DesuckifyWork®

“This place is nuts. I’m outta here.” That was the note from a freelancer at an agency I worked at a while back. We’d brought him in for a few weeks. He lasted a few days. The note stung. Because he was right. We’d gotten used to the crazy because that’s what we do in this business. But man, it was refreshing to hear those unsullied words. I’m not sure we ever fully fixed the crazy. But we did mak...

Years ago, I worked at Hill Holliday in NYC. Not the most glamorous work, but the people were fantastic. At some point, our team grew to include folks from an agency in Greenville, SC called Erwin Penland (EP). As typical NYC-ers, we didn’t know anything about them. Or Greenville for that matter. Was South Carolina the good Carolina? Over time, those SC-ers simply became part of the team. We had t...

You know how almost every agency feels under-resourced? What if that’s a you problem? Yeah, you. The one leading the work. Are you dumping your under-resourced nervous system on your team? Look around. How is everyone? Is that normal agency “buzz” or is that abject terror? Be honest. You’re running on fumes and poisoning your team in the process. Everyone’s in reactive mode. And you’re wondering w...

Can working on an Alaskan fishing boat make you a better agency leader? Assuming you survive, it certainly can’t hurt. Dave Maricich and his brother Mark had this experience as teenagers. While other SoCal kids were cleaning beach club cabanas, the Maricich brothers were swabbing decks, hauling massive nets and trying to avoid becoming Orca food. This high-stress, everyone-better-pitch-in-or-get-o...

Your agency doesn’t have to be insane to produce great work. We’ve romanticized chaos in this business for years. 🙀 The weekly (daily?) fire drill🙀 The wall-to-wall meetings🙀 The indecisiveness masquerading as niceness Justin Bajan and his partner Dustin Artz wanted something different. After years riding the big-agency roller coaster, they created Familiar Creatures with an explicit goal to pr...

Networking doesn’t have to involve a room full of strangers. Or shotguns. After Greg Roche was laid off, someone invited him to a networking event built around sporting clays—which is apparently like golf, but with guns. Greg sat in his car thinking: “There has to be a better way to do this.” There is. Networking can be one conversation with someone you already know. No name tags. No elevator pitc...

Work sucks less when we talk to each other like human beings. Especially creative work. People need to feel safe asking dumb questions, challenging assumptions, and saying, “I have no idea what you mean,” before everyone wastes three days heading in the wrong direction. We try to solve this with process. 😼 We add another Slack channel.😼 Schedule another (ten) meeting(s).😼 Try our 17th project m...

Work sucks less when it doesn’t suck the life out of us. Obvious, right? And yet, agency leaders spend a lot of time thinking about utilization, capacity, deadlines and deliverables—and very little time thinking about what kind of work actually gives their people energy. So the brilliant strategist spends half her week building decks. The creative director becomes a project manager. The agency fou...

If you spend enough time reading about the agency business, you might think we’re all completely screwed. AI. Shrinking budgets. Procurement. Tariffs and trade wars. Another holding-company reorg announced before you’ve finished your McMuffin. But Stephen Brown isn’t buying the doom and gloom. After 23 years as co-founder and CEO of Fuse Create , Stephen has seen it all. He’s survived major client...

“There’s gonna be some changes around here.” Ruh-roh. That’s the reaction most of us have when leaders announce an exciting new initiative, new tech or new process. Why’s that? Because people are hardwired to fear change. Especially in a world where everything seems rootless and chaotic. You can’t just dump a steaming pile of new on everyone’s heads and expect them to smile and fall in line. Allen...

False urgency is killing us. Literally. Nearly a million people die each year from workplace-related stress. And yet we keep feeding the beast. What if we just stopped? What if we asked the simple question, “is this ASAP BS?” Most of it is. And it’s not just killing us—it’s making us less productive, less creative and less useful. Is that really what we’re trying to do here? Eric Recker decided he...

You know when you order something from IKEA, you get a list of all the pieces, plus instructions on how to put them all together? Why don’t we do that with people at work? A user guide, complete with a person’s preferred ways of working. What’s their relationship with time? What environments give them energy and which ones suck the life out of them? What communication methods work best? What are t...

Most agencies are in survival mode right now. Hell, the entire world is in survival mode right now. It's a crappy place to be. We're defensive. On edge. Reactionary. Nervous systems fully engaged all day long. Good luck being creative when you're crouched under your desk all day. And yet, creativity is exactly what we need right now. To build a new reality instead of being cowed by the current one...

Want the secret to running a successful agency? Stalk your clients. Not in the creepy, quite possibly illegal way. But in the over-the-top, can't stop being curious about who they are way. This is what the teams at Inspira Marketing and Enthuse Marketing do—two agencies run by today's guest, Kim Lawton . Who has time to dig into that kind of detail on every client? The folks who work in a culture...

We've all dreamed about it. Ditching the 9-to-5, moving to an exotic location and traveling the world. Derek Baron actually did it. And is still doing it, 27 years after he called his parents from Southeast Asia and told them he's never coming home. Now, before you send out an FU email to your boss and start scanning flights to Bali, you're gonna want to listen to Derek's take on his nomadic life....

The posters on the wall. The words on the website. The sizzle real that you share with every prospect. Are they b******t? You know who knows? Your team. Take a look next time you reference your mission or your values. How far back into their heads do their eyes roll? Slick messaging may help land a client or two, but I can guarantee you it's turning more folks off if it doesn't ring true. And if y...

You can tell a lot about a culture by who it celebrates. But you may learn even more by who it vilifies. Who are the bad guys right now when it comes to making work suck? How much time do we have? 😾 Meta laying off 15,000 people via mass email after telling everyone to work from home that day. 😾 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman casually speaking about AI gutting white-collar employment. 😾 Elon Musk tweeti...

You know who’s a good example for us at work? Jesus. Yes, that Jesus. It doesn’t matter if you’re Christian or a believer of any kind. Jesus wore his heart on his sleeve—and that’s something we need to do more of at work. But wait, aren’t we supposed to check out emotions at the office door? Isn’t being emotional a liability as a leader? Well, the guy who inspired the world’s largest religion may...

“More balls than most.” Those are the big, bold, embossed words on the black box Tom Hicks received from his grandmother. This was several years ago, when he was having some challenges in his life. Inside the box was a 3 ball juggling kit, which included a pamphlet titled, “A Short Course in Life Enhancement.” Okay. You had me at balls. Now I’m really curious. How in the world does juggling enhanc...

“Jobs are just a silly phase work is going through.”This is a quote from Rishad Tobaccowala , this week’s guest on the DesuckifyWork® podcast. I love the quote—because it reframes what we’re all experiencing right now in a provocative way. Work and jobs are uncoupling—the stable nine to five is becoming a hodgepodge of freelance, gig work and side hustles. It’s how we work now and the trend is acc...

Jamie Gutfreund came on the show a few months back and said she would like to get rid of HR entirely. I get it. Everyone has had experiences with HR that’ve been less than stellar. Today, I speak with someone who brings a different POV. Philip Suba has worked in HR for years and believes in it, deeply. But it has to be done right. What does right look like? You need to really understand the busine...

What song reminds you of 6th grade? Which one makes you feel invincible? What song got you through a hard breakup? Which one do you play after a miserable day at work? These are the questions Shaka Mitchell asks in his Come Together Music Project . It’s helped people with opposing political views have a civil conversation about hard topics like immigration, abortion and racism. Surely it can help...

Today is my birthday. The big 5-6. Not a particularly interesting age but I’m grateful for every turn around the sun. To celebrate the day, I’m sharing a clip from a recent guest appearance on Regina Larko ‘s amazing Lead With Your Voice podcast. Regina is a wonderfully empathetic and encouraging podcast coach who helped me find my voice when I started my show a few years back. And she is a genero...

If you run a company, work culture isn’t a part of your job. It is your job. Everything else, performance, profit, innovation, execution, is downstream from the culture you intentionally create every day. It’s a hard job. But it’s the one you signed up for. What grade would you give yourself? What do you think your team would say? I spoke with Kyle Johnston , Jacky Northgrave and Kianna Miller fro...

Humans are a messy species. And that’s awesome. Every drop of joy, meaning, purpose, love, hope and creativity comes from that messiness. AI creates slop. We’re sloppy, which leads to works of genius. So what kind of work do we want to be doing? That’s the question Steve Chavez and I dig into during this week’s DesuckifyWork® podcast. Steve is the Chief Creative Officer at Buntin , an ad agency in...