David Ogilvy flunked out of Oxford, sold cooking supplies door-to-door, and wrote a sales manual before becoming an advertising legend. Evan Carmichael traces how each detour taught him something that mattered: model what works, trust your gut, chase what excites you, and obsess over quality.
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Welcome to another Famous Friday. I believe that whatever goal you have, whatever obstacle is in your way, somebody has already solved it, and the fastest way to solve it yourself is to model that strategy, apply it to your business, and get to work. So today's lesson is the path to success is never a straight line, and it's by David Ogilvy, who's considered the founder of modern-day advertising. Now Ogilvy started on this straight line. He went to university, and like most people go to university, you're expected to graduate you go get an internship job, a trainee, you work your way up the corporate ladder, eventually get to some executive, and then you retire, right? That's what most people did, especially in his era. You stay with one company your whole life. But for him, it wasn't gonna be a straight line. He flunked out of Oxford. He went to Oxford University, flunked out, and instead of getting back on track, getting back on that straight line, he said, "I'm gonna try to trust my gut, to listen to my heart, and do something that feels right." So he went to Paris to learn how to be a chef. Totally different than what he was starting, but it felt right. And there he studied under a French chef who was really, who really cared about quality and who would fire apprentice chefs who couldn't make their bread rise. And what it instilled in him was a sense that this was a winning team and you have to be ruthless about quality if you want to build a winning team. He then discovered that, you know what, this chef thing, it's not for me. So he went back home to England and he started selling cooking supplies door-to-door. And he started doing really well. He was making a good income selling cooking supplies door-to-door, again, had nothing to do with what he was studying. Everybody would look at him as a failure. You know, he flunked out of university, went to go become a pastry chef, came back, started selling things door-to-door. This is what you were trying to go to university to become, right? Didn't make any sense. But he started doing well, so well that the owner of the company, the cooking supply company, said, David, you're doing really well. We'd like you to write a manual so that other people can learn how to sell like you. So he started writing, and he found, you know what, he loved writing. And then he said, you know what, I'm gonna leave this cooking job. Finally getting some success He says, "I'm leaving my cooking job to try to get a copywriting job." And he became a copywriter for a company, and that's where he discovered advertising. And when he found it, he said, "I loved advertising. I devoured it. I studied and read and took it desperately serious." And he went on to become a legend in advertising. He built his own business. He became the guy. He was at the top of his field that all the big companies wanted to work with as he built up his reputation because he loved what he did so much. But that path wasn't that straight line. Right? He didn't go to university and then graduate and take that internship job and slowly work his way up. That wasn't the path for him, and that's not the path for most successful people. You have to be willing to break the mold. You have to be willing to jump off that track, take the risk, take that strategy that doesn't make any logical sense, but your heart is telling you to go there. Become the French pastry chef. Go and sell things door-to-door. Quit a nice paying job to start writing manuals. Right? Follow what excites you. Follow what is— what makes you come alive. Follow what you're passionate about, and that will help you get back on track and help you identify what that big success path is for you. The path to that success is never the straight line, and if you have the courage to jump off, you'll eventually find yourself and become way more successful than you would be if you stayed on course. So if that's you right now, if you're looking at an opportunity and say, well, That's too scary a thing. I don't even know why I'm drawn to that. It makes no logical sense. Do it. Listen to your heart. It's the right thing to do. And believe. For those of you watching, like the video, subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon. If you want some Believe in your inbox every week to keep you motivated, check out the link below to join my newsletter.
