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Overview
Jordan Zimmerman is among the most provocative entrepreneurs of the last quarter century, and a singular expert on how to achieve success. As founder and chairman of one of the most successful—and client-focused—ad agencies in the world, his formula is simple: Everything begins with insane commitment—and plenty of it.
Leading Fearlessly is a pull-no-punches guide to success—whether you need some inspiration on a new business idea, motivation to continue fighting obstacles, or if you just need some direction. The undisputed “bad boy” of advertising shows you how success goes only to those who do whatever it takes—and who relentlessly pursue the goal, but never rest in the glory.
Leading Fearlessly is a powerful and inspiring prescription for anyone who dreams of success and is willing to sacrifice all that it takes, as long as it takes, to get there.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781626341630 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Greenleaf Book Group Press |
| Publication date: | 05/26/2015 |
| Pages: | 280 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d) |
About the Author
Jordan Zimmerman is the founder and chairman of Zimmerman Advertising, a multi-billion dollar firm headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His retail powerhouse is ranked the fourteenth largest in the world. A graduate of the University of South Florida, Jordan resides in Boca Raton and the Hamptons with his family.
Michael Long is an author and speechwriter who is also an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. Educated as a physicist, he teaches writing at Georgetown University.
Read an Excerpt
Leading Fearlessly
By Jordan Zimmerman
Greenleaf Book Group Press
Copyright © 2015 Jordan Zimmerman & Zimmerman Advertising, LLCAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62634-163-0
CHAPTER 1
Be insanely committed to your own life.
I want to let you in on one of my deepest, darkest secrets: I am insane.
I promise that after you read this book, you are going to want to adopt my insanity, because it works—especially for people like you, who want to achieve a dream and who are willing to do whatever it takes to get it.
Was I born insane? It might be part of my DNA, but it also has something to do with where I grew up. Every day I saw a lot of unhappy people—my parents' friends and my friends' parents—going to jobs that they didn't like to pay for things they didn't need in pursuit of a dream they couldn't name. I said that when I grew up, there was no way I'd be like them. I would live out my passion through the work that I chose. I would go to work every day to have the greatest time in the world.
And today? That's what I do.
When I was young, one of my first jobs was delivering newspapers. A lot of great entrepreneurs begin with basic jobs like that. My paper route started with sixty-two homes. But when I realized there were 4,400 homes in my neighborhood, I said to myself, Here's an opportunity! How big do I want this to be? Before I knew it, I had 460 homes.
I was sneaking out of the house at 2:30 one morning to deliver my papers—I had to get started that early to complete my route before school—and I ran into my mother. "Where are you going?" she said. "To deliver my papers!" I answered. She looked at me and said, "Son, are you insane? It's 2:30 in the morning, and this is the last day you are delivering papers at 2:30 a.m.!"
So a few hours later I went to school with a problem, but I came home with a solution: I hired two friends to work with me. I had just promoted myself from paperboy to paperboy manager!
I had to learn how to inspire my new "employees." Fortunately, I had a great mentor. My grandfather owned a bottling plant in northern New Jersey that produced syrups, toppings, and colas. He told me, "You need to be insanely committed to the kind of products you put out. You need to be insanely committed to your customers, so much so that you need to figure out how to be available all day, every day. You need to be insanely committed to the great employees you have. And you need to be insanely committed to your own life."
I applied his advice to every aspect of my life, and I've lived by those rules ever since. In fact, on the back of my business card, and that of every Zimmerman associate, you'll find this: "24/7 (Seriously)."
In my senior year at the University of South Florida (USF), I had an opportunity to put my insane commitment into practice. I was offered a slot in the most important competition I could imagine, more important than any high school football game. This was a real step on the ladder of life.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) was tasked with helping to end drug abuse among the youth of America. They held a contest among advertising and marketing majors in college. The challenge was to create a campaign they could use around the nation—something that would be memorable, compelling, and potentially game changing.
My team and I took on that challenge with an insane commitment to winning and with the firm belief that in life there is no second place.
Competing against every college and university in the country, our USF team won.
After our triumph, we went to Washington, DC, for ceremonies and meetings in the White House. We presented our campaign to the vice president, the first lady, the head of NIDA, and fifty other government figures. It was an amazing day, one I can never forget. It was the first time in my adult life that I saw what's possible if you have an insane commitment to your own goals and your own life.
As for that campaign we produced? Whether you're from the United States or the other side of the world, I'm sure you've heard of it. You may have even grown up with it.
Our winning slogan was "Just Say No."
Not long after, I took that campaign—and my brand-new diploma—to New York City, where I made ten appointments for job interviews with the most prestigious advertising firms on Madison Avenue.
I came out of those meetings zero for ten.
Can you imagine how that felt? As a college student, I had helped create one of the most recognizable slogans and memorable campaigns of the twentieth century, yet these guys couldn't see my obvious genius!
It turned out that at this point in my life, I wasn't the genius I thought I was. Still, I thought to myself, How dare they? I had accomplished more before the age of twenty-one than most of these men and women would in their entire careers. And they had the gall to tell me no?
I had dreamed of working on Madison Avenue, and just like that, these folks in suits and ties were denying me my goal.
A lot of people would have given up. You know, you get the rarest of opportunities—to make a personal pitch to the people in the corner office at the prestigious place you imagined yourself working—and your very best idea gets shot out of the sky.
Most people would have said that if "Just Say No" doesn't impress them, nothing ever will. Normal people would get rejected and give up. But I'm not normal. I'm insane, remember?
My reaction was exactly the opposite of normal: No! I don't care who you are or how much you know. I'm not allowing you to rob me of my dream. You can't make me give it up, and you can't take it away.
I was angry and hurt, but I wasn't going to cut off my nose to spite my face. If these were the guys I needed to impress, I had to know what it would take to get their attention. And once I cooled off, I realized they had already told me. At every appointment, I heard the same appraisal: You need more education. I grabbed on to that like a life preserver and made more education my new, intermediate goal, believing that it would help me get to my big goal. I erased the bitterness, every bit of it. It was forgotten—so long, the end. I wasn't going to let any naysayer live rent-free in my head. I was going to spend my energy taking productive action on my insane commitment, not on nursing hurt feelings.
I had always valued education, because it seemed like the way to get ahead. Now I was experiencing that truth firsthand. The only way I was going to make it into that big advertising world was through more education.
If I ever thought I knew it all, those Madison Avenue executives helped me knock that idea out of my head. Evidently I lacked a few key skills. Coming up with a great campaign wasn't all it would take to succeed in marketing and advertising. In my case, I needed to go to business school.
Not everybody needs an advanced degree in order to succeed. You, for instance, may not need one. But at that point in my life, I had to know what a business school graduate knows, so back to USF I went!
Surprises were in store there too. On the first day of my first class, I responded to my professor's lecture by telling him not only that he was wrong but also that the textbook was wrong. He stared back at me, a first-year, first-day loudmouth—an insane kid standing alone in the middle of that huge classroom—and he said ...
Well, you'll have to keep reading this book to find out.
The first lesson for you is this: Be insanely committed to your own life. Be dedicated, committed, unrelenting, unfailing, and unstoppable. In every impossible moment there is great opportunity, but the only people who figure that out are the ones willing to bust their ass to find it, to persevere, to work past the point when everyone else has packed it in.
Be insanely committed to your own life. Never give up!
CHAPTER 2Be insanely committed to what you know is right.
After I graduated from college, helped create one of the most remembered ad campaigns in history, and then was shot down by the top advertising agencies on Madison Avenue, my insane commitment was as strong as ever, but I had been humbled. I returned to the University of South Florida's business school ready to listen and learn. My experience had made me aware of where I was deficient: I needed more managerial ability, greater knowledge about finance, and a deeper understanding of marketing. So one more time, I enrolled, showed up, shut my mouth, and prepared to be educated.
But nothing ever goes as planned, especially when you're insane. I quickly realized that I was going to have to learn another kind of insanity: the insane commitment to what you know is right, even when you feel like you're the only one who "gets it."
My first class was in marketing—how to promote the things you want to sell. It wouldn't be long before I figured out that my professor, Dr. Stephens, was a bona fide genius. In only a few short months he would become a mentor to me. But that day he was just the first face I saw in front of the chalkboard.
On my initial day in his class, he showed us something called a purchase funnel, which is academic jargon for something you don't need to completely understand. Basically the funnel shows that the first step to success—at the wide end—is making people aware of your product. The next step is getting them to choose your product over the alternatives. The last step, at the narrow point, is making a profit.
As you have already figured out, when I sense something that's off, I call it that way. If that makes trouble, I don't care, even if I get caught in the middle. I am insanely committed to the truth, whatever it is and wherever it leads, and this drawing on the board was definitely not right. I can't imagine how it made sense to anyone who had actually succeeded in business! Perhaps using more colorful language than I should have, I said, "What? The last step is to work on profit? Are you serious? What the hell are we in business for, to be popular? Maybe we get lucky and make a dime or two in the end?"
The allegedly brilliant insight of the funnel—work on popularity before you work on profit—was being offered as the foundation of an education I had been told was vital, yet this foundational idea was in complete and utter opposition to everything I had seen in real life, from my family's businesses to my own success as a young entrepreneur. I had just one reaction: You have to be kidding me.
There's no school like experience. I had already learned a few things about business from my grandfather, who had become successful at it long before I was born. He had shown me the ropes at an early age—not just how the business worked but also why. By the time I walked into that classroom, I had been around enough companies to know what works and what doesn't. Every single business plan I had ever seen was a detailed map focused on becoming more profitable. Nothing else could possibly make sense to anybody who had set foot in the real world.
So I said to my distinguished professor, "Hey, boss. Your funnel is upside down. Profitability goes on top! Come on, we all know that! A brand that's profitable has revenue. A brand that's profitable has margins. A brand that's profitable has market share."
I was already in deep, so I figured I might as well finish the point. As the rest of the class waited for Dr. Stephens to flunk me on the spot, I refuted the funnel according to the truth I knew: You can't build a business unless you figure out how to make money. I said that when a brand turns a profit, then all the other parts of the funnel before the purchase—awareness, opinion, consideration, and preference—all that happens naturally. To sustain a business, your goal must be to earn a profit. If you can't do that, you can't pay the bills, and your business won't last anyway. There's only one pathway leading to a viable business. It's called commitment to profit, and it requires hard work.
So I finished sharing my point of view, and then I realized what I had done: A first-day-of-the-first-year student had just taken on a professor in front of the whole class! Was I insane?
Yeah, I was. Just like today.
In that moment, as I realized what could happen to my grad-school career, I prepared myself for the consequences. Stand by for the storm. In my mind, I was already packing my bags.
But you know what? Even with that possibility in front of me, I did not hesitate. I was standing up for the truth as I saw it, so I didn't care. The truth is always going to be the truth, no matter who doesn't like it.
Then Dr. Stephens proved why he was such a good professor: He considered what I had said, paused, and no, he didn't throw me out on my ass. Just the opposite! Instead, he told me that I was onto something. He said, I should keep analyzing, examining, and questioning like that all semester—and for the rest of my career in business.
He could have dressed me down in front of everybody and told me to hit the road, but he didn't. He told me to keep thinking for myself.
That was a hell of a discovery: Here was a man who was just as committed to the truth as I was! He didn't worry about getting credit for being right. All he wanted was to become better and smarter at what he did, so he could put it to use.
I could identify with him. He questioned everything, and he would hear anybody out, even a kid with attitude. If you're insanely committed to the truth, you don't care where the truth comes from, a PhD or a kid in his first day of class. You never know where the next idea is going to spring from, so you have to keep your mind open.
I took Dr. Stephens' good advice. I kept listening to my professors every day, analyzing and questioning. It paid off too—and not just for me. Not only did I get the education I needed, two decades later I endowed the Zimmerman Advertising Program (ZAP) at USF. It's an interdisciplinary program that provides an education in advertising unlike any in the world. I created it, and continue to support it, so that young people can be taught the rigorous logic, discipline, and technical skills that the real world demands. ZAP leaves in the dust advertising professionals who think they can substitute smooth talk and a shoeshine for the hard work of analytical thinking and metrics.
That first day was my most important day at business school because it set the course for my life. I had just heard that not everybody was putting profit first—at least not the guys writing b-school textbooks. Experts could be wrong! It seemed like I was the only guy who had figured that out, and many times it still seems like that.
But now you know it too.
I realized that the most obvious truth of business—that you make money by giving people what they need, not by blindly following what's expected—is not so clear to everyone. Some people focus on tactics and the path right in front of them, while the best of us focus relentlessly on the big goal, the greater truth, the point down the road that we are determined to reach.
I knew what I wanted to achieve, and I had suddenly gained a better idea of how to get there.
The gears started spinning in my head, and that night sleep wasn't on the agenda. I don't sleep much anyway—you can sleep when you die—and I spent the night awake, hunched over my desk, and killing cup after cup of coffee. By the morning I had the first draft of a business plan for something no one had created before: an advertising agency built solely on client success. Screw the distraction of output; by that I meant we would not worry about impressing our competitors or winning awards for fancy commercials. We would focus relentlessly on creating profitable, positive, business-boosting, bottom-line-building outcomes for our clients. Instead of selling promises, we would sell results!
At that time, ad agencies were not results driven. But we would be.
Ad agencies were not customer focused. But we would be.
And agencies certainly were not measuring their results. But we would do that.
I was going to build the first advertising agency that provided a comprehensive response to a client's needs. I would build an advertising agency concerned with more than just advertising. I would build a business solutions firm, the first of its kind, and it would be driven by metrics—that is, we would measure our successes in concrete terms that would leave no doubt as to whether we had delivered on our promises.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Leading Fearlessly by Jordan Zimmerman. Copyright © 2015 Jordan Zimmerman & Zimmerman Advertising, LLC. Excerpted by permission of Greenleaf Book Group Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
For More Information ix
Introduction: You're reading this book because you're tired of your own bullshit. 1
Part I Be Like Me, Insanely Committed to Doing Whatever it Takes
1 Be insanely committed to your own life. 9
2 Be insanely committed to what you know is right. 17
3 Be insanely committed to the suffering and the sacrifice. 27
4 Be insanely committed to being the best at whatever you choose to do. 37
5 Be insanely committed to competition. 45
6 Be insanely committed to your own professionalism. 59
7 Be insanely committed to the people who rely on you 67
Part III Pride, Excuses, and Lies You Tell Yourself
8 No excuses 77
9 Quit being proud. No job is beneath you. 85
10 Life is unfair. Succeed anyway 91
11 Attack of the bullshitters! 97
12 You can't build a better horse. 103
13 Doing brain surgery on yourself. 109
Part III Failure, Fear, and Fouling Up
14 If you want somebody you can trust, trust yourself. 115
15 You, too, can fail like me! 119
16 Fear is fuel. 125
17 Screwing up and getting screwed over. 133
Part IV The Trophy Generation Versus People Who Actually Do Things
18 Giving everybody a trophy doesn't create winners. It just makes more losers. 143
19 Quit being an entitled little prince or princess from the Trophy Generation and embrace reality 149
20 The inspiration of desperation. 155
Part V There's Only One Finish Line - Don't Lose Sight of It
21 Outcome beats output every single time. 165
22 Toothless lions. 173
23 If you want to build a railroad, sometimes you have to build a steel mill first. 181
24 Will the real Jordan Zimmerman please stand up? 193
Part VI Start Making Progress Today, Not Tomorrow
25 If you don't have a goal, you don't have a life. 203
26 Find the real problem. 209
27 Get an education, or get a broom. 223
28 Did 1 hurt your feelings? You're welcome. 231
29 How not to live your life or leading fearlessly versus following fearfully. 237
30 The sayings of Chairman Z. 247
Index 257
About the Author 267
What People are Saying About This
With Leading Fearlessly, Zimmerman has nailed it - what powers success and how to achieve it. Use passion and commitment to drive your own personal and professional triumphs! -- Marshall Goldsmith, author of the New York Times and global bestseller What Got You Here Won't Get You There
Take a journey with Jordan Zimmerman in Leading Fearlessly. He becomes your coach--cheering you on, celebrating your successes and helping you recover from any failures. Jordan Zimmerman's insight stays with you long after you finish reading. --John Baldoni, chair of N2Growth and author of Moxie: The Secret to Bold and Gutsy Leadership
This no-nonsense, fast-moving, hard-hitting book gives you a positive jolt of motivation that makes you raise the bar on yourself and accomplish more than you ever thought possible. -- Brian Tracy, author of The Power of Self-Confidence
Jordan Zimmerman is the real deal. He's been there, done that better than most ever dream of doing. Buy his book, drop your excuses, and do what he says. Leading Fearlessly will change your life. -- Dave Anderson, President of LearnToLead
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