Mad Men, the hit television series on AMC, is about the men (and women) who worked on Madison Avenue in advertising during the 1960s.

My father, Mike Turner, was a Mad Man. He worked side-by-side with David Ogilvy during Ogilvy & Mather’s years as the best advertising agency on the planet. (Doyle Dane Bernbach being the other “best” advertising agency on the planet.)

My father is 83 years old now and his visits to New York City are generally to go to Sloan Kettering to manage some of his health problems. But I learned a great deal from him during the 10 years we worked together at the agency we founded. Some of the lessons I learned were extremely valuable and I thought I’d share them with our regular readers so they can apply them to their own businesses.

Here goes:

1. Be relentless in pursuit of your goals. My father had an amazing sense of when it was appropriate to turn on the after-burners at work. He wasn’t always that way — you can’t be running at 110% all the time. But when he made a decision to pursue something, there was nothing that was going to stop him. That’s a lesson I try to apply to my endeavors today.
2. If you’re not 100% passionate about what you do, change jobs. I once asked my father what drove him to work so hard. He said, “I never viewed it as work. It was always fun. Just about every day I went to work, I was looking forward to the new problems I was going to solve that day.”
3. Nurture your curiosity. Part of what made my father so passionate about his work was that he was always learning something new. He’s retired now and I asked him if he was ever bored. “Never,” he said. “If you’re curious, retirement is a blast.”
4. Be inquisitive about your employees. This is a lesson my father learned from David Ogilvy. He said there was nothing more thrilling than having David lean over your shoulder and ask you about what you were working on. He said that Mr. Ogilvy was always fascinated by the brilliant marketing techniques his top-of-class employees were developing. Imagine how inspiring it must have been to have David Ogilvy be inspired by you!
5. You get back what you give out. My father taught me that you attract into your life what you send out. If you send out positive, decent, honest energy, you’ll attract employees who are positive, decent and honest. Ogilvy & Mather was that way, as is BKV, the parent company of The 60 Second Marketer.
6. Be kind to everyone, especially people you don’t know. My father would be the first to say that you shouldn’t expect anything in return for being kind. But once, he played in a highly-competitive tennis tournament with several other players who were being rude to one of the women in the tournament. He went out of his way to be especially kind to her. It turns out, she ran the U.S. Air account, one of the largest pieces of business in the region at the time. His kindness prompted her to invite him to pitch the business, which they eventually won.
7. Use your positive energy to influence others. Interesting story — when we first moved South in 1971, my father got a call from a real estate broker who was selling resort property. My father is the least racist person I’ve ever known and decided to have some fun with the real estate broker. “Can I ask a question?” my father asked the broker. “Sure,” answered the broker. “Do you sell property to African Americans?” The broker replied, “Well, sir, we do our best not to.” My father’s response was, “Well, I wouldn’t be interested then because my wife is African American.” There was silence on the phone for a few seconds before the real estate broker eventually hung up, embarrassed and, hopefully, having learned his lesson.

My mother isn’t African American (not that there would be anything wrong with that), but you get the point. Good people send out good energy and snuff out the negative energy put out by the less-enlightened.

Here’s to sending out positive energy. And here’s to all the Mad Men of Madison Avenue who are rounding third and heading towards home.