Because when I look back over the last fifteen years, it's weird, but I don't really think about the campaigns first. I think about the people. Some of my closest friends are people that technically used to work for me. Actually... I hate saying that. "Worked for me." That always felt weird. I always wanted it to feel like we were building something together.

One of my old bosses had this saying: "Rangers don't leave Rangers." At first I thought it was just something he'd say. Then you work with somebody long enough and you realize... oh. He actually means it. If someone was getting crushed, he stayed. If someone was behind, he stayed. I carried that with me. Maybe a little too much.

Because when my own teams started getting bigger, my instinct never changed. Somebody starts struggling? "Just give it to me." I'll fix it. I'll knock it out. It'll be faster. And... it usually was. That's the dangerous part. The project got better. The person didn't.

That one took me a while.

Because my instinct wasn't to let people struggle. It was to protect them. I still feel that way, honestly. But somewhere along the line I realized that if I stepped in every single time, they never got the chance to figure out they could've done it themselves. So I started backing off. Not completely. Failure still wasn't an option. But stumbling? I actually think that's part of the job. Sometimes somebody needs another pass. Sometimes they need to come back and realize on their own, "Yeah... this isn't there yet." If I take that away from them, what am I really teaching them?

I think that's probably the biggest thing leadership changed for me.

Actually... no. That's not right.

Leadership didn't change me. It changed what I thought my job was.

At first I thought my job was making the work better. Then I thought my job was solving everyone's problems. Now... I think my job is creating an environment where people feel supported enough to figure things out themselves. Those are very different jobs.

I'm proud of where so many people have ended up. Not because of titles. Honestly, I couldn't care less about titles. I'm proud because most of them still call. Or text. And when they do, it usually has nothing to do with work. That probably means more to me than any campaign I've ever worked on.

Sometimes... this is going to sound ridiculous... I have this fantasy of getting everybody back together. Like the Avengers. People from Express. A&F. Under Armour. Not everybody. That'd be chaos. But most of them.

I know it'll never happen.

Still... I think about it every once in a while.

Because I don't think we'd spend the night talking about the work.

I'd probably just sit there, look around the room, and think...

Damn... look what everybody became.