The Biz: Being Great is More Than Luck

Okay, so where am I?

Today I’m in the office. I’m in “grinder mode.” Actually, I’m in Finder/Minder/Grinder mode. I’m sure you up and comers know what grinder mode is, right? (If you don’t, you should.)
Let’s go over the definitions…

Finders—these are your sales and marketing types. From finding your audience to positioning your product or sales proposition, it’s their job to get the right eyeballs from the right people to your company. The more the better. We are the creators. The finder role is always underplayed and unappreciated, often taken for granted. We are “people people,” the sage analysts who know where to find lead, how to find them, and most importantly what to say when they do.

Minders—these are your management types because, hey, you can’t do it all alone. Great minders know that the central element for success at the management level is being able to inspire people to climb the mountain with you. Those of you who want to overlord over every aspect of the project won’t find success [read: micromanagers need not apply]. Optimal success is found when you think of yourself as captain steering a ship on the proper path and pivoting when things go off course. Assigning clear and defined roles, teaching at the right times, and letting staff achieve are the checkpoints that need to be ticked.

Grinders—these are your invested workers who either work smart or work hard, or both. Your big ideas won’t matter without the ability to execute. Grinders get sh*t done and never forget it. The indicative sign of an organization devoid of Grinders are continued meetings that collapse in the aftermath when tasks don’t produce results.

Throughout my career, I’ve had to personally embrace all three Finders, Minders, and Grinders roles. I worry about being great. I worry about the important things. I let people work. I make sure they have the tools to succeed. And when it comes to a campaign and its data, I never fully trust the numbers and I never fully trust my instincts. I blend them while taking chances to be different. It’s worked out pretty well so far, but why is that?

Maybe it’s because I have made it a daily priority to be great, due in part to the teachings of Aristotle who wisely said,

“You are what you repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

Being great is not about task management. It starts with your individual habits of behavior, mind, and heart as you wake each day. Keep in mind that getting up to face the world with the right attitude is the hardest part of your day. If you start with maximum effort [be a Grinder] and blend it with whatever systems of task-alerting, technology, and scheduling, you will learn the most and achieve greatness, even if it is not immediately acknowledged and rewarded by others.

stuff.

I remember seeing an interview years ago with Tony Gwynn, the greatest baseball hitter of the last thirty years, and he said the secret to his success was never taking an at bat off.  Every bit of the process was important to him, as it should be to you as well. Much of this country’s workforce has a daily struggle to stay focused and give 100% of their effort because it fall into apathy where the thinking, “What does it matter?” permeates through the work day and the weekend becomes a shimmering goal within reach. If you want greatness, shed that thinking…right now.

When you map out your career, you won’t be able to chart every hill and valley. Sometimes you won’t know where the bumps are and that’s when you trust your work ethic to kick in and the process will guide your steps. As you progress at work, reading the landscape is also important. Looking for opportunities to hone your skills and develop new ones. Network by joining your industry’s professional organizations to meet new people. Always have that high visual horizon.

Not all of us can be the Finder/Minder/Grinder triple threat. Start with being a Grinder and the rest comes naturally if you have it in you. Giving your best effort every day to be great at whatever it is you are doing will bring you what you ultimately deserve—mastery of skills, accolades, a promotion, or even the break of working with advanced team.

Anyone can find themselves in a situation that they want to change jobs or industries, but striving to be great will allow you slide effortlessly from one opportunity to another. If you master being a Grinder, you have successfully prepared yourself to be “lucky” when new opportunities present themselves. Because, after all, I’d rather be lucky than good, but you have to be good to be lucky.

Eating Alone Can Be Your Virtuoso Moment

Okay, so where am I?

I’m at a local eatery working, of course, on finding the next big idea. The last few years have been fruitful on my pursuit of these grand plans for advertising and marketing grandeur. It never stops. But the quest for being great should never stop. Employers and businesses want that. They demand it actually and I am one to oblige them at every time.

My work should be a performance of sorts; at least in the advertising world. My ego tells me that I’m on the payroll is because the people paying my bills want to see me perform for the same reason you went to see Baryshnikov dance, Christian Bale act or the sun set over the white sands of Hawaii. It’s art in the form of advertising. It’s not work, it’s a recital. I can’t be just an ad man. I must be a virtuoso. Itzhak Perlman with a violin. Michelangeli at the piano. Gretzky with the puck.

I don’t play the ad game where everyone else does. I play it behind the scenes. I don’t bluster in meetings trying to charm people to go forward with my ideas. I work in the sanctity of my office, or offsite, sifting through muse and the magic of data. I come in for a landing every now and then, usually with a creative brief fresh from the design team. Sometimes I get the feeling my colleagues don’t know where I have gone until I plop the brief down in an email and shout “right over here.”

Yet I digress…

So why am I not in the office collaborating all “think tank-like” in a brainstorming session, you ask? Eating alone has become a crucial aspect of modern living. The commuter, the businessperson, the student—everyone is doing it these days and according to the Great Britain’s Wellbeing Index nearly a third of adults in major metropolitan cities are eating alone “most or all of the time.” I remember in high school doing things solo was a red flag that you were an irreversible loner, or worse, a Unibomber type. Things are different now, as we’ve become less embarrassed about solo dining habits. Bookings websites report that reservations for one have soared, home delivery of meals is a cottage industry, while communal and cafeteria tables are increasingly popular in restaurants everywhere.

Unaccompanied dietary habits are steering us into unexplored terrain. Group dining has long been a universal human ceremony. Not only is it sensible (more hands make lighter work) but meals have, customarily been used to meet our essential need to connect with others. The multi-generational family meals that were often lore of television ads are going the way of dial-up modems. Take a look at Peggy's pitch about "connecting" for their advertising pitch.

The concept of communal dining existed from the 1960s until present day, but despite the fact that the default number that cookbook recipes serve is still four or six, changes are afoot. Most of us are time-poor and overworked (at least in our own mind). Eating alone, at least for me, has turned into a brilliant space to image campaigns. As I wrote earlier in the year, (and not just Taco Bell) best Big Ideas can be found in the smooth future heartburn of a Taco Bell quesadilla with fire sauce food. 

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The trend for eating alone has contributed to the popularity of hummus and guacamole dips for less polished lone cooks who aren’t seasoned enough to whip up 15-minute meals out of those new bestsellers or get expensive Postmates or DoorDash. The boom in dips can be ascribed to people eating on their own because they are so simple to consume if you’re concurrently in a hurry and eating alone. It’s a combination of getting into a habit of thinking it’s not worth cooking for yourself mixed with comfort.

The splendor of independent dining is that you are free to savor your guilty pleasure without judgment from others. Mealtimes now are an ideal way to have quality time to yourself. It becomes a blurred border between work and pleasure and that makes work seem less like, “work.”

Another thing that may entice you to dine alone is your waistline. Eating with other actually makes you eat more and the bigger your group, the more you eat. Take a  dinner for two—you’ll eat approximately one-third more than you would alone. A party of four? Plan to increase your consumption as much as 75%, because that’s what happens on average.

Trust me and the forty plus pounds I’ve left behind this year while eating alone. Try it and you make just discover the Big Ideas you’ve left on the communal dining table.