The gangly young man stepped inside the office and froze. He took a step to the side and pressed up against the wall.
His eyes darted from desk to desk. But nobody took notice of him.
Finally, he spotted somebody even younger than himself at one of the desks. He walked over.
“Hey buddy,” he said. “Maybe you can help me. My company has an account with you guys. They sent me down here because we just got some new business. I’m supposed to buy more ads. Can you tell me who I should talk to?”
The even younger man at the desk blinked a few times. “Actually,” he said, “that’s something I can help you with.”
The year was 1900. The place was the Lord & Thomas advertising agency in Chicago.
The young man who came looking to buy more ads worked for Collier’s Publishing. And the even younger man he approached was a 19-year-old Albert Lasker.
Perhaps you’ve heard of Lasker already. At 18, he started work as an office boy at Lord & Thomas. At 19, he became an accounts man. At 23, he became partner. At 32, he became CEO.
Under Lasker’s tenure, Lord & Thomas ran breakthrough campaigns, building brands like Palmolive, Pepsodent, Sunkist, Kotex, and Lucky Strike. And today, Lasker is known as one of the greatest advertising men of all time.
Lasker had natural talents that made him such a success in advertising, and at such a young age. But none of it would have happened — so Lasker claimed later — were it not for a few early successes. Like that Collier’s account, which landed in his lap thanks to his look of inexperience.
Early success.
I recently looked at the areas of my life where I’ve persevered and achieved something. This includes copywriting.
I made a list of common elements. There turned out to be three crucial things.
The first was an experience of early success. It gave me the belief to persevere when things got hard.
And vice versa. When I look at things where I failed… I find I didn’t have any early successes. Maybe I was following a process that was supposed to work. But without a signpost to tell me I was on the right path, it felt like wandering in the wilderness. So I gave up.
My point is that an experience of early success can be transformational.
Keep this in mind when you’re trying to retain customers or clients… or manage yourself.
An early success can come from blind luck and land right in your lap, like it did for Albert Lasker.
But with a bit of preparation, scheming, and maybe downright fakery, you don’t need luck. You can create an experience of early success with near certain probability. For your clients or customers or yourself. And once that happens… who knows how far you will go?
By the way, would you like to know about the other two crucial ingredients I found for long-term success in copywriting?
It’s something I haven’t written about before. But if and when I do, it will go into my email newsletter. You can sign up for that here.