There are agencies who are good losers, places where losing is not only accepted, it becomes part of the culture, it is expected. That is debilitating. Don't let that happen to you. At Deutsch we go into every pitch assuming we are the Yankees. It's amazing what happens when you go into a room of smart, hungry people and say, "Failure is not an option." People are galvanized.

If the person who runs a company has a belief system and everything he does stays fairly truly to that system, it will attract like-minded people who buy into it and then keeps selling itself in concentric circles.

When I looked into the mechanics of being a businessman, I found it wasn't rocket science.

A good ad is one simple idea, with humanity in it, that connects with consumers, that represents the value system of a company and then can connect it with the consumer. We always say a brand is set of shared values. So if you can simply demonstrate your value system as a brand, so that a consumer could say, "Ah, our values line up. I vote for you, brand!" that's a good ad.

I've always managed by walking around. Any CEO or leader who spends the majority of his time in his office is not doing his job.

The only thing I hated about the agency business was a lot of business travel. It was the only part of my job that I did not like. I found it very tedious and wearing.

Once you realize that there are no geniuses out there, you can think, "I can do that". One reason I've succeeded is that I have that naïve sense of entitlement.