Chris K. Hogan Shares His Advice for Ambitious Youngsters with Big Dreams

Success is something we all seek, yet it’s elusive, hard-won, and once gained, slippery to hold onto. Chris K. Hogan, who has turned his full-service branding agency, ILIXIR, into a global success within the space of a year, attributes his achievement to three essential principles.

A prominent glass whiteboard in Hogan’s zen-like office features the singular word kaizen at its apogee. This principle, he shares, can be illustrated in a story about a pottery class.

As an experiment, the students were divided into two groups. The first was tasked with making a singular clay vessel, the best and most perfect one they could create.

The second group, instead of a lone impeccable bowl, would be graded on the number of pots completed in the same amount of time.

Now logic would dictate that the first group, which focused on perfecting the quality of just one bowl, would produce a superior result, while the second group would generate a profusion of sloppy, misformed lumps of clay.

But that’s not what happened. The second group actually became better at crafting quality bowls. Making small incremental improvements every day can, over time, lead to massive improvements.

Hogan proposes kaizen is applicable to almost every area of life – work, sports, health, and relationships.

Underneath kaizen is written the word focus. Hogan expounds that his second principle of success developed from the insight that raw intelligence is actually subordinate to the ability to focus.

“I was raised in a fairly intellectual family where a high value was placed on university learning,” he explains.

Indeed, with two engineering degrees, a co-patent, and a position as a strategic consultant for a technology incubator, the 25-year-old is no stranger to academic success.

“Just being smart is useful,” Hogan admits, “but without focus, it has no direction; it’s just wasted energy.” The beginning of focus is putting an end to unnecessary distraction.

“If you value deep work, efficiency, insight and creativity, turn off your phone, shut the door and plan your day before your day happens to you.

In the tyranny of the moment, it’s easy to get distracted. But if you plan it out and execute, you’ll focus and win,” suggests Hogan.

Chris K. Hogan’s third principle of success is curating a positive environment. “It’s hard to change and grow if your surroundings are holding you back,” he notes.

Many years ago, Hogan was told the barrel full of crabs fable while visiting a friend in Mexico and its message made a lasting impression.

In this version, there is a crab on top of all its barrelmates, close to the edge of the rim. Freedom and escape are within a claw’s reach.

However, the crab never makes it out because all the other ones, at the bottom, pull him back down. Being around the right people can change everything.

“Fill your environment with like-minded people going after the same goals and collaborate to lift each other up,” encourages Hogan.

It seems fitting that as Founder and President of ILIXIR, he uses modern storytelling to help entrepreneurs find their voice to elevate them in their field.