A Great Terrible Decision–Part Two

I finally landed my dream job—then spent the next few months wondering why it felt wrong.

When we last saw our intrepid would-be advertising whiz-bang, he had just turned down the chance to be a seed investor in Men’s Wearhouse (MW) and had accepted his dream job working for an advertising agency. If you haven’t read Part 1, A Great Terrible Decision, you can find it here.

Yup. There I was, first day on the job. All clean and spiffy—coat and tie, new folio briefcase ( I still have), pencil sharpened, about to sit down in my new office at Marcom-Day Advertising in Houston, Texas. The dream job I had moved halfway across the country in search of.

The first minute… no… the first second I sat down, something felt off. Kinda itchy, for lack of a better word. Couldn’t be. I wrote it off to first-day jitters, or maybe to having a windowless office.

“Could this have…?” “Did I make…?”

Nah. No way.

I jumped in and wrote my first-ever 60-second radio commercial. It was for Chair King, a large retail store selling patio furniture and accessories. Spring and summer were their best-selling seasons, and I was assigned to write several spots—and quickly.

Like a bad dream revisited, I still remember the first words of my first radio commercial: “Spring is here, and with it, Mother’s Day,” and it went on to explain how a new outdoor dinette from Chair King from Brand X was the perfect gift for mom.

(And from the “Look at me, I’m an adult now” standpoint, if I gave my wife an outdoor dinette for Mother’s Day, she’d probably pick it up and smack me upside the head with it.)

I took my handwritten ad—my penmanship still quite legible—and gave it to Olga (I had my own secretary!). She typed it up in a jiffy, and I walked my gem over to Drew Cherner’s office for a quick look-see. (Drew was the original Marcom-Day Account Executive on the MW account. I don’t remember exactly what he said, mostly because I had to duck to avoid being hit by the crumpled ball of paper I had just handed him. His rant began with “Rutgers” (what he had decided to call me), had a flurry of f-bombs, and the reminder that I wasn’t in Composition 101. I needed to sell, not write a romance novel.

Back to my little office to rewrite. I worked on the one Chair King commercial for the rest of the day. I spent more time writing that spot than I did writing my Independent Study on television advertising…or any other paper I ever wrote while at Rutgers.

OK, so the first day, it was a little rough.

Uh, so was the second day.

And the first week.

And the first month.

Whatever IT was, it wasn’t going away.

The first-day itch was becoming a scratch. Could this whole dream of working at an advertising agency have been some mirage? Had I been telling myself a false story?

Nah. No way.

It wasn’t for lack of work—I had plenty. I wrote radio commercials, oversaw their production, and bought airtime for MW, Chair King, a car tire center, and a camera store. I even put together MW’s first television campaign, a slapdash one-station effort that failed miserably.

But still…

For a reason I had yet to discover, Drew had asked for my help with a campaign he was developing for a local FM radio station, KRBE. It was a fun diversion, so I happily did the work. It wasn’t retail, like everything else I had been working on. It was more about market positioning, something I was curious about.

One day he stuck his head in my office and said, “Get your KRBE stuff, and come with me.” Soon enough, we were sitting in the offices of Alan Becker and Pace Management, neither of whom I had ever heard of, and neither of which had anything to do with KRBE radio.

Becker and Pace were a management company that promoted events such as a motocross in Houston and a famous tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. They were growing rapidly and had reached the point where they believed they needed an in-house advertising agency. They were in the process of hiring Drew to run it.

And Drew wanted to hire me.

Me. Whoa. The first event the new agency was going to promote was the opening of the Louisiana Superdome. Whoa again. Big time. And Drew offered me a salary several times what I was already making. Whoa x 3.

And I didn’t take the job.

Was I out of my freakin’ mind?

No. I felt loyal to Bob Day, who had given me an interview when no one else would even look at me. Who had made a promise to hire me when he could. And who kept his word. All of which meant something to me.

Drew left; I stayed. Now I had the big office with the floor-to-ceiling window. Things were looking up—and down, for that matter. My advertising dream was finally going to be realized.

Sure.

But that TV advertising I was so enthralled with?. At Marcom-Day, I wasn’t doing any of it. My accounts could afford radio, but TV was out of reach. Because the agency was small, I wasn’t just writing copy—I was producing, buying media, and serving as the Account Executive. And often, the middleman when presenting print ads and any other non-broadcast creative. This last piece was something I hated. I wanted to write, not defend someone else’s work.

That scratch was now a rash. I was frustrated and beginning to feel quite bored. Making matters worse, when Drew left the agency, he took some accounts with him, causing the agency to lose substantial income. Bob Day was already nervous about the income from the accounts I handled. It was derived from the 15% commission the agency received from broadcast media placements. Bob handled a large pharmaceutical company and several other non-retail accounts, for which he charged a monthly fee—a much more profitable business for the agency. More than once, he suggested I start looking for new business to offset the losses.

And more than once, I asked myself, “Why?” So I could be more frustrated?

Meanwhile, MW had opened a second store, then a third, and I noticed my work for them and spending time with George were the only parts of my job I felt good about.

For the first time in my life, I had achieved exactly what I’d wanted—and discovered it wasn’t what I wanted after all.

UGH…

Little did I know the forces of my restlessness at Marcom-Day and the expansion of MW from one store to three were about to collide and change my life.

Once again.

On one of my trips to MW, George asked if I would meet him for dinner. The ask felt pressing, so we agreed to meet the following day. We sat down, and George didn’t waste time—he said he realized I had been correct in my assessment of Harry, and he wanted to buy Harry out and have me return to MW as an equity partner.

While my first instinct was to say “When do I start?” I told him I’d sleep on it. Not because I wasn’t interested. But because I was already nursing the wound of one bad career decision. I wanted to breathe a bit before making another commitment.

And maybe to finally admit I had made a big mistake.

Sleeping on it didn’t change anything, and the next day I let George know I was ready to come back. The offer of stock in the company was for me to buy one-third of MW for $3,000 (about $20,000 today). While it might sound like the bargain of a lifetime, keep in mind MW was losing money and had yet to find the formula for making any.

And oh, by the way, I didn’t have $3000.

I left Marcom-Day a few weeks later and took a week off to visit my parents in Pennsylvania. On the same trip, I also drove to New York to meet Jordan Morganstein and his advertising agency, which soon became the agency for MW. (The rest of that story lives in What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been.)

I had the most interesting conversation with my father then. He had been following my career moves and always made it clear he was sad to see me leave Hazleton, but happy I was trying something on my own.

When I told him I was going to buy a stake in MW for $3000, he gave me what he thought was fatherly advice: if I didn’t own a majority of the company, then I was always going to be subject to the whims of whoever did. And the fact that MW was losing money didn’t make the investment appear sound to him.

I politely told him I wasn’t asking for his permission. I was asking for his opinion. And I wasn’t asking to borrow the money from him.

(For the record, my Dad had a great sense of humor when he remembered this story and often retold it to friends and to me with a big smile on his face.)

Stories we tell ourselves. They’re worthwhile, important, and even necessary, especially when young and beginning a career. And equally important is being open to changing circumstances.

Holding those stories lightly to leave room for change.

The story I had told myself about a career in advertising was just that–a story. One I held onto for over five years—a very long time in my very young life, which felt like forever when I was a young twenty-something.

But there was more to it.

Difficult as it was, I had to set aside my story long enough to notice the reality in front of my nose: retail, and apparel, and television advertising. Those were the things that excited me, and far overshadowed earlier dreams and poor decisions.

Could I have had a successful career in advertising? Maybe. Could MW have been as successful without me? Maybe. Fun questions, but not very useful.

I think I learned at a very young age that doing what I truly loved meant more than the story I had been telling myself.

As always, thanks for reading.

Want more Curmudg between Wednesdays?
Check out Notes—random musings, timely observations, and the occasional revisit of an older column that still feels uncomfortably relevant.