Three years ago, I pulled in “my shingle” from my freelance business to take the executive creative director job at San Francisco ad agency Duncan Channon.
It’s been a great run and I’m incredibly proud of the work that we’ve done together, including new business wins and great campaigns for SweeTARTS, Black Forest gummies and fruit snacks, InnovAsian Cuisine, Knotel, and others. (Though, I suspect my real legacy will be the pre-pandemic move from Keynote to Google Slides.)
I’m grateful to the Duncan Channon team for treating me so well and to our clients who gave me new insight into the struggles of modern marketing.
Now, I’m making the (incredibly stupid?) move to leave a great full-time job and hang the shingle out, once again.
I realize that my ability to give this a try comes from a place of enormous privilege. So many families struggled to get by over the last 18 months. There’s something a little vulgar about walking away from a good job.
But it’s time to give this a try. Here are five reasons why (and here is my theme song).
1. Coronavirus
This is probably an all-time understatement, but a global pandemic that changed everything about daily life was a wake-up call for lots of people, me included. It certainly changed the calculus about what’s important and how/where people want to work.
It was a blessing that my work so easily pivoted to remote. For the most part, my job did not change all that much. Parts of it got worse (miss being on production!) and parts of it got better (don’t miss that daily commute!) But it was an eye-opener; it changed my thinking about how to define team, collaboration, and work culture.
It was an eye-opener for clients, too. They now realize that great work can come from creative people working from home and may not require a fancy office with kombucha on tap.
2. I'll be dead soon
I turned 50 during the lockdown. Milestone birthdays make you take stock. How do I want to spend the last chapter of my career?
Having my own place has been a dream for a long time. Growing up, both sides of my family had their own business (farming on my dad’s side, dry cleaning on my mom’s side.) After 30 years of working, I feel like I finally know enough and have a clear vision for how I’d like to spend my remaining work years.
I want to build something. From scratch. I want to be part of a small team of superstars that wants to stay a small team of superstars. I want to construct a way of working that delivers great work, provides enormous value to clients, but also maintains a healthy perspective about work’s role in your larger life.
If you harbor a desire to start your own thing, at some point you have to ask, “What am I waiting for?” (Or, more accurately, “Why am I so scared to take the leap I know in my heart I want to take?”) When you run out of excuses, it means you have to give it a try.
3. Client empathy
After fifteen months of Zoom calls, my empathy for my clients is through the roof. Working with people from their homes, via video, is weirdly…intimate. I feel like I’ve gotten to know my clients better than ever before.
Your average brand manager is navigating new levels of complexity and chaos, especially in the light of the pandemic. I’ve realized that a lot of agency standard-operating-procedure is a waste of time — clients need less complexity, not more.
I’ve also worked at enough agencies to realize that it’s almost impossible to change them. So if you want to work differently, you have to build that different way of working from scratch.
4. Hubris
I mean, let’s call it what it is, right? You don’t start a new agency unless you think you have a better way of working. That’s equal parts brave and stupid.
I have friends who have started their own agencies and, to a person, they all say the same thing: it’s a hell of a lot harder than it looks (and it looks pretty goddamn hard to begin with.)
And yet…
I think the post-pandemic shake-out presents enormous opportunity for a new playbook. We’re going to try a “do it for you, do it with you, teach you how to do it yourself” model that feels well-suited to the moment. We’ll work directly with brands, in-house creative teams, and even other agencies. We’ll solve problems (even if we’re not the solution.)
5. Impact
This was one of the reasons I left my freelance life and moved to DC back in 2018. There’s only so much you can do as “an agency of one.” You need collaborators to make a real, long-term difference on a brand or in an organization.
So, while our start may be modest, the desire is to make a real impact on people’s lives. Not in an abstract “increasing shareholder value” sort of way (although that’s important too.) But in a highly personal way, with a focus on the individuals we work with and for.
In this model, “impact” is solving a problem for a brand manager so they can spend more time with their kids.
It’s making sure a superstar performer is well-compensated for the quality of their output, not just the hours they clock.
It’s pointing a potential client to another agency because they can help them more than I ever could, helping them both succeed.
It’s about crafting a way of working that supports the rest of your life, not the other way around.
Will it work? No idea. But I’m excited (and terrified) to give it a try.
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