Twenty Years Ago, I Gave Up Lying to Clients (And, it nearly bankrupted us).

When I founded the agency that would become DiMassimo Goldstein back in 1996, I took with me a treasure of learning from having worked closely with some of the most successful advertising entrepreneurs ever.

One of the operating principles I learned from them included a bit of strategic fibbing.

This is how I remember it: “Clients and prospects will rarely give you permission to announce pitches or even wins. So, just leak. If you lose a few clients over it, the press will get you more than you lose.”

In short, fame is your advertising. Don’t let anything, not even client relationships, get in the way of getting fame for the agency, or you’re sunk.

For three years, we executed that strategy beautifully.

By 1999, we were the fastest growing agency in the country.

We were the subject of numerous press profiles and I was even featured on the cover of a couple of magazines.

Having started with only one owner and one employee (Ben Rothfeld, a brilliant young strategist, now a brilliant not-so-young math teacher), we were well-over one hundred strong and growing fast.

Most clients blamed others when we leaked. Some got mad at us. Some got mad at my partner, then our new business leader, Lee Goldstein (a convenient scapegoat as getting clients to fall out of love with the new business guy was actually a good way to keep him focused on new business). A few got mad at me. But, we were all so successful together that all was forgiven.

And then I lost a friend.

One client was so embarrassed and upset over this betrayal that she did not immediately forgive. Since her boss was more readily forgiving at the time, we kept the account. But, for the first time I now had a client to deal with who not only didn’t trust us but was brave enough to say so.

This weighed on my conscience.

Just before the turn of the millennium, I went to our leaders and I announced that we would no longer violate client confidences, that doing so would be a firing offense.

There was some discussion, but ultimately we agreed.

It was unanimous. No more lying. No more leaking.

We all but disappeared from industry media. They just stopped covering us, as we weren’t producing news.

Within two years, we were on the verge of bankruptcy.

Within three, having renegotiated rent and let many good people go, we were down to nineteen people. Our losses included three of the five partners who had made the decision to put client trust above agency fame. Great people who we loved and still love.

Our CFO declared defeat – loudly, in the middle of the office, for all to hear – and stormed out. I coaxed him back to his desk the next day, with the assurance that he would be responsible for our success and I would be to blame should we fail. He’s still our accountant to this day.

We stuck with our policy of putting client trust ahead of our own fame.

When we won some business, some of our people begged us to leak. The fame could begin to put us “back on the map” – they argued.

We refused.

For a long decade, we were under the radar. One creative director quit, saying, “You think you are in the club, but you’re not in the club. No one knows you.”

We leaders of this agency heard this sort of thing all the time. It was discouraging. When you’re failing, people don’t think you’re virtuous – they generally think you’re a loser. And this was all the more difficult because we knew that we knew how to be hotter than hot, that we had executed on it, and it had worked like a charm, but that we had foresworn that strategy for something else.

The only people who thought that that something else was working were the clients.

By putting client relationships first, we did earn the trust of our clients. In fact, we earned more than their trust. By totally committing to their success as the ONLY path to ours, we earned collaborators for life.

The result was that our business was growing steadily, driven nearly 100% by clients rehiring us and client referrals.

We were growing. Steadily. Not like the wild boom days, but steadily, and at a clip that put us on Inc’s list of the fastest growing private companies in America for four years in a row, a rare achievement.

We created jobs, adding good people to our team, and this time we could be even more thoughtful about who we were bringing on and why. This time, we were growing intentionally, not just to grow but to better serve our clients and our team-members.

It was steady growth. In fact, since our nadir, we have never laid off a single person for financial reasons. That’s more than 15 years now.

As the 2007-2009 Great Recession hit, we were hitting our stride. Still under the radar, and despite losing one major client to bankruptcy caused by the financial crisis, our growth and hiring accelerated during those years.

Social media happened, and for the first time people who met us could easily tell that they knew other people who knew us well. Now, our references we’re winning us a lot more business, and we began to be more and more choosy about what we would pursue and accept.

We kept the focus on the founders, growth and turnaround leader-clients that had gotten us through and kept us challenged.

And, we refused to pitch business with free creative work.

We were able to do this because of those client relationships and references.

So, when people ask, “If you don’t pitch, then how do you grow?” Well, now you know how.

2018 was, once again, our best year ever.

It is not easy. It will never be easy. But, we earned a life lesson by paying for it.

We chose a value - client trust - over another value - agency fame. We were willing to lose everything over that choice, and we almost did.

And that choice has made us. This gives us the strength to stick to our values even when the short-term results are discouraging.

We stopped lying to clients. Nearly went bankrupt. And that’s why we’re the agency we are today.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.