That rarely works. The happiest people are the ones who follow their own dreams most closely. The day your dream dies, a little part of you dies. And all of us want to live forever. Pick your own dream. There are 20, advertising copywriters in New York City right now. If they did, they would make it happen. For every person with the stuff, the one out of a hundred who goes to a very rarefied place is the one who says, Why not me? My particular strengths were street smarts, intuition, people skills, salesmanship.
In honors class I was the village idiot. I was always a good athlete, not a great athlete. My mouth made me better. Whether it was touch football or basketball or baseball, in the streets of Hollis Hills, Queens, I was always a six with a ten mouth. I was born at the end of November, so I was considerably younger than the rest of the kids in my class.
Today those kids are put in the following grade. Not me. So I had some talking to do. Talk of money was not in my universe. It was never discussed. My father made a very nice living, we lived in a lovely house, and had all the advantages of middle-to upper—middle-class life.
I went to the finest summer camps, I was given pretty much anything I asked for, I wanted for nothing. Very low-key. There was no money food chain. The premium was put on achievement, on being a success. That was important. But Hollis Hills was this little enclave in the larger mass of Queens. At home I lived this privileged life; during the day I went to Van Buren High School where I was exposed to much more of the schoolyard mentality.
I had the best of both worlds. I had it really good. My father worked in advertising. He told me, Find something you love. My mom gave me the same advice, but like so many Jewish mothers at the time, having been brought up to respect men with good jobs, she wanted me to be a professional.
For me, there was no alternative. At Martin Van Buren High School there were gifted, or honors, classes and then classes for the regular schtummy -head student body. Because it was important to get into a good college, to achieve, I started out with the honors students. That was their reason to be. I tried. And if you looked at my notebook, you would see for the first two paragraphs I would take really nice notes.
Then would follow doodles of gladiators and dinosaurs. You could actually see my mind drifting. If he worked harder, he could be a very good student. That was death. When my friends came home with the same reports, their folks were perfectly happy.
Not mine. I got saddled with the P-word. My mom was a teacher. She would challenge me, As long as you fool around you will not live up to your potential! My parents and I still argue about this thirty-five years later. The report card said I was capable of more, therefore I should have been doing more. They have a legitimate point. But the American academic system is not set up for kids who are not linear thinkers.
Academics is about linear thinking and memory. That was my potential! That hurt. A lot. What did I do instead? I watched TV and smoked pot. I started smoking marijuana in eighth grade. Just a pot smoker, and never during school hours. There were plenty of guys doing much worse. In ninth grade I did well enough grade-wise, 85s and 87s, but a lot of it was because of my personality. I was the only non-nerd in the class and I charmed the teachers.
I never defined myself as a student. I just wanted to be good in sports and I wanted to have a lot of friends. It took the school administration a year to figure that out and in tenth grade they transferred me out of honors and into the general population. Van Buren was one of those huge stone institutions that looked like a prison. Every day we walked into the clink, and in some respects it lived up to its looks.
There were two really tough groups: the greasers, who we called hitters, and a hard bunch of blacks. I was more afraid of the hitters. My second week there, some guy put a knife to my neck and said, Give me your bus pass. I was really quick. I said, Here. But sooner or later I had to take a piss, so I made sure I knew one of the real thugs and somehow I did something right by him. Chris Lang, I think his name was. Long hair. Gave me a cultural pass into the bathroom. Basically saved my life.
The only time I really thought I was going to get my ass handed to me I was coming home late and walked out of the subway station and there, standing around, were maybe a hundred sixteen-year-old punks looking for trouble.
I could see them pointing. I wished they were a couple of years older so they would know better, but they were just bad guys and I could tell I was going to either get hit on for my wallet or get the crap beat out of me. So I started walking toward them, cursing wildly. Fuck you! Fuck you assholes.
Fuck all of you! I was almost spitting, flailing my arms. Nobody screws with a crazy person. I started to laugh and one of them said, That guy is fucking nuts. The crowd parted like they were letting a fighter through to the ring and I never stopped, just kept on going.
I lived to tell. As a boy I played in the street all the time and I never picked on other kids. I hated when kids would cry and I always stuck up for them. I tended to be a leader in our group and when someone was getting picked on, I was usually able to say, Aaah come on, man, leave Billy alone.
With my big mouth I should have gotten into a lot of fights, and there were plenty of times I thought I was going to get beat up, but I was lucky. There was a tough kid in my neighborhood named Curtis Pflug.
I was with a girl I was dating and I said something about him, and he and this other beefy guy, Steve Traccarico, started pushing me, calling me out in front of her, trying to get me to put up my fists.
The fact that my girl was there to hear it made it even harder. For years afterward that really stuck in my head. A young guy struggles with that. Would it have been better to get my ass kicked or say, Screw it, you guys are assholes and walk away? I only got in one fistfight in my life. When I was around twelve, there was a redheaded kid who was kind of a dweeb and out in the schoolyard it came to blows.
I got him in a headlock and was banging his head on the concrete. My first fight and I was winning. Finally I let him up and the guys were cheering and the kid ran home crying. So in my tenth grade homeroom finally I was in my natural cultural subset. Using inside stories of the media, the advertising industry, and a youth spent growing up on the streets of New York, Donny gives the commonsense bottom line that he has learned along the way, broken down into real, relevant, and inspiring lessons that will be useful to everyone from the front-line salesperson to the middle manager to the successful corporate executive.
It's also a useful guide for dating. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. He is also a person that few feel indifferently towards. Whether you love him or passionately hate him, the undeniable success of Deutsch, Inc. In this book, Donny will discuss how he turned his father's advertising agency into cutting edge shop with blue-chip clients like Novartis, Revlon and Expedia.
He'll explain why a good firing can energize an office; why your staff should ignore award-winning work; and even take a stab at explaining what really works in advertising and marketing - and why. Convert currency. Add to Basket. Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory MX. More information about this seller Contact this seller.
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. And it is the secret possessed by every person with the right stuff? Satisfaction Guaranteed! Book is in NEW condition. If there is an assignment or a promotion up for grabs, a client or account looking for new answers, do you know how to go for it?
It is a tool to motivate people, build a business, and create a business culture. In a fun conversation with the reader, Donny lays out the core principles that propelled him to create tremendous wealth, build a huge and influential business, and become a national personality. Using inside stories of the media, the advertising industry, and a youth spent growing up on the streets of New York, Donny gives the commonsense bottom line that he has learned along the way, broken down into real, relevant, and inspiring lessons that will be useful to everyone from the front-line salesperson to the middle manager to the successful corporate executive.
They had shows. Sometimes I watched.
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