But you have something special: a room where it’s safe to be wrong. Before we get to that, consider…

AI is already doing what you charge for. Briefs. Headlines. Visual directions. Brand narratives. HTML Sites. Films. From functional to fabulous, and all of it fast. Clients are using it. Some are using it instead of you.

And the disruption won’t be slow. The deaths I’m about to describe came fast. Some came in an afternoon. One in a single meeting.

You’ve heard these stories before. But you need to take another look. Why? Because you’re in them.

Cautionary Tales are Predictive

In 1979, engineers at Xerox’s research lab in Palo Alto invented the graphical user interface — windows, icons, a mouse. The technology that would make personal computing accessible to everyone on earth. They locked it in the lab. Management didn’t understand what they had.

Steve Jobs visited. He walked out knowing exactly what he’d seen. Six years later, the Macintosh changed the world. Xerox watched.

In 1975, a Kodak engineer named Steve Sasson built the world’s first digital camera. In-house. He brought it to management.

Their response: “That’s cute — but don’t tell anyone about it.”

Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

In 2007, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone. Days later a reporter asked Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer what he thought.

Ballmer laughed. Said the iPhone was too expensive, had no keyboard, wasn’t a good email machine. Smirked: “Apple is selling zero phones a year.”

He was the CEO of the most powerful software company in the world. Surrounded by smart people. Performing his certainty in public.

Microsoft’s mobile business never recovered.

In 2000, Netflix’s founders flew to Dallas and offered to sell their company to Blockbuster for fifty million dollars. Blockbuster CEO John Antioco called it a niche business. Called the whole idea dot-com hysteria.

The Netflix co-founder later recalled that Blockbuster executives laughed them out of the room.

Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010. Netflix is worth over two hundred billion dollars. One Blockbuster store remains.

In 2013, Nokia announced it was selling its mobile division to Microsoft. At the press conference, CEO Stephen Elop ended his remarks with this: “We didn’t do anything wrong. But somehow, we lost.”

He reportedly had tears in his eyes.

The Person Missing from the Room Where it Happened

Five stories. The same failure every time.

Xerox didn’t know what they had. Kodak knew and buried it. Ballmer laughed in public. Antioco laughed in private. Elop wept at the end.

Notice what’s missing from every one of those rooms: someone who felt safe enough to say the hard thing out loud.

The firms I watch struggle aren’t struggling because they lack talent. They’re making Ballmer’s argument — quietly, to themselves. They’re Antioco, in their certainty. They’re doing nothing wrong by yesterday’s standards while tomorrow arrives without them.

That is where you are. Right now.

Who Pushes Back?

Here is the one question that matters. Not the strategy question — the human one.

Do you have anyone around you who would tell you if you were wrong? Would they feel safe enough to say it?

The best creative firms have something no corporation can manufacture and no AI can replicate: a room where it’s safe to be wrong.

Where someone can put an unpopular idea on the table and not be dismissed. Where a junior person can say what she actually sees. Where failing at something new is the cost of figuring it out — not evidence that you don’t belong. Where working for the common good is the actual norm, not the poster on the wall.

The corporate world has been trying to build this room for decades. They put it on the all-hands agenda. And then the meeting ends and the same people dominate and the same ideas die and the same unspoken rules take back the floor.

Ballmer had a building full of smart people. What was missing was the room where someone could say, “Steve, I think you’re laughing at the wrong thing.” Antioco had a conference table full of executives. Not one said, “Maybe we should hear these people out.” Elop inherited a company where no one had been telling leadership what was actually happening for years.

They thought they were making the right decisions. Because no one was safe enough to say otherwise.

You have something none of them had. A human-scale organization where the culture is still yours to shape. Where people are close enough to each other that trust is still possible. Where someone can walk into a room, say the uncomfortable thing, and be heard.

The firms that survive will have used that — built a place where people felt safe enough to figure out the new tools together, try things that might fail, say what they actually see.

That room is yours to build. Build it now. The next Ballmer moment is already happening somewhere. Make sure it isn’t yours.

The post Advisory Notes: Wake Up, Creative Firm Leaders. appeared first on Ted Leonhardt.

My client, Nadia, took a breath. “I could feel the pain in her voice when she said it.”

(Nadia is a pseudonym)

“It turns out she wasn’t the only one.”

In a sweeping layoff, scores marketing professionals lost their jobs — many of them had been clients of Nadia’s small creative firm.

“Will you lose the business?” Always my first thought.

“No, with the layoffs they’ll be sending more work out. We’ve seen this before.”

“But not at this scale, right?”

What happened next was even more revealing. One by one over the next few months, five of those let go landed positions at five new companies — and every one of them re-engaged with Nadia’s firm.

They had to fight to do it. Every major corporation runs a purchasing department. Those departments maintain lists of approved vendors and resist adding new suppliers. You’ve just been fired. You’re still feeling the pain and the vulnerability of being let go, and the last thing you want to do is ruffle the feathers of your new employer. There was real risk involved in hiring Nadia’s group.

They fought anyway.

Was it because Nadia’s work was better than every other creative service provider out there?

No. There are plenty of small creative firms doing excellent work.

What these clients were reaching for was something harder to name and harder to find — emotional safety. In their new and vulnerable positions, the last thing they needed was to work with a supplier they didn’t know or trust. An approved vendor on a list was a stranger. Nadia wasn’t.

They had to fight to hire Nadia.

There’s one more detail worth sitting with. All the players in this story — the clients who’d been laid off, the contacts inside Nadia’s firm they reached out to — were women. Whether that reflects something specific about how women navigate corporate vulnerability and the search for trust is a question worth asking.

Authentic Culture is a Business Asset

So, what had Nadia actually built?

It’s tempting to call it a particularly warm working relationship. It’s something more deliberate than that.

Inside Nadia’s firm, culture is not a poster on the wall. Self-improvement is a standing expectation. Staff read and take courses. Each year, Tommy holds the mic at the winter gathering and revels in awarding prizes for most books read, most courses completed, and top insights shared. It’s serious, but also full of laughter — one recent winner turned out to be a devoted reader of vintage Superman comics, which brought the house down.

Achievement here is something to celebrate, and the celebration is genuine.

The kindness is genuine too. Senior people model what generosity looks like in practice, every day. Client and staff birthdays are noted with cards, flowers, and often a meal or a coffee. A death in the family? Don’t be surprised to find a gift — a cheese board, something thoughtful — arriving at your door.

This isn’t policy. It’s culture, lived out in small acts. Consistently.

Young talent is invested in. Training, learning modules, ongoing mentoring — the assumption is that growth is continuous, not a one-time event. When the city began looking for groups to adopt local parks, Nadia’s firm took one on. They now arrange events for the neighboring businesses, condos, and apartment buildings. Progress on community projects gets reported in weekly meetings, alongside client work.

And then there’s the orientation toward clients themselves. Significant time goes into understanding not just what clients ask for, but what they actually need. Patience, listening, cooperation. An appreciation for the natural way projects evolve as they unfold, rather than forcing them to follow rigid scopes. Iteration is the norm. Co-creation is the practice. A make-it-happen culture has built skills in project management and live events that extend well beyond the writing, design, branding, and filmmaking at the firm’s core.

Here is what all of this adds up to: clients routinely park their funds with the firm in advance, completely eliminating cash flow anxiety.

Trust, backed up with money.

B2B is P2P

These days, inside giant corporations, individuals feel vulnerable. Often afraid they’ll lose their jobs. Not knowing what’s next it’s almost like being a stranger inside their own organizations — longing for a place where their creativity, intuition, and humanity is recognized and valued.

When they find that in a small creative firm, they don’t just hire it. They tether themselves to it for safety.

When those clients move on — to a new company, a new role, a new situation — they bring their lifeboat with them. The bond survives the corporation because it was never really about the corporation in the first place. It was person to person, all along.

What Nadia’s firm offers its clients isn’t design, or marketing, or even particularly excellent executional service, though it does do all of those things. What it offers is a psychological home — a place to stop being a title and start being a collaborator. A place outside the machine where someone remembers your birthday, celebrates your progress, shows up when something goes wrong, and never makes you feel like a line item.

Call it a Professional Sanctuary. Call it Institutional Immunity. Call it a Relational Lifeboat.

Whatever you call it, it is not an accident. It is the result of a deliberate culture, built over time, by people who understood that the most valuable thing a small firm can offer a corporate client isn’t a deliverable.

It’s a reason to stay.

The post Advisory Notes: Relational Lifeboat appeared first on Ted Leonhardt.

I turned 80 this year.

That means I’ve watched enough transitions to know the pattern. Something new arrives. It promises everything. People divide into the frightened and the evangelists. And somewhere in the middle, quietly, the real question gets lost.

The real question right now isn’t about the tools.

It’s about us.

There are eight billion of us on this planet. For three hundred thousand years, we evolved in groups small enough to know every face at the fire. Anthropologists call it Dunbar’s number — roughly 150 people. Within that circle, we could track loyalty, reputation, threat, and care. We knew who was reliable and who wasn’t. We knew when someone had gone quiet and why it mattered.

Beyond that scale, our nervous systems strain.

We default to tribe. We hoard. We other. We form camps.

Our technology has become planetary. Our emotional wiring has not.

This gap — between Paleolithic emotion and god-like tools — may be the real test of this era. Not whether AI is safe. Not whether it takes our jobs.

Whether we are capable of the cooperation this moment actually requires.

I don’t know the answer to that at civilizational scale. No one does.

But I work at a different scale. I work with creative firms of twenty to eighty people. And what I’ve come to believe — after decades of this work — is that the small group is not a consolation prize. It is, in fact, the unit of human organization that evolution actually built us for.

Inside a firm that size, led well, the Dunbar conditions still hold. People know each other. Reputation means something. When someone goes quiet, someone else notices. Trust isn’t a value statement on a website. It’s a daily practice, visible and fragile and real.

These firms can adapt to AI faster than the giants. Not because they have better tools or more brains. Because they have something the giants have almost entirely lost — the ability to feel what’s happening inside the room and respond to it.

Entire professions will dissolve and recombine. Knowledge will be cheap. Capability will expand in ways I can’t see. Maybe you can’t either.

And the cooperation required to navigate this moment may be greater than any we’ve ever asked of ourselves.

I think it will be won or lost in rooms small enough that people can still read each other’s faces. In firms where a leader pays close enough attention to notice when someone has gone quiet. In groups that hold together not because they have to, but because they’ve built something worth protecting.

That advantage, measured against the scale of what’s coming.

Is everything.

The post Advisory Notes: The Gap appeared first on Ted Leonhardt.

Just enough to require a light jacket and hat for the dash to the café.

The café where, with coffee, muffin and laptop, I’ll snuggle in to write, people watch and consider.

I sit down to type.

A guy sitting across is deep into his phone when he’s interrupted with: “Hey Dan, it’s been ages…”

Dan, annoyed for the briefest moment, extends his hand with, “How’s it going Tommy?”

Tommy pulls out a chair — I note he hasn’t asked — and responds with, “We hit the paper today. Great coverage, better than I’d hoped.”

“Oh yeah, is it the battery project? What’s the latest?”

Just then a woman balancing two coffees and a large bag enters with, “Tommy, Dan, I didn’t know you were working together…”

“We’re not.” This from Dan, as she puts the coffees down and says, “We’re going to need a bigger table. Karis is joining me.”

Now Dan has the I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening face, but he stands, scans the room, pulls his jacket off his chair back and moves to the long, empty communal table.

The group follows.

I type a bit, wanting to catch all of this. Not wanting to seem like I’m eavesdropping. Try to be small.

A second woman enters with pastries. Must be Karis.

“Oh, I didn’t know you’d invited a group, Sarah.”

“I didn’t.”

Dan is smiling as he stands and gives Karis a hug. Things must be looking up for Dan.

Karis, glancing around: “I’ll get some more pastries.”

Tommy: “Not for me. Did you see the piece on our deal this morning?”

Tommy looks like the youngest in the group, maybe late twenties. Clearly on fire with what’s happened and the publicity.

“Well,” Sarah says, leaning back into a long pause that gets them all to turn to her. “Well.”

I note that the space is filling, the clatter from the kitchen is louder, and hope with the noise I’ll still be able to follow.

Sarah’s “well” is followed by a description of a couple of short films created to promote natural products — one a fashion brand, the other a perfume. In both, the story and footage feel natural, soft like spring growth, and very human. She emphasizes the humanness repeatedly. Her hands gesturing, occasionally touching Tommy’s shoulder.

“It’s the human touch that brings it alive. That makes us feel the sensation of being.”

Pulling out her laptop: “Take a look.”

I’m desperate to see, but can’t. Don’t want to break the spell.

Sound must be low. They all lean into Sarah’s screen, watching silently.

“Tommy, when I saw your piece this morning, I called Karis to see if she was up for pitching you. And here you are. So — no rehearsal, we’re into it now. Karis? You up for this?”

“Let’s see what Tommy thinks.” Karis, the sensible one.

Tommy looks thoughtful.

Dan asks, “How did they get the actors to seem so natural?”

“They aren’t actors. They’re just teens — talented teens, but just kids in their element.”

Tommy asks, “What do pieces like this cost?”

They all look at Karis.

I checked the time. Gotta go.

I stood, put on my jacket, slipped my laptop into its bag, slung it over my shoulder and bussed my cup and plate, remembering all the business breaks I got from collaborations.

The post Advisory Notes: Collaboration appeared first on Ted Leonhardt.

Happy to be off the street. It’s become a rough neighborhood again. Panhandled three times between parking and finding the entry.

Buzzed in, I noticed the fresh paint and new sisal runner as I climbed. Reaching the second floor, I entered to find high ceilings and what had to be a fabrication in progress — a tower of some kind, half-built, dominating the center of the room.

My client Jenn, a pseudonym, smiled when she saw me from across the floor and gestured toward it. “Ted, don’t you love it! We’re boxing it for a B2B event in Omaha. It’s gotta get off tomorrow. I’m glad you got to see it.”

There it is, I thought. B2B. And it looks like a hell of a good time.

The End of an Era

I sold my firm years ago. To a holding company, as it happens — the same kind of company that has since acquired Turner Duckworth, JKR, and hundreds of others. I understood the impulse completely. You build something, you pour decades into it, and one day someone offers to turn that into money you can actually hold. You take it. I took it.

What I didn’t fully get at the time was what gets lost in that transaction. Not immediately — the work continues, the people stay for a while, the name remains on the door. But holding companies are not built to sustain creative culture. They’re built to extract value from it. Those are different projects, and eventually the difference shows.

Turner Duckworth and JKR were trophy acquisitions — not distress sales. The founders were rewarded. The work had been extraordinary. But the era those firms represented, the era of the large prestigious B2C creative firm as the pinnacle of the industry, is closing. Not because the work got bad. Because the model got old.

The Seeds of  What’s Next

WPP, Omnicom, Publicis and the large independents like IDEO have shed hundreds of thousands of jobs over the past several years. That talent didn’t vanish. It dispersed.

Some of it started something new. Some of it landed in smaller firms. In the Seattle metro area, where I worked, the Seattle Creative Directory lists over 200 small creative firms. As far as I know it’s unique — I’m not aware of another major market that catalogs its creative community this specifically. But I think of it less as a local curiosity and more as a window into what is probably true in every significant city. The fallout from the holding company era is out there, building things, finding footing.

A few of those 200 firms will grow into the next generation of significant creative companies. Not most of them. But some.

Understand the Moment

The question is which ones — and why.

It won’t be the firms with the best work, necessarily. It will be the firms whose leaders understand what moment they’re in.

B2B creative spending is growing fast. Budgets are increasing. The work is becoming more sophisticated — experiential, brand-driven, content-heavy, increasingly complex. And the premium on genuine human creative judgment has never been higher, precisely because AI has commoditized the cheap end of the market. Clients who want real creative thinking know they can’t get it from a prompt.

But here’s the problem most creative firm leaders haven’t solved yet: their best people didn’t get into this industry dreaming about B2B. They came up worshipping the work Turner Duckworth did for Coca-Cola, and the best from IDEO. The visual systems JKR built for global consumer brands. That’s what drew them to the craft. Telling them the future is B2B can feel, if it’s not framed right, like a consolation prize.

The leaders who figure out how to reframe that story — who can make B2B feel like a creative frontier rather than a fallback — will keep their best people. And keeping your best people, in this AI era, is the only durable competitive advantage a creative firm has.

Creativity in Bloom

Back in Jenn’s studio, watching her team work around the tower, I noticed something. Nobody in that room looked like they were settling. They looked like people doing work that mattered, solving a problem with their hands and their eyes and their judgment, enjoying the comradery, the pleasure of doing something cool, together.

That’s the story worth telling your people.

The large firms consolidated. The holding companies extracted. Talent scattered, landed and started building again. And the work — the real work, the work that requires a human in the room with taste and nerve and the ability to read what a client actually needs — that work is growing.

The neighborhood outside may be rough. But upstairs, something is alive.

The post Advisory Notes: New Creative Frontier appeared first on Ted Leonhardt.

I can’t do anything. I’ve done everything I can. To do anything else would weaken my hand.

Strategic calm required.

The Presentation

The presentation went well. Nods. Encouraging smiles. Our deck shared beyond the immediate group. We were the last to present — they allowed us that.

All good signs. And yet.

Experience suggests caution.

The waiting is the worst kind of not knowing. The dark place I go when uncertainty feels like vertigo. Freefall. Nerves on full alert. Action isn’t possible. There’s nothing to be done. Caught in the in-between time, nothing to fill an unfillable void.

A void that, if I let it, can completely own me.

Not Dead Yet

I’ve learned not to let it.

I find a diversion. I start a project that promises some completely unrelated future success. The project puts me in the flow — that private place of joy where thinking about what we do, how it helps others, how it advances the cause, makes time move again.

A couple of days pass. The anxiety still hangs at the edges. But mostly managed. There are stretches now where I’ve forgotten the waiting entirely.

Then the email arrives. Subject line oblique. I click.

We’re a finalist. Not dead yet.

Moving Targets

I book a flight and fire back a note asking who else is in contention. They’re not comfortable revealing that. But happy to talk.

So we talk. About fees. About goals that have shifted over the course of the process. (Iteration is always in play.)

About the decision makers — who, it turns out, aren’t aligned. Some are pushing hard for an almost fictional storytelling approach. Others want something grounded in technology.

The winner, my contact tells me, will offer a balanced approach that includes both.

I’ve heard this before. It’s a losing proposition. A brief written by a committee with conflicting views, asking for something that pleases everyone and therefore pleases no one.

You’ve heard this before. So have I.

Back to What Works

So I go back to my roots.

We design a survey. We go out and interview actual users — outside the biggest grocery stores in town. We listen. We write and illustrate a presentation around a single organizing concept: We Asked.

The result?

We won.

Always Somewhere to Go

I still get the vertigo. The freefall feeling when there’s nothing to be done but wait. I still feel that flutter — what a client once described perfectly as a bad butterfly in the chest — and I just turned eighty.

You don’t outgrow it. You just get better at knowing what to do with it.

The answer, every time, is the same: go make something. Not to distract yourself. Because making things is what you know how to do. Because the flow is real, and the waiting can’t follow you there. And because the work you do while you’re waiting for one thing is often what prepares you to win it.

Creative people have an advantage in the in-between time that most people don’t recognize: we always have somewhere to go.

The post Advisory Notes: On Waiting appeared first on Ted Leonhardt.

When you start a creative firm, the dream is usually simple.

You want to make great work.

Work with talented people.

Build something meaningful.

You imagine spending your days thinking about ideas, design, strategy.

What no one tells you is how much of your life will eventually be spent worrying.

About payroll.

About losing a client.

About whether the next project will come in time.

Somewhere along the way you realize something surprising:

You are no longer just the creative person you once were.

You are the person responsible for everyone else.

For their jobs.

Their families.

Their futures.

That responsibility can feel heavy.

And sometimes, incredibly lonely.

Many founders quietly carry the feeling that they have drifted away from the very work that once excited them.

The creative director becomes the manager.

The designer becomes the negotiator.

The strategist becomes the person solving everyone’s problems.

And occasionally they wonder:

Is this what I wanted?

Running a creative company can be one of the most rewarding experiences imaginable.

But it can also change you in ways you never expected.

If you’ve run a creative firm, you probably remember the moment you realized that.

What was it for you?

The post Turning Point: Every Founder Eventually Asks the Same Question appeared first on Ted Leonhardt.

That’s been true my whole career. A writer who introduced me to an engineer. A filmmaker who needed a designer. A coder who turned out to be a storyteller. None of it planned. All of it life-changing.

Andrea Leksen designs typefaces. The kind that shows up on your screen whether you’re shopping on Amazon or reading a Microsoft document. She shapes the letters you read without ever thinking about them. That’s the craft — invisible until it isn’t.

I’m a writer, graphic designer, and advisor to creatives. I’ve spent decades watching what happens when people who make things get in a room together.

We’re building that room in Bellingham.

Not a networking event. Not a meetup. A conversation. Ongoing, honest, among people who can’t not do the work. Designers, engineers, filmmakers, writers, animators, organizers, coders. People with an engineer’s mind and a storyteller’s instincts. People who think in their sleep and build in their dreams.

Many have ADHD. Which is another way of saying they know what it feels like to be fully alive inside a problem.

Some are making money from their work. Others are doing it for the pure pull of it. What they share is the flow state — that feeling when the work takes over and hours disappear. They know it. They seek it. They organize their lives around it.

What I’ve noticed, after years of working with creative people, is that the conversation matters as much as the work.

Maybe more.

A writer in the room with an engineer sees their problem differently. A filmmaker talking to an animator finds a collaborator they didn’t know they needed. A designer and an organizer discover they’ve been solving the same problem from opposite ends.

The right mix of obsessions and disciplines cracks something open that solitary focus never could. That’s what Andrea and I are after — not just a good morning conversation, but the kind of connections that lead somewhere. For each other. For the work you share.

We’re starting on Saturday, April 25th, 10 to noon, at my house in Bellingham.

If you’re within driving distance — Bellingham, Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver — and you recognize yourself in any of this, we have a few spots left. Five dollars to cover costs.

The Creative Room, Bellingham, WA Tickets, Saturday, Apr 25 from 10 am to 12 pm | Eventbrite

The post Announcing the Creative Room in Bellingham appeared first on Ted Leonhardt.

Hi I’m Steve O’Brian,” (a pseudonym). “I’m here from Gunn in Boston looking for a sales position.”

It’s late in the day, darkening, the hall lights a slightly green tint on the industrial carpet, as I exit the men’s room, caught completely by surprise.

But I knew of Boston’s Gunn Associates. A much-lauded design firm.

“Ted, I hate to barge in on you like this.”

Had he been waiting for me? I checked my watch. It was half past five and I was about to head home.

“Ted, Kathryn Spangler tells me you’re looking for a salesman.”

First Gunn Associates, then Kathy Spangler; that got me. Kathy was my former partner. Gotta talk to this guy.

I extended my hand and said, “Steve, let’s talk inside.”

Once in our conference room, Steve placed his bag on the floor, not on the table or a chair. Then, he turned his attention to the work pinned on cork covered walls and the presentation rail, looking at each carefully. He picked up the packaging and brochures not pinned, turning pages and examining each with care, nodding.

I let him take his time, thinking if he’s really from Gunn, this could be the break we needed. I pulled out a chair and settled in.

“Ted, your work is very good. It’s a pleasure to see. I asked around about you. You are well regarded.”

I enjoyed the compliment but reminded myself that this guy’s a salesman.

“Ted, let me tell you a bit about myself, and what I’m looking for.”

He crossed the room, retrieved his bag and returned to the other side, where he slid out a chair and sat down with his bag on his lap, from which he pulled a hefty, oversized brochure with “Gunn” in large sans-serif caps on its cover, and placed it with deliberate care on the table.

“Ted, my wife was relocated to Seattle. I’ve been with Gunn for years. Love the place. But my heart says I must follow.”

All said making eye contact with me, his hands on either side of the brochure.

Being newly in love myself, I nodded my understanding, and said so.

Steve went on with, “I don’t know how much you know about Gunn, but we have the absolute highest standards that we apply to all our work. Let me show you what I mean.”

With that he turned the brochure to me, opened the cover and began to describe the people and the work depicted inside.

I was captured. First, the print quality of the brochure was maybe the best I’d ever seen. Someone that knew printing had pushed that piece to the highest level. Second, the manner in which Steve handled the pages demonstrated the reverence he had for the piece. Finally, his use of language to describe the strategic goals and the creative solutions was as persuasive as I’d ever heard.

I was sold.

Maybe three quarters of an hour had passed when Steve excused himself, checked his watch and said, “I’m sorry, Ted, I must pick up Sandy at six-thirty.”

He stood, we shook, and he departed. I’d just been managed by an expert.

Once home, although Carolyn agreed we needed sales help, her concern was a potential conflict between a northeastern, “Boston” personal style and Seattle; that the pressure an easterner might affect would turn people off.

But we agreed that this could be the guy we needed. Worth another meeting.

A few days passed. We waited. When Steve called, he suggested that he and Carolyn have lunch together. They did. She was as impressed as I had been, and her fears about his east coast style completely evaporated.

In our next meeting together, we talked salary and commission and came to handshake agreement. That evening Carolyn and I celebrated. We were ecstatic. This guy, Steve, was a rockstar, the answer, and he was ours. We’d done it. We were in.

The crushing weight of missing goals, the exhausting demands on me and the many losses to competitors suddenly lifted. From anxiety to a profound, if fragile, sense of relief.

Our “losing hand,” our stagnant reality, replaced by a guaranteed win. We had with Steve not only experience but the very fact that he’d sign with us proof from the very best that we were worthy.

The very next day, again, end of the day. Steve steps into our reception. I just happen to see him as I’m stepping out of the conference room.

“Ted, is Carolyn in?”

“Yes.”

“If you’ve got a moment, I’d like to speak to both of you.”

My first thought is, “Is he going to ask for more money?” as I stick my head into Carolyn’s office to say, “Got a moment? Steve’s here and wants to talk.”

Once seated in the conference room. Steve says, “I’m sorry to say I’ve taken a position with Kathryn.”

“Kathy Spangler?”

Carolyn’s face falls. This is bad.

“Why, what happened? Steve, we had a deal…”

“Yes, I’m terribly sorry. You see, Kathryn is with Evans Kraft. I just met with Don Kraft, and –– I don’t know and better way to tell you this –– the agency has resources, depth that you don’t have. I must look out for myself and Sandy. And I simply can’t take the risk.”

Carolyn is crying now.

Steve stands and comes around the table. He puts a hand on Carolyn’s shoulder and says, “I’m so sorry…”

She brushes it off. Stands, tears streaming, and leaves the office before he can continue.

It’s no longer a simple business setback. It’s catastrophic — a professional betrayal, and a personal one.

We had a deal with a savior, a rockstar, only to lose to my ex-partner — a direct competitor — without even thinking we were in a competition.

We were used as leverage.

For days afterward, neither of us said much. There wasn’t much to say.

***

Tim Young, sticks his head into my office and askes, “are you guys still looking for a salesman?” Tim is one of our best designers.

“A guy at my church is working for the Art Institute in sales. He’s looking.”

Tim’s friend is Don Low. Don has been representing the Art Institute to high school seniors and their parents.

Carolyn first voiced what I’d been thinking. “Can a guy selling an art school to teenagers sell design to corporate clients?”

We hired him.

The first thing Don did every morning was sit in my office and ask questions about our work: why the client, why the project, what was the need, was there research, what was the strategy, how’s the creative meet the client’s need, and on and on.

Don recorded my answers and listened to the recordings on his commute.

Work from first local giants, then national, began to head our way.

Thank you, Tim Young.

Don was a learning machine.

The post Turning Point: All Was Lost appeared first on Ted Leonhardt.

Landing a big client.

Growing the team.

Seeing your work in the world.

What they rarely talk about are the moments when everything suddenly changes.

Years ago, my partner of eight years left our firm.

She took half the staff. Most of the cash.

I kept the office because I thought I needed to look stable. In control. Like nothing had happened.

A year later, we were still standing. Barely.

So, I hired a turnaround specialist. He interviewed everyone and looked at the numbers.

Late one rainy Friday afternoon he sat across from me and delivered his evaluation.

“Ted, you’re an amazingly talented designer. A gifted strategist.”

Then he leaned forward with an intense gaze and said, “But you’re not a CEO. You have an incredibly gifted marketing person on your team. She’ll make a great CEO.”

I leaned back in my chair, noted the gray afternoon grow darker, and wondered what I was going to tell my wife.

The following Monday I fired my marketing person.

Then I started contacting clients — asking for time to catch up and show them our latest.

Fear can be a powerful motivator. Running a creative company can be exhilarating. But moments like that can feel incredibly lonely.

The decisions — good or bad — are yours alone.

And sometimes the thing that saves you –– is the very thing that scares you most.

Oh, I fired the turnaround guy. Although, I’m grateful he moved me into action.

The post Turning Point: It’s Lonely at the Top appeared first on Ted Leonhardt.