Eighty years in,
still at it.
I built my own firm. Led 500 creatives across 27 offices. Got fired once in a way that changed everything. Then spent the rest of my career trying to understand what actually happens to people inside creative organizations — and how to help.
Where it started I grew a corporate communications and branding firm to $10 million in fees with a team of 50 before selling it. Later, as Chief Creative Officer, I led 500 creatives across 27 offices worldwide. I've experienced the exhilaration of building strong creative cultures — and the hard work of sustaining them at scale.
After that, I worked as a consultant for two investor groups helping them acquire brand design agencies. One morning I woke up and understood clearly: I was serving the wrong people. Not the creatives. Not the people who make things. I've spent every year since correcting that mistake.
The firing that launched everything When I was thirty, my boss fired me the moment I'd become capable enough to leave. I'd spent a year building his business while he was on sabbatical — grown it, held it together, earned the loyalty of his best clients. He came back and cut my salary 25%. I walked out with my portfolio.
Within a week I had a promise of work from our biggest client, a partner in Kathy Spangler, and a new firm. Within a month, we were open. That experience taught me something I've never forgotten: when we're demoted, dismissed, or otherwise made small, it unearths our deepest fears. The scars from past emotional impacts feed present shame. All our carefully constructed defenses fall away. I know this because it happened to me — in a lobby, staring at marble floors, missing elevators, frozen.
I also know that the same moment of being diminished can become the exact launch event you needed. The difference is whether someone helps you see it that way.
What my beginnings gave me I was adopted. My place in the family was conditional from the start. I was parked with strangers off and on for years. I developed a deep passivity as a way to survive — hiding my real nature, curling into that little ball of shame that was always there when someone wanted to bully me. I became an expert at reading rooms, sensing when things were off, staying quiet when speaking up felt dangerous.
Those instincts, once liabilities, became the core of my practice. I know what freeze looks like from the inside. I know the difference between a person who's disengaged and one who's just afraid to speak. And I know — because I lived through it — that the passive behavior learned in unsafe environments doesn't stay in childhood. It follows people into conference rooms, client meetings, and conversations with their own teams for the rest of their lives.
Age as an asset I turned eighty recently, and I say that with genuine pride. I've watched the same cycles repeat across decades. Challenges that feel unprecedented usually follow familiar patterns. I've also learned what doesn't matter. I no longer chase growth for its own sake. I focus on a small number of engagements where I can have real impact — and I still have the energy for it. I can outrun my teenage grandsons.
A transdisciplinary lens My perspective has been shaped by years of daily conversation with my wife, Robin McCoy Brooks — a Jungian psychoanalyst, practicing mental health professional, and author. We don't work together formally, but her thinking has profoundly influenced how I understand group dynamics, the emotional ecosystems inside organizations, and why certain patterns repeat. I bring business acumen and human insight to the same problem.
Selective and fully present I work with a very small number of firms at a time. This is intentional. If this resonates, I'd welcome a conversation.