I was at on the East Side the other day and stopped to take this picture. It caught my attention because it’s a door that goes to nowhere. It’s just there. I wondered — what happened to the stairs or had there ever been stairs? And what happens if you’re living inside and you sleep walk right outside and land on your head? It could happen. It looked odd and dangerous and compelling all at once.
You probably don’t stop to take pictures of doors that go nowhere. I do. And I try to capture everything because I see stories everywhere I look. Sometimes it’s hard to be in my head. Sometimes I think too much. Sometimes people even tell me “you think too much.” If you think too much, you already know what I mean. If you don’t, lucky you! We should hang out sometime.
In business, I’m always thinking — thinking about where the client will be in six months or a year or longer. I have to think about all the steps that we’ll have to take to get from here to there. I think about their customer or their donor and all the people we’ll need to mobilize and focus to get the job done plus about a million other people who will or will not be impacted by the effort. I think about everything. I’m the visionary, the master planner, the one who brings it to life so thinking is my business. So I see this door and I’m also thinking — I’m thinking about all the doors I’ve walked through in my life. I’m asking questions too — like why is that door just there going nowhere? Why didn’t they turn it into a wall? Why did they keep it? What does it look like on the other side? Questions with no answers.
I remember my very first offices — and the door to get in. It was in a basement of a decent office building and I had half windows. My rent was $350 a month. The year — 1989. I put inspirational signs from David Ogilvy on the door every day for my staff of college students so they would be inspired. I was broke most days so all I had to give anyone was inspiration and friendship. You get very good at friendship when that’s all you have to give. One day a man on the third floor (higher rent) walked through the door and gave me the book “How to be an SOB and survive in business.” I never did read it. I thought he was cynical. He probably was but I bet he had a lot of money when he retired. He was that kind of guy. I wasn’t that kind of girl though. That book bugged me. Success isn’t measured that way, at least in my book.
Sometimes I remember the first day I interview someone and hire them. Over the years, I bet there have been hundreds of people I have interviewed. I don’t count. But I remember many of them. I remember the characters most of all. They capture your attention and your imagination. I remember the guy who wore flip flops to the interview and the woman who wore a sparkly short skirt and asked for $120,000 a year. She had worked for a dot com with inflated salaries and other people’s money. I hope she found a job that paid that well. I learned a lot that day. I was glad I had to be scrappy, for one, and I was glad I was never so bold as to not have a grasp on reality.
I remember Peter. He was an intern who worked here for a few weeks. His first responsibility was to hang Christmas lights over the sprinkler system and I think he started planning his exit strategy immediately. He wanted to write. He’s probably writing novels now. I’ll probably have to hang his Christmas lights someday but for now, I still take out the garbage and hang Christmas lights and ask other people to do those things to0.
I remember when our former Art Director Mauro Magellan walked through the doors of the agency for the first time. He was a drummer with the Georgia Satellites back in the day with chart topping songs like “Keep your hands to yourself.” He was a designer too. He was so genuine and truly, a cool cat. We had met briefly once and then one day he just walked into Creative Company and asked for a job . He was so bold and audacious and honest. You would have hired him too. I said yes — pretty much on the spot as I recall — and we collaborated on a number of campaigns. It was good. And it was somewhat unexpected. And it honestly worked.
Why is it that sometimes you can spend months trying to find the right candidate and come up with zip and other times, the right person just walks through the door at the right time and you’re set? Sometimes it’s because someone walked through the door at the right time. Sometimes it’s because you walked through the right door at the right time.
With that, eventually he started spending more time in Europe like rock star artists do and he left the agency through the same door he originally came through.
There have also been doors that lead to nowhere just like the one in the picture. It’s funny how I don’t remember those though. The ones that I remember most are the ones where we went on adventures together and created noteworthy work and built something worth talking about.
I’m usually a little nervous the first time I walk through a door. You’re probably not because you’re super secure but I always want them to like me and hire us. And I always hope they’ll be nice and respond to my emails and be kind to the people I work with. I hope we’ll have fun together too and do great work and care about each other. I hope that if I have a bad cold one day and I’m not my normal inspiring self that they’ll remember that they get colds and not be mad just because I’m human. And I really hope to God they’ll pay their bills. My least favorite thing is chasing after money. But working with people who answer your bids for attention, collaborate well and get things done is the best stuff of life. Sometimes that happens and sometimes it doesn’t. I wish I always knew which doors to walk through.
But I never do. I never know for sure. I just have to be brave and walk through the doors — each and every one.
Sometimes there’s magic on the other side like on a gameshow and other times, it simply works well enough and then there are times when they open the door and you land on your head in the parking lot because that door leads to nowhere.
But you need to be brave and keep walking through the doors anyway. Mark Twain said “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”
I’ve walked through doors that disappointed me but there are many more I’ve walked through that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
The first time I went to New York City, I stayed at the infamous Hotel Chelsea. I’ll never forget the first time I walked through the doors.
This is where artists, authors, drug dealers, musicians and prostitutes stayed back in the day. Bob Dylan stayed there and Arthur Miller and Madonna and Janis Joplin. Sixty percent of the hotel was for permanent residents and their birds and small dogs. I felt like I was living in a movie. I shared a bathroom with other guests. Every day I was glad I lived to see the next day. A radiator went off all night. It was a seedy hotel. I was there to judge national advertising awards for the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association, a division of NRF. There were a few really creative campaigns and a whole lot of advertising circulars. But it was in Soho and my art director was into it and I had never been to New York City. I was 40 years old. Plus, it was the height of the recession but I thought for sure that if I went, I would meet some great people in the industry who would hire us. No one hired us. I lost money that year — not a lot but some. I would have lost less if I hadn’t gone to New York but then I wouldn’t have the story.
I got to stay the Hotel Chelsea and walk through Central Park and see Macy’s at Christmas. I got to escape for a few days to a different world. I walked through Hell’s Kitchen at 1 a.m. and ate a hot dog. I road the subway at odd hours and smiled at dogs and people. I listened to jazz at the Blue Note club. When I was in Little Italy getting gelato, a big Italian guy in a white stretch limo asked my art director and I if we wanted a ride back to the hotel for $20 and we took it. We didn’t die and I got to walk through doors I had only read about in books. Awesome.
I was brave.
This is why I started playing piano at Downtown Rotary Madison recently. It scares me to death every week I do it but I do it anyway. Downtown Rotary is a big deal. We’re one of the largest service clubs in the world and the room is filled with people who create change in the world. I was recruited to play a month ago by a former surgeon on the committee. I thought I would join the committee but I didn’t think I’d actually play for a while. But then these other things happened and the next thing you know, I’m on the schedule all because I walked through a door. I didn’t know exactly where it would take me but I walked through it just the same. And I like it because it causes me to stretch. I’m meeting all kinds of new people because I’m brave enough to get up there and try. And by no means am I doing it perfectly but they need piano players. One woman had surgery on her finger, another spends his winters where it’s warm and another has some medical issues so I’m the best they’ve got and I’m willing. Every week, there are over 225 Rotarians who want to sing a patriotic song and Happy Birthday and I help make it possible. Even though I’m scared out of mind each and every time I do it.
I’m also demonstrating to the best of my abilities that you can do something just for the love of it even if you don’t do it brilliantly. I hope that takes the pressure off everyone else in the room. I’d like to think it does.
Somebody actually offered me medicinal pot the other day. He’s kind of a big deal so it surprised me but it also told me a lot about what’s happening out there — people are freaking out every day and the pressure is real and we’re probably not going through enough doors that really make us happy. I turned him down, by the way, but I was flattered he thought I might smoke pot. I’m honestly not that cool — never was, never will be. I have asthma and in general avoid things that smoke.
I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow for you or me or any of us. I only know that the doors we walk through make our lives infinitely more interesting. I would prefer not to walk through the ones that go nowhere or where I could get hurt but that’s a risk that’s there every single time. What does it cost to only go through the doors where we know what’s on the other side? Because by avoiding the ones that drop us on our heads, we also avoid the ones that will cause us to stretch or grow or be changed or be happy — we miss the friendships, the adventures and the rich experiences and newness of trying something we’ve never done before.
Be bold. Be audacious. Be brave. Be yourself and for the love of Mike, live. Walk through as many doors as you can. Even if you get dropped on your head, you’ll still have the story about the time you almost died but instead, you lived to try again.
What doors have you walked through? What did you learn? How did you grow? Which ones do you hope to still walk through?