Be Kind. And Mean.

It seems to me about 37 times a day someone on some social platform, or wearing a t-shirt with a message on it, tries to show how profound they are by telling the world to "Be Kind."

I can barely think of anything dumber or more platitudinous. 

Because if you have to be told, and if you're taking life advice from strangers on corrupt and polluted social platforms, you never will be kind. You will instead be kind of a dimwit.

Toward the middle of last week a young person reached out to me. She asked for career advice. I wrote back to her and offered her an hour on Friday morning at 9AM her time. We spoke for a full hour.

I work pretty hard on these calls. I've been in the business a long time and I see a lot. I think I offer a lot to these people.

As Steve Hayden once said to me, "free advice is worth what you paid for it." I take that as a challenge and try to make it punch above its weight.

Usually, toward the end of our call, I say something I think is pretty good. And then I add, "that's it. That's your assignment. Do that work. Talk to the people I've told you to talk to and you'll be closer to getting a job."

I always add one more thing.

"Be mean to yourself. It's Friday now. Be done with the work I've told you to do by Monday. Be mean to yourself. Get it done. It's a pain in the ass, and hard, and introspective and maybe you have things to do this weekend, but be mean to yourself and get it done. It's how you'll get what you want from your career."

I wrapped up this particular talk with a nice turn of a phrase. "Being mean to yourself is the best way to be nice to yourself."

I'm not sure everybody gets that. But that's ok.

When my younger daughter was ten, she was determined to pass her open-water scuba diving test. Ten was the youngest age at which you could become certified.

We were all on vacation in Hawaii, and rather than hang out on the beach or play in the pool, my daughter sat at the poolside and studied her scuba text book. She looked grim, furrowed and slightly miserable. Studying when she wanted to be playing.

I didn't make her. I didn't tell her to. But she understood.

She did that also when she became a rescue diver at 15 and a open-water dive-instructor at age 18. Today, at 32, she helps run the world's premier Marine Science Master's program.

She got there by being mean to herself. Denying and trying.

When Friday rolls around, I do the same to myself. Virtually every Friday for the last 247 years, I say to myself, "It's been a helluva week." Because work, even as much as I love it, is hard. You put your whole brain, your whole heart and all your sinew--every-slow and every-fast twitch into it. 

When my work-week ends, even if I have no pressing client deliverables upcoming, I open--not shut--my computer. I do what I'm doing right now, I dope out a blog post or two for the upcoming week. I've done that for seventeen straight years without missing a day.

A lot of making it in our business or any other business is finding something that makes you stand out from the myriad people who can do roughly the same things you can. I mean, what we do is pretty easy. When you get down to it, writing a commercial is writing about 60 words about peanut butter or baked beans. It's really not that hard.

What's hard is showing the people who want those commercials why they should pick you to type them. What's hard is showing people what makes you different.

I realized early on in advertising that I had a lot going for me. But even with that I was never going to be one of the cool kids. There would always be people who won more awards or were smarter about hopping on the latest trends. Or their ass-kissing skills surpassed mine, which are not inconsiderable.

I realized my many shortcomings.

But I still had the same ambition.

To be picked. To be chosen. To get the job. To get the money.

How could I get there?

About 99.9% of what I do now--the blogging, the ads, the general sagacious-izing--is because I want to win. I want the money.

I know to get the money I have to be mean to myself. I have to drive myself. I have to metaphorically sit by the side of the pool and study while everyone else is drinking blue drinks and slipping into or out of various bikinis.

So, I recoil when I see platitudes like "Be Kind."

You're better off being mean. Denying yourself and trying harder.

Mean, I know.