The secret to success, wealth and fame is not really a secret, advises advertising guru and entertainment savant Steve Stoute. If you want something badly enough, then you must move towards it with a relentless and single-minded tenacity. No excuses, no hesitation, no procrastination. Just move with extreme prejudice.
“There are people and ideas that I have, that inspire me everyday to bust my a–. I bust my a–. We could put up anybody on the work and I’ll go hour for hour, I don’t care about that, I don’t care anything about that, about hours or being tired and not getting sleep,” the founder and CEO of Translation. “Because you can’t say you want something and complain about what it takes to get it. That does not even calculate in my brain. That’s a very important thing that people need to read.”
Stoute has attained remarkable success in his 20 years in the industry — he is considered an advertising revolutionary — because he had a total disregard for haters and failure and has divorced himself from excuses.
“Steve revolutionized the way brands partner with celebrities to connect with consumers,” said James Edmund Datri, president and CEO of the American Advertising Federation, which last year inducted Stoute into the Advertising Hall of Achievement, the highest honor in the industry for execs under 40.
“I don’t know how you could ever say you want something but then don’t have a way of getting what you want, but keep being fixated on something but don’t have a way, don’t have an idea and don’t want to put in the time to figure that out,” Stoute continues. “Do yourself an easy favor; don’t say you want that thing. It’ll make you sleep better at night.”
Another key ingredient in Stoute’s success: Managing the “pain and pleasure” principle with exact precision.
“I would say that I was willing to sacrifice my time in order to be successful. I remember Jimmy Iovine [the brains behind Innerscope] told me one time when I used to complain about my hours in my twenties doing two jobs and he said, ‘Do you think Steve Jobs or Bill Gates had great times in their twenties? The guys that you want to be like, the guys that you aspire to be, [you think] those guys werehaving a great time like their peers in their twenties? You gotta do what you gotta do man.’ It just felt right, it felt like the right answer, ya know?”
–terry shropshire
