We love rebels and people who challenge the status quo, conventional wisdom and mainstream narratives and so we asked some really bright folks to tell us about one piece of conventional advice they disagree with.

Brett Yanoski | Editor-in-Chief and Co-Host of The Inner Gamer

If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. I appreciate the thought behind this quote but in reality if you do what you love you’re working hard to make sure you continue to love it. When I started The Inner Gamer with my co-host Austin and another friend, we loved talking about video games. It was fun, it was new and it was exciting. As time went on, it started to feel like work because the honeymoon phase disappeared and soon we were working to grow and expand our brand which is hard when you don’t have a product to sell. How did we fix that? We leaned harder into making sure everything we did was something we wanted to be doing, even if it meant sacrificing faster growth, easier money etc. It’s hard work but it’s work we love doing. That is the real difference. Starting a business and building a brand doesn’t get easier. Read more>>

Kevin Sutton | Writer/Director/Creative Director

I had a boss who gave me this piece of advice on how to deal with managing people in an advertising agency. He’d say, “remember, everyone’s creative.” It’s meant to help us to inspire everyone, in every department and discipline, to help them feel like they are part of the process, to keep our ears open to ideas from anyone. It’s supposed to be egalitarian and inclusive and uplifting. Like a communal feel good. It’s bullshit. Yes, a great idea can come from anyone. Quite often some of the most amazing ideas come from the most unlikely sources. But that is not the same as “everyone’s creative.” A good percentage of creatives aren’t even that creative. So, what makes us think that everyone else is? This is not arrogance. It’s not meant to put creatives on some grand pedestal. It’s just a fact. Imagine that attitude in the airline industry. “Everyone’s a pilot. Enjoy your flight.” How good would you feel at a hospital that had the motto, “everyone’s a surgeon”? And this isn’t to say that creatives are more important than anyone else at an agency. Not everyone’s a media buyer. Read more>>

Jeremy PIerce | MA, LMFT-S, LPC-S Clinical Director of Avanti Counseling & Consulting

Conventional Advice: As long as you work hard, you will succeed. Hard Truth: Hard work does not guarantee success. Success is much more nauanced that just hard work, although many still believe that if you just put in enough effort, your business is bound to succeed. The truth is that it’s largely about having the right people in the right spots, having difficult conversations, and working hard on the right things at the right time and in the right way. Yes. Work hard. But work with the right people. Yes. Work hard. But for the right reasons. Yes. Work hard. But on the right things. Being busy is not a sign of success, and can often be a sign of exactly the oppoisite, of a business that is chaotic and lost. Movement for the sake of movement uses up resources and can decimate morale. Strategic and purposeful action done by the right people in the right way, is what turns the flywheel of sucess. Read more>>

Tara Peckham | Photographer

Conventional wisdom says that if you have a nice camera, you will take better pictures. I completely disagree with this. Taking great pictures has more to do with your understanding of the equipment you own, than with the quality of your equipment. Good cameras are available on pretty much every phone these days, and I’ve seen amazing pictures taken with them. A nice camera is wonderful, but if you don’t know how, when, or why to use the different settings, then it’s basically an expensive paperweight. Photography is not about equipment, it’s a study of light, and a few basic principles creatively applied. Read more>>