From the first season of Mad Men, showrunner Matt Weiner wanted to tell the story of Peggy Olson becoming a copywriter. That included showing copywriting as the practical art — or craft — that it is. It’s not a theoretical subject like law or medicine. There’s no proficiency exam or degree of certification that will do you any good in an ad agency. Writing ads is more like computer coding or cooking. You get the job by doing it and showing the person responsible for getting the work done that you can do it faster, cheaper, or better than anyone else.

Success depends on talent, drive, and luck. The luck is in finding somebody willing to give you a shot. The basic equation or implied contract for a junior copywriter — or any apprentice — is: If you give me a little guidance, I can eliminate a lot of the low-level crap work from your life.

Early in season one of Mad Men, Peggy Olson gets noticed by Freddy Rumson, a seasoned copywriter who would rather drink than do what he considers to be the piddly-ass small stuff. He sees that Peggy has imagination and ambition and is willing to put in extra hours. Freddy takes Peggy under his wing and begins to teach her the craft of copywriting, including the ins and outs of working in a creative meritocracy where you are only as good as your last idea.

I was told early on that if you want to move up in the world of business, you need to figure out how to solve your boss’s boss’s problems. Freddy was Peggy’s first mentor or boss, but Don Draper was Peggy’s boss’s boss.

Learning to think above your pay grade is not how you get liked by the people you work with. But it is how you move up in the world.

I always thought the most profound change to Peggy Olson, the professional copywriter, happened off-screen between Seasons Three and Four. Somehow, between those two seasons, the character of Peggy went from being a beat behind Freddy and Don to being a beat ahead of everyone else in the room.

In “Public Relations,” the first episode of Season Four, Pete and Joey struggle to keep up with Peggy as she pops off one idea after another. She’s ahead of the game. Firing on all cylinders. Going places. And not particularly concerned whether or not the others around her can keep up.

I watched that episode and was completely suckered. I remember thinking, “Wow, she really gets it. I bet she would be great to work with.”

I spent seven seasons working with Mad Men’s other writers and producers thinking about what makes people good at the business of persuading. How do they think? How do they behave? What’s innate? And what’s learned and passed on from master to student?

When my work on the show ended, I wrote a book. Because there are some things about the job of advertising, selling, copywriting, and seducing strangers you can’t learn from books. But there are a lot of things you can.

Josh Weltman’s book Seducing Strangers: How to Get People to Buy What You’re Selling (The Little Black Book of Advertising Secrets) will be published by Workman Publishing Company, April 7, 2015.