I have spent my entire career on the client side.
I have worked with agencies, hired agencies, challenged agencies, loved some agencies and probably driven a few of them mad.
But I have never actually worked in one.
And now, after more than 15 years in-house, I'm considering something I never really expected.
What if I tried life on the other side?
The funny thing is that I have spent years thinking I understood how agencies work. After all, I have been the client. I have managed budgets, written briefs, reviewed proposals, challenged fees and sometimes wondered why on earth we were paying so much when I seemed to be doing half the work myself. And that is being generous.
I have also worked with brilliant agencies and people who brought expertise, creativity and perspectives I did not have the resources to build internally. People you could genuinely trust, who lived and breathed your brand and made the work better.
So I know there is no single agency experience. Just as there is no single corporate experience.
But being on the other side of that relationship? That is completely new territory for me.
The appeal of seeing things through
One of the things that attracts me to agency life is the possibility of working on different projects, with different clients and experiencing the full journey from beginning to end.
You identify a challenge, develop a strategy, execute it, deliver the results and move on to the next project.
The whole journey, from beginning to end.
Of course, not every agency project works that way. But there is something incredibly energising about that possibility. Starting with a problem and reaching the point where you can look back and say, we did that.
You have already got me halfway convinced.
But then I think about the other kind of satisfaction I have experienced throughout my career.
Watching a team grow. Seeing someone you hired become more confident and take on bigger responsibilities. Building a communications function, a brand or a community that becomes stronger over time.
One gives you the satisfaction of completing something. The other gives you the satisfaction of watching something grow.
And I'm not sure I could choose between them.
Maybe I just love building things
I keep thinking about my early days at Houzz.
When we launched in Spain, there was practically nothing. We were a tiny team, doing a bit of everything. Actually, a lot of everything.
I was employee number two, although my dear friend Lucia Olona would probably disagree. We still have some unfinished business over who got there first.
I even remember having to assemble my own desk.
And I loved it.
Not because assembling furniture is a particular passion of mine, but because of what it represented.
We were building something from scratch. No established way of doing things, no big team to delegate to and no guarantee that any of it would work.
Just an idea, a few people who believed in it, lived and breathed the brand and had an enormous amount to do.
Looking back, those were some of the most exciting years of my career.
But I have also experienced that same excitement in much larger organisations. Building teams, transforming communications functions, navigating complex changes and helping businesses find their voice.
Which makes me wonder whether what I really enjoy has less to do with the size or type of organisation and more to do with the opportunity to build something meaningful.
Maybe it isn't about being startup, agency or corporate material. Maybe it is about finding somewhere I can build, contribute and make a difference.
Experience, people and the right kind of challenge
There is another part of agency life that I find both exciting and a little intimidating.
After more than 15 years in communications, I have worn quite a few different hats and tackled all sorts of challenges. But if there is one thing I have learned along the way, it is that experience does not mean having all the answers.
But does that mean I can walk into any company, in any industry, and solve every communications challenge?
Of course not.
Maybe seniority isn't about having all the answers. Maybe it is about having the judgement to ask the right questions, knowing what you don't know and recognising when to bring someone else into the room.
And that is where the people you work with become so important.
I have always valued being part of a team. People who challenge you, complement your skills, share your values and make the difficult days a little easier.
Whether you are joining an agency, working independently or leading communications inside a company, I think finding the right people is essential.
Because who you build something with might matter just as much as what you are building.
Is there really a safer career choice?
There is something else I have been questioning lately.
We often talk about entrepreneurship as the brave option and corporate life as the sensible, secure one.
But anyone who has spent the last few years working in tech will probably laugh at the idea of guaranteed job security.
I have experienced restructurings, leadership changes, difficult decisions and periods of enormous uncertainty.
And, strangely enough, I have enjoyed many of those challenges.
Not the layoffs. Definitely not the layoffs.
But the complexity, the pace, the people and the opportunity to help an organisation navigate change? Absolutely.
At one point in my career, I chose what seemed like the more stable option over the rollercoaster of startup life.
I don't regret that decision. I learned an enormous amount and gained experiences I would not trade.
But it has made me think about how we define professional success.
Is starting your own business inherently more ambitious than building something inside an established company?
I don't think so.
And what if you find a company you genuinely love? Somewhere you believe in the mission, trust the people, continue learning and have the freedom to make an impact?
Would finding a company worth staying with for decades not be a pretty extraordinary achievement too?
There are different kinds of risk, different kinds of ambition and different ways of building something meaningful.
So, agency, corporate or startup?
I started writing this thinking about whether I could move from in-house communications into an agency.
And somehow I have ended up questioning what actually gives me energy at work.
Is it the satisfaction of completing a project? The longer-term reward of building a team? The excitement of creating something from scratch? The people? The purpose?
Probably a combination of all of them.
I don't regret any of my career decisions. Each has taught me something, even when things did not turn out quite as expected.
But I also believe that our previous decisions should not define what we are allowed to want next.
Maybe the question isn't whether agency life is better than corporate life, or whether entrepreneurship is the ultimate form of success.
Maybe it is about finding the right people, the right challenge and an environment where you can do your best work.
And perhaps trusting your gut a little more along the way.
I'm curious: have you ever changed your mind about what your ideal career should look like? What made you rethink it?