(This is Installment #5 of Lessons From The Passionist: How To Turn Passion Into Purpose To Create Greater Meaning and Joy in Your Life. This week, I conclude the story of my passion guided journey that led me to write this book. I hope you enjoy, and please continue to send your comments and stories. I love the feedback and hearing from all of you.)
Chapter 1 (conclusion) – A Journey, Not a Destination: My Personal Passion Journey
In early 2001, the marketplace for big, senior level marketing and advertising jobs was changing and I was ambivalent about continuing down that career path. Clients were becoming less loyal. The digital revolution was making data manipulation and data mining sexier to brand managers than good creative ideas. And the industry as a whole, although nowhere near as sophisticated as today’s data obsessed marketing machine, was about to be shaken up in a short-term focused, digitally-driven paradigm shift. The art of building lasting brands, always a crucial counter-balance to the science of building them, was being minimized and even lost in some cases. Close relationships, always the special sauce that created the magic between clients and agencies, were becoming tenuous and short lived. The times, they were a-changing.
Good ideas, human connection, human judgement and experience are critical to marketing success in the same way that a great driver is critical to guiding even the most technologically advanced Formula One race car to victory (Steve Jobs demonstrated this with the successful iMac and iPhone, which he developed without the use of any market research data). Technology alone can’t win the race or build a brand. But in 2001, people were enamored with new marketing technology and, although I appreciated its value as a new addition in the arsenal of brand building tools, I was not a “technologist”. I was essentially a strategist with a creative mind who loved connecting ideas and brands with people. This changing industry dynamic and obsession with “technology for technology’s sake”, prevalent in the early 2000’s, was draining my passion for the business I loved, which had always been fueled by the human elements and creativity of the craft. Without passion, I knew it was time to change. But what to do next?
I was facing a common dilemma, and the main reason why many people don’t follow their passions: my economic success, and the comfortable lifestyle it provided, made it hard to leave or even contemplate leaving. At thirty-nine, I was living what might be considered by many a great life, with multiple homes and cars, traveling first-class to anywhere on a moments’ notice and eating in the best restaurants in the world everyday for lunch. My daughter attended private school and we enjoyed fun-filled ski and beach vacations every year. Who would want to change this? I was torn about what to do. Continue on a path without passion or make a change, even if it would drastically change my lifestyle for an unforeseen period of time?
Fortunately, I have always believed that if you do what you love, you will work hard enough to become good at it, maybe even the best. If you are good, you will be well paid. There is always a market for great. From this belief, I was able to quell my fear of change. I had confidence, based on my experience, that passion would steer me in the right direction with the right level of focus and energy to succeed at whatever I did, or it would lead me to something better.
I had spent my whole career to that point selling intangible concepts and ideas (not including the time I sold the Encyclopedia Americana door-to-door as a high school student trying to make some extra money) to brands, and had always wondered what it would be like to directly sell a tangible product, something that someone could walk into a store and touch and buy. Sure, people bought my clients’ beer, cookies, cars, insurance and the myriad products I made campaigns to sell. But my primary job was selling the campaigns to the clients. I was curious about taking a new direction toward actually selling MY product to consumers.
While curious about change, I was still resisting it. Fear is powerful. I knew how to run agencies and marketing groups, and was good at it. It would have been a fairly easy and lucrative career path to continue. Or so I thought. Then one day, I was invited by a recruiter to interview for a CEO position at a mid-sized agency in NYC. We had met briefly once before, and he knew my history. However, while he had called me to interview for this position (his client had asked him to), he thankfully told me that I was unlikely to get the job or any other senior job in the advertising industry for years. What? How was that possible? It wasn’t that I was unqualified for that position or others that might come up, he stressed. I had run my own small agency and a successful division of a large public advertising holding company. I had proven skills and relationships with clients who had worked with me for over a decade at two different agencies.
The recruiter’s theory, however, was that my age would work against me in the post-dot-com-bubble job market we were experiencing in 2001. I was still under forty, and all the candidates I was competing with for this particular job, and presumably the other senior jobs for which I would come under consideration that year, were all in their fifties. They offered at least ten more years of experience for the same or less money than I was commanding based on my work and salary history. When companies can buy good and more experienced people for less money, they usually do. It’s good value and it feels safer. If you try to drop your price to be competitive, it doesn’t work. Smart employers know that you will leave when the next good job comes along offering to pay what you really want to earn. So they don’t hire you. He turned out to be right. I did not get that job, and other attractive offers were not forthcoming. It seems that taking the unusual, rapid-growth career path I choose by starting Pinnacle Promotions at twenty-four was effective for creating lots of early success and financial reward, but it basically made me unemployable at forty. Thankfully, I had saved enough money to take some time and figure out what to do. Change is a lot easier to accept when it’s the only choice, and if I was contemplating a career change out of lack of passion, now it would be out of necessity.
Understandably, I was ready to go in a new direction, when my friend Gary Cohen, then president of Ted Baker USA, invited me to lunch. Gary and I had met on the Delta Shuttle between New York and D.C. We were both frequent fliers on that route. Gary lived in suburban Maryland and worked in NYC. I lived in NYC and visited my daughter on weekends in Virginia. On our flights together, and over many lunches and dinners, Gary and I would often talk about our passions: life, sports and family, and sometimes about fashion trends and the marketing of fashion.
On this particular afternoon, I told Gary that I was thinking of leaving the marketing agency business. I was ready to find a new passion to dive into. “Did you ever consider a career in men’s fashion?” he asked. “It’s a growing industry and I think you might be great at it.” Hmmm. I had briefly thought about it Italian industrialist, Claudio Del Vecchio (of Luxottica fame) purchased the iconic American brand, Brooks Brothers, from English retailer Marks & Spencer. I wore Brooks Brothers shirts in high school and loved the brand’s heritage and story. Marks & Spencer had almost killed Brooks Brothers by lowering product quality and poorly managing the in-store consumer experience. I had written to Del Vecchio a few months prior to our lunch to express interest in putting my marketing expertise and first-hand knowledge of the brand to work for him as he rebuilt the company. I got no reply and no return phone calls. I listened carefully to Gary as he told me what was happening in the menswear industry, and it certainly piqued my curiosity. Apparently, the industry was booming.
Throughout my advertising career, I probably spent enough money on suits to open my own store. My wardrobe was a big part of the “theatre” of advertising back when men wore suits to work every day. I studied clothing and used it to create different moods and impressions in meetings. When I was a kid, my mom taught me about clothing and how to dress appropriately for any occasion. Her passion for fashion was fostered in high school. At sixteen, she dreamed of being a fashion designer and was even awarded a scholarship to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design. Unfortunately, her father, an Italian immigrant and talented artist who made his living painting beautiful signs, had other plans for her. She should find a husband and have a family (lucky for me!). Her fashion dream got squashed, which is probably why she was always so supportive of my dreams as I was growing up. Anyway, I had successfully put my wardrobe to work in the boardroom for years, always creating the right image for every meeting or informal client get together. Maybe fashion was something at which I could excel.
While I half-heartedly continued to interview for agency jobs, I found myself increasingly more interested in observing men’s clothing and brands. I studied ads, brochures and websites. I visited stores and read magazines to see what was happening in the business. I was stoking a new passion. The idea of using my marketing and selling skills to sell an actual, tangible product rather than intangible ideas was gaining appeal. My Italian background contributed to my interest because most of the best quality men’s clothing was designed and manufactured in Italy, and many of the people I spoke to as I researched the industry were Italian. Perhaps this was a business I would enjoy, especially if it connected me to my Italian roots and offered a few visits to Italy each year.
While my passion for this possible career twist was growing, I had a lot to learn if I was going to invest my time and money in a new business. What area of the industry would I like? Wholesale or retail? Design or marketing? I studied for months and met with people in the business to learn as much as I could. I talked to wholesalers, retailers and tailors. I considered different business scenarios and ran spreadsheets to see if I could actually earn a decent living. About four months after my lunch with Gary, I drew up plans to open a men’s clothing store called Robert’s. After all my research, it seemed the best way to learn would be to start where the product touched the consumer every day – on the retail floor. Passion had struck again and I would now pour everything I had into a new career direction for the next seven years.
I picked Westport, Connecticut as the town in which to open my first store. Westport was close to my home town of Rowayton, a small bedroom community about thirty miles outside NYC. It was also home to Mitchells, the most successful independent men’s specialty store in the U.S. Ironically, Mitchells had been founded by an advertising executive who got tired of commuting back and forth from his home in Westport to NYC every day, so he started a little suit shop that grew into a $200 million plus, multi-store retail apparel empire.
I decided to open Robert’s about a mile down the road from Mitchells. Crazy idea? Not really. I surmised that in the process of growing so large (they had about 15,000 customers in their database and I only needed about 800 to make my much smaller store profitable), Mitchells must have lost 5-10% of their customers over the years because of bad experiences or Mitchells’ not offering what some customers were looking for, something other than just the well-known “mass luxury” menswear brands they sold. I planned on satisfying those customers by traveling to Italy and finding small and unique luxury brands that Mitchells did not carry. My formula worked. However, occasionally Mitchells would find out what I was selling from mutual customers, and place an order for the same items. Of course, the brands would take their much bigger orders rather than mine. It was the law of the jungle, and Mitchells was the proverbial 900 pound gorilla. But this just kept me on my toes and provided incentive to keep searching for new items to offer my customers every season.
It turned out that Gary was right about my chances for success. I had a natural instinct for selling fashion, probably the result of the skills that were honed by years of pitching abstract marketing campaigns to demanding clients. I was a natural story teller, and easily romanced the products in my store. I told of the small villages in Italy where they were made, or introduced them, virtually, to the third generation tailor who had made the very jacket they were holding. I poured them wine from a vineyard near the shoe factory that made the shoes they were trying on. My customers were not buying clothes. They were buying an experience. People who came into my store usually bought something. Products that people could touch and try on were easy to sell, especially when accompanied by a good laugh and glass of scotch. If fact, the selling was the easiest part of the business.
The buying was the hardest and riskiest part of retail. Picking the right merchandise for the store was tricky, especially with no experience. Not everyone likes what you like. As a retail buyer, you have to pick merchandise that caters to many tastes, not only yours. And you have to buy the right quantities and sizes. I made some massively expensive buying mistakes in the beginning, like loading up on pleated pants right as the market was moving to slimmer silhouetted, flat-front models. I had no idea who my customers would be once the store got going, so choosing sizes, styles and colors was mostly guess work at first. I eventually learned to how buy the right merchandise, how to take measurements for custom shirts and suits, and even how to design one-of-a-kind pieces for customers, which turned out to be a big part of my business. My passion to be the best drove me to learn and work long hours, seven days a week, and to always explore new opportunities to grow the business.
After three years of working in Robert’s every day, I started to sense an opportunity to offer some new products to the wholesale menswear marketplace. I felt I had learned enough in my store to start selling to other stores. My creative and entrepreneurial juices were flowing. I created a new brand, Roberto da Carrara, and bought another, niformis, and started a company to offer retailers like me artfully designed, high-end fashion for men.
I named the first brand after my grandfather’s hometown of Carrara (the brand name translates to “Robert of Carrara”), a town in the northwestern corner of Tuscany famous for mining the world’s best white marble. I bought niformis from Victor DeLeon, a hugely talented, one-man band who designed, manufactured and sold amazing shirts after a stint selling Dolce & Gabbana in the men’s department at Saks Fifth Avenue’s flagship store in NYC. Victor was a shirt star, who was known by menswear buyers for having the most creative, yet wearable shirts. The fit was amazing and the designs were just shy enough of over-the-top for most men to feel comfortable wearing. The designs were limited each season and people collected them, which means they keep returning to the store (which retailer’s loved, of course, so they could sell them more stuff). Victor’s passion for shirts and Italian culture was infectious. When I initially bought his niformis collection for my Westport store, the shirts sold out immediately. He would turn out to be an excellent partner for my new venture.
Roberto da Carrara, our uber expensive line, was made with the most luxurious fabrics and loaded with hand-made details. One-of-a-kind silk linings printed in Como, hand-hewn horn buttons, featherweight cashmere and exotic fabric blends, and the best Italian tailoring were all wrapped up in a unique brand experience. Our target audience was small and well defined. The brand was marketed to the man who could afford anything, and we used the tagline “Vita con Passione” (“Live with Passion”) to appeal to the adventurous and fearless nature of most our super successful prospects. I guess the passion theme for this book was taking shape even then. Two years after launching Roberto da Carrara, Victor and I were nominated for a global menswear design award by Fashion Group International and came in second place! What power passion has to make things happen in life.
The business grew steadily from 2003 to early 2008. In a few short years in the industry, I went from running a small store to running Robert’s and 2M Apparel Group, the company I formed with a small group of investors to build the Roberto da Carrara and niformis brands and to open a Roberto da Carrara store in NYC’s Nolita neighborhood. 2M had about fifty wholesale accounts by 2008 and in April 2009, Town & Country magazine featured our Nolita store as one of the best in NYC. Robert’s had about five-hundred loyal customers. I was on my way, harnessing my new passion to another business success. What a journey! What fun!
Unexpectedly, this incredible journey would start to unravel in the spring of 2008, just as we were hitting our stride. The mortgage market crash, the one ruined many people’s retirement and about which they made the movie, The Big Short, hit the NYC market harder than most. Unfortunately for me, the majority of my customers were young financial industry hotshots making millions at the hedge funds scattered around Fairfield County and at big NYC investment banks. We sold to other people as well, but the hedge-fund high rollers would come in every weekend and buy a few $300 shirts to wear to dinner or to take to some over the top party in St. Barths that they were flying off to in their friend’s jet. This was our bread and butter business and the backbone of our company. They were also the one’s about to stop spending money.
By fall of 2008, the entire business had skidded to a abrupt halt. It was not a slow down. People who thought nothing of casually spending $2500 on a Saturday afternoon in our stores wouldn’t even buy a pair of $150 jeans. Stores were canceling or reducing our wholesale orders. Or worse, returning merchandise. Full on consumer panic had set in, and even people who were not financially devastated by the crash stopped spending money. They felt guilty spending money on something as conspicuous as fashion while the world they knew melted down around them. My customers, most of whom had become friends, regaled me with tales of market woes and new budget constraints. Many lost their jobs. Some lost their houses. And some lost everything, including their trophy wives who had jumped on the gravy train when the market was red hot and money was flowing freely.
By mid-2009, I knew I had to act. Forced with an “invest more or shut down” scenario, I liquidated the inventory of both stores, and shut them down. Our heralded flagship store in Lolita didn’t even stay open for a full year. I wound down the wholesale business as fast as I could. It was a whirlwind of activity, of liquidation and negotiation. By 2010, I exited the fashion business completely, unwilling to invest more time and money waiting and hoping for the market to improve for our products. Good decision. It didn’t recover for about five years, which would have been a long and expensive wait. I have great respect for small boutique owners, especially those who weathered that crash. Retailing is one of the hardest things I have ever done in business. You can make a fortune or lose your shirt (no pun intended) very quickly.
Even with the difficult and abrupt ending, I loved everything about my experiences and career in the fashion and retail business (except maybe the seven day work weeks). I still visit stores and share war stories with other store owners. I have great memories of traveling to Como and Biella in Italy during those years, visiting the best fabric mills in the world and seeing how the most exquisite cashmeres and wools are actually made. One year, I took my daughter on a fun-filled trip to Florence to accompany me to Pitti Uomo, the premier seasonal men’s buying show that happens twice a year in that inspiring historical city. I met and learned about quality from passionate artisans who made our buttons, shoes, silk, suits, shirts and other apparel items, many of whom still run family-owned companies that are a century old or more. I even ate my way through the entire country of Italy, my ancestral homeland, and learned many cooking secrets (another one of my passions) that I use everyday. Most importantly, I learned about myself as I navigated the only market crash that actually effected my life directly and significantly.
After closing Robert’s and 2M Apparel Group, I needed to recharge my batteries. Even the most passionate people reach a limit to their energy, and I had reached mine. I decided to leave the hustle, bustle and winter weather of the NYC area and move to sunny Sarasota, FL. It was a quiet town with the most beautiful beach in the U.S., Siesta Key. Just what the doctor ordered.
The move to Florida, and out of the frenetic environment of NYC, gave me a chance to refresh my energy and decide which passion would drive my next adventure. While I was winding down 2M Apparel, I went back to my roots and formed Crosscourt Advisors, a consulting business advising marketing agencies and brands on a variety of issues. By the time I relocated to the sunshine state, I had a few good clients. But I wasn’t ready to jump in to work full time. Instead, I spent much of my time learning and practicing yoga, swimming in the ocean with dolphins and manatees, playing tennis and generally recharging my batteries. I wanted to be patient and see which of my passions would be the driving force for my next career move.
I operated in this partial-work mode for almost three years, advising a client or two at a time. Eventually, my energy returned and I started considering my next chapter in life. Sarasota was a sleepy town, full of mostly retired people and somewhat lost, younger people who worked in the bars and restaurants that catered to the tourists who visited the beautiful, white sandy beaches of the gulf-coach. It was no place for a recharged New Yorker. As I was getting prepared to get back to a more active work life, I knew I would also need to move. After living in the tropics and enjoying the quality of life that comes with living in a warm climate, going back to a cold city was out of the question. As I looked around the U.S. for a warm-weather climate with close proximity to the ocean, an international vibe, and a vibrant business community, Miami was the obvious choice. So off I went to the Magic City.
If there was ever a city to ignite your passion and make you feel engaged in life, Miami is it. The combination of beautiful tropical blue water, lush foliage and palm trees, incredibly designed skyscrapers, vibrant music and art, gourmet food and people from all over the world provide all the energy needed to light you up every day. Yet, Miami also has a tropical chill vibe, which makes it slower and calmer than New York or other major world cities. In Miami, you can work hard and then easily slow down. In New York, it seemed hard to ever slow down. The balance in Miami was perfect for me. I felt at home immediately and ready to begin the next phase of my life.
Since it’s inception, Crosscourt Advisors had been engaged to work on a variety of marketing-related projects. While in Sarasota, I worked with both agencies and brands. I worked with both start-ups and established companies. I basically worked with everyone who called for help, provided it didn’t interfere too much with my schedule. I was a bit unfocused. But once in Miami, and back in my groove, I was able to give my company a more clear, passion-driven definition. My passion translated into three areas of business: helping people bring their ideas to life, helping make brands better and helping people achieve their dreams. With my focus clear, I was able to pick the clients who best aligned with my work and personal goals, and I was even able to schedule time to write this book!
Today, about forty years after pursuing my first real passion on the tennis court, I look back at the incredible journey taken, while keeping an eye toward the future. I’m enjoying the present, while anticipating the next unexpected twists that my passions seem to attract. I still work in the tennis and marketing industries and, as I write, am launching a new fashion lifestyle brand called The Original Miami Beach Towel Co. (which I started because I could not find a good beach towel in Miami Beach. Go figure!) Passions tend to be cumulative and portable. While some die out, others follow you around and intensify over time. Many of mine have followed me and grown and fed each other throughout my life. It’s been a fascinating ride so far, all because I decided when I was twelve years-old to fearlessly follow my own path. I had no idea where it would lead, or what it would lead to. All I know is that I have never sat around bored or wishing I was doing something else for one second. To me, that’s a successful life.
If you have not yet identified your passion, it’s okay. Many people haven’t. I am going to help you find yours. In fact, the process of exploration is itself an exercise in passion. Plenty of people have to try different things for years before they find the one thing that makes them tick, that gets them out of bed in the morning with the anticipation that “today, I get to do what I love!” There is great satisfaction in trying different sports and activities; learning about different areas of science or medicine; creating art with cameras, brushes and pencils; cooking foods from around the world; learning new languages and traveling to new countries to try them out; writing stories and poems; or building a business that serves some unmet need. The passion possibilities are endless. The key is to be open to trying new things and sticking with the one’s that grab your attention. Embrace them and let them enthrall you.
My father, who was a dentist, left a prescription on my desk one morning while I was getting ready for school. I asked, “Dad, what’s that?” “A prescription for life,” he answered as he went off to work. On the prescription pad, he had written four words:
patience
persistence
consistency
balance.
You can’t pursue a passion driven life without following that prescription. You need patience to find your passion and to endure life’s inevitable ups and downs. You need persistence to pursue your passion until you reach a level of competency that will bring you joy, and possibly allow you to earn a living from your passion, if that is your goal. You need to be consistent in your study and practice of your passion, and not get distracted or pulled off course. And you need to find balance in life, so your passion does not consume your entire existence and lead to burnout. I will reveal more about the power of this prescription throughout the book.
The list of possible passions is infinite, and if you don’t explore all that life has to offer, not only will you not find your passion, you will wake up one day wondering “How did I get HERE?” And you’ll be asking not with gratitude, as I did that morning on my walk along the water in Miami when i decided to write this book, but with the frustration that you are not where you want to be. Today is the day to begin living a life that gives you energy, rather than sucking it out of you. Today is the day to wake up smiling and excited about the day ahead. Today is the day to shape your life in your own way on your own terms. Today is the day to start living your life with passion!. Today is the day to let your passion start to create your world.
Let’s get started!
(Next week, in Installment #6, I will post Chapter 2: What Drives You To Do The Things You Do in Life. In this chapter, I will explore our early influencers – parents, friends, family, teachers, etc. – the people who likely shaped our world view and behaviors, and either helped or inhibited our ability to find and pursue our passions. In this chapter, I’ll start to tell you some ways you can begin finding your passions. Until then…)
Let Your Passion Create Your World,
Robert (aka, The Passionist)
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