So you’ve gotten a taste of my work, my experience, and all that jazz. But now you may be wondering, “What’s this guy’s actual deal?”

Well, after umpteen years of agency life, I started to feel like all those years doing the same thing were actually making me less good at doing that thing. I was so neck-deep in my career that I didn’t have many outside experiences to draw on. And as inspiring as it might be to look at Cannes winners, I don’t think one can truly develop as a creative human being when that’s the only thing you’re focused on.

So I’ve spent my last decade or so exploring other things, in addition to continuing my ad work as a freelancer. I tried my hand at standup comedy, which turned out to be one of the most cherished and confidence-building experiences of my life.

I picked up my guitar again during COVID which led to creating an indie rock album with legendary guitarist Marty Willson-Piper (The Church); today, I’m playing that record live in a band with one of my former ad colleagues.

I also dove head-first into AI, completing a six month post grad course in AI and Machine Learning at the University of Texas McCombs Business School.

Most recently, I’ve started a very successful t-shirt brand, which required me to completely change my perspective on advertising and marketing, moving away from the big-brand TV campaigns I built my career on and going deep into social media marketing and e-commerce, hands-on, trial-by-fire style, drawing heavily on my newly learned AI skills.

And during this time I did some of the most rewarding work of my career as a freelancer, including working for The Lincoln Project, helping relaunch Lundberg Rice, and writing “Harry Caray’s Last Call” for Budweiser/Chicago Cubs.

True, I haven’t been at an agency full-time, for eight years now. But I have been quite busy. I’ve worked as hard during these past years as I have at any agency job. But, instead of being neck-deep in an agency, I’ve been neck-deep in life, so to speak. And I’ve become a wiser, calmer, more grounded, more well-rounded human being and creative person than ever before. To me, that means I’m more of an asset to any ad agency than I ever could have been otherwise.