Success.

About a dozen years ago, I got "hot."

Hot for probably only the first or second time in my career.

I had a lot of spots--good spots--on the air.

And I had three print campaigns running simultaneously.

I could hardly open the "Times" or "The Journal" without seeing a full-page ad I had written.

People at the agency were pissed at me.

They asserted I had done something "political" or otherwise nefarious to achieve what I was achieving.

I remember having a conversation with my older daughter about it.

She was 15 at the time.

And being an Upper East Side teenage girl, well-versed in the petty bullshit that goes on in both 10th grade and ad agencies.

I remember saying to her, "It's taken me 46 years to become an 'overnight success.'"

In other words, it took me a lot of work to be able to do what I was doing.

Now, I am in LA shooting six new commercials.

It's my fifth month in a row where I'm shooting something I like.

I'll hear about it when I return to the agency.

I'll get excoriated for taking too much on. For doing too much myself. I've heard this throughout my career, "George, you're a one man team."

That's a pejorative.

Here's the deal.

I do what I do.

And I will continue to do so.

If I'm at an agency that gets that, we're fine and we're all better off for it.

If I'm at an agency that doesn't, that's filled with back-stabbing and petty jealousies,
I will eventually leave.

And I'll be better off for it.