Put your name up in lights:

CHRIS SPIRO Two things matter in Chris Spiro's advertising world: How you lead, and how you lead.

His rompin', stompin', money-makein' advertising agency, Spiro and Associates, just blew through its 20-year mark in the business like a stock car through a stoplight.

Leadership, baby.

"Managers do the right thing but leaders… Leaders do what's right, and I'm a leadership junky, baby, I wanna do what's right," Mr. Spiro said. "When I'm done and gone and I'm a worm feast, I hope people will look back and say, 'He left this place a better place than he found it. His footprints are on the lives of the children in Southwest Florida. And he left his mark on advertising.'"

That's Mr. Spiro for you, speeding down that glory road at 44, and sounding a lot like his guitar hero, Bruce Springsteen.

"All you want is for your voice to be part of the record, at a particular time and place. You try to be on the right side of history. And maybe some other kids will hear that and go, 'Oh yeah, that sounds like the place I live,'" Springsteen told Rolling Stone magazine recently.

Unlike Mr. Springsteen, however, the guitar-playing, drink-only-on-theweekends (Crown Royal) Mr. Spiro is a real SOP, who can vividly remember his roots.

"I'm the Son of a Printer," he says. "My grandfather was a printer. My great-grandfather was a printer. I was destined to be a printer."

So much for destiny, though. Mr Spiro can print, he has printed in a variety of shops — he started in high school at the Cape Coral Breeze, then the friendliest little newspaper on the Gulf Coast — but he became a graphic artist, instead.

By his mid-20s, he'd set up a little agency in a 600-squarefoot space next to his dad's print shop, and kicked it into gear.

Mr. Spiro will be the first to admit that running the initial 18 years of his two-decades-inthe business marathon was, if not a piece of cake, a pretty smooth stretch of track, what with all the brains he had helping him (not to mention his own).

For years there was "Brilliant" Bill Waites, the man who once coined the words, "Rich Corinthian Leather" to help actor Ricardo Montalban sell the Chevy Cordova (1976). He's now retired from the firm, which was called Spiro and Waites until 2002.

And for years he's relied on Steve "Sweet-Spot" Martin, now vice president and creative director, who likes his Martinis "stirred never shaken with a mist of vermouth," according to his online bio. Mr. Martin can find that sweet spot in a product or a company, and turn a pig's ear into a silk purse before most people get to their mid-morning coffee break, says Mr. Spiro.

But it was that 19th year, the year of the pit stop formally known as 2008, that required a gut check, along with a brain check.

He's good to go on both counts, as it turns out.

Although Mr. Spiro hit the wall when the company's extensive real estate business across the southeastern United States spun out in the economic oil slick, he came up cruising, or chopping and kicking as the case may be (he's a first-degree black belt in karate).

In short order, he rethought, retooled and reworked the company's strategy, he says. Now the online client list reads like an index of the local everything — a few banks and stillstanding developers from the region, but a host of commodity businesses and law firms (see the portfolio at www.spiroandassociates.com).

In the portfolio's real estate section, however, the page is blank. But the names will come back, and they're already starting too, Mr. Spiro insists.

"This business is cyclical, with ups and downs, and although this is the worst I've ever seen it in 20 years, there are also beautiful opportunities," he says.

Hear that attitude? Don't start whining about how bad it is around Mr. Spiro. Pick your rear up and get moving. "I can't stand to be around energy vampires. I try to get away from them," he admits, categorizing those who fall back on the negative spin. Through hard times

Here's the short history of Spiro and Associates from start-up to beautiful opportunities:

"We blossomed (in the 1990s), and as the business environment overall blossomed, we went from a project company to more of a retainer-based company, where we could set a fee on a 12-month contract. Starting really about late 2007, we went back to being a project-based company, but not like then because now everybody's watching their budgets."

As late as 2006, he recalls, clients would spend large lump sums and leave it to Spiro and Associates to turn them into larger sums. They did that. But now it's small sums with much greater expectations.

"Then they'd say, I'll throw a $100,000 at it, and we're good to go, baby. Now we're spending $25,000 and expecting a great deal more. We're expecting more from our vendors, more in return. We're more of a strategic partner with our clients."

In the transition Mr. Spiro also had to shed some of his own blood, something he'd never done before.

"He had to lay some people off to survive, and it really hit him hard, because he feels responsible for their livelihoods," says his wife, Rachel Spiro, a financial consultant who works part-time both for her ad-man and for another company. She also manages the Spiro household economy, which orbits around Chelsea, 16, a student at Bishop Verot High School, and C.J., 13, who attends St. Andrews.

The Spiro household revenue stream took a hit, like everybody else's. Mr. Spiro had to cut his own salary in 2008, along with that of each employee in the agency. "When we're rolling in it, all of us are rolling in it," he says. "When we aren't, all of us are sucking it up. Together."

That's leadership.

"He's thoughtful, considerate, caring," says Mr. Waites. "Before he'd let anybody go he'd have to have his back against the wall, there would be no other choice."

2008 was the year of no other choice, but that's behind him.

Now, he says, "there's a lot more accounting, a lot more moving parts." Every job is scrutinized every which way from Sunday. And the company is down from roughly 20 to 12 people.

Mr. Spiro's approach to the business is more considered, too. In effect, he put a governor on his engine.

"He was always a pretty flamboyant guy," recalls Mr. Waites. "In numerous presentations we'd make together, he'd be swinging from the chandeliers, and I'd be reasonable and sensible and down to earth. We worked well together. Now he's much less flamboyant but not less self-promotional — and there's nothing wrong with that in the business he's in. If you don't promote yourself how can your clients expect you to promote them?"

Recession, like Mr. Waites, is his teacher, Mr. Spiro figures.

"In the last 24 to 36 months, I've earned an (unofficial) MBA whether I liked it or not," he says. "I've learned things about business and banking and even human nature that in some instances have surprised me."

Some people who invested in real estate communities, "contractors and others who are still living a very highbrow lifestyle, think nothing of not paying their bills," he says.

"They came up to me in public and say, 'How you doin'? And I say, 'I'd be better if you paid your bill.' I'm one of those who always pays my bills, so it surprises me. On the other hand, I've seen people come out of pocket to pay their bills."

And now — another positive, as far as Mr. Spiro's concerned — he has more time to work and lead, or just lead and lead.

"Now we go back to a more tiered process. It's not just about running an ad, but it's now about taking an advantage."

And one advantage is the chance to do additional "good works" in the community (for a self-described person of faith, like Mr. Spiro, the term is resonant).

In 2004, he was named Citizen of the Year in Cape Coral. And it could happen again, given the range of things he does.

His loyalty — to his beloved University of Florida 'Gators, to the Cape where he grew up and lives — is faultless, say his friends.

He's a hometown, home-team boy, in other words, like Bruce Springsteen.

And like Mr. Springsteen of New Jersey, Mr. Spiro of Southwest Florida keeps it fun.

"Living with him is exhilarating. He's passionate, he's just a whirlwind," says Mrs. Spiro. "He can go into a room of 100 people and come out with 99 friends. And he's that way at home. We're constantly doing things. We'll sit around the house for a couple of hours, and suddenly he'll say, 'OK, I've had enough of this.' Life is never boring with him around."

And advertising, like life, is the better for it, baby.