A Sad Post That I Hope Will Make You Smile

On Sunday morning, the President of my company died.  His name was Mike Hughes and he was an actual writer.  A copywriter by trade, and a creative visionary that turned a small regional advertising agency into the most awarded agency in the world in 2013.  But he was best known as just a nice guy working in an industry full of not-so-nice-guys.

Everyone is sharing their We All Love Mike stories – there is a website and everything.  I probably should have shared mine on his site where he could have actually seen it, since that was the intention.  But I was told not to tell anyone this little tale, so I didn’t.  But what can you do to me now, Mike?  (He would think that was funny.)

Several years ago, I was in a pretty awful client meeting the week of Thanksgiving.  A bad enough meeting that the president of the company was there.  It was clear to him – and to the rest of us – that we’d be working over Thanksgiving weekend and have a pretty rough workload leading up to Christmas.  There were some really sad faces in the room.

Mike felt really bad about what was clearly headed our way.  So he said “I want all of you to buy something nice for your family and expense it.”  A very nice gesture, but who would really go buy something and send the expense report to Mike?

Two days later, he called our project manager and asked her if she thought people had bought anything yet.  She of course said no.  He said “Good.  Send me the list of everyone in the meeting – I don’t want to forget anyone.  I am giving them all $500.”  And he did.

He was put into hospice care this past January, given only two weeks to live at that point.  We were all encouraged to send him emails – he actually likes them.  So I wrote a little note about how sorry I was about his prognosis and that he was great or something like that.  15 minutes later he wrote me back asking me “when is that baby coming?” Ironic that he was all over me about a deadline.  (He would think that was funny too.  In fact, I like this new method of just pointing out what my jokes are.)

You can read more about Mike on The Martin Agency website.

Or on his blog, where he wrote his own obituary.