Stop quitting.
Success is about doing Whatever It Takes.
For the past several years, my friends and I have built an agency by saying “yes” to a lot of things that we weren’t certain about.
Can you make a 50/50 partnership work? Yes.
Can you hire and work with your friends without destroying the relationships? Yes.
Can you start and grow a company without any debt or investors? Yes.
Can you run a company and be home in time for dinner with your wife (husband)? Yes.
Can you manage a team of 3? Yes. 5? Yes. 12? Yes. 15? Hopefully.
Can you create projects that gain the respect of the industry’s awards community? Yes.
Can you show up again after a day when you know you dropped the ball and let someone important down? Yes.
Can you survive CrossFit? Umm.
We didn’t say “Yes” because we knew we could do it, we said “Yes” because we were committed enough to make sure that we followed through and did it. We didn’t start with the intent to “give it our best shot” — we started with a blind, all-in commitment to do whatever it takes to live up to the promises we made to ourselves.
Several times a year, I go to lunch with a great friend and mentor who’s the Dean of the School of Business at my alma matter. During our last conversation, he asked what I consider the most identifiable weakness of recent graduates I’ve been interviewing for positions at Whiteboard.
I thought about it for a few minutes — knowing that I’d walked out of quite a few recent interviews feeling a general lack of enthusiasm, like something was “just missing” — and then it dawned on me—it’s not obvious that they know how to think critically.
The key to thinking critically is not stopping until you’ve solved the problem or met the objective. It’s really about doing whatever it takes.
Whatever It Takes has been the backbone of our “process” since we started Whiteboard. It’s something we’ve become quietly known for —the “last ten percent” as I’ve coined it in our office. It’s what happens when we look at a project that’s technically at the end of it’s scope and we go back to the whiteboard one more time because we know it’s not our best work. It’s what happens when its 5PM and the sun is setting and we’re staring at our screens just not satisfied with what we’ve created that day. It’s after those moments when we’ve gone that extra mile that we get an email of resounding applause from our client or an award shows up in the mail.
The problem with Whatever It Takes is that it can’t be systematized, optimized, synthesized or proceduralized. It can’t be scoped, planned, or prepared for. It’s not a method, it’s a commitment. It’s whatever it takes.
I’ve watched so many people quit — family members, friends, colleagues—and every time I hear excuses like “I can’t do this” or “I’m not smart enough” or “I don’t have the money/resources,” it’s difficult for me not to lose respect because quitting is a commitment to fail.
If you want to be the best, then commit to whatever it takes. Stop letting the resistance of others get in your way. Listen to wise counsel, not everyone’s counsel, and put your whole heart and soul into it as if it’s the last thing you’ll ever get to work on in life and it’s the one thing people will have to remember you by.
Stop quitting. Do whatever it takes.
