• Blog
  • Archives
  • Bio
  • Awards
  • Speaking
  • Book
  • Contact

Ogilvy

Published: Wednesday, 20 March 2013

A lot of successful entrepreneurs dropped out of school (Richard Branson) or university (Bill Gates).  But Ogilvy, who went on to become a famous ad man, at 38, had "no credentials, no clients, and $6000 in the bank" and a below average IQ of 96.

I watched a documentary on Ogilvy a few years ago, and when it got to the bit about his IQ score, it said that Ogilvy had tested his IQ at the end of his career, after he'd retired.  He was expecting to be a genius, but his results showed him to be below average.  He was disappointed for a few days.  But then he realised that he'd actually done quite well for himself to have done so well with such a low IQ.

So you don't think you're as smart as everyone else, you've scored low on an IQ test, you're broke, you don't have a job, and you don't have a great education.  So what?  Other people have been in that position before and created amazing things for the world.  And you can do so too.

About Me

Marita ChengForbes named me a world's top 50 woman in tech & 30 Under 30. I founded Robogals and Aipoly and was Young Australian of the Year 2012. Currently working on robotics company Aubot. I'm the youngest Member of the Order of Australia (AM) and I give speeches around the world.

I tweet @maritacheng and I'm on Facebook.

Subscribe

Enter your email address to receive my latest blog posts: 

 

Random Articles

  • One action a day

    Just taking one action a day, moves your project forward.  Keep living your life.  Keep going to work.  Keep studying.  Keep seeing your friends.  Keep...

  • My relationship with money

    You don't need that much money.  Just enough to pay the rent, utilities and food. My plan I created for myself post-uni when I was in 3rd year uni...

  • Are you a knowledge junkie?

    Knowledge junkies are people who love to learn and accrue knowldge.  They’ve read all the books, registered to all the web communities, heard of all...

  • Scrap paper

    I write all my blog posts on scrap paper. I printed so many speeches last year that I have all these A4 scrap sheets of paper that just have...

  • When?

    When are you going to apply for that grant? When are you going to start your assignment? When are you going to start your advertising campaign? When are...

  • The Bubble

    I used to think the bubble was a bad thing.  The huge number of people who called themselves an entrepreneur.  The over-inflation of entrepreneurs in...

  • Success is in the doing

    Even if I know my chances of success are slim because I've been disorganised, have missed deadlines, have generally not followed my own rules for...

  • Being your word

    If you tell people you are going to be at X location at X time, people take your word for that. If you’re not there, they decide that next time,...

  • 10 million

    My goal with my blog wasn't to reach 10 million views.  (And it hasn't.) My goal was to learn discipline:  making myself contribute to the world each...

  • Losing focus

    From an organisational point of view, it's better to focus on doing a small number of things right, than a large number of things wrong. In...

Enter your email address to receive my latest blog posts: 

 

Scroll to Top