Mentoring Matters
By Robin Albin, Co-Founder / Everlusting
By the time I reached age 27, I had been blessed with three incredible mentors who shaped my life and my career.
My first was Joyce, a beauty industry veteran who herself was mentored by the legendary Shirley Polykoff of Clairol “If I have one life to live let me live it as a blonde” advertising fame. Joyce took incredible joy in teaching me all about the beauty biz, how to name and position products and invent exotic new lotions and potions in the typewriter. (It was a long time ago.) During the 2 years I worked for her, she challenged, encouraged — and often mothered me. And when I eventually needed to spread my wings, she not only cheered me on — she did something even more important — she saved my life. I had been offered my first ad agency job at 2x my prior salary and responsibility. And that’s when I was stricken with a debilitating case of Imposter’s Syndrome — a condition in which someone doubts their abilities and constantly fears being exposed as a fraud. I was paralyzed — unable to breathe. What have I gotten myself into? The world was about to find I was not a writer — I was a talentless hack. Joyce would not stand for that. She picked up the pieces and made me go to therapy. And of course, made me take the job. Then she religiously checked in on me and championed me. Joyce paved the way for my future success as a person and professional.
At the agency, I worked for my second mentor, Mary Ellen, on Johnson & Johnson Baby Diapers. Her serene confidence set my values and standards for the future. She said speaking of herself: “I will never be a chief creative officer — I won’t play the politics — but I can get up every morning and I look in the mirror and I like who I see.” Mary Ellen is my constant North Star and I still strive to be like her in business and in life.
It wasn’t long before the Cover Girl group at said agency learned that they had a beauty writer from Revlon hidden downstairs. I was promptly reassigned and indentured to a mediocre writer named Trish. Trish was no Mary Ellen. She was a self-centered wack-job who preached EST (part of the human potential movement, it taught ideas of personal transformation, responsibility, accountability and possibility). Trish mostly practiced mood swings and humiliation. I pleaded for a reprieve. And eventually got one in the form of Mentor #3.
“I will teach you everything I know but I expect blood in return.” That was the first thing Lois said to me the day she became my new boss. I immediately thought “Out of the frying pan and into the frigging fire. Ouch!” But, Lois was a hugely famous copywriter with a long list of impressive campaign creds and awards. And I was in awe of her talent — and her cool sophistication. She had so much to teach. I had much to learn. Instead of giving me junior caliber assignments, Lois made me sit and write alongside her in her office, from 9–5, day after day — working on the high-visibility TV and print campaigns.
Lois was one of the most creative people I’ve ever known — and the most conformist. She wore the same two outfits every day. Red turtleneck with khaki pleated wool pants. Or a black turtleneck with black pleated wool pants. In the summer she swapped out her turtleneck for a round collarless top. Same khaki pants. Every day, she ate the same fried egg sandwich on a toasted roll from the coffee shop downstairs. With me eating beside her.
Lois hand wrote in large flowing script on a yellow lined pad with a thick blue felt tip pen. I’m not sure she ever used a typewriter — or even knew how to type. On rare occasions, I got to chime in with an idea or two. “Robbbbin” she would say in her deep Lauren Bacall voice “I don’t get it.” The even rarer times she allowed me write my own copy, she would make me rewrite and rewrite and rewrite it. Each word, each sentence carefully crafted, deliberated and debated over. But in the end my ideas began to sizzle. The words were crisp and sharp. Clever and smart. Humorous and human. Lois schlepped me to every meeting she attended and always gave me equal credit for the work — which cemented my credibility with the client. After 5 years, I had learned all I could from Lois and it was time for me to move on. I became a VP Creative Director at my next agency leading a staff of 12 writers and art directors.
As it turned out, Lois and I both lived up to our parts of the bargain — Lois taught me the art of ideation, advertising and strategy. I gave her blood. But Lois never forgave me for leaving her.
I recently read this question: How can someone teach others to ride a bike who hasn’t really skinned their own knees? I am forever indebted to these 3 incredible women — each 2x times plus my senior. Each among the trailblazers of their time. Mentors and role models who endured their fair share of skinned knees — from misogynist bosses and stereotypes about what women could and should not do. And they paid those lessons forward to me along with a great big box of Band-aids.
I often think that the Joyces, Mary Ellens and Loises would not likely be part of today’s corporate America. Their idiosyncrasies would likely be considered unprofessional. And their age likely a detriment.
Today, ageism has been added to the sexism — despite the accomplishments women have made. I watch with terrific sadness as many of my friends are dismissed from senior roles at an alarming rate. Too expensive. Less valuable. Or just plain over the hill. Here’s a nice package. Have a nice life. Bullshit. These women are amazing successes with gobs of experience to offer. And they not only have the ambition and the agency — they have the bandwidth to do it. This mass extinction will likely ripple through every field and industry. We’re talking mega-brain drain. And a huge loss of generational capital.
But besides the wealth of business savvy they / we have to share, there’s a sense of calm and confidence we can pass along that comes with living. We learned (the hard way) that the world will not come to a screeching halt and our careers will not be obliterated when we royally fuck up a presentation to senior management that we had slaved over for weeks. Or that the promotion or raise we were passed over for (again) was not our last opportunity. Or that losing a job — the one we secretly hated — was not the end of our career. We not only survived — in some cases we actually thrived as a result. Author, scholar and risk analyst, Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls it — Antifragile. He writes: “Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder and stressors… risk and uncertainty…Anti-fragile is beyond resilience and robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stay the same. The anti-fragile get better.”
Several years ago, I sat next to a young woman at a conference. She was visibly nervous and so I introduced myself to her. Rona was 5-minutes out of college — a recent University of Rochester grad — my husband’s Andy’s alma mater. In fact, Andy and Rona’s dad graduated the same year and vaguely knew one another. She told me that she was looking for a job in advertising. I offered to help her. We were total strangers. I mentored her for months. Introducing her. Teaching her. Propping her up when things went south as they often did. Just as Joyce, Mary Ellen and Lois did for me before. When she finally got a great first job, she took me to lunch and asked how she could repay me. I told her someday she will have the chance to help someone, and when that happens, be sure to pay it forward. We tried to stay in touch, but life got in the way.
Not long ago, out of the blue, I got a handwritten note from her. It simply said, “Thank you. I won’t ever forget what you did for me. I just want you to know, I paid it forward.” You never know the impact you can make in someone’s journey. Mentoring matters.
