Best Advice: Jimmy Iovine's Simple Trick for Making Big Decisions

This post is part of a series in which LinkedIn Influencers share the best advice they've ever received. Read all the posts here.

In the mid-nineties, I left my job as a Sony Records executive to join what was then a young startup of a record company, Interscope. By my late twenties, I was president of urban music and an executive vice president of the company, working side by side with Jimmy Iovine, one of the label’s founders and someone who is considered to be one of the entertainment industry’s most talented entrepreneurs of all time.

If you were fortunate enough to work with Jimmy, you found out what it meant for one man to be bigger than the logo. He trusted me and promoted me through the organization, and we remain close friends and mutual admirers to this day. He was always there to give me unbiased advice at odd times; from the earliest part of every morning to late at night, Jimmy’s was the voice I could always rely on.

The best piece of advice Jimmy gave me was, “When the shit gets bigger than the cat, you’ve got to get rid of the cat.”

And that’s what it was for me in my career at the time. I liked working in the entertainment business, but the shit was getting bigger than the cat. I had begun to see that the music industry had lost sight of the difference between good and great, and, in my opinion, that’s a sure sign the industry is going to take a turn for the worse. I decided that instead of trying to change the industry around me, I would bow out and try something new, so I got rid of the cat and changed careers, and started my own company.

With that, in 2004, I opened Translation. In these 10 years, we have grown into a 150-person agency that proudly counts Fortune 500 companies among our clients. Long-time, established brands (and a few new ones) look to us for transformative work that moves culture and resonates with consumers. So, yeah, I’d say that getting rid of that particular cat was pretty good advice.

To this day, Jimmy remains a mentor and a dear friend. And I hope one day I can do for someone else what Jimmy did for me.

Photo: Author's Own