There’s currently a meme on Facebook: Your First Five Jobs.
What interests me more, is what lessons did you learn from your first five jobs?
How did each job change you?
Here’s mine:
1) Apprentice Toolmaker: I was 16 when I left school and started work in a factory, it wasn’t anything like I expected.
It was duller than anything I’d believed possible
After a year I learned I didn’t want to do that for life.
So I went back to school and took A levels.
That factory was my gap year, I’d learned what education was for.
Why I was working hard.
2) Third Class Seaman: After four years in New York at art school I wanted some romance.
To experience exotic peoples and unusual lifestyles.
So I got a job as a deckhand on a freighter, to see the world.
What I found was that the ship spends nearly all its time at sea.
That’s like being stuck in a factory that you can’t leave, with the same thirty blokes.
Then once a month you might get one day ashore, that’s it.
I learned not to believe the hype that my own mind feeds me.
3) Junior Copywriter: I got a job in a New York ad agency.
I used to go for a couple of pints at lunchtime, just the way I would back in London.
If I worked late I’d take a beer from the agency fridge.
I got fired because they thought I was an alcoholic.
I learned that behaviour that was okay in working class London wasn’t okay in middle class New York.
I learned we had nothing in common but the language.
Culturally, ethnically, I had nothing to draw on as a copywriter.
4) Bank Clerk: When I came back to London I worked in The City while I tried to get a job in advertising.
All my friends were messengers.
They let me use the bank’s Xerox machine to make 50 small copies of my portfolio.
They let me use the bank’s postal system to send them out to fifty people in advertising.
I got two job offers in a week, instead of the process taking months.
I learned, if you’re in advertising: act like it.
5) Copywriter: I was the first person John Webster hired when he was made creative director of BMP.
He did ads for ordinary working class English people, like me.
What I learned was I didn’t have to pretend to be middle class.
Or try to write like P G Wodehouse.
If I found it funny, ordinary people like me would find it funny.
I learned to be proud of what made me different, not to try to copy middle class people.
If you are yourself, you own that market.
So what I learned:
You work harder when you love the job.
Don’t believe what your mind tells you.
You’re better when you use what you know.
Advertising isn’t a place for shy people.
Make the most of what makes you different.
Very interesting article Dave.
A though occurred as I was reading about your first job.
Some kids don’t like school.
They just want to be kids and mess about with their mates.
So many don’t work as hard as they could.
Which means they don’t do as well as they could.
Do you think schools should get upstream ahead of this problem?
What if they didn’t approach work experience as the chance for pupils to experience somewhere they would love to work?
Where they do two weeks, enjoy it, but don’t learn enough for it to be really valuable.
Imagine if the kids were sent somewhere they hated?
Somewhere they would never want to work.
Maybe this would inspire them to work harder when they returned to school?
Excellent idea Peter, worked for me
and also posted #mynextfivejobs, #mythirdfivejobs, #myfourthfivejob and #myfifthfivejobs. (By the time I got to advertising, I was grossly overqualified, it seems. That and there was a massive industry recession;)
Hi Dave,
My first Job was at 18 in an Insurance Company Art Department because the only thing I excelled at School was Art. The rest, other than sport bored me because I couldn’t see the point in English, Maths, Chemistry or Physics, so I messed about and screwed up all my exams. So I learnt not to mess about (too much) and be diplomatic so as not to get your friends (who also messed about) in trouble too. I had a great time at school! I did nothing.My first Job was to work in the Art Department of an Insurance Company. In the insurance company I learnt to fight like hell and rebel. My first day, I was sent to the HR department to be processed like cheese. They sent me to the OB Claims department. Boring! My parents were away on holiday so I phoned my Brother and Sister. They went mad. Then I went mad. They even had allotted tables for lunchtimes which were unchangeable. A bit like school dinners but worse. Initiative was punishable. Apparently they did this to all new intakes, but not me. Oh no! I fought my way to the top to get what I wanted. The first manager got it in the ear, the second manager got an explanation, the HR officer got an earful from my brother. None of them were decision makers. I learnt not to waste my time with also-rans and time wasters. It sounds very harsh but it’s true. I also learnt if you want something fight like hell until you get it. Then I was warned by a secretary. Don’t argue with the next man. He was the decision maker. So I didn’t and I got the job I was appointed for. What I learnt from this? Family comes first. Never trust people 100% and accept that they will let you down. We are all human.
My next job was at 20, working in a REAL Art Studio for Chris Barratt (Andrew MacDonald Associates). My first night was a test. I had to do Paste-Up, and I thought I knew how to do it, but at the Insurance company they only pasted one side and not the board as they used typewriter paper (Cheapskates), so I completed the artwork for a pack and when I showed it to Chris, all the elements fell off. I was so embarrassed and angry as I’d already quit my job and thought Chris wasn’t going to employ me, but he did. I learnt that Visualising was the thing I wanted to do and Art Direction was key. I delivered an artwork for Humphrey to BMP and was supposed to see some bloke called Dave Trott, but he was busy, so I just dropped off the parcel. What I learnt was. Don’t think you know it all. Work hard (and working late is part of the business, so get used to it) do your best, and if you’re delivering a parcel to a bloke called Dave Trott, find out who he is and NEVER release the parcel under pain of death until you’ve met him!
Then I met Terry Rye. He was a Freelance Art Director (he was my version of Dave Trott) He worked for all the big names in the industry. Sometimes he needed help. So I helped him at night after working at Chris’s for a couple of years. He had received a commendation in some New York Art Director’s magazine as a person to watch for the future. he worked on McCain for Fusion Partnership in Camden Town. We went on to work together for 7 years and he made me a director of his Design Company in the West End. With Terry, I learnt how to Art Direct, think about Typography, Design, and produce a campaign strategy. He is a great guy and we are still friends today. With Terry, I learnt that to produce really great work you have to love it with a passion beyond reason. Work was never work with Terry, because you always had to put your heart and soul into everything you did, so even creating a dummy packet of Trebor Mints with all the 6pt lettering painted by hand gave a sense of pleasure. Working for Terry I met Bill and Tommy Thomson and Brian Bull, three of the most well-known Retouchers in the industry at the time, and I would ask them questions and they would scratch their heads and give me answers. Watching these guys use a brush was a joy. This is where I learnt the craft of Advertising, long before computers had anything to do with creating the perfect line. These guys were real craftsmen and unbeknown to me at the time, they were all teaching me. Looking back, It was such an honour. I also learnt how to negotiate, how to work with difficult clients and when to keep my mouth shut.
So I’ll stop there and give someone else a chance.
Here’s mine:
1) Customer Service Assistant: A local pizza place decided it wanted to follow up with how happy their customers were, and hired me when I was 16.
The first month, nobody came to complain about anything, so I thought everything was OK… but I was suspicious.
The second month, I went to see customers at their homes after deliveries, and found out they had a LOT to say.
The third month, I went to management with a list of ideas to improve the place.
They listened: every improvement brought more and more customers.
Pizza place was my lesson that, no matter what job you have, you can do a LOT to help your business earn more money, but you need to give the extra, or otherwise, you will be mostly irrelevant.
2) Marketing Assistant: I had to pay for college, so I got a full-time job at a big company as an assistant.
I was full of ambition to grow quickly, so even though half my day I had to go to college, I overworked everyone in the company to produce the best results.
Even as I yapped about teamwork and collaboration, I fought hard for the spotlight every time I achieved something.
After a year, everyone hated me, including my boss; people who hate you don’t help you, so my results turned into mediocre ones.
I quickly learned no one can achieve anything by themselves, no matter how good or dedicated they are.
3) Marketing Manager: I managed to get into P&G as an intern, then Marketing Assistant, and finally I’d become a Marketing Manager.
Coming from a place where people slacked and many worked just enough to get by, I thought I had finally joined a self-motivated, AAA group of executives who would be so off the charts I’d learn new things every minute.
I was wrong.
Granted, they were more talented, but they were the same kind of human being I had worked before, and none of them worked for the company’s sake before their own.
In P&G, I learned that even the best of the best are still normal human beings, who need to have the right motivation before they’re willing to do anything.
4) Financial business owner: My dream had always been to open my own business, so when I was given the chance by an American bank to open a trading shop, I took it, even having no experience doing it.
After opening, we went three months without opening a single account.
My employees kept getting paid, the bills were racking up, and we didn’t have a single dollar to show for it.
I didn’t understand why we were failing so spectacularly, since we had spent months training, and were sure we were ready.
Happily, we got lucky on the fourth month, and opened a million dollar account that saved my business.
The harsh lesson taught me that, even for the best of the best, luck is important, so you need resilience and perseverance to conquer tough tasks.
5) Sales & Marketing Director: I had to sell my business to fix a family money problem, so I went back to the FMCG industry and got a gig as Sales and Marketing Director in a small company.
The model I had learned was P&G’s: traditional ads, almost following a manual, with huge budgets to repeat them ad nauseaum.
With a budget of less than 100k for the whole year, I had to be a lot more effective with money in this job.
After meeting with a bunch of agencies, I quickly learned they wanted to follow the same model I knew up to that point; they couldn’t be bothered to be challenged to produce something more creative.
I used my own resources to create my own creative campaign.
I also quickly learned the business owners and CEO were very afraid of the risks presented by such amount of creativity: they wanted something less risky, even if they didn’t have the money to make it count.
The toughest lesson of them all was that people are afraid of different things, even if not being different will mean they will not survive.
So what I learned:
You can always make a difference, no matter how small your role is, if you want to make a difference.
To achieve things, you ALWAYS need help.
People won’t help you (or the company they work for), unless they can profit from it and they want to do it.
Resilience and perseverance are necessary to survive if you want to do hard stuff.
Creativity is the most premium asset in any market and the best way to become effective and different, and yet, everybody hates creativity and will resist it to death.
Dave: I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post, and hope you can take something out of mine.
i love number 3. welcome to my world. i remember making a conscious decision in New York to become an expert on USA pop culture. or risk becoming a NY paddy. luckily there was a cable TV channel called Nick at Night that endlessly replayed all the past hit TV shows. that taught me all i needed to know.
I found it was a double adjustment Vinnie.
English to American
Working class to middle class
I’d never been out of east London before, so I was never sure what I was doing wrong for what reason
In November 1993, I stepped off the plane in Changi Airport to start work in a country I’d hadn’t even heard of six months before – oh, apart from reading James Clavell’s King Rat. My only guide to Singapore was a tiny Berlitz guide book. I’d applied for the job of art director in a local agency and they instead offered me the role of CD. I figured that if I was going to take the risk of flying all the way from Ireland to live and work in a country I could barely find on the map, I might was well accept a role I wasn’t sure I was ready for at the same time. Over 22 years later I’m still here. Best decision I ever made. To quote Ray Bradbury: “Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.”
Thanks, Dave.
Yours is an interesting life.
That shows in your work, too.
You mean to tell me, Dave, you didn’t start off with bob-a-job?
I started off helping out the rag and bone man. I learnt the power of repetition. “RAGBONE!”
“Don’t believe what your mind tells you”
Yes, yes. yes. I reckon the rest flows from that !
3 years ago I came to Russia with $70 in my pocket and my clothes and walked around every ad agency in town in the middle of winter and got nothing.
I could make a fortune for the international agencies here but they all chose to ignore me. My wife went walking around too and came across an English Language School who needed teachers. Now I teach Business English, Solve Marketing problems quickly that the ad agencies refuse to handle for staff at giant corporations and help them up the ladder in their career to success. I paint the rest of the week and have about 21 Oil paintings complete from a set of 45 I need to hold a one-man exhibition. I don’t know if my work is good, bad or rubbish, and I won’t know until I exhibit, but it only takes one painting to succeed, so I’m just going to keep painting regardless.