How The World's Most Famous Ad Man Started With $6,000 and Zero Clients

Tonight’s inspirational story reminded me of myself. Like many entrepreneurs, I bounced around a lot before finding my way - selling magazines over the phone, getting a graduate degree I never used, blah, blah blah. But it’s important to remember that all of those experiences are just stepping stones.

Back in 1948, David Ogilvy was an unemployed 38 year old college dropout, with a past that indicated he wasn’t ever quite sure how to move forward:

• He had been a chef in Paris

• A researcher for Gallup, and even a

• Door-to-door salesman

When we find him, he was living on a farm in Pennsylvania with a family to support and no clear path forward. He was a middle aged man with no experience in advertising and a bank account that was rapidly emptying.

Yet, of all things, he decided to move to New York to start an ad agency.

Why? He had had one win that he couldn’t forget.

The $6,000 Launch

David’s turning point did not come from a flash of genius; it came from a job he had held years earlier. He had once sold AGA cooking stoves door-to-door in Scotland.

And he had been so successful at that that his employer asked him to write a sales manual for the other salesmen. That manual, “The Theory and Practice of Selling the AGA Cooker,” was later called the “finest sales instruction manual ever written” by Fortune magazine.

So he decided to take that manual he wrote for those stove salesmen and apply the same principles to Madison Ave.

His first few months were a struggle.

He had zero clients and zero reputation.

Solve a Problem, Pass Go, Collect More Than $200

Most people would have seen his lack of clients, and experience, as a reason to quit. But David saw something else. He saw an industry that was ripe for remaking.

Ogilvy realized that big corporate clients were not just looking for pretty pictures. Their real problem was sales. They needed someone who understood the human heart and the mechanics of a purchase.

So, while other agencies made pretty ads, Ogilvy created ads based on deep research and lots of copy, concluding that an ad was really just a salesperson.

By solving the sales problem, he took the thing he had already been doing in the Scottish rain and productized it for an eager audience. He found the antidote to the industry’s biggest pain point right in his own history.

The King of Madison Avenue

In a remarkably short time, his firm, Ogilvy and Mather, became one of the most powerful ad agencies in the world - take that Don Draper! Ogilvy went from an unemployed farmer to the man who defined the industry.

How did he do it? Here is the thing: Rather than trying to be like everyone else, David Ogilvy used his specific, unsexy past to solve a very specific problem for his clients.

Success leaves clues.

The Takeaway

Too often, we entrepreneurs want to hide our “unprofessional” past. David Ogilvy’s story is exactly why that is wrong. People will pay you to solve their problem, but they will pay you more if you are seen as the expert who understands the human side of the breakthrough better than anyone else.

Your past is not a distraction; it is your edge.

Last week, after my recent SCORE webinar, Diana contacted me and we are now in the process of creating and launching the newsletter she has always wanted to do. Yves also contacted me and I am now ghostwriting his Linkedin and we are launching his newsletter next week too.

If you are finally ready to launch your newsletter or make a splash on Linkedin, let’s talk. I offer both “Done-With-You” and “Done-For-You” options to help you skip the learning curve, jump to the front of the line, and immediately launch the sort of high-impact content that will get you noticed.

Book a free call with me here and let’s get to work!

Steal This Strategy

📖 Ogilvy on Advertising: The definitive book that proves unsexy research and facts are a million dollar asset.

🔥 The AGA Stove Sales Manual: A masterclass in how to speak to a specific audience about their real needs.

🛠️ Free! ‘Start Your Own Profitable Newsletter’ Webinar: Here is the free replay of the popular webinar I presented for SCORE on how to launch your own, attenton-grabbing, newsletter.

About Steve

Steve Strauss is the best-selling author of The Small Business Bible (and 17 other books), Inc.’s small business columnist, a lawyer (non-practicing), and an entrepreneur. He sold his last venture, TheSelfEmployed.com to Mark Cuban & Zen Business. Need a ghostwriter or a newsletter for your business? Contact Steve!