Sunday, November 2, 2008

Quote of The Week, Deutsch- 11/2/08

The biggest winners in the world are the people who somehow, right or wrong, are able to use their own universe as a grading system. They don’t need anybody else’s boundaries; they don’t play in anybody else’s sandbox.

-Donny Deutsch, Deutsch USA

I’m currently reading Donny’s book, Often Wrong, Never in Doubt, alternating nightly with Augusten Burroughs and Charles Bukowski in my “fill your head with simultaneous bits from different worlds” reading program.

I started reading it on a roommate’s suggestion, and to be honest, I hated it at first. To begin with, I don’t particularly like the way he writes, which is often poorly-punctuated, usually not grammatically correct, and almost always sounds like it's written by an arrogant, suburban Long Island kid still stuck in 1974. On top of this, the examples of “good work” he cited from his agency are, in my idiot student opinion, not good at all.

But when I started getting into it I realized something: The reason I didn't like him was because he was different. He wrote differently, spoke differently, thought differently. Where every other ad writer wrote humbly and downplayed his or her accomplishments, this guy just tells it like it is. He's smart and successful and he lets everyone know that he knows it.

More than anything, dude's honest.

So instead of resisting his poor grammar and annoying Long Island slang, I soon found these things refreshing. A strange, more down-to-earth way of saying something thousands before him have all said in the same, well-mannered way.

He’s got good things to say, and an interesting perspective from which to say them. He looks at the world the way I suppose all ambitious young people should. With a “do what you think is right” attitude and a “why not me” philosophy.

Why not me write brilliant ads? Why not me win lots of awards? Why not me make a shit ton of money? Why not me get promoted? Why not me get promoted again? Why not me open up my own shop? Why not me be the next big thing in advertising? Why not me be the next big thing in anything other than advertising? Why not me marry a supermodel?

Why the fuck not me?


When you live your life like that, when you arm yourself with this lack of thinking about all the boundaries and all the politics and all the things holding you down, the walls fall and the whole world opens up to you. When you think like that, your mind is free to see beyond what you think you will be and onward to what you could be.

The hard part is having the courage to think like that.

dubs. out.

1 comment:

Not Dickless said...

You're braver than me. I would even bother with him because he's such a tremendously giant douchebag (deutschbag?)