I have succeeded at five different ad agencies over the course of nearly two decades by sticking to one simple rule: Be a freakin’ weirdo.

Weird, you question? Yes, weird. Weird is what fuels individuals in the most prolific agencies to remain the vanguards of new ideas. And despite the tendency to outfit agency halls with creative stimuli, channeling our “inner weirdo” is not a natural tendency simply instigated by odd-shaped chairs or brainstorming books. Weirdness–uncovering it, embracing it, practicing it–is one of the most difficult, yet most integral, components to success within the halls of any agency.

I first learned to unleash my inner weird when I was a child attending a Montessori school. And now as an adult working in the advertising world, I haven’t just grown up–I’ve grown weirder. Purposefully.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales, and Sims designer Will Wright are all among the so-called Montessori Mafia.

I was a Montessori kid back in the ’70s and ’80s when it was a relatively nascent and often misunderstood form of education. I credit my mom for being an early adopter of a teaching method that has since gained much steam across the country. Montessori education has helped give the world some revolutionary visionaries in the digital age, including Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and Sims designer Will Wright. Page once told Barbara Walters in an interview:

“We both went to Montessori school, and I think it was part of that training of not following rules and orders, being self-motivated, questioning what’s going on in the world, and doing things a little bit different that contributed to our success.”

While I’m not putting myself in such esteemed company, we do share this unique educational background. The structure of the Montessori school–the encouragement to think freely, to create and to wonder–also unconsciously had other effects: I got weird. While other kids wore school-spirit sweatshirts, I fashioned a T-shirt with a hand-drawn dinosaur. While my neighborhood friends memorized Mr. Z, I examined trilobite fossils. And later, to my shock and amazement, I learned that some mothers choose to save their placentas for an iron-enriched postpartum feast. I was in 5th grade for that lesson, and it took me years to shake off the borderline cannibalization questions that have haunted me ever since.

Recently, I shared a thought with my boss–what if we gave the planners at our agency a way to channel their own inner weird? I was inspired by a quote from our founder David Ogilvy: