I mean is you need to know that it’s the seemingly random stuff that will come across your plate, that may make no sense at the time, that is likely to be the very thing you reflect back on as your game changing moment. I’m not telling you to “be alert and recognize it while it’s happening” but rather, trust that it is happening, and that you will benefit from it if you lean in to it. And here’s the catch, when do you lean and not lean? If you’re a betting man, it’s best to lean in 100% of the time to maximize your odds.
True story to make my point: When I worked at Ogilvy Advertising, my client was American Express. In a meeting, an Amex executive said they needed a way to better collate information on the Travel Related Services industry. My boss at Ogilvy asked me to pull together articles on important industry related information but I took it further and created a newspaper, summarizing what was happening in the hotel, airline and restaurant sectors. Now, in high-school I was on the newspaper staff - I loved researching, doing layouts and writing news stories. You may be tempted to think this story ends with me impressing a handful of creatively stunted executives with the graphic’s prowess and new perspective that a 22 year old could offer. No. I mean, that happened a bit, but that’s not what set me up for what ultimately opened up my mind on what I could do with my life. Rather, it was the act of compiling this information that I became very knowledgeable about these sectors. This was a task that felt tedious at times and sometimes had me wondering if anyone was even reading my reports. But here’s what happened. If my Amex client wondered aloud if airline bookings were up or down, I could tell him what was happening in the Southeast vs. the Westcoast. If our CFO mused about operating costs in restaurants, I could chime in that margins had been depressed over the last few quarters possibly due to traffic decreases in the Midwest. DO YOU REALIZE how fucking smart that made me look? A 22 year old offering up data points for serious consideration? This is pre-google time guys, I looked like a veritable genius. American Express asked me to leave Ogilvy and come work for them. Game Changer. My “sliding doors moment*”: I went on to work for Amex, do deals with some serious entrepreneurs, learn how p&l’s work IRL, meet my husband who turned out to be on the same floor as me at 200 Vesey Street, move to Hong Kong, start Tibi, create my own marketing and financial plans, couple this with my art skills, move back to NYC, and here I write to you some 30+ years later. This was never going to be written on a business or life plan.
Trust in the process.
Principles coupled with pragmatism and the alertness and eagerness to lean in to the moment you’re in to suck everything out of it possible. Even if you’ve no clear idea how you’ll use the experience in the future. Always try and be a good person, be hardworking and curious, and don’t wait for opportunity to knock at your door but instead grab it when you see it passing by. But make sure that when you do grab it, you’ve gained enough credibility that it doesn’t cite you for assault.
It will all work out, I promise, though I realize this begs another discussion around whether my vision of “working out” is the same as yours. More on that, later. Ok?
*Sliding Doors is a rather mediocre (my opinion) movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow that has if not a profound message, it at least has an analogy you’ll find yourself using often.
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I fucking love this. Articulated so well from the vantage point of a 30 year run that’s still gaining momentum.
Thanks for helping me reflect on my non linear journey in a more affirming manner. Go Amy.
Very well said and a hard thing for people to do especially when they are young. The best thing that comes with age is letting go of preconceived beliefs. I was told early in my 20’s to not resist change but to embrace it. Life will go a lot easier. This coupled with your essay, is life!