In 2020, I wrote in a previous incarnation of The Agency Inner Circle, I wrote an issue called Breathe. I think it has been lost through brand and ESP changes, but it recounted my experience having open heart surgery, which because of a huge allergic reaction, resulted in compromised breathing and a collapsed lung.

There was a moment in my post surgery recovery where I was in the ICU, and I startled myself awake in the middle of the night not being able to breathe or being able to make any noise. I waved my arms in the air, and tried kicking my feet, but I was really weak - less than 48 hours after surgery and still sedated. I couldn’t find my nurse call button, and I waved as loudly as I could. My breath was gone, and the dim lights of a nighttime ICU started to fade. Luckily, a cleaner was doing something in hallway, and she started yelling “¡ayudarle!”. A few minutes later, a medical SWAT team descended from somewhere and got me stabilized. I almost died on the operating table because of the allergic reaction and I know that had the cleaner not seen me, I would have died that night.

Earlier this week, I had a weird feeling in my chest. I ignored it. When you’ve had heart issues, you learn that almost all weird flutterings in your chest are either the love of your life walking into the room or transient things that pass without incident. The following day, I was on a walk and I got another weird feeling…but it, too, passed. But a tingle remained…and wanting desperately not to face the loss of breathe and dimming lights again, I tried ignore it. But it was insistent.

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Over the last few days, I’ve had a doctor ask me if his AI note taker could join our conversation, another look at 3D motion images of my internal organs revealed by thousands of gamma rays, a mesh tube that releases medication inserted into a previously repaired part of heart, and a curmudgeonly doctor who held my hands and told me that it’s going to be fine because this event was so minor that it didn’t change outcomes for me. This event was closer to changing an oil filter than anything else. So, a blockage in my heart is now something so routine that doctors aren’t phased by it. That kind of confidence in your competency is miraculous.

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I’ve has several cardiac events - at 34, and 44, and 52 and now at 58 - and every time, I decided that this will be the defining event that changes me into that idealized version of whom I could be. After all, isn’t that the purpose of an event that makes you aware of your own mortality? A glimpse of the end will make you relish the moments you have available between now and then…

These events have changed my diet & my exercise habits, but they’ve never changed “me” for better or worse, (AFAIK). But each of them has made me realize more of what I want: 34 - family, 44 - stability, 52 - things happening on my terms & 58 - well, as of today, I am pretty sure that whatever concerns I ever had about what people thought about me are gone (therefore I have zero fucks to give) but know that there is freedom In the land of of zero fucks to be loving & kind and supportive and honest in a way that wasn’t truly possible before.

Your agency has probably almost died a couple of times along the way. If it hasn’t yet, don’t worry, it will. I think those near death experiences aren’t necessarily an indication of failure or lack of competence, but rather an opportunity for reflection and expression. Almost every agency failure that I have ever seen had to do with an agency doing something that wasn’t true to themselves (a misconnect between team and task), or doing something that they thought they SHOULD do that wasn’t core to their best work.

So imagine, right now, that it is your agency on the bed, breathlessly waving its arms. What is the thing that you can do to make its breathing easier? Can you adjust your pricing, can you reduce churn, can you hire or partner better, can YOU stop doing everything, can you hand off sales , or generate more interest, demand and leads.

Think of things you can give up because:

If you yank those away, your patient has a better chance of survival.

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