*Typing*

Jackson Pollock discovered his iconic drip painting style not in an art studio but in a hardware shop on Long Island.

While he was perusing the store one day, he stumbled upon house paint. Unlike the oil paint he was used to, the house paint was much thinner and more lustrous. It flowed naturally, like water. Pollock was curious. So, he lugged several cans back to a barn he had converted into a studio and began experimenting.

He soon found the house paints could be poured, dripped, splattered and strewn directly on the canvas right out of the can. Pollock did away with the easel and blanketed the floor with several unprimed canvases. Madness ensued.

His painting style was much like his demeanor: angry, aggressive, in-your-face, self-destructive and, at times, outright violent. One of Pollock’s most loyal supporters was the art collector, Peggy Guggenheim. She hosted a solo exhibition for him once at her house where Pollock got drunk and took a whiz in her fireplace. Remarkably, she remained his most unwavering advocate. Her loyalty was rewarded. In 1950, Pollock created arguably his most legendary masterpiece for Guggenheim.

The enormous Mural is nearly 20 feet wide and 8 feet high. Today, it’s estimated to be worth $140 million.

Don’t just be disciplined about your work. Be disciplined about your rest.

Highly successful individuals don’t get blocked. American Football coaches know this better than anyone. The NFL has a statistic called YAC (Yards After Contact). It measures how far a player travels after first getting blocked by/ making contact with the opposing team. In every creative project, there are dozens of unique blockers that will manifest out of thin air. The expectation you should have for yourself and those you work with is that you "don't get blocked". You breakthrough. When briefs morph, you shape-shift. When deadlines change, you sprint. Constant progress is the expectation, regardless of the terrain.

Be the kind of person that reminds the rest of us what is possible.

Most brands are unoriginal.

Rather than doing the difficult, hands-in-the-dirt work of developing a unique brand identity, they copy all the other brands in their space. With time, this creates a sea of sameness that stretches across the entire industry. To see this phenomenon with your own two eyes, walk the aisles of a supermarket. All the toothpastes looks the same, as do the spices and the sauces and the sodas and the snacks and the garbages bags and the detergents and so on.

I don’t fault these brands. Choosing to be on the side of the majority is safer, after all. However, if you want to create a brand that is like nothing your industry has ever seen before, you must go where nobody in your industry will go.

You must take to heart the words of the writer Charles Bukowski…

"Wherever the crowd goes, run in the other direction. They’re always wrong."

Otherwise, you risk looking like everyone else. Which is to say you risk extinction.