If you're the typical wildly demented ad professional, you probably think that some day you'd like to run your own agency. Since I've been doing that for several centuries I thought I'd give you a few tips.
Managing an ad agency is like delivering a baby. It seems pleasant enough in theory. But until you've actually done it you have no idea how messy it is.
Forget everything you've ever seen on Mad Men. Running an ad agency will not make you beautiful, handsome, or sexy. I suggest you Google me.
There are only two types of people who work at ad agencies -- crazy people and people training to be crazy.
From where you sit now, your colleagues seem good-natured and sensible. When you're their employer, you will soon find that all the good-natured and sensible people are over at Subway making pastrami melts.
One day someone you have worked with happily for 10 years will come into your office and close the door. She will tell you that she has left her husband and two children. She has fallen in love with your biggest client and is now living in the back of his 4-Runner. As soon as he tells his wife about this (which will happen "any day now") they will be moving to Oregon to make leather candles.
One afternoon you will be on a conference call between several of your staff and a film production company. The production company's director will be going on and on about how much he loves the storyboard they're bidding on. While he's doing this, your agency producer will be entertaining the troops by using his right hand to make the universal gesture for "whack-off." Two weeks later a letter will arrive by messenger informing you that a legal action has been instituted against you for enabling a hostile work environment.
One morning at 3:30 am your home phone will ring. It will be the the nice young Stanford graduate you hired in your billing department. He has been arrested for shooting off a gun at a strip club. It's all a terrible mistake, but can you come downtown and bail him out?
You will think of your agency as "your team." And, like all teams, they will have a remarkable capacity for petty grievances and will go out of their way to undermine each other.
Running an ad agency has nothing to do with making ads, working with clients, or managing accounts .
Your only real job is to keep crazy people from killing each other.
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