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The stress of leading a Canadian branch of a global shop behind him, Mike Fyshe is looking for new challenges
When Mike Fyshe announced he was stepping down as president and CEO of BBDO Canada earlier this year, his explanation was an unusually frank one: he just didn't need the kind of stress in his life anymore that came from running the show at BBDO-an agency that, despite a solid track record with its clients, just wasn't making the sort of numbers its New York-based parent expected.
So, with his family's blessing-and a little inspiration from his friend and fellow hockey coach Bill Durnan, who stepped out of the limelight at Toronto's Ammirati Puris in June 2000 and resurfaced as a consultant to Cossette Communication-Marketing late last year-Fyshe took an enormous leap of faith and quit. What followed in his wake were rumours that he was forced out of BBDO, or that he had to leave for health reasons (Fyshe lost a kidney to cancer in 1995). After all, the thinking went, who on earth would leave a job like that voluntarily?
That, Fyshe says, is an easy question for anyone on the outside looking in. "They don't know what the...