TWS "The Wright Stuff": It's In The Cards

In 1986 I joined the sports marketing agency IMG. It was equal parts exciting and scary (funny how those two emotions frequently travel together - think roller coasters). Exciting because being a lifelong fan of sports it had never occurred to me that I could combine what I loved, with my vocation. Scary because after a relatively successful career in the packaged goods industry, making a dramatic shift seemed risky... and that is an understatement.

So fourteen years into my career, here I was, running the event division at IMG Canada - my experience? I'd been to many sporting events - full stop.

In those early days at IMG I was flying by the seat of my pants and I did not think I was making progress quickly enough in my new position. One day I read, "Success is a journey, not a destination." It resonated with me so I wrote it on the back of one of my business cards and set it on my desk in a visible location. Interestingly, that simple phrase has served me well many times since that day.

A couple of months later, another quotation caught my eye so I pulled out another card and wrote the phrase down, noting the month and year - and a collection was born. I would shuffle the deck on Mondays and whichever quotation ended up on top would be my words of wisdom for that week.

"Only the mediocre are always at their best."

I like them best when you have to give some thought to the meaning.

"You'll be amazed what you can accomplish if you don't stop to quiet every barking dog."

Stay focused, not every problem is your problem.

"The speed of the leader is the speed of the gang."

Watch any championship team and you'll see the coach and/or the captain sets the tempo. Everyone want to stay with the pack. If the leader is tentative and indecisive... so go the troops.

In retrospect, these business cards, fifteen in all (including numerous positions at IMG over twenty years), are a map of my business life. I can tell by the title on the card and the date I wrote the quotation, exactly what was going on at the time.

I remember in 1993, on a gut feel, I took IMG into the wacky world of International Airport advertising. We had no expertise, no track record and very little in-depth knowledge of how that worked. I had a hunch we could remake the business model from one of selling individual signage positions, to a partnership/sponsorship model (which IMG had invented and was a global leader in). I had very few supporters and in the end, we gambled.

Among other 'firsts' - Harrods first branch anchored retail at Toronto T3.

"If you're going to walk on thin ice - you might as well dance."

We were, and we did... and we won.

I've been a fan of Katherine Hepburn's all of my adult life. Love her... maybe safer to say I had a crush on her... you know, movie stars.

So it was with delight I added a card with one of her quotations -