Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Advertising Legend Lee Clow - Creative Genius, Loving, Listening

Episode Date: October 12, 2016

Lee Clow has been making this thing called “advertising” for more than 40 years. He started at Chiat Day in Los Angeles when there were 10 people and 2 accounts and has been there ever since. In This Episode: -Growing up adopted post WWII -Identifying his passion for art early on -The meaning of “applied art” -How the advertising agency shifted to mavericks leading the way -Looking for the things he could become obsessive about -Why he was drawn to advertising -How the idea originated for the Apple Genius Bar -Finding the romance in advertising, looking for the emotional center of a brand -From form to formless – having a disruptive nature -Working closely with Steve Jobs and why “impute” mattered -Why he’s most proud of the relationships along the journey -Behind the scenes of Apple’s “Think Different” campaign -Needing resiliency to overcome the downside of the advertising business -Finding ideas in listening_________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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cliffs of some of the most incredible coastline in California, where there's this incredible juxtaposition, his modesty and creativity overlooking the ocean and the vastness of that beauty. And at the same time being in his dream home, what he describes to be his dream home that he built. And like much of what he's influenced, both in his home and globally, was masterful as well. So there's so much to learn from Lee, from humble beginnings to world shaping a media artist. So let's jump right into this conversation with Lee Clow. Okay, Lee, here we are. I say this often, but this feels like a real treat. And what I say is I'm looking forward to this conversation because I am, but this feels like a real treat to me to spend time with you to understand what you've come to

understand. And you've been touted as a guru and that doesn't come lightly. And I also know that there's so much humility that you have around the work that you've done. I feel like in this conversation, I'm going to have to work and I have to work to pull it out of you. So, you know, maybe we can start with something that will set the trajectory up and maybe you can share how life started for you, what those early years were like, just to get a sense of um the formative experiences and you know what was that like well as i think about oops sorry as i think about growing up and i've been thinking about it more lately.

I realize how incredibly lucky I've been. And I kind of put that across my whole life experience. I've just been, I think, one of the luckiest people. You know, in the history of the world, you imagine how many people have been on this planet, and to have been born in the, at the moment in time I was born, in the part of the world that I was born, I just feel so blessed and lucky. I was adopted by parents who were a bit older, and I was born, you know, right near the beginning of World War II and I was born you know right near the beginning of World War two I was just a baby but my growing up was that time after World

War two the 50s the 60s where so many kind of pure and kind of marvelous uh things were happening in the world first there was the you know now they look back and call it the the naive 50s the ozzie and harriet the nuclear family a mom and a dad and some kids and And the war was over and we were at peace and people, kids, you know, the GI Bill was sending kids to school and could ride your bike without a helmet, you know. It was just this, you know, I grew up in this perfect time. My dad was probably, I guess, lower middle class. You know, he worked for Douglas Aircraft for most of his life after he moved here from Chicago with my mom. Looking for work, actually, you know, because when they moved here, it was the Depression.

And then the war kind of changed everything. And the war industries, you know, because when they moved here, it was the, it was the depression. And then the war kind of changed everything. And the war industries, you know, created jobs. And my dad went to work for Douglas aircraft. Um, but you know, we, we lived in a really modest two bedroom house, one for me and my brother, one for my mom and dad, you know, and I'm a very modest neighborhood. And, you know, what neighborhood was know and I'm a very modest neighborhood and you know what neighborhood was that I'm sorry uh Palms which is near Culver City yes you grow up Angeles you grow up in Los Angeles my whole life you know again born and and lived in in in the perfect place at least for for what from my

vantage point the things that I was able to do and the things that I wanted to do. So you came into the family adopted young? Yeah, as a baby. And my brother was adopted. They adopted two babies. They couldn't have kids. But, you know, I had this hardworking dad who took a lunchbox and walked down the street every day

and got in a carpool and went to Santa Monica to go work at Douglas Aircraft and come home at night with his lunch pail and, you know, dedicated to giving me and my brother as much as they could possibly give us in the context of, you know, not being rich. We had a black and white television, you know, for years we couldn't afford the first color television. But it was such an honest, beautiful, kind of pure upbringing. And as I say, I've been reflecting on it more lately. I think I try and think about why, how I've approached life and approached work. And I think a lot of it has to do with watching my dad walk down the street with that lunch pail and come home every night and make

sure my mom was okay and his kids were okay. And that's kind of all his life revolved around was being a father and a provider. He was fairly quiet. He wasn't, you know, he wasn't an athlete or a philosopher. He was just a good man who took care of his family. And I think I ended up realizing what responsibility looked like and what a work ethic looked like. And so I was lucky enough to, you know, have that kind of family and then and then i discovered surfing in the beginning of you know the famous surfing era the 60s the early 60s the the gidget movie that that told the world what surfing what this what was going on in california and the actual surf movies that celebrated a bunch of guys that I grew up with and hung out with.

This kind of free-spirited thing that is the California lifestyle. Surfing, I kind of believe, is the nucleus of kind of fanciful extreme sports. The idea that if you can do it, there's a more radical, more interesting way to do it than they used to do it. From roller skating to skateboards, to bicycles turn into BMX, to skis turn into snowboards. I mean, I believe all of that all of that kind of, I like to

believe that surfing is kind of the genesis of so much of that extreme sports mentality. You know, I'm not going to disagree. I think the same thing. And I want to pull on that a bit with you and that idea because surfing is definitely much of the ethos of surfing is about progression and seeing how far and how deep you can go and how radical you can do something. And at the same time, be connected to an unfolding and unpredictable environment. Each wave is uniquely different of itself and you have to be connected, but also push. And so there's, there's nature and there's human involved in it. And that intersection between the two teaches much. And so I, I, I knew that you served and I want to, I want to just put a placeholder here for the first time

I came to your, um, your headquarters in Culver city at Shia day, TW, uh, TB, Shia day, T-W-A Shia Day. And, but before we get to there, let's go back. So dad was, dad was responsible, hardworking, caring man that was dedicated to the wellbeing of his family. Did you, did you always have the sense of gratitude that you're expressing now? No, I'm sure. I'm sure I didn't't appreciate it or understand it the way I do now. Early on, I pointed a lot to my mom because she was incredibly loving to both me and my brother but she was the one who always you know encouraged me uh my dad again was kind of this more silent provider kind of

rock you know center of the family but my mom was the one that kind of just kept believing in me and pushing me and not letting me be less than confident and early on one of my teachers told my mom that I had some ability to draw you know because you all go in the room. Okay, what age is this? What age is this? It was like first grade, you know, right after kindergarten when they give you poster paints and you get to paint pictures for an hour in elementary school. So in first grade, you know, you paint a boat. and I guess I was smart enough to make the smoke coming out of the smokestack go the right direction the front of the boat was this way

and the smoke was going that way so somebody decided I had some kind of visual sensitivity sensibilities and some artistic talent and this one teacher told my mom, I always remember it was Mrs. Rice, told my mom that, well, encourage his artistic ability because he has some talent. And my mom never, never gave up on encouraging my art. And my dad kind of thought it was kind of dopey. Like he didn't know whether, well, he's got to learn how to make a living and he's I had to I had to pay buy my own first car and I had to have a job have a paper route you know it wasn't wasn't like they were gonna give me stuff and he worried if in school all I'm studying is this art thing whether I'm gonna be ready to you know go make a living out in the world so he you know but he usually kind of just

gave in to my mom who you know kind of that was part of part of his drill too yeah but my mom just encouraged the art thing and and i liked it and did it all the time anyway so you, whether it was drawing on notebooks when you're sitting in the class, supposed to be listening to the teacher about something else, to taking art classes, to, you know, kind of evolving when I finally got out of high school and had to figure out what to do when I went to junior college. Again, take art classes. I'm taking art classes and what have you. But my mom pushed the art thing. And again, I didn't know what the art thing meant.

Actually, I remember in the seventh grade, you were supposed to write a paper on kind of what do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to do when you grow up? And at that time, I was kind of fascinated with animation. Walt Disney was building Disneyland out in Anaheim in the 50s. And I was fascinated with Walt Disney. Here's this artist who commercialized his artistic talent into a dream, into a vision, into a whole idea, not just a mouse, but all the things that was Walt Disney's vision and dream kind of seemed to be pushing me in that direction. And so animation and becoming an animation artist was the thing I did in my paper on it. And you had to write a letter to a company and, you know,

ask for information, you know, kind of teach you how to approach business. So I wrote a letter to the Walt Disney Company saying, I'm, you know, 11 years old and I want to be an animator someday. And I got a nice letter back from them that my mom kept for a hundred years. And I don't think I know where it is now, but my mom kept everything. But, you know, a letter back from Walt Disney and I did a storyboard for a, for an animated film for part of that class. Was it a letter from Mr. Disney or was it from the corporation? Probably, you know, the PR department or the department that answers kids' letters. So they, that department, so they like you. So, okay. So you had this interest. You demonstrated some sort of acuity to art.

But you also had an interest where you kept drawing. You were interested in it. And then you saw a mentor or somebody that was doing it at large scale and building something that was amazing and beautiful and taking it beyond the page, if you will, from animation. And that, so we got some combinations going right now that I think is building what I'm thinking about your framework. Reliable, hardworking, imagination, an interest in drawing, but bigger than what was going to be on state, or I'm sorry, on paper. Yeah, for some reason, you know, you have an interest in art, but I never had much of an interest in being an artist, like a fine artist.

That didn't seem to be the thing that was most interesting to me. That's why this applied artist term that I kind of used to define the people that kind of molded my thinking was the model. Walt Disney was an applied artist. Architects are applied artists. They're people that work, take their artistic talents, but then apply them to something that needs to be done. And part of it can be your own vision and your own passion, but part of it ends up being kind of a business responsibility. So Walt Disney, he loved drawing and art, but he'd made animated films so he could make a living. So he made Mickey Mouse films that kind of made him famous that then gave him the resources to then take his imagination even further and create Disneyland and television shows and all those kinds of things.

Did you have the chance to spend time with him? Walt Disney? No. No. But he captured something that fueled you. Again, I don't know. If you look back at the 50s, there was a weekly TV show called, I think it was called Disneyland. But it was the Walt Disney Hour. Disney one week showing you how they did Snow White, the film, and showing you storyboards, and going in the back and seeing the artists doing the painting. Then they spent years,

once a month, they'd show you how Disneyland was developing. They showed you the models of Jungleland and the castle. And so there was almost this tutorial that was this TV show during the 50s about Walt Disney. And they told stories about the early Mickey Mouse animation and Donald Duck. so there was a whole history of Walt Disney in the form of a TV show that I watched religiously. Matter of fact, I remember it conflicted with my scout meetings. So it was like a tug of war, whether I got to watch Walt Disney or go to my boy scout. You know, okay. I'm laughing right now because Boy Scouts and Walt Disney. So it creates a certain image, right? And then let's go back to that placeholder I had, which was first day into your office. And you've got a big pirate flag hanging like right at the entry.

And I know that you – okay. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but no, not, not, but so talk, talk us through that balance between Walt Disney, Apple pie, mom, you know, boy scouts. We left out a piece to get to the pirate flag. I'm sure we left out a lot. No. Well, I'm going to go back to it. Yeah. Yeah.

I love the sixties. Then I'm surfing. Surfing was considered a rebellious thing. Yeah, Inegades. And then, as you know how the 60s evolved, the rock and roll and the opposing the Vietnam War. And there was a rebellious cut. So you take the 50s, this pure decade. Then you take the 60s, which is this rebellious decade. And I'm surfing and rock and roll is evolving. And the Vietnam War is kind of making people kind of stand up and say, you know, there shouldn't be a black bathroom and a white bathroom and a black water fountain and a white water fountain and Martin Luther King, you know, is changing shit.

And so I have, that's another whole piece of, you know, of the building blocks. So being rebellious, being kind of a pirate was and i i didn't identify as pirates back then it was being you know it was being a rebel rock and roll surfing and all that stuff but then when you get into business and you start thinking about okay i'm going to be in business but i don't want to just kind of conform to the way business is supposed to operate. So that's the next kind of rebellious piece of how I evolved. The advertising business in the 60s was changed dramatically. You know, the TV show Mad Men that everybody was watching and talking about, which portrayed kind of the 50s

and early 60s advertising where Madison Avenue and everybody in suits and ties and smoking and, you know, kind of the three martini lunch and all that kind of business acumen. The business was changed dramatically when Bill Burnback started doing advertising that was very different. And I don't know if you want to hear about this, but it was very different. And I don't know if you want to hear about this, but it's very interesting.

I'd love anything that's a game changer. For me, you represent game changing. Well, and I only kind of drafted off a bunch of game changers. Yeah. I mean, that's what kind of built all of my energy. So here's another. I admired Walt Disney. I admired Lance Carson, a surfer, and Mickey Dora. Now, Mickey Dora, you probably know that story, but Mickey Dora is one of the real pirates.

Anyway, but then here's a Sky Bull Burnback. In the 60s, when advertising was a bunch of kind of white Ivy League, you know, college tie kind of business people, here comes Bill Bernbach, who's Jewish and didn't go to necessarily the right schools, and he gets the Volkswagen account, Volkswagen, a car designed by Adolf Hitler, and a Jewish advertising agency takes it and makes the car famous and successful in America

and changes the face of advertising by virtue of the simple, smart, amazing advertising they did for this ugly little car designed by Adolf Hitler. And it was intelligent. It was humorous. It was brave. It was breaking the rules. And that started a whole wave of creative energy in the advertising business that, again, was the magnet for me and for us and for a York and then in the rest of the country were a bunch of mongrels, were a bunch of mavericks. They weren't the Ivy League college guys. They were Jews and Italians and Greeks and women, you know, for God's sake, actually, Mary Wells formed one of the great

agencies in the history of advertising in the 60s when women weren't supposed to, you know, be, you know, creating advertising empires. How do you attribute her success? What was the thing that she did really well? I always believed that, again, my blessed good fortune, I found the advertising industry right when it was in this shift to, hey, if you're creative and you have an idea and have some energy, anybody can succeed in advertising. It didn't have a rule book that said you had to graduate from this college and have this degree. That was one of the barriers that was broken down is if you are good

and have ideas, you can succeed in advertising. Some of the great early copywriters were women, Phyllis Robinson and Mary Wells and George Lois, who's Greek, and Amarati and Pyrrhus, who are Italian. I mean, it was one of the early industries that kind of opened up to anybody who's got talent, that kind of a meritocracy that was even colorblind to some extent just kind of allowed anybody and everybody to to believe that this is a this is a business you can be in so so I'm out in California and there's agencies starting to pop up in LA and San Francisco and Portland and in Minneapolis that are also doing very rebellious kind of brave work that

immediately attracted me because I got drafted because I was surfing and I didn't keep my college credits up. So I had to spend a couple of years in the army during Vietnam and blessed with some college education. So they didn't send me to Vietnam to shoot people. And that's where I kind of got a little bit more kind of politically astute is when I'm in the army, seeing these kids going to this stupid war that politicians are not, you know, prosecuting properly but letting these kids go over there and die anyway but you know that little window I spent a couple years in the army I always felt again was even good life experience

considering I didn't have to shoot anybody and I didn't get killed but when I when I out of the army, I had to figure out what I'm going to do with this art thing because I had just been taking art classes and design classes and admired Walt Disney. Was I going to be an animator? Was I going to be an illustrator? What was your vibe like? Was it edgy? was it straight down the middle was it curious my like the way that you saw the world the way you conducted yourself in this high school college age i think i i wasn't an i don't think i was an edgy kid or an edgy person i i kind of intellectually admired brave, courageous, but I think I approached it more like a nerd than a cool guy. You know, I never consider be brave and rebellious. I didn't want to be straightforward.

So if you had the chops, you wanted to take a shot. Yeah. You wanted to do something a little different. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, I met my wife right at this moment in time. She's 12 years older than me.

Everybody thought that was pretty crazy. But I said, I want to marry this lady. And everybody thought, wow, that's kind of nuts. So we're married like 48 years. So that was kind of not doing what you're supposed to do. So on that thread, this was not part of what I maybe thought we're going to talk about. Well, I'm just roaming around. No, I love this.

But it's all the stuff that makes you into who you are. And that framework is the part that is really intriguing because it's going to set up an understanding for how you've cultivated your craft to be able to influence the world ultimately. And so on the marriage piece, it's not easy and it's wonderful. And, um, that not easy part just means that there's work. It's not like it's effortless. That's been my experience. I've been married 20 some years, um, married my high school sweetheart. And, um, it's been amazing. And we've, we've hit brick walls and we've hit pitfalls and alligator pits, we've done all the stuff and mistakes that, well, not egregious mistakes, but mistakes that people can make. And what wisdom or pearls of insight from being a half a century almost married would you share and that I could you know I think I think a couple of things one I grew up in this family where I watched my father with this sense of responsibility and

love from my mother that there was no there was no concept of well if this doesn't work out we'll go do something else so one I learned notion, if you make a commitment to somebody, you make a commitment. I think one of the, you know, now at my age, just looking at what are my strengths, one of my strengths is I'm an incredibly reliable, responsible person. If I say I'm going to do something, I do it. And that's how I conducted my business life, but that's also how I conducted my personal life. I made a commitment to Eileen. And as far as I'm concerned, it's my responsibility till I die to take care of her because that's kind of how I grew up and what I saw and observed and what I admired. And the other piece of that long-lasting relationship is, and maybe again, like I say,

I've been blessed with all the stars of the line my whole life. I found the person that I could spend my whole life with and be committed to my whole life and I couldn't have done what I did without having a partner that trusted me and I trusted back. I didn't, I didn't, our life wasn't a bunch of kind of personal travails and and her needs and my, somehow our needs blended perfectly. So I could commit a lot of energy to the work I was doing. And she understood my need to do that. And I understood. So having the perfect partner is, you know, again, I don't think you can preordain it, but man, if you can find it, it's pretty special part of life. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family,

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Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. Where I feel it when you talk. And I don't know if that's just because we're sitting right next to each other and I can hear it in your voice and feel it in your being. Where does that come from, that gratitude and the love? Where do you feel that in your body when you speak of Eileen and really just gratitude in general, but in this case right now, just Eileen? I don't know. Sometimes I try and get a little kind of psychoanalytical and try and figure some of this stuff out. And sometimes I think, could it have something to do with being adopted that I need to make a commitment and have a commitment back

and have that kind of love be a special part of my life because even though my parents who raised me were my parents i i never had any interest in whoever my biological parents were never no no i mean i almost felt it would be disloyal to give a shit about the people who gave me up when these people gave their whole life to raise me and give me everything they could possibly give me. And at the same time, I wonder, because of that kind of strange I was adopted thing, is that why I'm more committed to loving somebody and having them love me back, you know, in terms of my personal

relationship yeah that's a little kind of pseudo psychoanalysis that who knows if it's right or not but it is it is it is very much part of my success in life that i've loved and been loved you know i i don't if you if you make all the money in the world and you're not loved and been loved, then you missed a whole important thing. Lots of money will not do that. Lots of attention will not do that. And that's one of the traps for elite athletes that has stopped short of mastery. And they're all about achievement and success

as opposed to the longer but it seems like with athletes it's because because so much of this stuff comes when they're so young that's exactly right yeah appreciate all the things so they they almost squander their their success because it all happens in this window when they're athletically capable. So if you've got to figure it all out between 18 and 30, that's pretty hard. And I think what happens is that, if this is of interest to you, is that they foreclose their identity in the years that they're supposed to explore their identity. So you remember your formative years between like 12 and 21 or 12 and 18 in that range where you're just, am I punk? Am I rock and roll? Am I reggae? Am I classical? What is the essence of how I approach the world? And you got to try some hats on, some different types of music to

figure out where that alignment is. And they foreclose their identity, the talented ones. They foreclose. They say, I'm an athlete. I'm a basketball player. I am a musician. And that's it. And that's really difficult when you go into your later years, which requires you to be so much more than just a doer. And at the same time, we're talking about mastery, we're talking about,

you know, achieving a high level at what you do, and athletes and musicians very often do it. For whatever reason, at the same time, I had a, maybe a more fluid way of kind of finding my way I'm pretty obsessed with once I found what I wanted to do I was pretty channeled and pretty focused into doing that it wasn't like I was still kind of wandering around curious about yeah I don't get that from you at all yeah so when i finally just like when i've you know i i kind of knew i wanted to love and be loved and when i found eileen i said this is the person i want to spend my life with well she's older than you and you know your parents didn't think it was a good idea. I don't care. This is a person. When I found advertising and this thing that finally kind of triggered my passion, then I was obsessed with being in advertising and doing this advertising thing as well as I

could possibly do it. So I guess I was looking for those things that I could become obsessive about or be totally dedicated to. In other words, you know, going back again, I surfed and I was a good surfer, but I wasn't a great surfer. And I, for whatever reason, I guess I knew that even though I loved surfing the sport, I knew that I couldn't become obsessed with surfing because I wasn't good enough. Or I didn't think I could be good enough to be an obsessed surfer and live my whole life kind of doing that thing. I was looking for the thing that I thought I could do well enough that I could become obsessed about it. What a really cool thought. I want to get back to love in a minute, but how did you know that, geez, I've got 15 questions.

I want to know about obsession, what that really looks like for you, because obsession can cut and it can be really dangerous. But I want to understand what obsession means to you. And I also want to know, how did you know that surfing was not the thing that you could do at the depth that you wanted to do something? Well, I didn't make a conscious decision that surfing was something I didn't want to do. It didn't pull at me saying, I'm going to spend the rest of my life becoming the best surfer I can possibly be. For whatever reason, it didn't have that draw.

I loved it, and it kind of spoke to who I wanted to be in terms of this rebellious, I don't want to do what everybody else does kind of character and a lot of my friends. But it just, I don't know, you know, what happens when something kind of just clicks in terms of that's what I want to do. But somehow, and again, going back to my art, you know, you could be a designer, an illustrator, an animator. You could do a lot of things with this art that I had been studying in school. And I never graduated from Long Beach State. I never could even afford to go to Art Center, but I had always been doing this art thing.

For some reason, I found advertising, and I looked at it. Again, this term I use, this applied artist thing. It says, you know what's interesting about this advertising thing is it's art, but it's words. It's storytelling. It's creative and imaginative, but it's also business and has a responsibility to results. And we didn't describe it back then, but ultimately has to do with becoming part of culture, becoming kind of a cultural force, as opposed to just designers.

Graphic designers could do annual reports and posters and really nice, but somehow advertising was about ideas and, and, and kind of impacting culture. So for whatever reason, I looked at advertising and kind of saw the opportunity to kind of use a lot of mental and creative abilities that were maybe more limited in other artists you know texts that a quote graphic artist could take so i just was fascinated by the – somehow it just triggered. I like ideas.

I like these words. I wasn't a writer. I didn't know from writing, but I like the words that went with the pictures. Again, go back to Bill Bernbeck and look at the headlines and the ads they did for Volkswagen. You know, the ideas and the words were as important as the pictures. So there's a really easy bridge to think different campaign that you created. But I want to pause for just a moment before we get there. What is your art?

Because you've created campaigns. Maybe that's not the right word, but you've created images and ideas that have shifted how we conceptualize what's possible. And you've done it with brands that have been interested in you pursuing and pushing that. And I'm sure you've got a whole history of campaigns that you're like, that one just paid the bills. I did what they exactly told me, but maybe not. I don't know if you had this really hardcore line that I'm only going to do things that move the needle globally. But maybe there was a business kind of play in there as well for you.

But what is your art? Is it matching words and ideas? Is it illustrating and drawing? What I've come to describe as, and I didn't necessarily think of it this way when I started doing it, but I think the totality of what I do is storytelling. It's the ability to tell a brand story in a way that people will love it, trust it, be interested in it. And, you know, all those things may lead to buying something they make. But the, but the kind of the totality of what's fun about what I do is storytelling. But it's, but storytelling, as it's been evolving, is, is lots of different things tell the story of a brand so all those things

interest me the t-shirt that a brand you know uh when i grew up when i grew up surfing wearing a jacobs t-shirt jacobs was the surfboard j Jacob's made me a surfboard for my 65th birthday. You have a Hap Jacob's surfboard. Yeah. Unbelievable. It's in the other room. Well, he made it for me for my 65th birthday. kind of something that I had wanted to be part of my, who I was in terms of surfing.

But that was, that was brand storytelling. That was Hap Jacobs telling his brand story through the young kids that wore his, you know, Jacob's surf team t-shirts and his boards. of course, the logo that was on the board, the logo that was on the store. And I'll segue into a story that, you know, will fit at some

point in your conversation. When we did the stores for Apple, we were sitting around talking about the Apple store. And I recited this whole thing about Jacob's surfboards. And I wanted to be part of that brand. And what we do is we'd surf all morning in South Bay. And then we'd go up to the Jacob's surf shop and we'd hang out in the store and get to know the shapers and get to know Hap if he's there and talk about surfing. And the Genius Bar that's part of the Apple Store was born out of that conversation about wanting to be so much a part of the brand that you can go talk to the kind of the purest, you know, perpetrators of that brand. And going to hanging out in the Jacobs surf shop and talking to the shaper was kind of like going to the Apple store and getting an appointment with the genius bar to talk about, you know, I can do photos better or whatever. Wow. So this is what, okay. I can see you spinning that conversation and, and with, um,

Steve jobs and, and whomever in class to be able to, to weave in the love and the experience of being able to be close to the brand and falling in love with it. I had a surf. Um, I also grew up in the South Bay. And do you remember competition surf? Do you remember that? So it was right down in... You're younger than me. Yeah. So it was right down on the beaches. It was a block off the water and it was a surf shop. And that was the place that we hung out. And it was competition surf. And oddly enough, because competition was something oddly named, because competition was something oddly named because competition was something that was not really cool in the surf community at that time, but they were making a stamp that were about competition and being connected to the shaper and being connected to that, that small little tribe of people that loved it was really important. But I never took it a step further to think about this is what brand stands for.

I never went there. How did you, how did you? Well, it, for, for whatever reason, I, the, the, the, the brand building that I admired when I was getting into the advertising business, I started to realize that a brand is kind of like a person. If it's an interesting, smart person that you trust and you like, then you might want to buy what they make. It seemed to be a logic that made sense to me. about your car that gets 35 miles to the gallon and uh and it costs uh you know 1300 which was a volkswagen or a honda car at the time uh it needed to have kind of more more of a story more texture to it uh one of the moments when i when i early in in my advertising career that I got excited into it was we got the

Yamaha motorcycle account. And motorcycles are a lot like surfing. Lots of people love motorcycles. When you have a motorcycle, you're a bit of a rebel if you had a motorcycle but another piece of what was fun about this the total story of of motorcycles was competition was motocross and road racing you know the kenny roberts and bob hanna which are people of the past that you may not even know who they are but bob hanna was a motocross racer bro Brock Glover, and Kenny Roberts was one of the first famous motorcycle road racers that dragged his knee when he ran corners. in extreme sports and stuff like that, built into a brand that wants to sell everybody motorcycles, you know, even if you just want a motorcycle to go to work. If it has a little bit of this romance

built into its story, it's kind of cooler to ride a Yamaha to work than it is to ride a Honda to work. I mean, so I don't know, that's where I learned that the fun of telling brand stories is usually finding the things about it that are exciting or interesting or funny or that make a brand into a personality that you like and admire. Yamaha had a pretty strong racing heritage, and that kind of built into how we told the Yamaha story. You mentioned personal... Just doing an ad for a 350cc motorcycle for $1,200, and here's the list of features is no fun. Yeah, it feels dry. Advertising needs to be more than just kind of the left brain, the logical. It needs to have this emotional piece attached to it. So you would blend, you would take a brand and try to personalize it

so that people could have a relation. Find the story. Romance. Okay. And, okay, I don't want to get away from love because I know how important it is, but let's keep going. Relationships seem to be really important to you. Your art is helping others have a relationship with a brand. Part of your mission in life was to be able to have deep relationships in your own life. This idea of relationship seems to be a thread that you're really good at.

How do you get to the center of the romance or the center of the story? Is there a process that you go through to get the person or get the brand? Well, you know, there's lots of people that try and make the advertising business into some kind of a science. They want to use focus groups and research, and now they want to use, you know, data, big data, and all these ways of trying to figure out. Neuromarketing and all of that. All the kind of logic of marketing. But I'm much more believing that what we do is an art form more than a science or more than a kind of a left brain process. So trying to, trying to find the story, trying to find the, the, the story, the, the idea for the brand is the fun part to me. And it's, and it's looking for the emotional center of a brand and a lot of brands don't have an emotional center and then sometimes we have to

try and invent an emotional center for for a brand or all right i'll tell you another story this is gonna be too long for your radio show no no no we're in uh we went to work for Pedigree Pet Food, Pedigree Dog Food. And it's made by Mars. And we got the account. And it's, quote, a packaged goods account. They sold dog food in grocery stores. And the people that go into packaged goods usually are very left brain, you know, marketing trained. And

kind of their logic is the new easy open package or the new flavor, or these were all the tools that they believed were the ways you sold dog food. And I said, yeah, but people love their dogs. What if the strategy for pedigree was for the love of dogs? And what if we tried to prove that we were a brand more committed to and loving of dogs than maybe the competition in terms of hopefully how fastidiously we create our products and how good the products should be for animals. But how about other gestures that kind of prove that we are a dog loving brand? And there were luckily some people high enough, this wasn't in their DNA. This was something we invented for them in terms of could you have an emotional center. And luckily there were some people high enough up in the company who basically said, I like this.

Go try and make this real. So we wrote a whole book on being a dog loving company. We discovered that none of their offices, they're a worldwide brand, none of their offices allowed dogs in the company. And we basically said, you have to let dogs come to your office. If you're a dog loving company, dogs had, dogs have... And they actually, there was enough clout up high up in the company that they changed leases and moved their offices in some parts of the world so they could bring dogs into the office. And then we basically said, you should be about, they had a longstanding contract with the, what's the dog show in New York? Westminster? Yes.

Yeah, Westminster Dog Show. So they pedigree, they advertise on Westminster. But we said, but these are the haves. What if you made a big part of your brand the have-nots, the dogs that are in shelters, the dogs that need homes, the dogs that are left out? So they made rescue dogs into a huge part of their brand proposition. So whenever they went on Westminster,

they would basically talk about the dogs that needed homes as opposed to all these fancy dogs that had perfume and, you know, their own limos and, and whatever. It was kind of the, and they rose, they raised millions of dollars for rescue dogs, which they still have a foundation that we lost the account that which is all another part of the advertising business that's stupid but uh but there is millions of dollars to give to rescue dogs but more interestingly when they started doing this

rest they sold more pedigree dog food during the times we were talking about rescue dogs than when we were talking about a new flavor or a new easy open package. This sold more dog food for them that they had a story, that they had a passion. We love dogs. And the way I ended up articulating it, I went to a board meeting one time. I said, if you can prove to people you love dogs as much as they do they're going to buy your dog food that's simple it was that simple so how do you get to that we had to actually find the emotional opportunity because they didn't see okay so you're looking for the emotional center of a brand or a person and what's true and pulling that out of them.

Yeah. Is that okay? Yeah. And is there a way that you clear out the noise and the clutter or is it, is it more simple? Like you value the counterculture pirate punk approach that you see things just a little off center. And that's just the filter that you relentlessly go through.

Well, I like to think that breaking the rules is kind of part of what we're supposed to do, this pirate thing. And there's another word that's part of our company now, and it has to do with my French partner who joined me on my journey kind of halfway through when Jay Shiat left the company. We then became part of this holding company that combined us with a French agency named BDDP and Jean-Marie Drew, who actually I actually knew before we got merged together. He had written a couple of books on the subject which he coined called disruption. And disruption is his process, is his belief, is his idea of what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to find the status quo and we're supposed to punch a hole in it. We're supposed to disrupt the

you know there's a word for it that I'm not going to think of now. The convention. Find the convention and then figure out how do we go 180 degrees away from the convention if we want to stand out and be interesting to people. I love it. It's one of the ways I think about, it's not the only way, but this concept from form to formless. You have to understand form to break it, to go to that creative imagination, that expression on whatever canvas that you have chosen to be your craft.

And so from form, convention, to the disruptive process. And you have to be pretty understanding of the convention to then disrupt it properly. And by the way, just a tangent, because I've always loved that thought too, that to create jazz music, you better understand music before you go create jazz. And to create abstract or avant-garde art and paintings, you better understand the basics of art before you have the right to disrupt it. And I always kind of call bullshit on people I saw in school who decided they were going to go straight to abstract art when they didn't really understand art. A hundred percent. And I'm nodding my head right there with you because one of the things I've seen, so a wrestler of all people taught

me this idea, wrestler, like a traditional wrestler, Olympic wrestling. And he talked about, I said, why are you so good at what you do? And he said, I know the full alphabet now. And now I'm putting words together that people haven't seen yet, but I know the alphabet and I know I have a command of the alphabet and I understand vowels and consonants. And now I'm putting them together in unconventional ways. I said, oh, there it is. That's the formless. So having that base, that being said, what is your base? Is it draw? Is it drawing? Or is it ideas? There's something really special about how you can get to the center of an emotional-

It always seemed to be drawing. It always seemed to be, know mrs rice told my mom i could i should pursue my artistic talent but i don't think i'm a i never thought i was a great artist but when i really found what i loved it was finding this this storytelling place words and pictures yeah i still i still argue that a picture is worth a thousand words coming from the art side but i think ultimately you're trying to you're trying to say something you're trying to tell stories as opposed to just the ability to draw something it's the to, to tell a story that excites me. So you've gone from big, the biggest brands in the world and one that probably most of us, um, are in love with, man, it's too strong of a word, um, have an affinity for Apple brands and using

some of that technology on a regular basis. most of us, not all, but, but can you do the same for the, the third tier brands, the small startups, the, maybe the, the, the just momentum based companies. And can you also do the same thing for individuals? Cause I hear that thought about individual brands. And I'm wondering if there's a connective tissue between those three for you. Well, first of all, I just told you a story about a brand that didn't, you know, it still isn't a change the world brand, but we found an emotional center and, and took them to a place that was, as far as I'm concerned, higher ground than just selling dog food. My thought was they had a big budget, though.

Well, they had money. But go back. When I met Steve Jobs, he was 23 years old. He was making the Apple II. He and Wozniak just thought computers could be important someday. So we started with the, we want to change the world, but we don't have all the money in the world. We just have an idea. And then I've got to pass the credit immediately to the fact that I happened to meet up with Steve Jobs, who happened to be a 23-year-old who knew at 23 that he wanted to change the world. He knew Wozniak loved computers, and he loved making the computers that his other computer friends thought was really cool.

Steve looked at computers and said, this is going to change everything. And he knew it. important to, that the technology was not just, it was not just some kind of science project. This was something that was going to change how human beings lived and did things. I mean, computers were already doing things on a kind of a big giant corporate scale, big computers in the basement of big companies. I mean, I was fascinated with the movie about the machine that decoded the Nazi code during World War II. That was the first computer. The reality is that was the first computer in the world,

and it did something pretty important in terms of, and I still have no idea how computers work, but how that thing figured out how to break the nazi code is as mystifying as as how i can google you on my on my phone and find out everything i want to know about you including your wife's name so it's it's all i just think it's all magic but i met up with this guy, Steve Jobs, when he was this little tiny company, but with this belief that what he wanted to do was to deliver this technology to people's lives because he thought it could make their lives better and more creative. And I actually have to admit that, you know, it just kind of brought out all my storytelling juices, because here's this kid that understood that when we started doing work with him, that everything Apple did had to be part of their story. He cared about everything.

He cared about the package. He cared about the manual that you read that taught you how to use the computer because he didn't want it to be daunting. I happen to believe, and I had nothing to do with this, that his intuition, his creative genius beyond the computer thing was a marketing genius. He named that company Apple. And there's all kinds of, you know, kind of mythology about the day he said, let's call it Apple. But somehow, intuitively, he understood that this brand was going to make technology accessible to people all over the world. And it couldn't be named something daunting or put offish

or, or unlikable. And he came up with something as simple as Apple because he wanted to be that accessible, because he knew he wanted everybody to trust it and like it and want to use it. And that's pure intuition. Storytelling intuition, marketing intuition, whatever you want to call it but between whatever was driving me in terms of what I loved about what I did and meeting up with this kid who somehow understood that the way not only what he did but the way we told people about it was really important just totally totally you know

riled me up and and got me i almost was trying to think of the word. What happens when you get old? You think of something, but there's a word out there. I was hanging on every moment. I don't know if I'm going to find it. get old you you think of something but but there's a word out there i know i know i want it but i don't know if i'm gonna find but he he basically needed wanted demanded the stuff that i love to do and to a lot of people he was very put off he was very he made a lot of people uncomfortable because it was very demanding. And at the same time, it just, it just drew me in like, like a magnet. I just, I wanted to do what he wanted to do. You know, as much as he did.

And that's why we had a long lasting relationship and trust because he knew that I believed and wanted to, wanted to tell the story as badly as he did. But we kind of, I could deliver things that he wanted, but he taught me things as well because how he believed that, you know, this package, we've got to use five color printing on this package, because it says something about who we are. He taught me the word impute. He basically said, everything we do, impute something about who we are. So everything we do has to be has to tell a

story has to be part of the brand story and and I I believe that's the world we live in now is every brand has to understand that everything they do is an ad everything they do is a message everything they do is part of their story so there's no like here's the public company and here's the, we won't tell anybody about this because of the internet and everything. People can find out anything and everything about who brands are and who companies are. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines

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Do you see that people are personal brands? Is that how you see people? Well, I don't think everybody's a personal brand. Some people don't need to be personal brands. They kind of live a little more modest lives. But I think when you get out into kind of the public realm and people have some kind of a public persona that has to do with their life, then they are brands. And they are, you know, whether it's a Michael Jordan or a LeBron James, you know, kind of different eras, they're brands.

By the way, Nike is one of the, you know, the great brand builders of all time. And it basically gave, gave, uh, gave basically this opening to, to these personal brands that are athletes. And I know you do a lot of things with athletes, the, the, the branding of athletes, I think for for the most part, came out of Nike, although Bjorn Borg was Fila early on. And we actually went back and kind of reminded the world that Jesse Owens was an Adidas athlete when he went to the Berlin Olympics and fucked over Adolf Hitler. Yeah.

And basically, you know, kind of broke down some barriers. So athletes have the power to be brands. Movie stars have the power to be brands. Musical artists have the power to be brands. Politicians, I guess, have the power to be brands. What is your brand? Oh, I don't know the power to be brands. What is your brand? Oh, I don't know if I have a brand. I mean, well, I mean, that's a whole interesting... I went to work for Chiat Day. And again, back to this obsessing. I wanted to work for Chiat Day

because it was the place in LA that was doing this brave, you know, let's take the spirit of breaking the rules that's coming from New York and let's be one of those really creative ad agencies. Only it was here on the West Coast because I didn't want to move to New York. I didn't want to leave the Pacific Ocean and all the things that were in my life. So I joined Chiat Day, again, like I married my wife, and I've been there my whole life. A lot of people jump around and move from agency to agency, they learn stuff, and then they parlay it into a bigger salary or a bigger job or bigger. I just stayed at this one place. And a lot of times during the course of my career, people ask me, well, why don't you want

to open your own agency? Why don't you want your name on something? Why don't you want? And I kind of felt like I built a brand called Chiat Day. I mean, people who I care about know what my role and responsibility for the company Chiat Day that's turned into TBWA Chiat Day is. They know the role that I played in that. And now I have the Media Arts Lab, which I was the founder of. So I have little things that are the children of who I am. So I'm going to oversimplify. Is it a humble game changer? Is it a humble guru?

Yeah. A humble pirate? I mean, I kind of basically say, well, I'm an art director. Yeah, the art director. Yeah. Yeah. The art director. But, but, but, you know, kind of parlaying art director into a lot of amazing stuff that lots of people, I think, you know, wish they could have done from the storytelling on behalf of Apple and Steve Jobs to being part of a company that's still pretty vibrant and positive. And a lot of people that have worked for me who, I mean, that's one of the proudest things

in my business life is for whatever reason, and again, I don't know if this was conscious, or maybe it was conscious that I've got a lot of people who are almost like my children, all the people that I've influenced over the years with my career. And when I became the conductor of the orchestra, as opposed to a musician, was kind of when I found my most comfortable place. I'm really good at helping people get better and helping people be their best. And in this business, most of them move on and they go either form companies or go to work for other companies. But I'm kind of most proud

of the fact that there's a lot of people out there that love me for the fact that I help them be better. And that gives me as much pride as the work I've done, that I think most all the people that I've come in contact with in my career still like me and some of them actually love me. And again, maybe that goes back to that love thing. I love this, though. I really do because it is not lost on me in the depth of this conversation now, how much you really care about love and relationships and

getting to the essence, the emotional essence of a brand, but you see it as a person and that connectivity. It is beautiful. And I still am hungry to understand how, like, how is it that you operate? Do you, cause I like, maybe I could, well, I, okay. Again, 15 questions for you, but let me, let me stick with this one thread on my way over. I emailed or text Jimmy Smith. So Jimmy is how you and I met. And what is he? Six foot three, six foot four dreadlocks down to the mid back, African American, creative genius, loud, amazing, wonderful human being.

When he first wrote me a letter, he thought I was Chinese. I want to meet this Chinese dude in Los Angeles. That sounds like, oh my God. You know, and so we've had wonderful conversations about race and, you know, his growing ups and wonderful stuff. So anyways, I text him. I said, you know, what's the burning question you have for Lee? And he says, Lee, what exactly is the nincompoop forest? And if he gives you a polite answer, ask him for more. Well, actually, the nincompoop forest isn't something that I authored.

It was a talk that a guy named Mark Fenske gave. Mark now teaches at the V at the vcu at the at the advertising center uh but he was a creative guy in the business that was kind of bolder and braver than me he was always breaking the rules almost to the point where he was unsaleable by virtue of him pushing the envelope. And he made this speech one day, this talk one day, and he basically likened having great ideas actually see the light of day. It was like traveling through the Ninh Kien Pung forest. And he basically said, you know everywhere they're their clients they're the

people you work with they're the they're the director you hire they're the nincompoops are all around you and if you can make it through the nincompoop forest and an idea actually sees the light of day you've you've you've accomplished something i guess he also likened it to the uh in uh star wars where going through the forest on the on the on the jet cycles and avoiding the trees and everything that's what he basically says like trying to get an idea through anyway that the so the nincompoop forest, and then I took it and I wrote a longer little bit of an essay on it. But it's actually Mark Finsky's premise that getting an advertising idea through to see the light of day is like traveling through the nincompoop forest. Okay.

All of that being said, let's go through how you created, because it's a perfect segue to the legendary story about you creating the, you with, I think it's Steve. Is it Steve Hayden? Steve Hayden. Hayden, yeah. And Brent Thomas. And what was the? Brent Thomas. Brent Thomas.

The three of you curating the campaign for Think Different. That the first time... No, no, no. That was 1984, Steve Hayden and Brent Thomas. Oh, those were 1984. Think Different was different people. Oh, okay. So I have that wrong.

Which one do you want to talk about? 1984 or Think Different? Well, the legendary story of Think Different, which is when you and team presented your idea. All right. And who was on that team? Well, that's a whole, I'll give you more story than you can maybe use, but Steve Jobs, you know, he created Macintosh. He created Apple.

He created this company that he wanted to change the world. And then he got pushed out by making some mistakes, hiring a Pepsi soda pop salesman to be the head of marketing who sided with the board and pushed Steve out the door. So he went off and in his spare time did Pixar. But then Apple was going downhill, downhill, downhill almost out of business and in 1997 Steve sold his operating system that he had created

next operating system to Apple because they needed something and I think it was their way of trying to get Steve back into the fold. But Steve wasn't having too much to do with the management that was there. So I was talking to him. We remained friends when he wasn't at Apple. I said, are you going gonna go back to Apple he said

nah I don't know these guys are I don't think they know what they're doing and then all of a sudden I'm driving along in my car and he's and Steve the phone rings he says hi Lee this is Steve guess guess what Emilio just resigned that was the CEO that Steve thought didn't know what he was doing, was running Apple. Can you come up here? And basically he was stepping back into the role of running Apple, and he wanted me to be part of figuring out what to do.

So he basically sat down and said, this is really desperate. This company is on life support. I don't know if we can save it. They're making a bunch of dopey products that aren't any good and they don't have any vision anymore. So we've got to do something. So we went off and basically spent kind of a crash week or two weeks trying to come up with something that could kind of speak to the Apple soul, the Apple promise that I understood. And the company had kind of forgotten or left behind. How did you do that? Because this campaign changed my life. Well, yeah.

Yeah, it changed my life. It was such a spark and such a capture of genius that it really set me on a different trajectory. How did you, what were those two weeks like? Well, it was kind of born out of crisis. Here we got Apple, this company. And when I worked for Apple and worked for Steve the first time, it was like a labor of love because Steve had that passion. And I became a, I'm not looking for that word again, I was looking for before kind of a disciple of Steve's Steve's path and so when Steve

left it was very disappointing we got fired at the same time when Steve came back it was like this is I knew how important it was to Steve yet Pixar but this was his first child this is This is really important to him. And I basically, we just basically sat and we had to dig into what is Apple, what is the soul of Apple that they've lost? And how can we find it again to kind of put them back on a trajectory of staying in business and succeeding? I didn't have anything to do with the product Steve was going to ask them to try and make or anything.

And they, you know, on day one, they didn't have any new products. They basically just said Steve Jobs is back. So this was kind of a statement of Steve Jobs is back. And we had to try and find the purpose of Apple that the people who took over when Steve left Apple. He believes so much in creativity and the people who had ideas and the people that changed the world are the ones that had the courage to do something that nobody's ever done before. And that was his passion when he made Macintosh. And that was what he believed Apple, the product, was supposed to be about, to give people the tools to do amazing things, to do world-changing things. And for whatever reason, I understood the story, the Apple story. I understood Steve and understood his passion.

And I sat with the people that were working with us uh for for us then and they said this is the center of Apple this this belief in creativity and how creative people are the ones that can change the world and so the first thing I showed Steve was interesting was we did a whole bunch of stuff but but it but we found this place that had to do with you know Gandhi and and Edison and Frank Lloyd Wright and you know these kind of genius people but I actually put it together with a song that's a seal song called gotta be a little bit crazy gotta be a little bit crazy and we did this video of just all these genius people to the song seal and at the end i wrote the words uh i'm not going to remember the words um but it netted out and the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do and steve just like a laser, he just said, yes, you know, we should do that.

Because we had no products and we had to go kind of tell the world that Apple was going to be rebirthed. So then when we started actually trying to work on the commercial, for whatever reason seal didn't want to sell his song which he probably would like to sell it now but back then he didn't want to sell his song and Steve made us start trying to write the copy and tell the story you know with words and we started writing copy and we wrote this copy that uh here's to the crazy ones and it was a tribute to crazy people and we looked at things from robin williams and the dead poet society we looked at what's the what's the poem the path less traveled uh we looked at all these ways of kind of speaking to, kind of taking the brave, courageous,

and we ended up writing our own copy. Steve wrote it. Copywriter Rob Siltman started writing it, and then everybody kind of contributed sentences. So we wrote the copy that went with the TV commercial, and the other piece of what ended up being pretty amazing So he wrote the copy that went with the TV commercial. And the other piece of what ended up being pretty amazing and special about that moment in time is Pixar, who was part of Disney at the time, Disney was going to go back on Sunday

nights. This is kind of full circle to me watching Disney in the 50s right but Disney was going to start doing a one-hour show on Sunday nights and the first show was going to be showing Toy Story the first Pixar film so we were determined and it was a very tight window we said we've got to run the Think Different commercial for the first time on Toy Story on Disney. And Steve told me a number of times since that moment. He said that was one of the most emotional moments in his life that we,

and we were up till three in the morning. We kept changing and nuancing the commercial. And I tried to get Steve to be the voice on that commercial, which ended up being having one of those brain things. Oh, the voiceover, the person who did the voice, Mark, was it Freeman? No. I can see his face. It wasn't Morgan Freeman.

No. Okay. it wasn't Morgan Freeman no okay it was oh I but this didn't make is this the person that made it into the commercial didn't make it into it ended up being the voice on the final commercial I'll go back and do this once I remember

oh this is find a commercial. I'll go back and do this once I remember. Oh, this is what gets really crazy when you're as old as I am. It's like on the tip of my brain. There's actually a name for that. Tip of the tongue. Luckily I have this phone here. Steven. Dreyfus. I remembered it just before it came up on the screen.

I knew that was going to happen by the time it came up. Richard Dreyfus. All right. So let me back up. So the night before the commercial was going to run on Disney, we had to deliver the commercial by 6 a.m. I wanted Steve Jobs to be the voice on this. And I had him record it, and it was really good.

But we also had it recorded by Richard Dreyfuss, who was a big Apple fan, by the way, but also a great actor. And at 3 in the morning, I'm still asking Steve if he would let us use the version with his voice on it. And he says, Lee, I'll call you first thing in the morning. Send both of them to the station and I'll call you in the morning. And he slept on it or he talked to Lorene

or I don't know how he made it. But he calls me in the morning. He says, Lee, you know what? This is really important to the future of Apple. And if people think it's about me and not about Apple, this is going to be a big mistake. And so I want to use Richard Dreyfuss. And I'm sitting there just saying,

that's why he's a fucking genius and I'm the fucking advertising guy. But he was so right. And in the meantime, the version with Steve's voice on it, we used after his death in a tribute and it's quite amazing, the version with his voice on it. But Think Different tried to go to the soul of what Apple was dedicated to, what Steve cared about.

Steve called it Apple values. This is who we are. This is what we care about. This is what we are. This is what we care about is what we think. And it's one of the proudest things in my career that I was able to find this thing that, that was what Steve believed the Apple brand was about. That is really cool. That is brilliant. Okay. So it's beautiful that you have touched the essence of one of the geniuses of our time. And I thought the story, the legendary story that I thought was part of the experience was that you pitched your idea or shared your ideas probably a better way because of the relationship with Steve. And he met it with, this is shit. He saw a lot of ideas that he said that, but he didn't say that about this.

So that's wrong. So that was not what happened on this campaign. No. He'd say that about a lot of... He said this is shit about a lot of things i showed him but not not 1984 and not think different both of those immediately he said this is great i want to do this i mean he had incredible marketing in intuition so in in, with people that you create, this is like your process. I think part of your process is that you think deeply, you're trying to get to the essence of something.

You ask a lot of questions. I want to know what your most important questions are. And then you get to, um, resistance, the nincompoop forest. How do you have, not all the time, but sometimes, but how do you have not all the time but sometimes but how do you have such patience how have you created patience in your life when you know you're on to something that has alignment and you've tapped into your genius how do you have patience well with with all the i've said it a number of times in this conversation, I've been incredibly blessed and lucky. The moment in time I was born into, I grew up in the business I found that I loved and was good at. But one of the biggest frustrations is the amount of emotional energy I put into finding these truths,

these kind of the soul of brands. Not every time does somebody as smart as Steve say, I love that. I've had a lot more time where dopey people say, I don't get it. So it's a very frustrating business I'm in where people, you know, two and three tiers down the food chain in terms of companies get to say no to things that I believe are really or the other talent. I guess it's not really a talent that I believe I've had is I'm incredibly resilient. I just don't give up. Lots of people, they do one good idea, and then it gets shot down. And then they say, all right, well, what do you want? And they'll give you the mediocre thing they're asking for. I learned from Jay Shiet and I learned from a

demanding Steve Jobs and other people that you just keep going back at it with the best thing you can come up with. And still, I've ended up settling for mediocre on the basis of the client, that's all they were able to buy. And we had to sell stuff and we had to pay the bills and all that kind of so i've had lots of you know mediocrity either the nincompoop forest you can be the even be the nincompoop you know so i can make a mistake that you know the director could screw it up the client could screw there's lots of ways things get screwed up. So the miracle of making it through the nincompoop forest is kind of those once in, you know, a dozen tries, something good happens. But it's certainly not everything I've done has been stellar, has been at the level that I wanted it to be. And I can't even say it's always been the client's fault.

Sometimes my idea was crappy. So, you know, all you can do is aspire to, you know, to doing something brave and great and smart. And when all the stars align, it actually happens. And sometimes it doesn't happen. I have this idea that we can train bravery. And we can train bravery. And we can train courage.

And it's by doing things that are difficult for us and progressively doing harder things for us, whether it's emotional or physical or mental, whatever it might be, that when we have reps at doing things difficult, that we're actually training courage. When there's a little bit of risk on the line and we feel animated and maybe a bit overwhelmed at some point, do you think that bravery is a decision and or trainable? or do you think that it's purely a decision? No, I think, you know, kind of just speaking in my business life, bravery is something that has to be kind of encouraged and or it's kind of fragile and people can step back from bravery immediately. So in terms of an agency culture, for example, Jay Shiet was very brave and he was one of my first mentors.

And he taught me that wanting to be brave and wanting to be a rebel was okay. If you go into a company or a culture that basically plays it safe and doesn't want to be brave, and you're trying to keep your job and make a living, lots of people step back from brave they step back from trusting their intuition they they step back from uh from their their creative side and become very pragmatic and basically just go along to get along i'm going to do what I'm supposed to do

to do my job, to make a living, to get my paycheck. So it's hard to be brave unless you're in a culture that says it's okay to be brave. Again, I listened to your talk with Seattle. Coach Carroll. Pete Carroll. He tries to create a culture where people believe in themselves and believe of what they're trying to do, and it's probably totally appropriate on a sports team, but in business it should be the same way.

You should build a culture that tries to challenge everybody to be their best and kind of push beyond their, you know, sense of maybe confidence and say, God damn it, step out there, be brave, have the guts to try, you know. And so I was lucky enough, again, my, you know, my whole life story is about being the luckiest person in the world in terms of everything that's ever happened to me. Finding my way, and I actually spent a year trying to get my job at Chiat Day because I knew it was the place I wanted to work but I worked in a culture that asked you to be brave expected you to be brave expected you to try and do rule-breaking courageous stuff

so I don't know if that means it's taught or basically you need to be in a place that allow maybe everyone has the kind of deep down desire to be brave, but you need to kind of be put, some kind of a fire or a bomb, and all of a sudden somebody ends up being braver than they ever thought they were and runs in and, you know, picks up two children and runs out the door. So I think, you know, maybe brave is inside of everybody, but it needs an environment that nurtures it and demands it and expects it and cultivates it. Or it can atrophy and you can just kind of give in to kind of go along to get along. Yeah, it's beautiful. And there's such a cost to do the mediocre give in piece that you're articulating before. Do you see the same for creativity and imagination that being creative

are is creativity inside of all of us and we need to cultivate it and honor it or is are there certain people that truly do see the world differently and they are the the creative geniuses well they aren't all geniuses but i i think, and I don't know the science, and you could probably look it up, but I think I've heard that some people are more left-brain and some people are more right-brain, and there's more left-brain, you know, rational thinking people in the world than right brain right brain is the kind of the creative intuitive imaginative and there's less of those people than there are the people that kind of trust their logical side of their brain and i don't i don't know if it's you know it's like another one of those is it is it you know kind of in your biology or can it be trained or learned? But I think there is probably something in people's makeup that allows them to be more imaginative and creative and trust their creative side of their brain versus people who are, you know, no matter how hard you try, all they know how to do is think about things logically. And then I think schools,

I think a lot of the business schools particularly, they almost try and strip the marketing students of their intuition and their creativity and their guts and try and make them believe that there's a process and a way of doing business that is the way to succeed and you've heard lots of the stories that the you know some of the geniuses of our time, you know, the, the Federal Express, uh, story, that was a paper turned in by, what was it? What's his name? The Federal Express guy, Smith. I don't know the story. Anyway. Uh, I love the arrow inside the logo though. I love the arrow inside the logo. Yeah. The logo is good. No. Um, I'm trying to remember the name of the guy that started

federal express i'll look it up and put it in the show the guy that started express in business school wrote a paper on his idea for federal express which was the central hub and everything got sent and then got redistributed he got a c on that paper in business school and ended up creating Federal Express out of the idea. And I think that's, that's, that's, that's the, I think, you know, these academians who try and teach entrepreneurial thinking, I don't think they have, they haven't even lived in the real world to know how to do it. And I, I would imagine, you know, Google and Airbnb and Steve Jobs and all these people didn't graduate from some business school that taught them how to think like that. It was their creative intuition that allowed them to get there from here.

That being said, do you have a word that guides your life or a phrase? Do you have a word or a word that guides your life or a phrase do you have a word or a phrase that guides your life no i know i never thought of it i've said it a bunch of times though lucky lucky is a pretty good word and i don't know if it's really luck i mean you know you i just think all the things that all the things that were my life experience was just so incredibly lucky that all those things happened the way they did to allow me to have the journey that I've had do you have a word or a phrase that, that captures what you understand most and what you've been able to,

you know, really, yeah. What you've understood most, what I, what would you understand most? I don't what are you filtering right now I don't know I'm trying to figure out what

understand most means in terms of how I think and what i do um i don't know that's not that's not triggering uh so i'll probably make up make up something let's not do that. Okay. How about this part about your inner critic? When you're going through that creative process and you're trying to understand and get to the place that makes sense of the soul of the person or the heart of a person or the

emotion of a person and or brand, and you have that inner critic that's saying, that's not right. That's not good enough. That's not it. What do you do? Do you have an inner critic or are you blessed some kind of way not to have one? Or what do you do with that inner critic if you have one? One of the things I've always felt is that I'm a really good listener as opposed to I don't I don't necessarily ask a lot of probing questions as much as I just kind of

like to hear people talk and and I think I'm a very good listener and and I've always said in terms of kind of going to work for somebody whatever my sense in the first meeting is, is usually right. Somehow, somehow I listen and I kind of hear what the idea should be, who the, who the person is, what the, what the, what the, and it's like, it's like almost two, you know, three weeks of research and information almost would camouflage it. But that first initial reaction is usually, I've come to trust it, that my first reaction to what's the essence of this guy or this brand or this story it usually seems to be right on and I usually gets murkier and muddier if I as

if I let you know too many other influences and people mess with it so I had a trust in my own intuition I love that how do you do that do you make do you make a decision like I'm gonna listen deeply or do you focus just on the words it's just the way it's just the way I do I just sit and I say all right I want to let's go have a meeting and I listen I don't have I don't I don't go beyond that and say, I'm only going to listen to the words. I'm going to close my eyes. I'm not going to listen.

I don't have anything other than somehow I'm just a really good listener. Before I have ideas, I'm a really good listener because that's where I find kind of the idea. I think that there's, when I hear you say that, the discipline that it takes to focus fully on another person and the care that goes into that is, it's beautiful. actually you know I've met a lot of creative people over the years and some of them I I think are more talented than me but very often you know with creativity comes ego and some and and sometimes I've observed that some of the best creative people I've ever known didn't have the ability to listen. They didn't have the ability to first understand and find the opportunity before they engaged their creative ego. You know their idea ideation came before their understanding. So that and then they fall in love

with their ideas. so a lot of creative people end up their downfall is their their ego and about their ideas is bigger than a client wants to you know wants to deal with so so again i think it's also given me an opportunity to have ideas succeed is one they're based in i've actually found a nice human truth or a nice a nice understanding that if if you go to work for a brand or a company think of a brand as a person and your job is to kind of dress them up and take them out and introduce them to people. And if you take a client and you don't listen, and you put them in a suit of clothes that doesn't look good on them

or is embarrassing to who they really are, and you go and introduce them to people, they're not going to be comfortable. And the people meeting them aren't going to be comfortable. And that's what sometimes creative people try and do. They try and create a suit of clothes for a, for a brand that isn't the appropriate suit of clothes. And as opposed to,

I know who these guys are and this is how they should be dressed. And this is how they should go out in public. It's so amazing. My father-in-law introduced me to this concept, which was founded from Epictetus, which is know who you are and dress accordingly. And that knowing who you are is really important. It takes some time. And so I love this idea of listening. How do you listen to yourself? Do you have a process that you create space or do you do it by playing sports?

Do you do it by being in the ocean? Do you have some sort of quiet time, writing time? What is your process to listen to yourself? I get up really early. I get up five in the morning and the dogs are sleeping and my wife's sleeping. Now I've got a puppy. Actually, she gets up with me. I find that time to be the best time to think about stuff and to write stuff.

Before it gets all messed up with going to work and being with a bunch of people. I actually think having ideas requires the ability to think about stuff with a high degree of energy, like going in an office and meeting with people but then getting away from it and then you know reconnecting with it after you put it aside and then come back to it you can find kind of the clearest under sense of what you know what where the center of what you're trying to do is. So those early mornings where I try and kind of figure out, okay, so what am I thinking?

What do I know? What am I doing is the best time to figure stuff out. I hear that a lot, how important the morning kind of process is. Well, and it's interesting. A lot of creative people music in particular they can't do anything until the sun goes down so i don't i don't understand night people because you know i need to sleep at night but so i definitely believe that morning morning is the most productive time for my mind. How many hours of sleep do you get a night on average? Oh, plenty.

Eight or nine hours. Okay. So let me hit you with a couple quick hits here. Are you more street savvy or analytical? Street savvy meaning read a room, understand the vibe, or analytical, A to b to c to d i i don't think i'm analytical but at the same time i really think creative people and having ideas is made up of ingesting and having lots of kind of sense and knowledge

of what's out there, what's going on, so that you have all of this stuff to draw on when you're looking for ideas. So in a sense, analytical could say, I gather lots of information to then kind of have these, have this input to having ideas, but I don't think it's quite that left brain or that logical. But I really think all creative people, the ones that are the most curious, the most kind of looking and seeing and ingesting all kinds of information to draw on when you want to go have an idea are the ones that, you know, end up. Because there are kind of like no new ideas where you're kind of, there's never been that and now there is. It's usually taking what's there and kind of

putting it together in a different way or looking at it in a different way or telling the story in a different way. I mean, even Steve Jobs, he basically took a lot of things that people had been doing and he made them better, whether it be an MP3 player or a phone or even a computer as opposed to creating something from there was nothing. Fast-paced environment or slow-paced environment? Which do you prefer, a fast-paced or a slow-paced environment? I think fast-paced. You know i i get i get when things get drawn out too long i think again that's where a lot of good ideas get lost if you

if you drag things out there's too many opportunities for the newcompoop forest to take its toll on an idea. Some of the best ideas are the ones that better do it tomorrow because we only have this one chance before anybody can mess with it. And I wanted to know, do you appreciate fast decisions or more slow methodical decisions? I make very fast decisions. Okay. And then where does pressure come from?

I think pressure comes from, here's my description of a creative person, at least is what I've always described a creative person. I think a good creative person has a very big ego, very big sense of his talent, and at the same time... New York is calling, so they're probably trying to sell me something. I think creative people are an interesting combination of ego and self-confidence quickly juxtaposed with a lot of insecurity. So on the one hand, you're very brave and bold and want to do, you know, change the world stuff.

And at the same time, there's an underlying insecurity that you really don't know what the fuck you're talking about. You're really full of shit. And somebody's going to find out so i think the i think the pressure is it usually comes from the insecure side of your makeup where shit i know i can do this but shit what if i screw up and I can't do this? You know, so the pressure is proving that you're as good as you think you are, or proving to the client that you got the idea that, you know, that they're looking for and not falling short. I mean, when I make, going back to this work ethic thing, I make commitments to people and I

don't just kind of like walk away. I, whatever it is I say I'm going to do, I'm determined I'm going to try and do. And the pressure user comes from not figuring out how to get it done. And there can be all kinds of reasons why. But I just don't want to disappoint or let anyone down once I commit that I'm going to deliver. Is not letting people down, is that a big driver for you? Or is it holding true to the creative spark or idea? I think

going back to my early life story, the sense of responsibility and work ethic is the thing that's driven me to be resilient and not to give up. And to have a sense of being responsible for what you say you're going to do, what you're going to do, is part of what I think has allowed me to be this old and I'm still in the business because people trust me and believe in me and believe that I'm not only good at what I do, but I'm to be trusted, to be respected for my commitment.

What Steve Jobs, probably the best compliment Steve Jobs ever gave me is, we were at some conference and somebody asked, why do you believe Lee is your best creative partner? I don't remember how the question was posed. But she said, I believe Lee wants to do what I want to do. And I believe that I can trust him to help me do it. So that trust and that respect is probably as important as the creative results. When you think about trust, do you trust yourself?

Yeah. And do you trust others as well? Again, I think the reason that I've helped so many young people grow and even clients is and even clients is I think I almost naively trust people. I'm a very glasses-half-full person. I really look at the positive in anybody and everybody. So I think I trust people and I try and give them the encouragement and the ability to succeed as opposed to,

again, kind of the strange political machinations of the workplace. So many people are like distrusting of the people they work with and or feel so adversarial that they can't work with people. I've never done any of that stuff in terms of, I'm competitive and I want to accomplish what I want to accomplish, but my goal which is it doesn't mean that we need to hold somebody's head underwater and until there's no more bubbles. And that's actually, um, uh, a CEO that I spent a little bit of time with. That's how he defined competition. Yeah. I, I was not, that's what he thought. Yeah. When I asked him what, like, yeah, and we're, we're going to do work with each other. And I said, I don't want to be around this. This, this doesn't feel good at all. And that when I asked what does competition, we're going to do work with each other. And I said, I don't want to be around this. This doesn't feel good at all.

And then when I asked, what does competition mean? Because he said, he kept saying in this kind of way that I love competition. I love competition. And when I asked him how he thought about it, he said, competition is holding my opponent's head underwater until there's no more bubbles. I don't like that. Okay. How about this? It all comes down to? You know, I believe that my life

has been incredibly successful. But it doesn't have to do with any one thing. The totality of pride in how I've lived my life and done my work, the work I've done, and back to the love I have, all those things add up to, it all comes down to kind of being at peace with how I spent all the years I've been here, you know, it was the last time you had peace. When was the last time you remember peace? Remember? Yeah. Remember having a sense of peace.

I, I kind of have it most, most of the time, except, except for when I get into the middle of something that's going on at work. But most of the time I'm the freedom of and the joy of having had a great career and a great married life uh and you know being lucky enough to have had enough financial success that I don't have to worry about anything I mean I'm pretty much at, except for when I stick myself back into the, I'm going to try and sell one more good idea

and get pissed off and frustrated with the process. But, you know, if I step back on any given day, there's no reason I shouldn't be at peace because I don't have anything that I regret. Do you care what people think of you? Or should I say, how much do you care what people think of you? I think I care what people think of me. I mean, I think I'm really proud to think that most people I don't know who doesn't but I'd like to think that most people think I'm an honorable hard-working talented but honorable person in my business life and my personal life. Yeah, so I would like to have that. I wouldn't like to, you know, again, either the

business life where you cut throat and you do anything to succeed or the personal life that says, you know, I'll love somebody for a minute and then I'll go love somebody else. All those things have no appeal for me and I wouldn't like to be thought of that way. Okay. Whatever all that means. Yeah, the heaviness. It feels like it's like

i've never been to a shrink so this is kind of like going to a shrink well that is my training you know that is my training yeah and i'm but i'm you know i'm not wanting to do like psychoanalysis or anything like that i'm trying to figure out like how the game changers of the world work people that are on the path have experienced mastery understand it like how the game changers of the world work. People that are on the path have experienced mastery, understand it. Like how do they work? What is the process? How do they think, what are the mental skills they use to be able to, but I, well, I, again, you probably heard it a million times. I don't, I don't know if,

if mastery or becoming really good at something has to do with a process. You probably watched it, but Steve Jobs' commencement speech that he did for Stanford. If you find something you love, it's not work and it's not a process. It's just something that you're driven to do and I found that thing or that I could do every day with 100% of my energy and wanted desperately be good at it because I loved it not because it was it was was never, you know, again, you've probably heard this a million times, but it was never about getting rich. It was about doing something I love to do as well as I could possibly do it. And, and so the people that are lucky enough to

find something they love doing are the, are, are the, are the people who are blessed. And I don't think everybody finds that. Yeah, I think you're right. And I think it's painful to not have that alignment or that insight or even maybe at some point the skills or courage to go for it if you do find it. And there's a lot of pain with that, both of those scenarios that I suggested. And I feel fortunate. I know you do. And many of the people that I've had these conversations with feel they are extremely humble, also have a sense of deep gratitude and a noticeable fire, an inner fire about wanting to understand something and, or to do something. They're compelled that love that you talked about. And I think I'm, what I'm trying to sort out is like, how, how can we help others that have naturally fell into that process? We've had to work at it. All of us have, but to be able to share that with as many people as possible and the idea behind this and tell me if I'm on a soapbox

here, but what I want to sort out to do is help is maybe not help, but if this is, gosh, I'm saying this and I feel like I'm speaking almost out of turn, but if I could touch 1.5 billion people, that's a big fricking number, and help them connect to a deeper meaning in life and to help them understand how to use their mind to be able to have deep meaning and pursue a life that adds to the world's wellbeing and or refines their craft. And there's three things I just said, deep meaning adds to the world or refines their craft that if we could touch 1.5 billion people, we essentially will touch seven because everybody has five friends. Yeah. And so how the hell am I going to be able to do that? I'm trying to sort it out, but first I'm trying to sort out, I've studied all this stuff, read as many books as I

possibly can, been in the trenches with people that are so switched on and hungry and understand mastery for their entire life, whether they're early in the path or later in the path. And the themes are similar. And it feels like it's this wisdom held within very select few. And how do we amplify that? How do we spread is a technology based is a communication and what we're doing you know the best might my two mentors in my life Jay Shia who demanded and encouraged me and Steve Jobs both of them had this interesting conversation. Steve, in the last chapter of his Stanford commencement speech, had to do with, you know, finding that thing you love

and do not get trapped into doing something you don't love and don't settle. Jay Shia used to have an interesting thing. We would have breakfast with new employees, and he'd basically say when they came into the company, he'd basically say, all right, so I want you to love working here, and I want you to grow, and I want you to be great at working here. But if you don't want to work here, if you'd rather be a ski instructor or you'd rather be a surfer,

I want you to leave right now and go be a ski instructor or go be a surfer because you've got to do what you love that's what life has to be about not you know working for an ad agency because you have to work for an ad agency now it's a little bit you know halcyon in terms of some people have to make a living but both steve jobs and jay shy basically said you've got to go find the thing you love in life and go do it with all your heart and i think that's the that's the only message that needs to be amplified and still circumstances don't allow every person on the planet to to get there from here but that's that's the only way to becoming great at something and to have a fulfilling life i think i'm right there with you okay so last last couple questions here is um and you can just do these as quick hits or expand as much as you want but success is

i think what you'd say is loving what you do. Yeah, okay, so that's easy. Love. Love is pretty essential to, I think, having a total and happy life. Success without love is pretty nothing. And finding that person you love can basically be the kind of the underpinnings of you accomplishing all you want to accomplish in life. So when you say that, I just want to say out loud how much I love my wife.

Isn't that a really cool thought? Just to be so in love with another person that you do and they consume. This is what love feels like for me. They could take up so much space inside of me that I want to put that into action. And so that's the way I think about love is that there's a consumption and I'm compelled to put it into action. But I guess I don't know about the action part because somehow love is the comfortable, beautiful place I want to be when I want to kind of step away from everything else. I want to have this place that is love, that, again back to you know i said mornings are like the best time in the morning when my wife's still sleeping and i'm sitting in a chair and the dogs are still

sleeping and just kind of having all of that around me is the most beautiful time and and you know money can't buy that it is the i mean it's what i think the neurochemical exchange that you and i just had kind of reminiscing about that morning glow and being so content and at peace in that morning hour with people that you know care deeply that you can't buy that and so and we all are afforded that you know um i think it's more um i think the work is to love others rather than to search for being loved and that's a little bit of a trap and you know we don't need other people to necessarily receive it but we can give it and when they when it is received okay um what do you hope the next generation gets right and then um what do you hope the next generation gets right

i'm i don't want to go i don't want to go all negative, but I'm really worried about the next generation. Me too. from my beautiful 50s and 60s growing up to a place that I feel is kind of more polarized and more at odds with each other than it's ever been. It seems like, and, you know, my only hope is that young generations usually figure out a way to set things right. versus them in the world that I don't know how people are going to find the middle, find the, find the, the, the, the way to solve the problems that we have. Because, you know, if it's black versus white, rich versus poor, uh, young versus old, Democrats versus Republicans, and you know if you say something that hurts my

feelings I don't want to talk to you anymore. I mean it's I don't know I'm very I'm just very worried because the whole idea of the next generation should kind of see the next peak, the next mountain to climb. I kind of feel like they're going down the other side of the mountain, and it's very worrisome, and I can't do anything about it. What do you hope they get right I I again in a political context I hope they get back to a of self-worth and self-responsibility and kind of personal ambition, I kind of feel like there's a whole conversation that's drumming a negativity. You don't have a chance. You're all victims, somebody's trying to fuck you over

kind of mentality that kids are being told they can't go accomplish anything they want to accomplish instead of, you know, what every generation I would like to believe is I'm going to go, you know, conquer the world. I'm going to go do something that's never been done before. And I don't know, I don't, I don't, I don't feel like that's the, that's, that's the and i don't i just i just feel like back to i was i grew up in the most amazing time on the planet i really don't think i would like to be born right now and be growing up right now because i don't think the same opportunity is there. It's a different game.

Okay. So, Lee, thank you so much. And I've got one question that I think that you are just so beautifully positioned to answer this is how do you think about mastery? I don't want to ask how do you define it, but in some kind of concrete ways, that's what I'm essentially looking for. But how do you think about, or how do you articulate this concept of mastery? well i'm not sure i think there's any such thing as mastery because you're throwing me now for a loop i love it i i don't believe i'm as good as i should be could be would like to be, and maybe I'm too old to be any better at what I do, but the day you think you've mastered something is the day that you're basically finished.

And I don't think I've mastered what I do, and I don't think any artist or any person who drives themselves to be as good as they can be ever believes that they are done, ever believes that they are as good as they want to be. I think that's what ultimately maybe is the definition of a master is someone who is so determined to be great that they will never be satisfied. So never being satisfied is probably mastery. Can you not be satisfied and be content at the same time? Can those two things? I mean, I can very easily say, man, I've given it all I got, and I've accomplished some great stuff, and I'm very proud of myself. I still wish I could do a few more things good,

but maybe I'm running out of time or I'm getting tired. So I'm very content and proud and happy with, with what I've accomplished, but I don't necessarily believe that, you know, no point in trying anymore because I can't be any better than I am. You know, I think you're still never satisfied, even if at some point you say, but I'm done and I'm going to just rest on my laurels. Lee, thank you so much. I'm honored to know you. I'm honored to have this conversation. And I feel like I've just swallowed and had or almost no, that's not it. I feel like I've had this, this information wash over me, that is reaffirming and at the same time challenging to the way that I want to organize my life. And it's like you're 14 paces ahead and you've seen the turns and the winding and the weaving and the ups and the downs and the pitfalls and the cliffs. And you're painting this beautiful imagination with this beautiful picture from your imagination of what it takes to fall in love both with others and what you do and to be so engrossed in both of those that there's a sense of peace throughout life. And with that, you're able to understand

things at a deep level. And you've been to places that are really amazing globally and inside the minds of people that have changed the way the world works. And you've been right at the center of it. So thank you. Well, I'm glad it was worthwhile. I probably learned a few things just trying to being psychoanalyzed for the first time. No, these are just questions. This was not psychoanalysis. But you better edit this in half if you want anyone to listen to it. Okay.

I imagine you're not on social media, but is there a way that people can... I do Instagram and I do Twitter, but I don't answer Twitter too much. You're on it? Okay. So what are your handles? What is Instagram and Twitter? Underscore Clow is Instagram, which I really like Instagram because it's pictures.

Me too, yeah. And I think that's the same. Okay, so I just kind of listen to things on Twitter and every once in a while I put something out on Twitter that's

interesting to me, but not on a regular basis. I'll put, I'll put all this in the show notes. And so people can, you know, follow you online. And then the last thing,

those of those of you who are listening, I want to thank you. I want to thank you for being on this journey. It's been fun and it's been enjoyable to, and too long. No, no, this is beautiful.

What, what we're going to do is we're going to, we're going to figure out a way to how to keep this sustainable. And, you know, at some point in time, we'll turn on that machine. But right now,

I just want to thank everyone for the questions and the love and support. And underscore. Oh, underscore. Clow. Okay. And that's where you can find Lee online. And,

and, you know, be connected to his genius. Yeah, it is. It's really a, a, I think it's a beautiful platform. Okay. So thank you everybody. Um, thank you for the reviews. Thank you for the social engagement. Um, and, um, with that Lee, thank you very much. My it was fun all right thank you so much for diving into another episode of finding mastery with us our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you we really really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday.

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