Ideas can come from anywhere.

As this year began, I had time on my hands.?No one – prospective clients, where are you? – appears to be looking for workshop help; coaching and consulting assignments are scarce; book ideas, try as I might, continue to elude me – so to maintain some semblance of productivity, I signed up for?MasterClass, a distance-learning program populated by well-known, high-profile teachers.?

I investigated several promising opportunities – a session on writing by Malcolm Gladwell, negotiating by former FBI negotiator Chris Voss, – but my first choice is “Advertising and Creativity” by Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein, co-founders of the?agency?Goodby Silverstein & Partners.

So I’m working my way through each session; when I get to Chapter five,?How to Make Advertising That Lives in Culture: Three Ways to Engage,?I hear Jeff Goodby say, “Good ideas can come from anywhere.”

Wait, what did he just say??Didn’t I say that??And maybe I said it first?

I went looking.?I checked the?current edition?of?The Art of Client Service.?Yes, there’s a line, “Ideas are the currency we trade it,” but no, there’s no “Ideas can come from anywhere.”?What about my workshops??I opened the?PowerPoint?presentation on?Five Ways to Build Trust with Clients and Colleagues[rs1]?.?There it is, on slide 163 (confession:?it is a?really long?presentation).

Did I say it first??Maybe.?

Would it help if Jeff Goodby cited me??Too much to ask.?

Does it matter??Not really.

In fact, Goodby himself says as much, in a chapter devoted to the “Got Milk campaign: “A great idea?travels?to other places…”?Sometimes letting go of an idea and letting other people own is really the most important thing and the most exciting thing you can do.”?In?Goodby’s Rules for Creative Vandalism,?he goes further, quoting Picasso: “Don’t copy. Steal.”

Listening to Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein speak over the course of two plus hours, I hear echoes of much of I’ve been saying for 20-plus years, about forging trust, building relationships, the importance of strategy, pursuing new business, and a host of other subjects about the business, much of it (nearly) replicating what I’ve written and spoken.?Other people have been kind and thoughtful enough to quote me for attribution, but let’s face it: I’m not a Pablo Picasso or a David Ogilvy, so as much as I would like to hear my name, my expectations remain rightly, anonymously modest.

After Wiley?published?The Art of Client Service, I turned to my copywriter/strategist friend?Kristi Faulkner?for help in promoting the book.?Kristi has a vastly larger?Twitter?following than me, and offered to publicize the book, using quotes drawn from it.?To help, I compiled a short list of possibilities, divided according to topic:

RELATIONSHIPS

1.???“Serving clients well?should?be simple, except it isn’t.?Solving problems?should?be easy, but almost never is.”

2.???“Everything begins and ends with?what clients want, and what they want is relatively straightforward:?consistent execution partnered with solid ideas, driven by people who understand and care deeply about their business.”

3.???“When I began in this business, I didn’t give a damn about trust; I thought instead of the work.?To me, and to the other people who share my view, there is an unwavering belief that the only thing that matters is the work.”

4.???“We had won the account based on our work. We lost the account because we didn’t understand that while great work is what wins business, a great relationship is what keeps it.”

NEW BUSINESS

5.???“If agencies are to survive, or, even better, thrive, they need to pursue new business if their lives depended on it.?Because it does.”

6.???“There are no silver medals in the Olympics of new business.”

7.???“New business is all about handicapping risk.”

8.???“Happy clients are the most powerful weapon in new business.”

9.???“One client referral is worth a thousand cold-call overtures.”?

EXECUTION

10.?????????“Account people with the best judgment are the ones who made mistakes and learned from them. Their good judgment comes in part from previous bad judgment.”

11.?????????“I know of no clients who say, ‘Sure, take as much time as you need with the assignment.’”

12.?????????“Budgets are what keep clients awake at night. They should keep you awake too, at least until you figure out how to do them well.”

13.?????????“I didn’t understand that my job was to?improve?the work, not?approve?it.”

14.?????????“There’s a reason why people who rely on technology often refer to it as ‘working remotely.’ I couldn’t describe it better, and it couldn’t be more chilling.”

COMMUNICATION

15.?????????“A good conference report isn’t long. It’s short. It isn’t detail laden. It is detail specific. It isn’t comprehensive. It’s concise. It shouldn’t take hours to read. It should take minutes. And it shouldn’t be a recap. It should be a plan-of-action.”

16.?????????“Badly used, Power-Point can eviscerate even the most thoughtful content.”

17.?????????“There are some skills driven by talent. There are some skills driven by instinct. Writing is a skill driven by practice. The more you do it, the better you will become.”

If you’re in search of a quote – for a presentation, a blog post, a tweet – to amplify or reinforce your own thinking, maybe one of these will help.?If you decide you’d like to borrow – or should I say steal? – from the list and are kind enough to cite me as its author, I will be grateful.?

After all, ideas (and quotes) can come from anywhere. Sometimes they come from you.?And, on occasion, they might come from me.