EIGHT THINGS EIGHT YEARS OF ENC HAS TAUGHT ME

Eight years is long enough to learn a lot of things the hard way. About business. About people. About creativity. About money. About myself.

I started ENC knowing I wanted to make really good work with really good people. I did not know I was signing up for an eight-year crash course in human nature.
Turns out, I was.

Here are eight things I know now that I absolutely did not know then.

01. PEOPLE WILL TELL YOU EVERYTHING. MOST OF THE TIME, WITHOUT SAYING IT.‍

Running an agency has made me a professional reader of rooms.

The pause after an idea. The energy shift in a meeting. The person who says “totally!” but absolutely does not mean totally. The client who needs reassurance but asks for another revision instead. The employee who needs to be pushed versus the one who needs someone to believe in them.

I’ve learned to listen to words, but I’ve learned to pay even closer attention to everything around them.

Business is human. Creativity is human. Leadership is deeply, wildly human.
The better I understand people, the better I am at all three.

02. NOT EVERYTHING DESERVES YOUR FIGHT. THE RIGHT THINGS ABSOLUTELY DO.‍

Eight years ago, I probably thought caring meant fighting for everything.

Every idea. Every detail. Every client. Every opportunity. Every opinion. Now I think caring is knowing what deserves the fight.

Some things need to be released. Some feedback should be taken. Some doors should close. Some ideas really weren’t that good. But then there are the things you feel in your bones. The idea everyone needs another minute to see. The person worth betting on. The standard worth protecting. The weird little creative thought that won’t leave you alone.

I’ve gotten much better at knowing the difference.
And when I know? I push.

03. GROWTH ISN’T ALWAYS MORE. SOMETIMES IT’S MORE YOU.‍

More clients. More people. More revenue. More services. More square footage. More everything.

There have been seasons where I thought growth had to look like expansion.
Eight years in, I’m much more interested in depth. Better relationships. Bigger thinking. Stronger work. More trust. More room to play. More projects that make us say, holy shit, we get to do this?

I don’t want ENC to become the biggest version of itself.
I want it to become the most ENC version of itself.
That’s a very different goal.

04. THE BEST IDEA IN THE ROOM DOESN’T ALWAYS COME FROM THE PERSON IN CHARGE. THANK GOD.‍

This one changed me as a creative director.

My job isn’t to walk into every room carrying the answer. My job is to build the kind of room where the answer can show up. Sometimes it’s mine. Sometimes it’s Jess’s. Sometimes it’s one of my INCREDIBLE designers halfway through a sentence. Sometimes it’s a client saying something completely offhand that makes all of us stop.

I’ve learned that leadership isn’t having the tightest grip. It’s knowing when to direct, when to challenge, when to ask one more question and when to shut up and listen.
The work gets so much better when nobody needs to be the smartest person in the room.

05. YOUR GUT GETS SMARTER WHEN YOU ACTUALLY USE IT.‍

I wish I could go back and show year-one me how many things I already knew.

The client who wasn’t quite right. The hire who felt incredible. The project we should stretch for. The one we should walk away from. The idea that sounded a little insane but felt unmistakably right.

I’ve talked myself out of my instincts plenty of times. I’ve also watched what happens when I trust them. Intuition isn’t magic. It’s eight years of conversations, patterns, wins, mistakes, weird situations, hard lessons and tiny details your brain has been quietly filing away.

At this point, when something in me says pay attention, I do.

06. YOU CAN BE KIND AND STILL HAVE A BACKBONE.‍

This might be one of the biggest ones.

I care deeply. About our clients. About our team. About the work. About how people feel in the process.

For a long time, I think I confused caring with accommodating. They’re not the same.
You can understand someone’s circumstances and still send the invoice. You can love a client and tell them an idea isn’t right. You can care about your team and hold a high bar. You can be generous without making yourself endlessly available.

I’ve learned that clarity is often the kindest thing you can give someone. Even when it’s uncomfortable.

07. THE MAGIC IS USUALLY HIDING RIGHT NEXT TO THE THING THAT SCARES YOU.‍

Some of the best things ENC has ever done started with some version of:
Are we allowed to do that?

Take on that kind of project. Charge that much. Say the weird thing. Change the model. Put ourselves in the room. Walk away. Start over. Make something nobody technically asked for yet.

I’ve learned to pay attention when an idea makes me equal parts excited and slightly nauseous. That feeling has taken us somewhere good more times than I can count.
Curiosity has built far more of this agency than certainty ever could.

08. THE GOOD STUFF WAS NEVER JUST THE WORK.‍

This one probably took me the longest.

Of course I care about the work. Obsessively.
But eight years later, when I think about ENC, I don’t immediately think about a logo or website or campaign.

I think about the people.

The office days that somehow turn into therapy. The ideas that start as jokes and become something real. Watching someone on my team become wildly more confident than when they walked in. Clients who became friends. The texts. The celebrations. The hard conversations. The absolutely unhinged days. The tiny moments nobody outside of this thing will ever know mattered.

We have made a lot in eight years.

Brands. Campaigns. Websites. Photos. Videos. Ideas. A whole lot of beautiful shit.
But mostly, we made a little world. One where people care a lot, stay curious, make things together and keep asking what else could be possible.

And eight years in, that is still the thing I’m proudest of.

ENC taught me how to build an agency.
But somewhere along the way, it taught me how I want to move through the world, too.

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