Be ready to quit.

Be ready to quit.

This single best piece of advice I can give you if you want to maximize your potential as a strategist in the marketing, advertising, and media industry.

I don't mean to constantly threaten to quit.

Nor do I mean to be difficult to work with, reckless, defiant, uncollaborative, or outright pompous.

What I mean is to always ensure you're in a position to think, write, and present with enough conviction that you'd be ready to quit over it.

I don't want to downplay how difficult this is.

We all have mortgages, bills, and people to take care of.

And the more senior you get, the heavier and more immobile these responsibilities become.

But the inescapable reality is that being scared leads to writing scared strategy.

Compromised, dull and predictable strategy, based only on "best practices" and what's proven, instead of what could be.

And writing scared, over time, only leads to stagnation that leads to being laid off anyway.

If you find yourself constantly hedging because you don't want to annoy a boss or colleague, or 'get in trouble,' I can promise you're not doing your best work.

So, do two things:

First, constantly be in the market.

Network.

Talk to headhunters.

Poke around on LinkedIn. (Apply once in a while).

Interview. Get the offer. Then decide.

Your top job is to always have a job so you can do your best job in any job.

Of course, never do this at the expense of performing your current job well, but squeeze in the time and energy to do it.

Not every two years, but every two months.

Agnostic of how the economy is doing.

Second, and if you've done the first right, remind yourself that you are liberated to write what you truly believe.

Fearlessness is a mind trick you have to constantly play on yourself.

Fear, on the other hand, is involuntary.

Choose which emotion you'd rather work under.

I truly believe that all great strategy stems from self-agency.

Real or delusioned.

And let's be real, 99% of the time you're not actually going to quit, but feeling like you could makes all the difference.

The 1% of the time when you actually feel like quitting, take my second most important piece of advice: do it.

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