If you’re so damn great, why did these agencies let you go?

LevLane:

Our largest client’s corporate parent decided to bring all the creative work to their in-house agency – over the vociferous objections of our client’s CEO and senior leadership. Another client, which was primarily a media account, was consolidated with a larger media agency for the typical CFO reasons. A third client was in the automotive business and if you have tried to buy a car in the past 18 months I don’t have to tell you what interest rates have done to that business – and their corresponding marketing budgets. So those three things reduced revenue significantly – despite our work driving sales and winning awards for all three clients. During this time I wrote five new business plans for the agency that used the unique qualities of LevLane to win new business, because I saw that the new business team (which I was not a part of) was not bringing in new clients. Senior management ignored these plans, which meant no new revenue streams, and ultimately the need for layoffs of 20% of the agency. Including this guy.

7419:  

I started 7419 as a freelance endeavor when I left Renegade. I stopped actively freelancing when I joined Electric Enjin. 7419 was active when I left Electric Enjin and i stopped it again when i joined LevLane. Then when I left LevLane, I started it again.

Electric Enjin:

Literally three days before the first paid vacation in over a decade, the founders informed me that they could not pay me. But they would love for me to stay on and help them anyway. I told them that I love advertising but I don’t do it for free. So I packed up my things and looked for a place that would pay me.

Renegade:

I left for two reasons. First, my father was very sick and I wanted to be around to help take care of him. And second, social media was just starting up and I had a hunch that it was going to be big and that I would not be able to learn it at Renegade. So my plan was to spend a couple of years learning it while freelancing around my father’s treatment schedule, and then re-join an agency full time. Unfortunately my re-entry timetable coincided with the global economic collapse of 2008, when jobs were scarer than hen’s teeth. So I was forced to stay out longer than I wanted, and by the time agencies were hiring again in earnest, recruiters told me I’d been out too long and didn’t have any current “management” experience. Don’t you just love this business sometimes?