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Paul closes his masterclass with the three pieces of advice he would give his daughter and grandchildren β and the reflection that his real talent was simply paying attention. A meditation on what a creative life is really for.
Paul Lavoie has built agencies, launched iconic campaigns, turned down Jeff Bezos, and spent decades doing work that mattered. And when you ask him what it all comes down to β the advice he'd give his daughter, his grandchildren, anyone standing at the beginning of a creative life β he doesn't reach for frameworks or industry wisdom.
He gives you three rules. Simple ones. The kind that sound obvious until you realize how few people actually live by them.
Not the version of yourself that seems hireable. Not the version that fits the agency culture you're trying to break into. Not the version that plays it safe because the industry is in a recession and this probably isn't the right time to take a risk.
Yourself.
Paul grew up in a small town in northern Quebec, the child of an Irish mother and a French-Canadian father who spoke different languages and came from different religions β but shared a love of storytelling. He went to an English school in a French city. He was already, from the very beginning, someone who didn't quite fit the expected mold.
And rather than sand down those edges, he leaned into them. He started the school newspaper. He designed the yearbook. He launched a radio station with his friend Gordon. He was building his own playground β not because someone told him to, but because that's who he was.
Pro Tip: "Being yourself" in a creative career isn't just about personality β it's about trusting your instincts on the work. When Paul founded Taxi, he didn't try to replicate what other agencies were doing. He brought his design background into advertising, merged disciplines that weren't supposed to mix, and built something genuinely new. Authenticity, in practice, means bringing your whole self to the problem β not just the parts that seem relevant.
The through-line of Paul's career is a person who kept being himself even when it was inconvenient. He turned down a safe path to travel Europe. He left a great job to start an agency during a recession. He took the biggest risk of his life by going into business with someone he was in love with β because he knew, without her, Taxi wouldn't survive.
None of those decisions came from a strategy. They came from knowing who he was.
There's a moment in Paul's story that captures this rule perfectly. He's watching ESPN. A 15-year-old named Robbie Nash is windsurfing in a way that humbles him completely. The interviewer asks Robbie what he loves most about the sport.
His answer: Falling down.
Paul didn't understand it at first. Falling down is embarrassing. It hurts. There's nothing good about falling down. And then it clicked: Robbie fell down more than anyone else. That's why he was the champion.
Key Insight: Passion isn't just about loving the good parts of something. It's about being willing β even eager β to fall down in pursuit of it. Paul has said he made more mistakes than most of his contemporaries. He believes that served him well. The people who follow genuine passion are the ones who can tolerate, even embrace, the falling. The people doing it for safety or status are the ones who quit when it gets hard.
Paul could have stayed in design. He was good at it. He had his own company at 25. But advertising spoke to him β the films, the stories, the problem-solving. So he sold the company and moved to Montreal to start over at JWT.
He could have stayed at JWT. He was good at that too. But something was nagging at him β the dysfunction of silos, the way collaboration only happened during pitches and then disappeared. He kept that thought. He built Taxi around it.
Following your passion doesn't mean chasing whatever feels exciting in the moment. It means paying attention to the thing that keeps nagging at you β the problem you can't stop thinking about, the approach you keep wanting to try, the version of the work that makes you feel most alive.
Pro Tip: When Paul talks about passion, he's also talking about specificity. He didn't just love "creativity" in the abstract β he loved the particular challenge of doing more with less, of finding the hidden story in a simple mark (like the IH logo that, once you saw it, was clearly a man on a tractor). Your passion is probably more specific than you think. Get specific about it. That specificity is where the real work lives.
This one is quieter than the other two. It doesn't come with a dramatic story or a turning point. It's just there, steady, underneath everything else.
Paul built Taxi on collaboration β on the belief that the best idea wins, regardless of who has it. The account person, the strategist, the junior designer: if they had the best idea, you ran with it. That's not just a creative philosophy. It's an ethical one. It says: your ego doesn't get to override the work, and it definitely doesn't get to override people.
Success built on other people's expense β on credit stolen, on contributions ignored, on people diminished so you can look bigger β isn't worth having. It doesn't last, and more importantly, it isn't the kind of life worth living.
Paul has spoken about the people who shaped him: his parents, who told him his drawings could be worth a million dollars and made him believe it. His brother, who told him to look again at the IH logo. Jane Hope, his partner at Taxi, without whom the whole thing wouldn't have survived. The teacher who didn't teach him to draw β who taught him to look.
Every career is built on a web of other people's generosity. The least you can do is not break the web for the people coming after you.
Here's the thing Paul says about himself that might be the most important line in this entire masterclass:
His real talent was paying attention.
Not the awards. Not the famous campaigns. Not the global offices or the challenger brands or the Viagra launch or the short film festival. The talent underneath all of it was simply this: he noticed things.
He noticed the hidden figure in the IH logo. He noticed that windsurfing existed on a beach in Crete when he'd never seen it before. He noticed the dysfunction of agency silos and kept the thought. He noticed that clients didn't speak the language of advertising β they spoke the language of strategy β and adjusted accordingly.
The drawing teacher who had students cut an apple into quarters and eat it before drawing it again wasn't teaching technique. He was teaching attention. Look at the thing. Really look at it. The second drawing was better because the student had paid attention in a way they hadn't before.
Brian Baumer, Paul's neighbor in New York, teaches drawing the same way. Bankers, dentists, truck drivers β none of them can draw when they arrive. By the end of the week, they can. Not because he taught them technique. Because he taught them to look.
Key Insight: Creativity is not a gift you either have or don't. It's a practice of attention. The people who see what others miss aren't smarter β they're looking harder. They're in a state of playfulness and curiosity that keeps them open to what's actually there, rather than what they expect to see. That state can be cultivated. It starts with deciding to pay attention.
Paul closes his masterclass not with a campaign or a case study, but with a reflection. A small town in northern Quebec. A school trip to the center of Quebec City. A wall, a castle, a snowman β and a child coming home to tell his mother: you won't believe it. This is a town.
That moment of wonder β the realization that there was something else out there β became the anchor of everything that followed. The sense of adventure. The willingness to travel, to fail, to start over, to build something new.
A creative life isn't about building the most celebrated agency or winning the most awards. It's about staying connected to that original sense of wonder. It's about keeping your eyes open. It's about being the kind of person who looks at something everyone else has walked past a thousand times and says: wait. Look again.
Be yourself. Follow your passion. Don't hurt anybody.
And pay attention.
That's it. That's the whole thing.
This concludes Paul Lavoie's masterclass. The greatest gift you can take from it isn't a technique or a framework β it's permission. Permission to trust what you see, to build what you believe in, and to do it in a way you'd be proud to pass on.
Paul says his real talent was paying attention β to the people around him, to their behavior, their advice, their kindness. The choices he made throughout his career were shaped by what he noticed and absorbed from others.
It's a deliberate choice to ground everything in what actually matters. After decades of campaigns, awards, and agency-building, the most important things Paul has to say fit in three simple sentences. That simplicity is itself a creative lesson.