Mentorship Matters
The secret to finding your perfect mentor
My childhood dream was to be a famous film producer. This stuck with me through my teens and led to my applying early decision to Boston University's College of Communication, where I could get the education I needed to make it happen.
I took a required "Strategic Planning" course with Professor Carolyn Clark the second semester of my freshman year. Professor Clark presented the case study behind Mastercard's "Priceless" campaign, created by the marketing maverick, Joyce King Thomas (or JKT, as most of the marketing world knows her).
That college course, especially the "Priceless" case study (along with Goodby's "Got Milk?"), led me to change my major to advertising (with a minor in film! The dream is still alive & well). Upon graduation, the first job I applied to was, of course, Assistant Account Executive on the MasterCard campaign at McCann Erickson.
Needless to say, I got the job and was able to work for a living legend! I left 3.5 years later (yes, I outlasted the millennial 3 year average...barely) with some of the best foundational skills in the business (and the battle scars to prove it).
I never had the courage to ask Joyce to coffee while I worked at McCann as I thought I was too green and too low on the totem pole to do so.
Through the power of social, I managed to reach out and stay in touch with my hero, Joyce, after a year post-McCann, and am honored to to call her my friend & mentor today.
I had breakfast with her this morning (the second time we've met IRL post-McCann, but with plenty of URL conversations over the years). She reminded me of why I went into marketing and why there is no such thing as too many ideas, too much energy and too much passion about endless industries and areas.
My advice to anyone starting, middling, leading in their career/s:
Find someone (or multiple someones) who you admire.
Persist in reaching out to them (activate and leverage all channels to do so — LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google search, random email guessing).
Ask them for 10 minutes of their time on the phone or to take them to a 20 minute coffee and/or Diet Coke.
Rinse & repeat.
And, at the end, it all comes down to Joyce's genius formula:
Days I've worked in the real world: 4,261.
Tweets / emails / LinkedIn messages / DMs I've sent to dream mentors since June 2007 when I entered the real world: 6,012.
Coffees I've been treated to or have treated dream mentors to based on who actually responded and took me up on my offer: 54.
Mentorship that expands your mind, network and career & personal confidence = Priceless.
#mentorship #advertising #career