Do you hate it enough to change it?

Discovering agency within your agency when you're not sure who's driving.

Last week, I wrote a piece about leaving advertising and what comes after. It hit well over 150,000 impressions—and clearly, a nerve.

What started as a personal reflection turned into a shared howl.

People who left the industry. People who stayed. People still unsure whether they’re gripping the wheel or just strapped to the front bumper.

All of them said the same thing: “I feel this.” Thank you for sharing those feelings, your thoughts, that howl.

But here’s what’s been on my mind since:

Some people are leaving.

Some are staying.

And some of us? We’re staying to build something better.

So this one’s for the stayers.

Not the ones staying out of fear or inertia. (God bless ya.)

But the ones staying because they still believe in the power of creative problem-solving—just not in the way things have been running.

We act like all of this is happening to us.

The layoffs. The lack of mentorship. The rise of AI. The erosion of craft. The slow death of inspiration.

And yes—writ large, these are systemic problems far beyond any one person.

But inside that system, we each still have power.

The power to change something.

To set our expectations higher.

To collectively refuse to go quietly in the same direction—a direction that leads to work we can’t be proud of or feel we have to lie about.

And I want to ask you:

What do you hate enough to change?

I hated the way we promoted people into leadership as a retention strategy.

So I built something better.

I created The Messy Middle to teach leadership intentionally—to help mid-level creatives become the mentors and decision-makers our industry so desperately lacks. The response has been overwhelming: We need this. This is so important. This can actually fix things.

And yet…the funding isn’t there (yet).

That’s the quiet part no one wants to say out loud:

We can’t afford to invest in people we’re not sure will still be here in six months.

But I’m not giving up. I’m staying in the fight because I believe we’ll hit a moment when we’ve cut too far and too deep—and someone will have to stick their hand into the wound to make the bleeding stop.

Staying isn’t the opposite of quitting.

It’s the choice to build something new in the ashes of what’s no longer working.

I don’t want to go back to the days of blown budgets and bloated shoots.

I don’t miss the chaos disguised as glamour.

But I do miss the bandwidth. The time. The space to make something great.

We lost craft when we lost margin.

We lost culture when we lost mentorship (not when we lost summer Fridays, RIP).

We lost energy when we stopped investing in people.

Now, we’re working too fast, too cheap, too scared.

And blaming the next generation for not knowing what we never bothered to teach them.

---

But here’s the opportunity:

We’re living through a moment of deep refinement.

The frivolous stuff is gone.

The posturing? Mostly obvious—and giving us the collective ick.

What’s left is a core group of people with the guts and hunger to rebuild this thing.

---

It won’t be easy. But that’s not a reason to opt out.

It’s a reason to opt in—intentionally, powerfully, with clear boundaries and renewed purpose.

---

So I’ll ask again:

What do you hate enough to change?

What’s one thing in your corner of the industry you could stop hating—and start rebuilding?

Drop it in the comments. Or just take this as your sign to start funneling 10% of your energy toward that thing.

If the idea of giving 10% of your energy feels impossible right now, I get it. This isn’t about adding more to your plate—it’s about redirecting a sliver of what’s already leaking out as frustration, cynicism, or dread.

• Brainstorm with yourself.

  Use your creative powers for your own good. Take 20 minutes to list what you hate, what you want to change, and what you could do about it. Whether or not you act on it, it’s empowering to remember: you still have ideas. You still have agency.

• Make one decision differently.

  Whether you’re a CD or an intern, find one moment this week to prioritize craft, clarity, or care instead of speed. Present the impossible idea—not because it’ll sell, but to remind people there’s a weirder, more wonderful option on the table.

• Mentor one person.

  A Slack DM. A quick call. Forward a resource. Share your story. Normalize being the person you wish you had.

• Reclaim one ritual.

  Bring back the creative warm-up. The team walk. The midday reset. Whatever made the work feel human. And be a little bit of an asshole about it. Honestly, we admire “eccentricities” more than we admit—and they create culture.

That’s it. That’s the work. No launch plan, no budget approval required.

Just one tiny act of reimagining, repeated. And if that gives you some momentum to do something even bigger, then hell yah.

Changing something will make you more valuable, more of a leader, and less disposable than piling into another jump ball. I promise.

If you’re staying, stay with your eyes open and your hands in the dirt. Not for nostalgia. Not for the promise of what was. But to shape what could still be.