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Finding your corporate soul-mate

By Laura Laing

It was 1980, and Scott Aylward was enduring the Houston heat as most young ad men must from time to time–playing in a golf tournament in the name of networking. But this trip to the greens was a turning point for Aylward's professional and personal life.
"These good old boys were making these AIDS jokes and fag jokes and just laughing," says Aylward. "Being put into this situation of having to laugh along with it, that was the part that sort of forced my hand, if you will. When I left there I said, 'I'm never going to let that be a reason that I don't move ahead.'" He made a vow to work harder and smarter than his colleagues; he knew that he would have to in order to make it in the cutthroat industry of advertising.
He also made the decision to come out–quietly, slowly and on his own terms. First he told his parents, and then he began the glacial process of coming out in his career. "I reached a point where I wasn't announcing it, but if people asked, I just told them," he says. "That just, to me, seemed to work well."
Being gay is not a central theme of Aylward's book, "Confessions from the Corner Office: 15 Instincts that Will Help You Get There," which he wrote with Pattye Moore, former president of Sonic Corp., the parent company of the largest drive-in restaurant chain in the country. Examining the things that made them successful, Aylward and Moore offer advice for moving up the corporate ladder with ethics, pride and dignity intact.
That means that for Aylward, being successful in advertising–a passion that rivaled those of starry-eyed, young dancers wanting to make it big on Broadway–meant being genuine and driven, something he brings up early in the book.
"As I look back, I realize that those hurtful jokes on the golf course motivated me to prove to myself and my colleagues that success is an internal decision, a choice," he writes. "I was forced to look at the future, and take a gut check. I asked and answered the question, 'At what level must I perform to achieve my dream of success so that the fear of professional bias goes away?'"
His decision to come out during a very unfriendly time for gays and lesbians certainly didn't hurt his career. The former CEO/president of Barkley Evergreen & Partners, the country's largest employee-owned advertising agency in the U.S., Aylward was partly responsible for ad campaigns that shot Sonic into the stratosphere. And along the way, he met Moore, whom he calls his "corporate soul mate."
Just as advertising was Aylward's passion, Sonic restaurants were Moore's. "I think people thought we might go crazy because we're both such workaholics," Aylward says, laughing. "It is an exhausting business. Especially at the rate that we grew the business." During their tenures, Sonic sales grew from less than $900 million to just over $3 billion.
Aylward and Moore recognized early on that they had a special connection. They were both uncommonly driven by their careers–even though Moore had a family, and Aylward had a partner. They spent their free moments thinking about the next big thing for their companies and were comfortable calling one another at odd ours of the day and night to discuss new ideas and solutions for pressing problems.
It was a symbiotic relationship that Aylward admits seems too close for comfort to some. Yet, the idea of having a corporate soul mate is central to the advice in their book, along with suggestions like "have a passionate love affair with the office" and "jobs have time clocks–careers don't."
Ironically though, Moore didn't know that Aylward is gay until about six years into their relationship. Their partnership was strictly about the business and "kicking ass on your way up the ladder," he says.
But after leaving corporate life to launch Instincts, LLC, a consulting business he created with Moore, Aylward now reflects on how being gay did play a role in his career. "I think it can really be a good thing, and [gays and lesbians] can be a heck of a role model for people," he says.
The key is honesty and pride. "I hope people don't move into the role of a victim," he says. "I think it somehow detracts."
Still, the jokes and snide comments prevail. "The jokes are still there in corporate America," Aylward says. "It sickens me. I certainly don't go along with it anymore. You express a level of disgust. I can say, 'That's really in poor taste.'"

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