attempt something so great that you’ll be doomed to failure if you heart is not in it.

There’s a quote I’ve secretly printed out at every agency I’ve ever worked at.

I stick it somewhere only I can see it.

Yeah, I know. It’s corny. But it’s always rung true for me.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’ve folded like a cheap suit plenty of times and created the kind of content that the “swill merchants” from Almost Famous would probably find boring. That happens in this business. But the point of this post is to give you permission to swing for the fences when you actually get the chance to create something with guts.

Over the years I’ve worked at some incredible creative shops in North America. I’ve also worked at a few that were… less inspiring. Because of a couple of non-disparagement clauses I’ve signed, I’ll leave those stories alone.

And honestly, you don’t want to hear about the hack stuff anyway.

You want to hear about the good ones.

The best shop I ever worked at was The Martin Agency. As far as I’m concerned, it’s Mecca. I can’t even tell you how hard it was to remove it from my LinkedIn profile when people started telling me you should only list the last 10–15 years on your resume.

Personally, I think that’s absolute bullshit.

But the late, great Les Guessing (yes, he actually changed his name to get attention) once told me that ageism is real and that if you leave too much history on your resume, you’ll be judged at the pearly gates of HR before anyone ever sees your work.

He wasn’t wrong.

Still, my time at The Martin Agency was more than just another job. It was the moment I realized I would happily do this work for the rest of my life.

For free, if I had to.

Don’t tell my wife Heidi.

One of the things I’ll never forget was a wall near Mike Hughes’ office. Creatives would put their concepts up there and invite the entire department to weigh in. Anyone could comment. Some of the feedback was thoughtful and constructive. Some of it was brutal.

But every idea that went up on that wall came down stronger.

I’ve never seen anything quite like it at any other agency. I think that culture exists only at Martin. You could feel the standard in the air.

This was the same place that produced work like the Virginia Holocaust Museum campaign, NASA’s “Big Brains for Rent”, and the legendary SAAB ad: “Last one to Aspen is a BMW.”

Ideas with teeth.

Ideas people still talk about.

There are a hundred stories behind those campaigns. Maybe I’ll tell some of them another time. But the real point is this: being in that environment permanently changed how I think about creative work.

When you’re surrounded by people like Jonathan Mackler, Jeff Ross, Mark Wenneker, Hale Tench, Joe Nagy, Ty Harper, Jelly Helm, Raymond Mckinney, Chris Jacobs, Mark Brye, Judd Burnette, Anne Marie Hite, David Boone, and John Oakley, you realize very quickly that great ideas aren’t accidents.

They’re the result of people pushing each other.

Hard.

Look any of those names up and you’ll probably have that moment where you say, “Holy shit… they did that?”

Yeah.

They did.

And being around that kind of work raises the bar for the rest of your career.