Modern times.

About 20 years ago as Ally & Gargano was going out of business, I made a fairly major career-choice mistake and jumped to Foote Cone and Belding. I had never worked in a giant network before with layers and layers of approvals and a lot of empty people with huge titles.

I decided to ignore all the crap and just focus on doing the work I thought I was hired to do. That is, good advertising that makes a difference in the marketplace.

I quickly found out that this was exactly the wrong tack to take if you want to succeed. The minute I produced something, titles would come out of the woodwork like cockroaches in my first New York apartment. They would scurry across the floor and quickly be everywhere. You couldn't stomp quick enough to get rid of them all.

In short order they had taken the funny commercial I had done for AT&T and flogged it into crap. They had ruined it. But more important than that, they had peed in my pool and therefore earned their keep.

I was young and naive and kept fighting for the work.

Wrong.

It's much easier and much more important to be able to ruin something than to be able to make something. Much easier to judge than create.

We live in a world where about 2% of the people actually do anything, actually put their asses on the line, and 98% say "That's not how I would have done it." Somehow, that dichotomy has become the acceptable norm. Tearing down trumps building something.

Of course, now I am a freelancer and I am paid solely solely soley to do things. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

There's frustration in this.

Frustration in always being second-guessed.

That's ok.

I can make 'em quicker than you can break 'em.