The Divine Miss M.
I met “Miss M.” in the mid ‘90s. I call her that because that’s exactly what she had on her office door: Miss M. She’d been in the business world since the 1960s, an era when people in the workplace addressed each by last name only. Whether boss or coworker, everyone’s first name was Mister, Miss, Misses, and in some cases Madame. When she explained that to me, I thought it was crazy. But after thinking about it for a while, I decided it was actually kinda cool.
One reason people go soft in business is that the corporate world breeds a false sense of intimacy. In business we swap first names and nicknames like we really know each other, like we really care. Then those same people will call you by your first name while they’re firing you or stealing clients and money from you. Truth is nobody really knows each other, not in business, or in life. Sometimes it takes years to get to know someone well enough to consider them a true friend. M’s crazy nameplate was a reminder that this is always business, never personal.
Miss M’s agenda was simple: Don’t get laid off. She started out as a secretary. In order to dodge cutbacks she did what all hustlers do: made herself as valuable as possible. She didn’t just do her job; she did all the jobs that no one else would do. She learned the advertising business mainly by watching everyone around her do their thing and reading everything they asked her to type or file. Then she looked for opportunities to exploit. Her goal was to become so valuable they couldn’t afford to let her go. (Hustlers are scavengers.)
By the time I met her, she was her late 50s and had clawed her way up to a VP slot. She ran her own department—I guess you’d call it Billing & Account Receivables. She handled invoices, made sure clients were properly billed, stuff like that. She also negotiated fees and contracts with vendors (i.e., freelancers, commercial directors, photographers, actors, etc.) But like I said, hustlers are scavengers. So she did what every good scavenger does—find more ways to eat.
Now the one thing every company worries about, especially nowadays, is getting sued. In marketing the only thing worse than getting yourself sued is getting a client sued. Sued for making false claims. Sued for using unlicensed music or unauthorized celebrity likeness. Sued for marketing adult products (cigarettes/liquor) to minors. Sued for breach of contract or breaking confidentiality agreements. But my favorites are the “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” suits. Besides aping movies, videogames, wrestling, and old MTV staples, kids copy what they see in commercials. (Remember that Reebok “Pump” commercial with the bungee jumpers? Reebok had to yank it because some kid actually tried it at home.)
So to protect our clients (and ourselves) out come the lawyers. Corporate lawyers are hilarious. They live to beat lawsuits. They know they’ve got more money than you and more time to sit in court than you do. More manpower than you. More connections than you, no matter who you are… They’re built for this.
Anyway, we were in Chicago; our lawyer was in our home office in New York. It was simple: If you had a legal question, call the lawyer. Got a great idea for a commercial, but not sure if it’s misleading, call the lawyer. When in doubt, call the lawyer. Now if you used common sense, you hardly ever had to call him. But this is Corporate America—land where, as Will Rogers once noted, “Common sense ain’t common.”
So to keep a lid on the calls, our account execs and creative directors were selected to be the liaisons. One problem: They didn’t want to do it. The account execs just wanted to schmooze clients and tell creatives how to do their jobs. Creatives just wanted to do ads and push the envelope. But seriously, most were just too busy to sit on the phone talking legalese. It was faster to make your own calls. Plus there’s nothing fun about sitting through, “I don’t care what you told the client; legally, we cannot say/show this,” on 9 out of 10 calls. You’d much rather pull an “Okay, here’s what we did/said. Now how do we get away with it?”
This is where Miss M. came in. She did what we wouldn’t. Whenever there were legal questions, she called the lawyer. The more she talked to the lawyer the more she learned about law. It got to a point where she became the agency’s unofficial official legal counsel. After a while, she stopped calling the lawyer and began making calls as the lawyer. She started judging what we could and couldn’t do, based on her understanding of the law. She threw around phrases like “damages,” “negative press,” and “settlements.” Scared the crap out of folks. (We often joked that with her, every silver lining had a cloud.) But that was just the beginning.
The way our department ran, the higher-up creatives also dealt with creative budgets. Let’s say you had an idea that required illustration or photography. First step would be to find out the budget from the account exec. With a budget in mind, you search out illustrators, etc. then start taking bids. Next you negotiate rates and do the work. Well, most creatives hate doing budgets and bids. (It’s that whole “artist” thing, I guess.) So Miss M. scooped up a lot of those responsibilities as well. She began dictating the flow of all sorts of things like a dam. Good thing too, because she had serious management issues.
Miss M. had a Lily Tomlin, circa 9 to 5 vibe going—tall, dark-haired, glasses, very straight-laced and serious. But to hear her staff tell it, she was more like Dabney Coleman. She actually had a nice smile, but when you saw it you often wondered if any blood had been shed within the last 30 minutes. She went thru staffers like frat boys thru kegs. Percentage-wise, she had the highest turnover rate in the company next to the media department. (Traditionally, media folks—the planners and buyers that keep us all in the black, get low-balled, especially in Chicago.) I don’t know what Miss M. paid her folks but according to them it was never enough.
Our departments were on the same floor but at opposite ends. Still it was regular to hear her chewing people out all the way down the hall. Everybody I knew in her department was either constantly looking for a new job or drinking to deal with this one. And she couldn’t keep a secretary or personal assistant for squat. Looking back, I remember one secretary who stood up to her. Miss M. promptly fired that person in front of everyone.
But when it was all said and done Miss M. fulfilled her agenda. She never got cut—she had too much juice and too many aces in too many holes. She’d stepped on all sorts of folks along the way. Consistently made people’s jobs harder than necessary. And they couldn’t do a thing about it.
I remember being in a big department meeting where everyone whined about some of Miss M.’s antics. Philly (yeah, him), being the pimp he was, stood up and calmly said, “It’s your fault—she’s just doing what you won’t.” He knew a hustler when he saw one. Game always recognizes game. I think that’s why those two actually got along.
O.G. Hustlers
When it comes to business, department stores are the biggest legal hustlers I know. Think about it: You can walk into a Wal-Mart and buy baby food in one aisle, tires in another and a pair of jeans in aisle #8. That’s not business, that’s hustling. They’re no different from the guys I saw on the trains pushing phone chords and incense. They’re income agnostic—no loyalty to anything but the almighty dollar. Whatever you want, they’ll get it. Just like they say on the block, I got what you need.
But many of us don’t consider any of this hustling. We’d rather categorize it as “diversification,” “reinventing yourself,” or “changing with the times.” Those phrases are nice and tidy. For many, hustling (like much of this book) may be too “urban” to describe something as noble and American as business. But hey, that’s part of The Hustle, too. (Besides, if Gore Vidal can cop to it, what’s everyone else’s excuse?)
One reason people go soft in business is that the corporate world breeds a false sense of intimacy. In business we swap first names and nicknames like we really know each other, like we really care. Then those same people will call you by your first name while they’re firing you or stealing clients and money from you. Truth is nobody really knows each other, not in business, or in life. Sometimes it takes years to get to know someone well enough to consider them a true friend. M’s crazy nameplate was a reminder that this is always business, never personal.
Miss M’s agenda was simple: Don’t get laid off. She started out as a secretary. In order to dodge cutbacks she did what all hustlers do: made herself as valuable as possible. She didn’t just do her job; she did all the jobs that no one else would do. She learned the advertising business mainly by watching everyone around her do their thing and reading everything they asked her to type or file. Then she looked for opportunities to exploit. Her goal was to become so valuable they couldn’t afford to let her go. (Hustlers are scavengers.)
Now the one thing every company worries about, especially nowadays, is getting sued. In marketing the only thing worse than getting yourself sued is getting a client sued. Sued for making false claims. Sued for using unlicensed music or unauthorized celebrity likeness. Sued for marketing adult products (cigarettes/liquor) to minors. Sued for breach of contract or breaking confidentiality agreements. But my favorites are the “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” suits. Besides aping movies, videogames, wrestling, and old MTV staples, kids copy what they see in commercials. (Remember that Reebok “Pump” commercial with the bungee jumpers? Reebok had to yank it because some kid actually tried it at home.)
So to protect our clients (and ourselves) out come the lawyers. Corporate lawyers are hilarious. They live to beat lawsuits. They know they’ve got more money than you and more time to sit in court than you do. More manpower than you. More connections than you, no matter who you are… They’re built for this.
Anyway, we were in Chicago; our lawyer was in our home office in New York. It was simple: If you had a legal question, call the lawyer. Got a great idea for a commercial, but not sure if it’s misleading, call the lawyer. When in doubt, call the lawyer. Now if you used common sense, you hardly ever had to call him. But this is Corporate America—land where, as Will Rogers once noted, “Common sense ain’t common.”
So to keep a lid on the calls, our account execs and creative directors were selected to be the liaisons. One problem: They didn’t want to do it. The account execs just wanted to schmooze clients and tell creatives how to do their jobs. Creatives just wanted to do ads and push the envelope. But seriously, most were just too busy to sit on the phone talking legalese. It was faster to make your own calls. Plus there’s nothing fun about sitting through, “I don’t care what you told the client; legally, we cannot say/show this,” on 9 out of 10 calls. You’d much rather pull an “Okay, here’s what we did/said. Now how do we get away with it?”
This is where Miss M. came in. She did what we wouldn’t. Whenever there were legal questions, she called the lawyer. The more she talked to the lawyer the more she learned about law. It got to a point where she became the agency’s unofficial official legal counsel. After a while, she stopped calling the lawyer and began making calls as the lawyer. She started judging what we could and couldn’t do, based on her understanding of the law. She threw around phrases like “damages,” “negative press,” and “settlements.” Scared the crap out of folks. (We often joked that with her, every silver lining had a cloud.) But that was just the beginning.
The way our department ran, the higher-up creatives also dealt with creative budgets. Let’s say you had an idea that required illustration or photography. First step would be to find out the budget from the account exec. With a budget in mind, you search out illustrators, etc. then start taking bids. Next you negotiate rates and do the work. Well, most creatives hate doing budgets and bids. (It’s that whole “artist” thing, I guess.) So Miss M. scooped up a lot of those responsibilities as well. She began dictating the flow of all sorts of things like a dam. Good thing too, because she had serious management issues.
Miss M. had a Lily Tomlin, circa 9 to 5 vibe going—tall, dark-haired, glasses, very straight-laced and serious. But to hear her staff tell it, she was more like Dabney Coleman. She actually had a nice smile, but when you saw it you often wondered if any blood had been shed within the last 30 minutes. She went thru staffers like frat boys thru kegs. Percentage-wise, she had the highest turnover rate in the company next to the media department. (Traditionally, media folks—the planners and buyers that keep us all in the black, get low-balled, especially in Chicago.) I don’t know what Miss M. paid her folks but according to them it was never enough.
Our departments were on the same floor but at opposite ends. Still it was regular to hear her chewing people out all the way down the hall. Everybody I knew in her department was either constantly looking for a new job or drinking to deal with this one. And she couldn’t keep a secretary or personal assistant for squat. Looking back, I remember one secretary who stood up to her. Miss M. promptly fired that person in front of everyone.
But when it was all said and done Miss M. fulfilled her agenda. She never got cut—she had too much juice and too many aces in too many holes. She’d stepped on all sorts of folks along the way. Consistently made people’s jobs harder than necessary. And they couldn’t do a thing about it.
I remember being in a big department meeting where everyone whined about some of Miss M.’s antics. Philly (yeah, him), being the pimp he was, stood up and calmly said, “It’s your fault—she’s just doing what you won’t.” He knew a hustler when he saw one. Game always recognizes game. I think that’s why those two actually got along.
Don’t mind me, I’m just grindin’, Jack.
—The Clipse
—The Clipse
O.G. Hustlers
When it comes to business, department stores are the biggest legal hustlers I know. Think about it: You can walk into a Wal-Mart and buy baby food in one aisle, tires in another and a pair of jeans in aisle #8. That’s not business, that’s hustling. They’re no different from the guys I saw on the trains pushing phone chords and incense. They’re income agnostic—no loyalty to anything but the almighty dollar. Whatever you want, they’ll get it. Just like they say on the block, I got what you need.
But many of us don’t consider any of this hustling. We’d rather categorize it as “diversification,” “reinventing yourself,” or “changing with the times.” Those phrases are nice and tidy. For many, hustling (like much of this book) may be too “urban” to describe something as noble and American as business. But hey, that’s part of The Hustle, too. (Besides, if Gore Vidal can cop to it, what’s everyone else’s excuse?)
I sell ice in the winter, I sell fire in hell—
I am a hustla baby, I’ll sell water to a well!
—Jay-Z
I am a hustla baby, I’ll sell water to a well!
—Jay-Z
