That’ll never definitely happen.

        I walked out of the Creative Director’s office dejected and demoralized. We had shown Tom some work for Wild Turkey. He liked some of it. That was good. Apparently, he had been working on some ideas of his own, too. That was bad. He expected me to lay them out for him. Uncharacteristically, one of the ideas was less than great. In fact, it was horrible. I told him what I thought in the nicest way I could. Let’s just say I was unsuccessful in talking him out of it.

        Over the next few days I realized I couldn’t work for Tom any longer. Maybe there was a way to work on accounts he was less involved in, I wondered. Or maybe, he’ll leave. Since he was one of the owners of the agency, I thought, “that’ll never happen.”

        I didn’t know it at the time, but saying the words “that’ll never happen,” pretty much guarantees it will definitely happen.

       Sure enough, about a month after I had given notice and began at a different agency, Tom was bought out by the other two partners at the agency and left.

        I often retell this story to young creative people. Maybe they are down on themselves over a bad client meeting or an ill-fated internal agency review. “Don’t worry, it’ll change,” I say. “Probably in the way you least expect it to. I guarantee it.”