This content is a career retrospective and life philosophy discussion with Justin, an advertising professional, who shares his journey from a determined intern to a seasoned creative, emphasizing passion, resilience, and the importance of authentic leadership and personal fulfillment.
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Justin, welcome aboard to the show.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Thanks for having me. I'm really
excited. This is awesome. I I I w to go
back in time and ask you about your first
first
job. You offered to work for free. Tell
us the story.
Yeah. So, I went to Miami ad school and
u right after I graduated, I was looking
for a job. I was living at home and uh I
at the time it was really difficult to
find a job especially at a great
agency and um I was getting a little
worried about not being able to find a
job and I thought to myself I'm really
passionate about advertising and at the
time Christian Porter Busky in Miami
right near my hometown of Fort
Lauderdale was the hottest ad agency in
the world big time
and it they did amazing work that culture
culture
defining and I they they started an
internship program. The first time they
ever had a paid internship program in
2004 when I graduated and of course all
of the copywriters and art directors at
our school, all of them
applied and
I took a took an approach with the cover
letter. I I'd like to think my work was
good, but the cover letter is what
really broke through. All of the
creatives told me later and that's why
they chose me. And it was written on
cardboard with a Sharpie and it was
modeled after the will work for food
signs and it said we'll work for free.
And then and then if if you turned it
around, it said all I asked for. And it
was this long list of really I poured my
heart and soul into this list of what I
wanted to do and why I wanted to work at
Chrisen Porter. And it kind of gives me
chills when I read it now because I was
so young and I was so young I didn't
know any better and I thought that I
could do this
groundbreaking. I didn't even use
award-winning in there. I think just culture
culture
changing work that would really touch
people emotionally and move them and by
the way really do some great things for
the world. At the time they had an
antismoking campaign called truth many
people call it the most successful smoking
smoking
sessation campaign in history. Oh wow.
And you know, for a lot of reasons, the
the way they they made it cool to not
smoke. And it's it's a long story of how
they did that, but it really worked. I
So, oh, I remember driving in the rain,
you know, sad and depressed when the
phone rang and I picked it up and it was
my school recruiter from our my school
telling me, "Justin, you got the Chris
Porter internship." And I get chills
now. I almost cried
because it was like somebody got me, you
know, somebody felt my passion and to be
tell you the truth, I thought some of
the other writers didn't respect my
work. M
and I thought about quitting many times
in many times in school and my Brazilian
the re one of the reasons I didn't is my
Brazilian art director who's now an ECD
of EMIA in Europe. He told me at the
time that there's an expression in
Portuguese, what's a fart that
translates and it rhymes in Portuguese,
but what's a fart when you're covered in
[ __ ] And because I'd invested time and
money into this school and he told me
that, I thought that makes some sense.
So, I stuck it out.
So, you joined this um highly admired
group of people.
What did you find out to be that was not
true about what you thought? What did
I didn't know how competitive and
cutthroat and backstabbing
advertising was. There were people that
had to lock they told me as an intern,
somebody really nice took me under their
wing. And uh this person works at LEGO.
It's a global creative director now. But
they took me under their wing and they
talk quietly to me. And it said to hide
my ideas cuz people steal them.
Did Did kind of did all that really
happen to you? What's the worst horror
story that uh came to pass? The worst
horror story is that they gave me an
assignment. I'm not I haven't told this
story to many people, but it's crazy.
They gave me an assignment the first day to
to
write a headline for a BK Big Fish
sandwich. M and the the benefit of it is
that it's bigger than
the the filt of fish from McDonald's.
Mhm. And I wrote and wrote and wrote and
I kept trying to get this
approved and that they' say, "No, it's
not there yet. It's not there yet. It's
not there yet." And I was trying to try
every direction in every angle and go
try puns, try smart, try conversational,
try a long headline, try a short
headline. And um I had one that I really
liked what was we we found Nemo. Finding
Nemo had just come out and so it was
this fried fish and said we found Nemo.
That that was one of my favorite.
Another one was great by the way. Thank
you. I'm glad I'm glad you liked it
because I appreciate it. Um but
everybody gives me this sometimes they
they like that cartoon so I get a lot of
silence. So I'm glad that you can see
the humor in that. But
um I I can't believe So I and I don't
know if it's on brand, but it's
hysterical. Yeah. Well, that was my idea
is I want to I wanted to pitch stuff to
get noticed and get a job as much as I
did to sell stuff. I wanted them to
laugh and be like, "Wow, you really
pushed it too far and push real me in,
you know?" Yeah. Tell tell them like
stop like hold that like that would be
good. I thought that at a place like
that that would be good. Yeah. And
um I I got I was trying to get hired and
I was working. Somebody my first day
told me, "Look, you got to
stay past 10:00 p.m. every night if you
want to get hired here."
And you got to come in nights and weekends.
weekends.
And I lived in Fort Lauderdale, so I had
to drive like sometimes if there's
traffic an hour.
So it was brutal. the work schedule and
the lack of sleep and the stress and
anxiety. And I towards the end of the
internship, I kind of got this feeling I
might not get hired because I'd been
doing a lot of work for creative
directors and group creative directors,
but the only person who mattered was
Alex Bodess. He said, "If you don't talk
to him and he doesn't like your stuff,
you're not going to get hired." And
I I
finally mustered everybody said like
don't talk to him if you're an intern.
And then it was my last day at work and
I mustered up the courage. I went to the
office early and there he was in the
office alone in this empty agency. And I
just walked in. I said, "Hey, how you
doing? Can I talk to you for a moment?"
He said, "Sure." Like, "Sit down." And
then I remember
uh I looked at him and he he had this
book behind him and it was Chuck
Clusterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.
I don't know if you've ever heard of
that. No. But it was a it's a huge pop
culture book at the time. Imagine a guy
with a Harvard degree just writing true
stories about music and movies and
putting that kind of intelligence into
the pop culture arena. So anyway, I
said, "Wow, that's my favorite book." He
said, "I haven't heard I haven't read it
yet." He's like, "Now I know everything
about you because I know your favorite book."
book."
And like I was like, "Whoa, is this guy
some kind of master ninja that sees into
your soul by reading clues?" And then I
asked him, he's like, "So, did you get
anything produced here?" And I said,
"Well, yeah, I worked on this Kung Clean
campaign for method, and I did most of
the writing for that. And by the way, it
ended it ended up winning the Grand Prix
at Canon. Oh, while you were an intern.
No, that's the problem. If I went was an
intern, probably I probably would have
gotten hired. Which is what I was about
to say
is he he's like he's like, "No, anything
that you did all yourself." And I said,
"Yeah, I wrote 500 lines for the BK Big
Fish sandwich. Were any of them What did
you think?" He said, "I was just looking
for something from a different angle."
And I thought, "Well, I think I tried
every angle there was." I didn't say
that, but I was like, "There's a
different angle. I wrote 500 lines. I
that deck I wanted I saved them all.
They're somewhere in a server
somewhere." So, anyway, I said, "All
right, thanks." And he didn't, you know,
I didn't get hired. And that's I was
super depressed after that because I was
trying to get a job. I think it paid
$27,000 a year at to give some context.
At the time, another classmate got a job
at a healthcare agency as a copyriter
making 90,000. Yeah. Wow. So, the point
was I was doing it for love, not money.
And I knew that if I started my career
there, I could go anywhere
after. So, I didn't get hired. And then fast
fast
forward two months, I'm looking for a
job in New York and we're in Time Square
and I see this Burger King billboard in Time
Time
Square and it was the first line I
wrote of the 500 lines and it was not my
favorite and that's why I told you about
the other line. It was the first thought
that came to my head, the first pun. And
it had nothing to do with the size of
the burger. Sorry. The had nothing to do
with the size of the fish, which was the
point. And the the sign was said, "Reel it
it
in." And like I said, "No, no." I threw
my fist in the air and my sister-in-law
was there and she's like, "What's the
matter?" I'm like, "I wrote that. I
wrote that." And she's like, "Good job,
Justin." It's a good job. I didn't even
get hired and I wrote the line. It's in
Times Square. That is not
good. And I I did this bad got a bad
line produced. Nobody credited me for it
at the best agency in the world. And
that somehow somebody sold that. And
that's my that's sort
of inspired so many things I want to do
at my agency, but I never want to have
somebody else sell the creatives work
because I have no idea what happened.
Like how did that line get sold? What
else did they show? Did they show the
Guppy line? What happened? I even
thought it might be some some torch like
hazing thing just for fun just to tell
somebody to keep writing and writing.
Like I really think that was probably
it. But I'm totally not bitter because
when when this creative director PJ
Pereira who now is owner of Pereira and
Odell and he's an author and an artist
and I'm not sure if you're familiar with
him but he's from Brazil. He called
me uh a few weeks later and invited me
out to San Francisco and we went out to
dinner. He offered me a job on the spot
and I ended up working at
AKQA which was which became the probably
the number one digital agency in in the
world like the Was that solely due to
the internship or did you guys develop a
relationship beyond that? No, it was
solely because of Chris Porter and
because of the this website I worked on
called come clean for method where I
wrote hundreds and hundreds of lines. It
was before AI. Now AI could do this very
quickly. But back then a human being,
you know, subservient chicken, right?
No. No. What's that? So subservient
chicken was a website that Chrisman did
that was the first viral digital
campaign. It was a landing page where a
chicken was dressed up in bondage and
then you could say jump up and down,
spin around, do push-ups, it would do
everything. And that thing won, I think,
a Grand Prix. And this was this thing
was so viral that a friend sent it to me
before anybody in advertising and that
never works. And if that works that's me
as a culture
shaping idea, right? That's delightful.
So they, by the way, they used porn
technology to do that. The technology
behind Subservient Chicken, this Burger
King ad is was developed for the porn
industry. And the Crave directors,
believe it or not, I don't know if you
know this, a lot of Crave directors go
to porn conferences because they have
the best technology ideas. Yeah. So,
virtual reality, they're early adopters
of everything because they're young. A
lot of young males and they're ready to
spend money on porn. And if you want
like all of the streaming software,
software, the technology, the virtual
reality, augmented reality, a lot of
things where you say nobody uses that.
It's like, well, porn uses it. you know,
like who uses virtual reality? It it
hasn't done that well, but apparently it
has done well in that area. So, I worked
on Come Clean, which was kind of a the a
followup and it was a audio version
where you were coming clean for the new
year and so you're washing your hands
with this soap they were selling method
and you're also metaphorically come
clean because you're confessing your
sins. So you could confess one of 800
sins. And I that was part of my job.
Wasn't just the response. It was
thinking of 800 things people could
confess to. Wow. And I I wrote 800
responses and
um it was the the Alex Mosski's
contribution I remember was he said he
didn't want a male voice of God because
you heard the voice of God absolving
you. I thought that was pretty
interesting. He wanted a woman and he
wanted a woman with a Indian accent.
Why did he explain that? No, he was
pretty he's very good with gut. Yeah, I
think he lives in Boulder, by the way.
But he he's very good
with listening to his instincts and his
gut, and that's what I admire most about
him. I don't want it to come across like
I'm bitter about that billboard because
working there was the best thing I've
ever done in my career. And I I swear
you ever seen Willy Wonka in the
Chocolate Factory where Slugsworth comes
and offers Willy Wonka a job? Yeah. I do
I swear to you the first day of the
internship while I'm waiting to get
onboarded. I'm sitting in the lobby and
this woman comes up to me and she's
like, "I'll hire you right away when
you're done with the internship." She
hands me her card. Oh wow.
Like that's how powerful Chris and
Porter was that an intern on their first
day just sitting there could get poached.
poached.
Oh wow. So
So first of all I would argue that you
know having your line up there even
though it wasn't the best one I I would
have loved to see we found Nemo. But
having your lineup there I think that's
vindication right? Like you were you
were vindicated and that's all that
matters. Um, when you look at a the
lifetime of a career that you've had and
maybe for you it's two lifetimes just
reflecting on how hard you you work.
What was the moment that you were just
like, "This is
[ __ ] This is wrong. This is not how
the industry should work." What pisses
you off?
I can't stand when creative
directors, as we say in America, throw
you under the bus.
I don't mind I I do not mind if a client
has an issue, even if it's silly and
kills a campaign. But I do not like
being told the client was right when we
know they're wrong. Just say, I know I
know they're wrong. We got to it doesn't
make sense, but let's just come together
and figure out solution. I like that. I
don't like
when you kind of gaslight some
creatives creative directors gaslight
themselves into thinking the client's
right because they can't just admit
that they're wrong and it's okay. We'll
move on. We're
professionals. And I don't I don't like
that. I don't like that. I mean, I think
a creative director has to support and
stand by and defend creatives. Creatives
are sensitive people.
They're they have these baby ideas and
you have to help them nurture it. And it
would be great if we could be completely
separate from our work and not become
emotionally attached to it, but that's
just not
not the way it is. You you're describing
between really it's about leadership and
culture of management in a cutthroat
competitive environment.
What's the culture that you've adapted
for yourself when you think about
working for and with creatives?
You mean that's been successful for me?
Like what's my coping strategy? Yeah.
I think freelance has been best for me
and that's where I succeeded for a long time
because they this may sound bizarre but
they respect freelancers opinions more
than a full-timer because I think
because they're paying you by the day by
the hour and they want to get the value
out of you and when you're full-time
They take you for granted because you're
on the salary. They waste your time.
They make you work weekends and nights
when you shouldn't have to. They send
you on wild goose chases just because
you're around. If you're not busy,
they'll just give you busy work. And as
a as a freelancer, I've always been I
can't remember not being happy as a
freelancer. In fact, when I was a
full-time worker at this toxic agency,
the sweat shop, I remember freelancers
would come in like smiling and happy and
like showered. And I remember asking
them like, "How do you like and I would
say to them I said to one, I said, "Wow,
you're you're always so happy. What's
going on?" He's like, "Have you ever met
a h unhappy freelancer?" I was like,
"No." And he's like, "Yeah, that's cuz
we're when we're booked, we're happy."
He's like, "Maybe when we're not booked,
it's a different story." But every every
freelancer should be happy when they're
at work because they got booked. So, I
don't I think the create the the
creative directors in the agency doesn't
take you for granted when you're a
freelancer and the freelancer doesn't
take their job for granted. They're very
thankful for the opportunity to have a
job at least for a day, right?
So, that's that's been my coping
strategy. And when you know I think
that's I think the idea is to have
full-time workers but treat them like
with the respect that you'd give a
freelancer and value their time as if
you're paying by the hour.
I love that. I mean it goes to incentive
design, right? How are you thinking
about your engagement with this other
person? And it's just completely changed
in that dynamic. I that's such a great
comment. So you you talk about this
unpredictable and chaotic nature of
modern advertising. What do you mean by that?
that?
So many things. There's the processes
are out of control. They say that you
need to be in an office to do great
work. I launched an agency that has
attracted global attention from my
office at home that I'm in right now.
I'm working with somebody. I work mostly
as a freelancer with my friend who lives in
in
Rome. I'm learning Portuguese from my
teacher in
Rio. What do I need to be in an office
for? I think an office is great for I
like to hang out and see people. I'm a
pe I like hanging out. I'd like to be in
a room with you and have a beer, but the
magic of us being able to talk this
easily is amazing. I can meet you at
South by Southwest someday. Yeah. In the
meantime, we can connect and I can be on
this podcast and we would have never
connected if it wasn't for
for
virtual meetings. And I don't take that
for granted for a second because that's
what that's what allows me to feed my
kids. If this didn't exist, I wouldn't
be able
to pay for their Cheerios. So,
what's the what's the nature is when you
talk about a beautiful disaster, is that
the creative nature or what is that? I
think the universe itself was a was a
mess. That's how the world works and
science works is that we we come from we
start with chaos and from that comes
order. And the big bang theory was
chaotic and then it blasted everything
and there was this big mess and then
eventually everything distills. And I
like to call myself a distiller of chaos.
chaos.
I think somebody can come to me and I
I've mastered this art because I've had
to and somebody a client can ramble on
about all over the place for like 40
minutes and go this way and that way and
I I can take that and I'll make sense of
it and that's my job and I have to deal
with that complicated products. I've
worked for AI products and cloud
software and all this complex stuff and
my job is to make it accessible for
regular people and do it in a fun
approachable human way and not talk at
the like I'm a robot. It is it always
possible? Well, I mean, some products
are just, excuse my French, but effing
boring. Yeah. And then like, okay, so
it's a software that you log bugs for a
different software online and it's big
advantage is that whatever and then and
then there's other stuff. I don't know,
drones for example, there's something
cool to it, right? Yeah. But how do you
how do you work in that environment
where you're just not energized from the
product, the team, maybe the executive,
the customers like Monotonia speaking
slowly, just want to shake him by the
shoulders and say speak faster. It's
funny it's funny you say that cuz I I'm
not I don't get frustrated by boring
products. In fact, I embrace the
challenge and it's way more rewarding to
do fun work when something's boring. For
me, I'm the opposite where I can't stand
if somebody has a cool product and then
they are boring and like to talk about
it in a boring. That frustrates the hell
out of me because there's so much
potential. You got this cool product,
let's just talk about this thing in a
cool way and sell a lot of it. By the
way, side note, I think there's this I
want to clear up this notion that
creatives don't care about making money
or don't care who sees it or don't care
that it becomes a market leader. There's
nothing more
rewarding than making a a difference in
in sales and making money and seeing
profits and seeing the value of the
stock go up. And we love to see the data
of it performing well. It's
unfortunately a lot of people just don't
share it with us. They don't think we
care. I can't stand it when people think
that we like to do fun, wacky ideas just
for the hell of it. I actually don't
like when people say something, "Oh,
that's that's clever." because I think
they're implying that it's just fun and
they're not maybe I'm, you know, maybe
it's in my head, but I think they're
they're they're not appreciating the money
money
value of it. And that's what we, you
know, we're not artists, we advertisers.
We need we're marketers. We we like to
make money and make art and marry them
together. That's how that's what drives
capitalism. As long as it's around,
there'll be people like us need it,
right? I I I love the concept that
you're and this is almost the philosophy
and I'm sure you teach this to your
kids, but the philosophy that you're
talking about here is rising to the
challenge is really what it is and I
absolutely love that. Right. If it's
boring, it just means it's so much more
harder and so much more exciting to get
it right. When you talk about um your
kids, you wrote a line, I thought it was
hysterical. Um and you said something of
the on the lines of, you know, oh, they
want to be I think it was soccer players
or something or pro athletes. they just
haven't figured out yet that they're
they want to be creative. Um, when you
think about kind of child rearing, what
are the big things that you want to pass
to them?
I want them Oh, I was telling I tell
them this all the time and I told them
this yesterday when we're driving to a
soccer tournament. I told them
that a lot of kids their parents want
them to be doctors or lawyers or certain
or inherit the family business. I said,
"Me and your mom just want you to be
happy." M I said if you can pursue any
field you want and I encourage you to
not worry too much about the money
because if you don't worry about the
money you're going to be so passionate
you're going to be so happy you're going
to you won't waste money on cars and
boats and yachts and things to make you
happy when your job makes you happy. And
I said guess what happens when you're
happy and you're you work is like play.
You're really good at it. I said most of
the time money follows and they I love
it when a lot of times you can tell
they're not listening or ignoring me but
looking at and yeah you know but you can
tell when something's sinking in and
it's amazing. I didn't Yeah. I didn't
know you were a dad. So you you get
Oh wow. Amazing. So my daughter, she's
11. Just yesterday we got her her poetry
book in pre-publish mode. Um, so it's on
Amazon for everybody to pre- purchase
and she's 11. I am the opposite of
creative. She shows me her poems and she
writes one every day. So she does an
illustration. Wow. And a poem every
single day and I look at it and I'm like
honey, I suck at this. Like I'm a
terrible judge of these kind of things.
Like I'll tell you if I like it or not,
but like I'm not the guy. Um, but I am
the guy who got her on Amazon and and
you know can connect her to people and
and do the you know the kind of digital
stuff. Um, so we got her uh
pre-published. So, um, that's awesome.
It rem she reminds me of myself because
I have I had an art director, a creative
partner, and he said that in
design school, they have what's called a
tonnage project. And they're referring
to projects where it's a lot of volume.
Yeah. And when you describe your
daughter making something every single
day, like a machine, like But she she I
don't force her. I don't make her do it.
She just does it. Like it's it's almost
like and I'm like honey, it doesn't have
to be good. It doesn't have to be bad,
but if you get your 10,000 hours and you
do 10,000 of these, like you're going to
slowly get awesome, right? And at the
beginning, your stuff was kind of like
me, okay? But it's starting to get
consistently better to the level like
I'm like, "Huh, that's actually quite
good." Um, yeah. So, that's amazing. You
know what that reminds me of is in the
pandemic part I don't know part of what
kept me sane is I started writing
country music songs every day. Yeah. And
I would write one I don't I don't they
start off as ironic.
Some of them are Yeah. Some of them are
I would compare them to Shell
Silverstein type thing.
They definitely don't have the voice of
what you'll find on my company website
now. Um but they do have some of the
humor. It's just
more appropriate for a broader audience.
And it they don't have to be country
songs. It's just that's the way I think
about lyrics
is is some of my favorite songs are
country songs. Yeah. And I love the
stories and and how there's I got like
three directions that I'm going to go
here. I want to stay with the kids, but
I also want to talk about country. Um Okay.
Okay.
So I think
that for me personally the most
beautiful songs are ballads. So Nick
Cave Country has a lot of that right. Um
Cat Stevens I mean there's a there's a
beauty to telling a story through song
which I think is a a such a
underappreciated art. I'm not sure
everybody agrees with me on this one.
And you know, not for nothing, you know,
we're called story samurai. But this
idea of telling good stories is
something that I feel not only can
change my life, but it can change other
people's life and it can change the world.
world.
Storytelling builds
empathy. It allows you to get in
somebody else. You know that song Fast
Car by Tracy Chapman? Yes. I love that.
I I love her. Yeah. It's an amazing
song. And when I when I fell in love
with that song and I connected with it,
I think I was a 10-year-old white
straight boy living in Fort Lauderdale,
Florida. She's
Africaname lesbian
woman and it spoke to my soul. Yeah, it
spoke to everybody's soul. And then when
Luke Holmes, I think it was the country
singer, did his version of it, some
people said, "Why? He's a white male.
what right does he have to do this song?
And I thought and he's straight and I
thought that's the beauty that that's
such a tribute to Tracy Chapman that it
connected so deeply with all of us. And
the song itself is about a woman who's
working class at a working at a grocery
store. So the song itself isn't even
about Tracy Chapman. It's about somebody
else. So, we're seeing the life and
empathetic for this woman who's a Tracy
Chap who who Tracy Chapman wrote about
and that there's a there's a waitress at
a diner, my favorite diner in Fort
Lauderdale. And she tells me all the
time every time I see her that I lived
in San Francisco and she said I lived in
San Francisco and every time I see her,
she says, "You know, me and my husband
are going to move to San Francisco. It's
the best city in the world. We're going
to move there every time." And I and
she's she's seems happy, but maybe I
always think of that song Fast Car. I'm
thought because I think sadly you're not
moving to San Francisco because it just
gets more expensive every day. I I I
don't know. I don't want to get
political, but I do believe that
imitation is a form of flattery. I I
truly believe that. Um and I truly do
believe that culture should be shared.
And when I say culture, I mean food. I
mean music and I mean language and I
think not sharing culture is a roadblock
to people connecting with each other. Um
so I'm not a big fan of you know cancel
culture and and all the those other
stuff. Um so and me either and I'm glad
that the controversy it seemed it wasn't
that it wasn't that big and fortunately
nobody got cancelceled and I think they
ended up performing together and he was
so gracious to her. Yeah. and she was so
gracious and it was good to see her make
a lot of money. She'd be on an awards
stage. She started performing again. I
think she's a private person and maybe
it encouraged her to share her voice
again because obviously the world was
hungry to hear it. Yeah, I I actually
love that when you know the the celebs
so to speak kind of live good honest
private lives and they're not kind of
dependent on this uh you know addictive
nature of the the public. I don't know.
It's like I see these these celebs and
I'm like, "Oh, I I love that he she
whatever is like that." Um, but uh maybe
a lot of people say, "Oh, their husband,
they're washed up." And it's like, "No,
they have a family and they're living at
a ranch in Wyoming and they're taking
care of their kids and they know that if
they, you know, maybe in 20 years
they'll get back into entertainment,
maybe they'll start a winery." Yeah. I
mean, isn't that everybody's dream,
right? To get to the [ __ ] you position
if to quote the gambler and like And
they did it. like that's they they did
what everybody wants. Um I I have to get
back to the the kids, right?
Um I love the fact that it's about the
money. It's about the happiness and not
the money. Um you went over to the quote
unquote dark side for a while. Got a
business degree. Ah so yeah I actually
started it funny enough though I I got
my business degree right after gra b
bachelor's. So that's that's unusual
because most people get some work in get
an MBA. And there's something to be said
for being in the corporate world and
working before getting your MBA. There's
something to be said how much money you
can save going straight into your
masters from bachelor, especially at a
state school, University of Florida.
So yeah, I I I got I went straight into
that program the first year. It was
2000, the first year that the Masters of
Arts of International Business was at
the University of Florida and it is
modeled on the Thunderbird Business
School. I don't know if you heard of
that. I don't know. What's that about?
It's a specialty school for
international business that only has a
master's program and they place people
in Singapore, Australia. Nice. I my
school m the masters of arts and
international business. It's pretty
funny story. Um, I wanted to do an internship
internship
in advertising in Barcelona and the
programmers knew they didn't have any
internships. They definitely didn't have
an internship in advertising in
Barcelona. Do you remember Ask Jeeps?
Before Google, there was Ask Jeeves.
Yeah, that's right. And it was this
little butler. And everything was in the
form of a question. And I said, "Where
can I find an advertising internship in
Barcelona?" And I hit enter. And the
first thing that came up was called ayagora.com
ayagora.com
which is a Greek word for the
marketplace and it's
closest way to explain it is it was
Facebook and LinkedIn together for
international students.
In other words, they could find an
internship, they could find a job, they
could find a date. Mhm. And I I clicked
ayore.com and I went to the internship
and then I emailed them and then 5 minutes
minutes
later they said you can come to
Barcelona in December. You can intern at
the World Trade Center. There's also one
I didn't know this but there's other
World Trade Centers in New York. So I
was on the Mediterranean in the World
Trade Center overlooking 360 view of the
city. Wow. working as a intern for this
site and they gave me a free apartment.
They said they would have paid because
they paid all the other interns. It was
just they couldn't pay an American but I
I lived for free and worked at this
amazing office and got all this dot
experience and that was that was that
was just fate. that that's how that's
how I as maybe the universe it works
weird like that but the fact it took me
five minutes to land that because I
decided to ask Steve so thanks to shout
out Jeie
I love that um Justin believe it or not
we are way over time I I I have God I
wanted to ask you more about the kids
but we got to wrap up um we have one
question that is the only question
scripted on this
And it's if you had to go back to 20some
year old Justin, what would you tell him?
him?
Oh, it's all going to be okay. And that
relax and don't worry and just enjoy
this time of your life and you're going
to meet a wife and you're going to have
kids and you're going to have full-time
job and
then be young. Be young, have fun, drink
Pepsi. That's my favorite tagline ever
because it's so Some people probably
think it's like too salesy or
straightforward, but I so honest. It's
like you're selling Pepsi, be young,
have fun, drink Pepsi. Yeah, just do the
first two and why not do the third. It's
honest. Yeah. It's like if you listen to
the first two, it's not even an ad. It's
a metaphor for life. You just never
never think you're old. Just just live
young. Just just a good idea. Justin,
thank you so much for coming on the show
today. This has been absolutely delightful.
delightful.
Thanks a lot. It's been a lot of fun.
Appreciate it. And uh look forward to
listening to other episodes in the
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