Very early in my career, a veteran of the ad world said to me, “75% of the stuff you work on is not going to get produced.”

Ouch. Wow. Sheesh. Really? Regardless, I didn’t let this get me down, stayed the course, and now I’m still here, 15 plus years later. And now that I’m here I have a little bit of advice for you all.

75% of the work you do isn’t going to get produced.

I know it’s a harsh reality; a lot of times you’re going to put your heart and soul into an idea and a client is going to kill your idea for any number of reasons. But the key is to pick yourself up and move on. All you have to do is keep coming up with ideas. The more ideas you have, the more chance you have of getting a great idea produced, right? Make the numbers work in your favor. All you have to do is be one thing: persistent.

But not just any kind of persistent. A kinder, gentler, version of persistence. There are two scenarios when it comes to being persistent: There is the overbearing jerk type of persistence in which one fights and fights and fights for their idea and doesn’t know when to stop. Their world hangs on that one idea and it’s all they have. Most of the people I have encountered in my career who were like this aren’t in advertising anymore.

Then there’s the other kind of persistent. The kind of persistence that says, “I’ll show you, I’ll come up with ten more good ideas, all better than the one I just showed you.” It’s the type of persistence that goes back to the office, rallies the team and says “We can solve this.” Those are the type of people that hang around and have long illustrious careers in the ad business.

As I’ve said many times (to an equal amount of guffaws and applause) “Ideas are like Doritos, we’ll make more.”