624: Chris Beresford-Hill - Writing Excellent Cold-Emails, Taking Responsibility of Your Career, Pushing Your Edges, Becoming Dave Matthews' Pen Pal, Building Culture, & Leading a Creative Agency

25:15So I probably would overstate the kernel I had, but I got to sit and write with him. And so that was kind of how I endeared myself or gave enough in order to get a better seat at the table, so to speak. Again though, right? Being proactive, taking action, doing something that you didn't even know, like what a script looked like, but that didn't stop you or say, wait a second, I need to read a full book or I need to take a class or I need to not, not that there's anything wrong with that, but instead of that, you learned by doing it and then getting one-on-one coaching from someone who sounds like a master at it.

25:48What was that like? What was that moment when you sat down and you could, when you, when I hear I got to write with them, I'm immediately thinking like, wait, what does that even look like? What does that mean? Take me inside the room. What's it like inside the room when you get to write side by side with someone who's really good at it? So Lance Jensen would do this with me and some of the creatives. And then later when I worked at another agency called Goodby Silverstein and Partners, which is a very American classic ad agency, they did Got Milk among a million other things. And the creative director there named Jamie Barrett would also do the same thing.

26:20It was, it's kind of a pull up a chair. Okay. And then they, they crack the knuckles and they sort of say, all right, like I like this part. So let's start here. Okay. So we, you know, I like the idea of a forgetful guy in a Budweiser commercial. That's easy to make fun of. I think what it would be is they'd almost let you shadow them, kind of writing off of your kernel, leaving enough space for you to interject. And if you threw out something good enough, it kind of made its way on there, or if not, but it's kind of a very gentle and it's very nice. And you get the benefit of it. I didn't think, oh my God, if I'm sitting next to him, there's probably a good chance this thing will get made.

26:54I think I realized I was getting a chance to see how he thought on what that process was like. I was much more excited not to be showing anything of myself to him or thinking about converting. I think I was saying, okay, this is someone I admire. I'm going to watch them do what they do. And I'm going to immediately figure out how much of that I should be doing myself or what's the same or what's different or what have you. Speaking of the writing process, and now in your position as both a creative person, but also leading a company, I've found writing to be one of the ultimate tools for learning.

27:32It forces clarity of thought. And I push hard every leader that I work with to have some sort of a writing practice, whether they want to publish it for others to read and judge or not, doesn't matter to me. What does matter is that they get the thoughts out of their head onto the page because that's when you truly get a feel if you know what you're talking about. And so now that you, and then writing ad copy and all that fascinates me because I always want to do it better for my own business, like selfishly, like how do I get better at this skill that it's not one I've developed yet? So there's a lot there, but I'm curious, Chris, from your perspective, starting when you were quite young, all the way up to this point in your career, where you're still writing a lot and your writing is what earns you work.

28:16Your writing earns a response to a cold email. Your writing helps you lead people effectively. Can you go deeper into writing and thinking and communication and how that helps you from a leadership perspective? Sure. Talking about the process, I think advertising is probably a very broad. Some people think almost web banners and direct response. Other people think Gillette, the best man can get. writing that enduring brand tagline and writing a functional kind of conversion asset. Those are highly different things. And I think probably where the best creative flex is, is when you're creating a new campaign.

28:55So for example, my friend here at BBDO who's been here some 20 years, Peter Kane, 15 years ago wrote the line, you're not you when you're hungry for Snickers. When I talk about coming up with advertising, it's Snickers has this strategy. They need to, they satisfy this purpose in people's lives. And this is the audience. Now, tell me what the story is. What is the, how does the brand show up? What does the brand look like, sound like? Who are they? That is the one where you take all that in. And my youngest self, I'll tell you what I would do 20 years ago and what I do today. I would brain dump everything, everything I could possibly, you've got to purge it out of your system.

29:38So write every idea, bad ones, good ones, ones that make no sense. And when you think you're done, and I'm sorry if this is like a gross, but you've got to almost stick your finger down your throat and find and actually trick yourself into doing more. And my friend, Jason Bagley, who runs an advertising school, has made a list of questions, of prompts that you should ask yourself. I was doing a version of this on my own. But his thing is, once you've gotten every idea out of your system, you should say, what is the worst ad I could possibly make? What would I do if I wanted to make fun of this strategy?

30:11What would I write if the laws of gravity no longer existed? So almost prompts that force you to make something up to satisfy them. I would go through this exercise for 20 % of the time I had. If I had a week, I would do this for a day. No matter what happened the rest of that week or two weeks, I would always return to that. I would take an idea out. I'd write it. I wouldn't go off and think of something new. I would return to that and I'd find another. You find it all in there. That to me is probably the most common process. Everyone does it differently, obviously. There may be some psychopath who's so good that they just, they quietly write out one perfect idea from the beginning.

30:52But for most of my colleagues, that was what it was. It was about getting everything out. Today, I think over time, when you've done it so many times over and over, now I can do it very quickly in my head. meaning I don't need to have a one day brain dump and sift it for a week. I can immediately start rolling through things and I can stop on something that's good. And I've developed the skill now that if I'm looking at someone else's work, I just know when it clicks. I just know when it clicks relative to the problem. So it's just been the same as I'm sure dropping back and throwing a certain route.

31:27It's just the more you do it, the more you do it, you kind of get into a zone or you get into a strong muscle memory and you just know exactly what it feels like when you hit it. Interesting you brought that up. One of the things that happens for a quarterback, the more reps you get is, and you've heard people say this, is everything around you slows down. When you're young and you're playing or you're new, like first starting out as a freshman in high school or a freshman in college, or even first reps as a pro, it's like, oh my God, this is so fast. There's no way. I don't know how I'm going to be able to do this.

32:00And then you just need like, you just got to complete one of those deep balls or just get a completion or get, okay, let me settle in. And then each rep there forward, it gets a little bit slower, a little bit slower, a little bit slower. So eventually you feel like I'm faster than everybody out here. This is, it's not easy, but it's easier. What's the version in your world of the game slowing down around you? You, the, so let, let's say I'm at a point where someone else has five ideas. I often believe creativity is deconstructed usually by non-creative people and it becomes very academic. And the truth is it's not academic at all for the people that are participating in the creative act.

32:42I actually think oftentimes creative people aren't even aware of all the structural things their ideas do. They just feel it and other people, whatever. And I think the The version today for me and of any strong creative leader at an ad agency is when you see that idea, it lifts off the page. But furthermore, it's not enough just for you to anoint it and say, this is the one. You can grab that idea within two seconds of seeing it and you can flip it around and you can manipulate it and you can understand the power and potential of it, develop a sense of mastery around the idea. and that is what gives obviously the people in your company confidence but a creative has just spent their whole canon they've used all their gunpowder on these ideas you get to pick it up and say i can protect this every which way to sunday because i understand this even better than you do because i've just seen it you've taken it to the end of the marathon and now i see how much farther it can go and so i think that ability and then the way it manifests you can talk to a marketer and they can challenge it.

33:48They can probe it. They can ask if it can thread a certain line and your ability to firmly hold the idea without compromising the integrity, but manipulate it, change it. That's what it feels like on a really good day. The name that popped in my head, as you were describing the intuitive element of that, they might not even be able to describe it, but they can feel it and it lifts it up was Rick Rubin. It feels like because Rick isn't the guy who actually plays any instruments, but he's produced some of the greatest music ever over the last, I don't know, few decades in multiple genres and different styles of music.

34:24But it's almost like he just has this sense. He's developed this skill to know what sounds pleasant to our ears. How much of like Rick's work do you study? Oh, it's right there. Okay. We did not set this up. Yeah, how much of this is a part of your life? You know what? Okay, this is very interesting. I read this and then I listened to it, which is even better because his voice is incredible. If you'd ever heard Rick Rubin himself speak about creativity, I would even skip the hard book and listen to it because he's got, he kind of sounds like what he's talking about. The whole thing. Rick Rubin, if I was feeling really low, really empty, I could pick this up and I would feel re-inspired.

35:06I don't feel like I really need this on most days. I feel like I need the Learning Leader podcast because I feel like all I've got is creativity. I need confidence. So anyway, but I think if you are in a creative industry or creative adjacent, I think it is a wonderful look into the mindset. I think if you live in that mindset, it's funny, like I was saying to my partner, Nancy here at BBDO, she was shocked because I read business books nonstop. Every time I've read a business book, and I'm not talking about like serious textbooks, I'm talking about the airport business books, usually written by semi-ghost writers and things like that.

35:46And I always get one thing out of it that helps me with this business, with dealing with marketers, with dealing with creative ideas, but all the peripheral forces. The people. But it's funny, but it's like business people read books about Da Vinci and then creative people read books about the CEO of GE. That's very funny. My escapism is not reading about creativity. It's reading about leadership and pragmatists. You said that in your email. I'm obsessed with this. I'm reading leadership, management, books all the time, listening to your podcasts all the time. You said at the beginning of that answer, I need confidence.

36:22I don't sense that in you. What do you mean by that? Well, how about this? I actually think my creative industry is one that it's in the frontline. AI is probably going to disrupt the accounting industry faster than it's going to disrupt the creative advertising industry. Yet, there's all these looming fears of what was this going to take away creative people's jobs or the nature of business or clients willingness to invest in high funnel advertising, which we specialize in. And I think beyond creative directing work, our responsibility at all the big creative agencies is writing the business and advocacy for the value of creativity and how it changes the fate of brands and impacts consumers.

37:04And so I think leading a company well, because at BBDO, we have an incredible global CEO named Nancy Reyes, who's my partner, and she does the business. But a lot of the vision and a lot of the looking at headwinds and opportunities and how we position ourselves in the market, I want to learn everything I can about successes in leadership in order to do the best job there, because I am a nerdy writer by trade. So the leadership is a late skill. And that's kind of why it's the new thing that I'm learning. I'd love to hear like the breakdown of how you spend your time. What percentage of it is being an ad man, being a creative who's writing and thinking and coming up with ideas?

37:41And what percentage of your time is spent leading people and working with others and doing like one-on-ones and hiring and trying to develop teams and building culture? I know I'm sure it's not a perfect breakdown, but I am just curious how you allocate your time.

37:59You've got to do it all. There's definitely roles where you can say, I've got to ruthlessly prioritize. I think if you sit over the whole thing, you've got to do everything. And I would say 20, 20, 20. But the 20 % uncreative is like 80 % of my soul and energy. So the biggest impact I can make with our clients and with the company is to champion, unlock, shepherd, deliver a giant idea. At the end of the day, we can have the most motivated group. We can have the most balanced departments. We could have a great agency positioning. We have no HR problems. We can, all those things could be solved, but without magnetic ideas and the actual product, there's nothing, there's no there there.

38:41So I do everything. And by the way, the casting is instrumental. And so going around our global network, traveling, meeting everybody, learning about the strengths in every office, trying to capitalize on those strengths, trying to bring the network together. It's very inspiring, but it's very operational. and it definitely is much more about bringing a community together, giving to that community and that being really the primary influence. But then Pepsi is one of our new clients in New York. And I just came over to talk to you right after sitting on the couch with my creative leads on Pepsi, kicking around how the hell we're going to pull off a crazy stunt that's going to get filmed in a couple of weeks.

39:22So I'm always there. I'm always going to find the good work or I'm going to find the problem works and get it unstuck. And then the rest of it is like the privilege of having this job is like everything else. Just do it. You got to do it. I'm fascinated. You got a terrible thing to talk about. Let's unpack this because you probably can't do all of it. It's a bad mindset, but. Well, no, I mean, it's part of the role when you're a senior leader and you're in a creative position and you got to that position. Part of the reason was because you're so good at that thing. And that leads me to want to talk about that specific thing as far as when I look at your history of your career, one of the things you're known for is going to a place that maybe is doing okay, or in some cases not great.

40:04And then within a couple of years, they are doing great and you've increased revenues and you've gotten amazing briefs and projects and big, big time clients. What is the process like for you to earn a new client, someone like Pepsi or somebody else? Like what, what happens? What goes into it? Other than, I hate to say, other than the fact that they've just seen your history of work and you're like, let's just get that guy. He's the best. That takes decades to get to that point. I'm curious more, maybe earlier in your career, what's the process to earn a new client? Well, it's not given to you.

40:40And the ultimate compliment, and by the way, I think one of the best things you can do with an ad agency is if you want the absolute most out of your team, be a marketer, be a brand that knows what they want and is willing to meet a few agencies and then say, you're the ones and not create some arduous, unending pitch process. I would say that you've got to go through a competitive creative pitch, which would be traditionally between three and five agencies would take a briefing from a client about their product, about their consumer, about what their challenges are. And you'd bring back after two weeks, a strategy.

41:17And probably about two weeks later, you bring sample campaigns. That is the traditional process. But if Nike comes up for review tomorrow, I'll just call that Nike because it would be probably the most world-class advertising, creative account you could ever imagine. The real game is being in those three to five agencies. And that is only work you've done and reputation. When you win an account, you're competing in a group. And that's much more about playing your own game, thinking about what the best thing possible to do is something you're going to be passionate about because you've got to show up to the client with a lot of conviction and a lot of energy.

41:54But the truth is you can have the best team in the world, but if you don't have the work underneath your feet, you will never get the phone call. And there's no cold email I could write to Nike if we didn't have the work to back it up that would get us in the games. I think your audition is the creative work you do, and then you get the chance to compete. And that's a fair ground. And that really is chemistry strategy. But if they see a great idea, that's it. What about your first Super Bowl ad? You said you sold it by trying to solve more than the brief, which made my ad the only one in contention.

42:25What do you mean by that? There was probably about 10 creative people invited to pitch a bit of an internal jump ball. It was for a peanut company called Emerald Nuts. The brief was, we want to win the Super Bowl. We viewed funniest ad. And I wanted a better chance at winning. I like to read the liner notes. I like to watch through to the end of the program. I like to hang out, just see if there's any more there for me to work with in life and in business. And so I grabbed ahold of the strategist who had written the brand strategy and his name is Matt Herman. I asked him, is there anything else they want to talk about?

43:03And he said, they just want to win the Superbowl, but we are talking to them about maybe positioning nuts as a form of energy. So instead of trying to write the funniest Super Bowl ad ever, I just wrote funny ads that were about the peanuts providing energy. They probably had funnier ads than me, but they were doing one thing and my ads were doing two things because I was selling a benefit. It was about the peanuts giving you energy plus a funny Super Bowl ad. And so by doing that, by solving more of the problem, by bringing more value to the table than was asked, It was the simplest way to clear out the field.

43:41What happened then? How did the commercial go? How did it air? It was an ad called Robert Goulet. Do you remember him? The old crooner? He sang The Impossible Dream. He's like a magnificent, handsome, old-timey singer. And I don't know why I was obsessed with him. But at that time, I found him very funny from this kind of man from a pastime. And so I wrote a sentence that said at three in the afternoon, when your blood sugar and your energy are low, Robert Goulet shows up and messes with your stuff. And then the whole commercial was someone nodding off at their desk. And then this lounge singer lowering through the ceiling and behaving as a poltergeist, taping people to desk chairs and fucking with people's stuff and throwing their papers around.

44:27I think if you watched it, you'd say it was batshit crazy, but it was probably one of the most strategic things I've ever been part of because it basically just is problem solution. We just invented a completely made up memorable problem and it did really well. Ad age the next day called it the number one Superbowl ad. There was an ad reviewer at the time named Bob Garfield and he gave it the top rank. This was early in the days of YouTube where not every video on earth was on YouTube. And for a couple of days, it was the number one or number two comedy video on all of YouTube, which probably meant it only had like 500 ,000 views because I don't think we were all on YouTube 24 seven.

45:03But I wish I got a screen grab of that. How did that feel? It felt great. Well, what felt really good about it was I think solving the problem, a bit of success, getting something under my belt that would mean something. But I also felt like I express myself because it did good things for Emerald Nuts, but it was deeply my own sense of humor. It was the kind of thing that makes me laugh. And I would think makes my friends laugh. So I think that became like, okay, like maybe my sense of humor is not just for me. Maybe I can entertain people with things that I didn't, I didn't know. How did it change the arc of your career?

45:39I think every time I would equate a Superbowl to solving a big famous brand platform, having a big commercial or a big statement piece. I think anytime you can be part of one of those, it becomes a little bit of foundation, a little bit of bedrock under you. And I think if you, anyone can get lucky once, I think if you can get lucky three times, you become a pretty good bet for people. So I think you kind of look at, you know, as someone told me once that baseball is the only sport where your individual stats being the best for you always equate to the most success for the team. Whereas in basketball, you could have the most insane stats and be hemorrhaging points on defense.

46:22I think as you come up as a creative, the points for you are also the points for your clients and the agency. But I think you need to get a few things under you to make it to the next level to have someone see the track record and have confidence in you. So you've got to harness your body of work. I like this idea of being at the edge of finding an idea on the edge of possible that you sent some notes to me about and this value of potentially going over your skis. Like I literally went skiing recently. I'm not a great skier, but good enough to kind of hold my own. But then sometimes you push it and you fall, you crash.

46:58And that's when you know that you're probably pushing it enough as you crash every once in a while. And I think part of striving for excellence is that willingness to be over your skis from time to time. And you even wrote that sometimes like you got to lie. Now I want to put that in proper context. What do you mean by that? How do you push your edges? How do you get over your skis? And why have you lied maybe a little bit in the past to help do something great? It's a little, not to go too heavy into sports metaphors, but someone once described Messi's soccer style and they paid me, my friend Guillermo Vega, who's the head of creative for Coca-Cola these days, but he's had a really illustrious career.

47:36He told me for a while, he kept telling me I was messy and I thought he was insulting my thinking process. And then he's like, no, like Lionel Messi. And I literally for a day, I thought he was just insulting me with a nice big smile. But I think sometimes if someone tells you what they perceive, it helps you understand things. I think when Messi walks around, he's feeling out the pitch. He's on this corner, he's on that corner, he's going up near this player, that player. And it just seems like you don't really know what he's doing. And the next thing you know, he slices to the goal. I think I would equate that to walking around the agency every day.

48:11How's this idea going? How's that idea going? How's this client going? How's that client going? And then you see something where you go, okay, let's take this and let's stick this in the goal fast and let's do it with conviction. And so doing that is, it's got to be an idea that feels a little scary, a little dangerous, like it could be a mammoth success or a colossal failure. That's where the excitement is. That's where the tingles are. That's what you've got to find as a creative leader. But then when you do it, it becomes a little bit of an EQ game and a little bit of a willingness to fail.

48:51And as I think I mentioned to you offline, how to go all the way without electrocuting yourself. If you're going to do something truly brilliant, you've got to really put it out there. And if it's brilliant, it is going to be a perceived risk. And you're going to need to grease the wheel. You're going to need to de-risk it in some way. And sometimes that means putting your own ass on the line. So I think enough time has passed that I'm probably safe for saying I was part of the Michael CeraVe campaign that many people saw in the Super Bowl last year. and we had a client that really liked it. And I knew if we got to do this thing, it could be a hit.

49:33It could be great. And the client just said, I just need to know if I say yes to you and if I say yes to this, that we can get Michael. And so I said, yeah, we've already spoken with his agent and he's really, really interested. And that was not an entire truth. I wanted his agent to be excited about it, but this is what your role is as a leader. You've got to be very careful of the example you set, but there are just moments where you've got to take a risk and then figure out how to get the universe to make it work. And so that gave the client confidence to say, I want to go with this team. I want to go with this idea.

50:14We had ideas for days. We were going to solve the problem beautifully. It required a little bit of a risk. It wasn't lost on me when we got on a Zoom call with Michael and his wonderful agent, Willie, that all the marbles were riding on this because if he didn't like it, then I was going to have a really tough conversation in front of me. But as long as the risk doesn't jeopardize your business, your team, or alienate a person or a people or a community or anything like that, if it's a risk that can fall squarely on your shoulders, there just come times where you say, I believe this is going to work more than I'm afraid of the blowback.

50:55And every time when I talk to my friends about this that have done incredible work, there's just always a moment of that. And that is a sort of EQ thing. How did you sell him on that idea when you got on that Zoom? he when anything you've got to match energy and so we popped on a zoom and michael's very he's a lot like he is in his characters very small reserved so i so i didn't go new york ad professional i think i think i opened with it with the self-effacing joke that felt appropriate i said this is going to be really weird for both of us because i'm going to show you a deck of work that has your face all over it, but we've never met.

51:37And I'm really sorry if that makes it weird. And he kind of chuckled or whatever. And I popped it up and it was just the TV script. We didn't want to overwhelm him with a giant campaign that was going to take a lot. And he, thankfully, he's the right casting. It was the right idea because he's a bit of a prankster. He liked the idea of tricking the internet. I don't know whether he loved the jokes or the writing, but I think to do a Superbowl ad and use his name in it, I think for him to pull one over was interesting to the kind of alt comic world that he lives in. So it was definitely lucky. I want to learn about a time when you failed, specifically the learning lesson in that moment.

52:19I believe this is when you lost a huge client or the biggest client. What happened and what did you learn? This is a good one. I think we're talking about creativity and obviously that's a great subject. But this actually, I think, goes right into not creative leadership, but just what a moment of leadership feels like. So Nancy, my business partner today, we were together at the same agency called TBWA. And I think I can actually share the specifics of it because our biggest client that probably accounted for a third of our revenue was Accenture. Accenture tapped us for their advertising. And we sort of knew, but maybe we're in a little bit of denial when Accenture started buying ad agencies that one day someone at Accenture is going to say, hey, we should have the ad agencies we own do our stuff, not these folks.

53:09So thankfully, it was more of a story about a crisis than a screw up. But what was going to happen is we had six months on the contract and we had to part with some people immediately because they reduced the scope of the business. All of a sudden, the mission for the year, which was to have a big, fantastic glossy creative year it very much turned into how do we how do we stave off shrinking and how do how do we protect our team i'm a big fan of danny meyer's leadership style one of my favorite things i i read in setting the table which was around this time probably read this a few months earlier anecdotally he talked about how he was sitting with no you know what maybe this was in daniel coyle's book but it was also he also talks about it in his own book effectively, he's sitting there with Daniel in Coyle's book, but the anecdote is repeated in a different way in his own book.

54:00A server drops a tray and Daniel Coyle looks at Danny Meyer and Danny Meyer quietly just kind of leans back and looks over his shoulder. And Danny says, what happened? It's the plates breaking isn't the thing. I'm really looking at what happens afterwards. And he watched and all of a sudden that one waiter standing there, another waiter shows up with a broom and another waiter shows up and brings a new tray. What makes the culture that Danny Meyer created, and I think the best kind of cultures, is ones where, to an extent, like a team, you're playing for each other. And so the idea is in our business, sometimes you think about how am I going to service the client?

54:39But really, what you want to be is the kind of team that is completely in it for each other. And so if you're, let's say, a client at a restaurant, If you watch that Trey thing happen, you like the way that team operates. You want to be part of it. That is an environment you want to be part of. You just want to be close to that. So as this thing happened, Nancy and I made the choice not to be scared, not to talk to everyone about the bad things that could come. But instead, we had two pitches in the pipeline. And we said, all right, everybody, this is one of these moments. This is a bad thing that happened.

55:14Let's band together. Let's not be fear-based. let's approach both of these things with what is the best possible thing we can do and work that way. And a truly magical thing happened. And we started feeling in a way I hadn't before at the company. If there was an art director at 9pm at her desk, working on a comp, putting together a visual, if there was another art director that was about to leave, they'd stop and say, do you need help with that? There was something happening where it wasn't a team pitching this to try to win, it was, can this company do it? And it changed everything. And we started in new business presentations afterwards saying to clients, you don't come first.

55:55This team here taking care of each other comes first. And as a result of that, you're going to have the best possible team. But that moment, it was just a real make or break moment. Instead of people worrying about their own jobs, people started taking care of each other and everything got better. And there felt like there was more purpose behind everything everyone was doing, more energy, and it just felt like everything came together. I love that example. Dan Coyle's stuff is so good. I was at a basketball game last night, and I like to watch how the team responds when it doesn't go their way.

56:28I think that really shows a lot about the culture of the team, especially if a guy gets called for a foul, whether it's a good call or a bad foul or whatever happens. And the team I was watching, the four other guys if one of the guys either got a foul or missed a shot or had a turnover they would all go and and touch him on the butt or touch him on the back or smack his hand and like to see them all get a touch it happened every single time throughout the whole game i was fascinated watching not only they celebrate when it goes well and they had fun and during timeouts they're going crazy for each other and they have celebrations on the bench when they get a big dunk or something but even more so when a guy makes a mistake or makes a bad play every other guy gets a touch and i think that's those little things are huge those are massive and that's like i was thinking about that last night when i saw that happening as i was preparing for for our conversation because i i had an inkling about this story from reading your notes and i thought like ah that's like the little stuff that's the big stuff but how do you get that like how do you have that happen what do you do because you can be like hey guys get a touch like it's but what did you do that made everybody want to come together and say, hey, we come first.

57:38It's us. We're taking care of each other first. And then the outcome of that will be that we'll take care of our clients, but it's all about us. How do you get people to want to do that? If I'm taking myself back to it, there's a philosophy that probably came from a Learning Leader podcast, but management by walking around. Nancy and I spent a lot of time, whether by accident or not, in between my office and the restroom was the entire creative department and I drink a lot of water. Every time I go by, I had to know what everyone was working on. So I think we were, this was pre-COVID. So this is everyone in the office at all times.

58:17I think it was a matter of a hundred small interactions. And then as culture is built by the stories, the stories you tell. And I think as soon as we started seeing some of these different behaviors, people, again, banding together rather than thinking of themselves. We complimented it. We highlighted it. We talked about it ourselves, but it was, you can't announce it to the company. I think you've got to talk to people one-on-one about it. You've got to nudge people maybe. Can you help out on this or we do that? But just appeal to everyone's good nature. Everyone believes that they're a team player.

58:51Everyone knows that deep down they have good nature. I think if you make a few spot appeals and you watch the connections happened. I think it's probably one of those things with a number of us in leadership going around and doing that and then packaging it, talking about it, telling everyone about all the great things everyone's doing. But it was organic. It was a organic campaign for sure. And then afterwards, we talked about it all the time, that a lot of companies will put a mission or a purpose on the wall. We felt like we did this. This is not recent history. This is not elongated history.

59:24You just did this. You just came together, took care of each other, and we succeeded and won because of it. And so it became very easy to talk about it going forward. That matters so much. What is the leader focused on? What does he or she say to the team? Are you just putting up the stack rankings of the sales organization and just mentioning the people who sell a lot? Or are you using and telling real stories, real stories of people living up to the core values of the company or real stories of people helping others. I think that's critical. Yeah. But I think it was, it was, I think we talked about the whole group, but then everyone was just, again, it was the best thing you can do for someone is to say something kind about them behind their back.

1:00:08Like the, it's easy to compliment someone to their face. It's also easy to be pronounced out, but to go around and show, show what we're valuing, show where the energy is, show what everyone's seeing, making sure you see people helping each other, rewarding it in that way. But it was a bunch of lifeboats connected more than pulling a ship up from underwater. Love it, man. One more. I know we got to run, but you're speaking to a newer person, whether it's in your industry or somebody else's college graduate, and they want to leave a dent in the world. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to them?

1:00:44I knew it was coming. I'll talk to anyone who wants to pursue a career and leadership in a creative industry. And the advice that was baked into me, I think through maybe some of my early resilience or whatever, is do not give up. You can have a hundred ideas that get shot down, but if idea 101 is the state street fearless girl or Snickers, you're not you when you're hungry, you will very quickly forget about those hundred ideas. And you'll probably realize those hundred ideas were never as good as number one. But I think the field of play in creative industries is harder and harder, but we're all competing in the same way.

1:01:24And just be someone who has the heart and spirit of an artist, but tons and tons of resilience and love that fortitude that it takes to continue being creative while the world keeps killing your ideas. Because that mindset, you will get ideas into the world. As the great Jimmy Dugan said, in the League of the Realm, the heart is what makes it good, man. It makes it more rewarding. It makes it feel better when you do get the 101st idea out there after the first 100 gets shot down or ignored, man. Chris, I love this. Thank you so much for reaching out. Thanks for having me. I would love to continue our dialogue.

1:02:01I'd love next time even to meet in person. It'd be great. If I'm in New York, we could go to your breakfast spot or go to dinner or drink some beer. We'll go to Balthazar or dinner any Friday or Wednesday. Come visit us. I'll introduce you to Peter who wrote, You're Not You When You're Hungry. We have some cool people around here. Love it. All right, man. Thank you so much. Bye. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, ryan at learningleader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Chris Beresford Hill.

1:02:33A few takeaways from my notes. You never need permission to take responsibility. Chris learned this from Ed Catmull's book, Creativity, Inc., and he's embodied it his entire career. The people who build huge careers take ownership of their own and regularly solve problems and improve their clients and colleagues' life, and they do it proactively. They don't wait for somebody to tell them they do it. that's what Chris has done since his very early days to earn his first internship and then competence combined with insane follow-through for some clients it takes upwards of 50 plus ideas to get to the one good one that will work and Chris has done a really good job of creating a culture where the team can all share their bad ideas safely in order to find the one great one I think all of our businesses, all of our teams would be better suited if we created a place where that can happen.

1:03:40And I love that Chris has a standing reservation every week at the same restaurant where he meets with a mentor, mentee, or a peer to deepen the important relationships in his life. I feel like that would be something we all should do. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Chris Beresford-Hill. I think it will help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that, and you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts, you subscribe to the show, you rate it, hopefully five stars, and you write a thoughtful review by doing all of that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis.

1:04:20And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.

1:04:31Thank you.