Читать книгу The Accidental Entrepreneur - Allis Janine - Страница 7

After turning my back on a safe bank job, I managed to get a job in advertising. My sister Rae was working for a huge ad agency at the time and she recommended I go to the employment agency she used to get her job. So, in I went, even though I had absolutely no experience. The woman I met with told me she thought she had the perfect job, and with a quick phone call she'd arranged an interview (telling my future boss I was a ‘freebie' for him and that she thought I would be perfect, even though I was a bit green). After a ten-minute interview, and answering the question on whether I made good coffee (‘Absolutely!'), I got my first job.

I was a very junior, junior (did I mention I was junior?) media assistant at an advertising agency. Advertising in the 1980s was all about short skirts, bad hair and long boozy lunches. Each Friday, lunch started at noon and ended at 5 pm. For a while, the fun in advertising significantly outweighed the boredom of my first job. (And it was a very dull job, mostly just typing little numbers into little squares, which, to be honest, after many liquid lunches, was a challenge.)

The ad agency was very advanced and had some nifty devices to help me out. They had these boxlike things called ‘Apple computers' that allowed me to do a spell check (after coming from Knox Secondary College, I thought all my dreams had come true). Three months after I started, they also purchased a brand-new machine where you could insert a photo (or whatever) in one end, and it would print out on a similar machine somewhere else. (If it was a photo, it would print out a bit grainy, but if you looked really hard you could see what it was.) They called this machine a ‘fax'. Still, the spirit within wanted more.

One of the many terrific things my mother did was to continually tell her daughters how beautiful they were. Personally, I think a degree of rose-coloured glasses was involved when she looked at us, but it was always nice to hear. While I was at school, I completed a Suzan Johnston modelling course, like my sisters had before me. Twelve months into my new job at the agency, the people who ran the course called and asked if I wanted to audition for a job promoting Australian-made products. The promotion was to be government-funded and they wanted one girl from every state. Never one to die wondering, I went to the audition – and, to my surprise, was given the role of the Victorian model. So I handed in my resignation and off I went to Brisbane to start my very short-lived stab at modelling. After settling in to Brisbane and meeting all the girls from each state, we started our ‘training'. Unfortunately, however, after about three weeks we heard the government had decided not to go ahead with the promotion – and I found myself out of a job.

Still, with the confidence I gained after getting the role, I thought, Why not try modelling more seriously? I had some photos taken and did the advertising rounds with my new photo book. It became fairly clear fairly quickly that my mother's view and reality did not quite match. Tall and thin I was; Elle Macpherson I was not. However, I did land the in-house modelling job at Adidas and made a few front covers – admittedly not the cover of Vogue; more like Greyhound News and CB Action magazine. In the end, modelling was not for me – a fact cemented after an appearance on The Bert Newton Show. I was modelling the new Olympic uniforms and went in the complete opposite direction to everyone else, tried to turn, tripped and fell. Not my finest moment and the end of a very short modelling career.

Next, it was back to the wheel of advertising for me with a job as an account coordinator. Multiple lessons were learned in this place. One senior male had octopus arms, which he used for big, long hugs and touches. When I complained to one of the bosses, I was told that I just had to put up with it (got to love the 1980s). The same male spent absolutely no time teaching me anything and kept everything regarding his work to himself. When he was sacked, I was given his accounts to run (Johnson Tiles and the SEC) and found myself way out of my depth. I tried my best to swim, but I simply did not have the experience or knowledge to do an effective job. In the end, the agency lost the accounts and I lost my job.

So there I was – 20 years old and jobless – when my friend Deborah asked me if I wanted to go travelling around the world with her. That was it. That was exactly what I wanted to do! I said I would join her, but the pull of a good party and buying new clothes meant I had very little money saved. When she packed her bags and took off without me, I knew that I had missed out. It was time to get serious so I could investigate my deep-seated knowledge that there was more. I started to work at night for two nightclubs. One was called the Chevron. If you're from Melbourne and over the age of 40, you probably remember that this was the hippest place to be – and I most likely checked your ID. I was hired as ‘The Door Bitch' (a term that was not always affectionate). The nightclub life was an eye-opener for a girl from the 'burbs. I saw all sorts of things: girls being taken out the back for a quickie, drugs and gangsters. I worked six nights a week at these clubs and got a job at a little advertising agency during the day. I was too busy working to spend any money, so rather quickly I had saved enough to start my travelling. During this period I was so determined, most nights I worked until 2 am. I remember driving home thinking that if I drove in the centre lane, I might wake up before I hit anything. Young people can be dumb and, once again, I was no exception. (I can only hope my own children are wiser than I was.)