Some people go to business school. I went to an ad agency.

At the time, I didn’t know I was preparing to become an entrepreneur. I was just trying to find work that felt like me—creative, strategic, and dynamic. What I didn’t realize is that the agency world was giving me a blueprint for building a business, long before I had one to build.

Ad agencies don’t call themselves startup incubators, but they should.

When a client walks through those glass doors, they’re not just asking for a logo or a clever line of copy. They’re asking you to solve a problem. It might be declining sales, a shifting audience, or a competitor on the rise. Whatever the problem is, it’s real and urgent.

The solution-focused process that’s used is structured but creative. First, the strategy team dives deep into research—analyzing consumer behavior, market trends, demographics, psychographics, brand messaging and history. The team distills it all into a creative brief that gets handed to the copywriters and art directors. The goal? Turn those insights into ideas. After they are client-approved, the production phase turns those ideas into action. The media planning team launches into the world, and then comes data, reflection, iteration.

Sound familiar? It should. Advertising campaigns are the startup lifecycle, but disguised in storyboards, taglines, TV spots, and banner ads.

When I reflect on my time working at agencies like StrawberryFrog, Ogilvy, Carmichael Lynch, Fallon, and ICF Next (then Olson), I see now that every presentation, every creative brainstorm, every late-night edit session was sharpening the very muscles I’d later depend on as a founder:

• Solving real-world problems with limited time and resources
• Collaborating across disciplines with wildly different personalities
• Pitching bold ideas — and learning to stomach the word “no”

Very quickly I had the foundation. And then, one particular project made it all click.

Difference between advertising and entrepreneurship

One of the most pivotal moments of my agency career wasn’t a glitzy Super Bowl spot or a glamorous celebrity campaign shoot. It was a scrappy pitch for a smart ball for dogs.

The brief from our pet industry client was simple: encourage more interaction between people and their pets. Our team, led by ad agency alum-turned entrepreneur, Marty Wetherall, was riding the early waves of the Internet of Things (IoT) excitement. Marty boldly proposed a forward-thinking idea—a smart ball that could track playtime, suggest activities, and encourage bonding between dogs and their pet parents.

We mocked up user journeys. We imagined the events. We even teamed up with an emerging hardware startup then called Spark Devices (now Particle.io) to help us prototype it. The founder, Zach Supalla, was equally energized. All we needed was a few thousand dollars to get an early concept off the ground.

But when we brought the idea to the client, it stopped cold. It was deemed too risky. Too experimental. Too “not what they asked for.” Despite its low cost and big potential, the project was shelved.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I see the distinction clearly now: Entrepreneurs take risks. Ad clients play it safe.

We were on the brink of innovation, of something new that could have propelled a staple, stale brand back into the spotlight. Yet, because the person holding the purse strings couldn’t see what we saw, the idea died. It was a wake-up call. I didn’t want to just imagine what could be. I wanted to build it.

Becoming a founder gave me my why

Those interactions with Marty and our innovation team planted seeds and dreams. Eventually, I hit a wall in advertising, not because I didn’t love the work. I was being pulled toward something more personal.

Despite the thrill of working with talented creatives and bold brands, I started to question the point of it all. We’d spend six months perfecting a TV spot or obsessing over the placement of a CTA (Call-To-Action) button. But was it making the world better? Or just noisier?

That’s when the whispers started—those soft nudges from the universe that something deeper was calling. I just didn’t know what yet.

Until one morning, I looked in the mirror and saw my entire eyebrow missing.

I had been struggling in silence for over 20 years with trichotillomania—a compulsive hair pulling disorder that I’d hidden under eyeliner and shame. My husband caught me at that moment. And instead of judgment, he met me with curiosity and compassion. That night on the couch, while I was subconsciously pulling again, he gently took my hand. I sighed, “I wish I just had something to tell me when I’m doing it.”

That moment became our “aha!”

From there, my husband Sameer, and our friends John and Kirk, helped turn that wish into a working prototype: a smart bracelet—which we later named Keen—that uses gesture detection to bring unconscious behaviors into awareness. We didn’t know it then, but that couch conversation was the beginning of HabitAware, a company that’s now helped thousands of people around the world with hair pulling, skin picking, and nail biting.

What started as a deeply personal problem became a product and a platform for healing.

What agency life really taught me

Here’s what advertising gave me that no MBA program could:

• To create great ads, you have to crawl inside your audience’s mind. You have to feel what they feel, fear what they fear, want what they want. That’s the same empathy that guided every decision we made at HabitAware—from product design to customer support.
• Rejection is baked into agency life. You learn to keep pitching, keep refining, keep going. That same muscle has carried me through investor meetings, grant rejections, and the daily pivots of running a business.
• Clarity of communication. Founders are always selling—to customers, to investors, to potential hires. The ability to distill complexity into simplicity? That’s a copywriter’s superpower.
• Creative problem-solving under pressure. Enough said.

For people still in advertising, wondering if this is “it,” maybe it’s not. Maybe this job is a training ground. Maybe it’s a university for something bigger.

So no, I didn’t attend Harvard or Stanford. But I went to StrawberryFrog, Ogilvy, and Fallon.

I worked alongside brilliant minds. I built ideas under pressure. I learned how to research, write, pitch, produce, and pivot—every day, for years.

Those same skills carried me through the founding of a company, the raising of capital, the creation of community, and the regrowing of my own self-worth.

So, if you’re dreaming of starting something—whether it’s a company, a product, a movement, or just a better way of living—don’t discount where you are now.

You might already be in the classroom.