Lisa Mehling of Chelsea Pictures
Why she doesn’t wait for permission.
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 164: Lisa Mehling
Hi. I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach and advise their leaders to help them maximize their impact and grow their business. To help them succeed where leadership lives - at the intersection of strategy and humanity.
These next few months are going to be chaotic. Industries are being reformed, culture is being redefined. New rules are being written and rewritten. It’s happening already. Decisions are being made today, literally today, about how to compete for talent and relevance in this new world. So, how should leaders lead as we meet a world of new possibilities and expectations?
This week’s guest is Lisa Mehling, the owner of Chelsea Pictures, who last month were named the winner of the Palme D’Or as the Production Company of the Year at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
Lisa doesn’t like to talk about herself. But her journey is an important one to understand as we struggle to build a society that supports all people.
Important not only because she is a woman in an industry that for too long has been dominated by men. But because of how long it took her to reach this extraordinary moment.
“…in my mind, I call it accelerating your path by 10 years, where I don't fault myself. But had I known then what I know now, I could have accelerated some of the things I did by a good 10 years, and I probably could have jumped over periods of time where I thought I was waiting for permission when in fact I wasn't.”
The single biggest decision we make in our lives is this. How will we use the time we get while we are here? How will we spend this moment? And this one? And this?
Are we reacting or acting? Waiting or moving? Hoping or choosing?
Time has moved differently over the last 18 months. We have learned new rhythms - some faster, some slower. But very little about the way we have spent our time has felt familiar.
Until we got used to it, and it did. Sometimes in good ways. Sometimes in bad.
And then the vaccines came. And now we have to figure out how we spend our time all over again.
Which makes this moment a gift.
I’m fortunate to see across and inside a wide range of industries and businesses. And what I’m increasingly certain of is that what came before 2020 will have increasingly little to do with what comes after.
We have been living for a long time with norms and expectations that were designed and implemented during the Industrial Age. The 40 hour work week for instance, despite all the data that shows working fewer hours dramatically increases both performance and personal well-being. The Industrial Age started in about 1760 and ended sometime in the mid 20th century. Conservatively, that means we left the Industrial Age about 70 years ago. And yet we’re still tied to its apron strings.
Human beings are creatures of habit, genetically and biologically built on rhythms. The rising of the sun, the speed of our breathing, the gestation period of creating new life. There are so many fundamental aspects of our existence that we can't control.
But if you’re listening to this podcast, there are many, many things about your life that you can control. You have agency. To decide and to act. To test the boundaries of what is possible and to discover who you are in the process.
The power to unlock creative thinking and innovation depends on challenging assumptions and breaking down norms.
Or, as Lisa said, of not waiting for permission that you don’t need.
These moments are fleeting. New structures and practices and expectations and processes will be here before we know it.
So you can wait until someone tells you what’s allowed.
Or you can save yourself ten years and decide yourself.
Here’s Lisa Mehling.
Charles: (04:09)
Lisa, welcome to Fearless. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Lisa Mehling: (04:12)
Thank you for having me.
Charles: (04:14)
When did creativity first show up in your life? When were you conscious that creativity was a thing?
Lisa Mehling: (04:18)
It's such a good question, because I probably was living around creativity before I knew it even had a name. So we weren't raised in what would be called a traditional creative family or community, but I'm one of four and all four of us work in a creative industry. And so we have now and again, spoken amongst ourselves thinking, “I wonder how that happened.” So we started to think about little hints in the way we were raised. And when we broke it down and had memories of our parents and our community, there were all kinds of creative inspirations all over the place, but it was never called that. But we decided we were influenced by people that were just living their lives with creative expression.
Interesting things I think back on, one of our neighbors was a captain for one of the airlines. So, at that period of time being a captain of a 747 was a really, wow, glamorous job. But what he did in his free time is he was a puppeteer. And so if you would go to his garage, which was just down the street from us, it was a world of puppets. And it came to… we would find out later he was renowned puppeteer. His name was Jim Gamble. And in that he was just part of the neighborhood invariably, he would perform at all the kids' birthday parties. So he was just part of our world, but there he is, as a true puppeteer master.
Another neighbor, a family friend of ours. She was a stay at home mom, but she was then and went on to become an enduring successful writer. She's published eight books. So, it was just something that you thought, oh, that's what Mrs. Abercrombie does, not realizing that it was a real achievement and very creatively focused, but it just wasn't defined as such.
It came to be known later, but not that anyone really spoke of it, but one of the creators of M.A.S.H. was a local friend and family community member. My dad, for instance, loved good design. We now look back on it and think, oh, wow, he was buying Eames chairs and unusual things before unusual became a thing.
My mom loves visual things. She loves beautiful things. She's attracted to fashion and home furnishings in a way that it was more than most of the other moms, and that was her creative expression. She always looked great. Her home always looked great, she made beautiful food. So now I think we associate that with someone who's got a good creative eye, back then it just wasn't called that. But anyway, me and all my siblings talk about it and say, “Oh yeah, it was there, we didn't know what it was.”
Charles: (07:36)
What about you? How did you show up?
Lisa Mehling: (07:40)
Let's see. First of all, I was the second of four, so we were a pack of kids. And within our family, there was always one or two other families. So at any given time, there were usually eight to 14 kids around, which was a great way to grow up. There was always something fun to do. There was a lot of room for kids to be kids and rough house and run around and get dirty. But inside my family, being probably second of four, I had a lot of latitude just to slip into the background. So I was really shy, quiet.
I think of my earliest, I don't know if we even would have called it a career, but my dreams as a child was to either be a flight attendant because I loved airplanes and going somewhere. And I loved when, we didn't travel very much at all, but whenever we did, I thought taking off was a unique thrill. And then having gone to the circus a few times, I sort of locked into being a trapeze artist. And I didn't go to acrobatic school or do anything about that, but I think I conjured in my mind that those would be like dream lives.
Charles: (09:06)
What pulled you into film production?
Lisa Mehling: (09:08)
By the time I went to college, I had conjured up my dream to go to New York City. So what career was going to be involved was less clear, but I was extremely clear about my goal to get to New York. And when I thought of New York, I thought of all the things that come to mind, but it was definitely more thinking of it as a city of big business. I didn't think of it as the city where Andy Warhol lives, that's not where I was yet. It was probably more informed by Mary Tyler Moore than Lou Reed. But nonetheless, I decided I had to get there, so that was the goal.
So when I went to college, I had thought I was interested in business. I had thought I was interested in banking. And that kind of worked with the New York plan. But when I got to college, of course, you take different classes. I went to liberal arts school, I went to Pepperdine, and you just start to take different classes. And so I tried a little of this, I tried a little of that and started to kind of narrow down some goals.
And I took one class with, it was, I think Marketing 101. I didn't even know what marketing was, but I went there and I just had a light bulb go off. I thought it was the greatest class. This guy was the greatest teacher. He was incredibly engaging and smart and energized about what marketing was. And he broke it down in such a way that was insight, plan, execution, results. And he would use examples and you'd think, “Wow, I had no idea that's how Volkswagen Camper was developed.” You don't even realize where these things come from. And so then you started to realize there were individuals that said, “I have an idea,” and somehow that idea was Coca-Cola, or chocolate milk, just weird arbitrary things that I didn't even as an individual realize that someone had conjured that and boom, it was a thing.
So, I got really excited about it. And it was the first time that I was able to connect a class with a career. And probably worth mentioning, from probably after my first year of high school, I lost interest in academics completely. So school to me was just something you had to endure. I didn't engage, wouldn't engage, went into a kind of academic rebellion, and wasn't interested really in much of anything at school. But I also knew from what you see around that it was important that I go to college so that I could sort of participate in the world.
So I was just skimming through as much as I could. I bring that up because the marketing class was the first aha moment. Couldn't wait to get to class, couldn't wait to dive in, couldn't wait to discuss things. Then I learned about the world of marketing. I learned about the world of brands. I learned where ad agencies fit into that universe. Again, I was still always watching and thinking about New York. So then I learned that that world was centered in New York and I thought, “Wow!” And I just loved it. And by the time I graduated, I was really passionate about advertising and had studied David Ogilvy and Birnbach. And Lee Clow was a star around that time, Steve Jobs was on the scene as a visionary and he was building a brand in a new way, in a relatable way. So I just started to pick up on some of the historic masters, and then I started to pick up on who was doing it right then and left college saying, “I'm going to work in advertising.”
My first couple of jobs were just anything to get my foot in the door. And the first job I got in LA was at a small agency, and they put me in the Print Traffic department. I thought I'd won the lottery. So my primary job every morning was to be aware of what the shipping deadlines were, and to know what elements I had to get by what deadline, to make the courier, to make the flight, what have you.
And then I'd go all around the agency to really every department from account to research, to creative, to production. And I had to get something like 12 signatures every day. So I would just go office, to office, to office, and invariably somebody wasn't ready. So I would just stand there or sit there, waiting for them, fly on the wall, and whatever they were doing, they'd be doing. Conversations would happen. And so I just started to see every pocket of every world and I started to develop fun, little rapport with these people because there I would be again.
And through that I came to interact with the TV production department and landed on the, “What do they do?” And came to realize that production was really the business of creative. And kind of pulled different things like the old vision of being a banker fits into production because you're minding a budget, you're negotiating financial deals. I was so drawn to the visionaries, the David Ogilvy's of the world. So the creative writer and the idea maker. And so then I said, “Wow, there it is. That's my job.”
Charles: (15:21)
What was your first job in the production world?
Lisa Mehling: (15:24)
So by the time I, in this course of this year, realized what I wanted to do and that I wanted it to be, at that time, it was called the TV department. My boss in Print Traffic was maybe only two years older than me. We both were really ambitious and I eventually told him, I've decided I want to be in TV production.
So he said, "What I want you to do is go out and meet people and try and get work as a PA. That's how you get into production. You have to start as a PA." So he said, "Go out and try and get PA work. And if you get hired, you can take your PTO and I'll cover for you. And until,” he said, "you can get up as many as seven PA days, then you'll have enough experience to launch. And when you're out of days, then you can quit."
Charles: (16:15)
What a great plan.
Lisa Mehling: (16:17)
Right. So, long of the short is another one of the grownups I had met through wandering the halls of Print Traffic was one of the lead creatives. And I told him what I wanted to do. And he said, "Oh, you should go meet a friend of mine." And it turned out, he still is, one of the all-time leading reps. His name is Steven Monkarsh. But this is now going back 25, 30 years. So Steven Monkarsh was a top rep when he was probably, I don't know, 25. And I went over to see Steven Monkarsh by way of this copywriter begging a favor. And he too said, "Here's what you got to do." And I always remember he pulled out this big Rolodex because everybody used Rolodexes then.
And he said, "I'm going to give you the names of 12 heads of production companies. You call them and say, you're Lisa with Tracy Locke," that's the agency I worked at. He said, "They'll all take your call because they will think you have a job." And he said, "So when you speak to them, you say some version of, thank you so much for taking my call. What I'd like to do is find work as a PA." And he said, "They'll feel so beholden because you're from an agency. They'll meet with you or give you a shot or something."
Charles: (17:44)
Good advice.
Lisa Mehling: (17:45)
So I said, “Okay.” So, I did this, and the first person or the second person said some version of, “Sure.” And that's how I got my seven PA days, because these production companies all took me on. And I think I PA’d three days and got a job at an ad agency in the Production department. I finally got myself to New York and started in New York without a job and went out and knocked on doors, didn't know a soul. And I knew about the production world and I knew about the agency world. And I just said I'll try and get a job in either or and whichever one I get hired in first is what I'll do, and then fate would have it that I got my break at a production company and started at the bottom on the front desk and that was that.
Charles: (18:37)
It's amazing how many extraordinary successful women started on the front desk. Susan Credle’s story is very similar to that actually. She started as a receptionist with BBDO.
Lisa Mehling: (18:45)
Yeah. It's good.
Charles: (18:47)
Which production company was that?
Lisa Mehling: (18:50)
It was a short-lived production company. It was a BBDO creative director had left and launched as a director. And it was a company called Moyer Productions. It was just a one director shop. And I was there for maybe less than a year and his small shop got acquired by a bigger London-based production company. And through the course of all that, I ended up working for an English production company, which at that time was pretty much one of the top five production companies in the world. I had no idea, twist of fate, but then I ended up staying with that English company for probably five years. And those were my formative years of really understanding the business and getting to know what directors do and how it all started to take shape.
Charles: (19:43)
Which company was that?
Lisa Mehling: (19:45)
Spots Films.
Charles: (19:46)
Barry Myers.
Lisa Mehling: (19:47)
Barry Myers.
Charles: (19:47)
The legendary Barry Myers.
Lisa Mehling: (19:49)
The Lion.
Charles: (19:49)
Yes. He was something, wasn't he? As a personality and a presence.
Lisa Mehling: (19:54)
Yeah, and exceptionally talented. And his body of work was considered, at that time, the very, very best in craft. And there were, oh, probably a good dozen directors and each one was unique, special, top of their craft. And then they had some of the strongest new directors coming on the scene. And they also had sort of a best in class production arm which went all the way from the senior founder all the way down to the runners. But I knew it at the time because I loved working there, working with them. And it was a really incredibly unique cast of incredibly talented people that everyone was running and learning and figuring it out, but it was a special group of people to be around at that time.
Charles: (20:52)
It had a very specific culture. I remember talking to Barry about the kind of culture he wanted Spots to reflect and represent. And there was a real sort of camaraderie about the place.
Lisa Mehling: (21:01)
You know, they were incredibly ambitious. They had an appetite for the industry that was infectious and they were bold and they were funny and they were charismatic. I also can remember back that they were so passionate about the best advertising. They didn't spend a lot of time thinking that they wanted to be, like a contemporary of Barry's is Ridley Scott. So they came from very similar backgrounds. They launched very similar companies. They rose to very similar high levels. Ridley Scott obviously had a taste for feature films and went on to be wildly successful. Barry didn't share that. So it wasn't a film production company that had an advertising arm, it was all-in, the magic, the greatness of exceptional advertising.
Charles: (22:02)
And how long did you stay with them?
Lisa Mehling: (22:04)
About five years. And then Barry decided to close the company and a fold in occurred with Radical Media. And then I went to Radical after Spots. And when Barry decided to close, all of us who had been at Spots kind of splintered, and a lot of us felt a little kind of brokenhearted like, “Oh, it's over. And there won't be another place like that,” which is how we felt at the time, everybody went on to be really successful, but I think everybody felt like we'd hit a dead end. And Barry pulled the plug and we all said, “Aw.”
Probably what I missed about Spots was that it was boundless in its ambition, but its ways and procedures were really fluid. There weren't a lot of people keeping track. And so it allowed for young people without a lot of experience just to go for it, and nobody was paying much mind. And then Radical was a company that was building and I have so much regard for them, but they were building a business. So they had to be a little bit more purposeful and serious about it. And they didn't have mega directors yet. And so when Spots and Radical became part of the same entity, the established mega directors came from Spots and Radical and their such great business mixed with such great production skills, married with some of the mega directors and off it went and became Radical.
Charles: (23:52)
When was your move to Chelsea? When did that happen?
Lisa Mehling: (23:54)
When I left Radical, I decided I wanted a break just to get some perspective and I traveled for a year. And when I came back, I was just trying to think what I wanted to do. And I was unclear because I didn't know that I saw a clear path with the demise of a company like Spots. I wasn't sure that the business was for me anymore. And so I just started to talk to people, listen, investigate, read, and think maybe there's a different part of this broader industry that I want to transition into. And I spent some time thinking that I had missed my shot at coming up online and working with crews. So I thought maybe I should go spend some time freelancing. So I spent some time working with a line producer, a friend of mine. She put me on a bunch of jobs as a coordinator, so I got to see behind the scenes and just learn what that component of the business was.
So I was just kind of floating in a little bit more open-minded, and then the opportunity at Chelsea, they were looking for someone and I was happy to chat with anyone. And in hearing about what Steve Wax, who was the founder of the company, wanted and what his vision was, it piqued my interest. And there was an English component of that company that was a little looser, but there were a number of English talent that were really strong. So I think I recognized maybe there was some of the culture I had missed that was baked into Chelsea, and so I decided to give it a go.
Charles: (25:46)
And you said Steve had a vision that was appealing to you. What was the vision?
Lisa Mehling: (25:51)
Steve was a dreamer. He believed in directors and the power of filmmakers, storytelling was really, really what he was into. And he was a real champion of left-of-center voices. He was less drawn to maybe big, like big budget Hollywood was not his dream, but indie greatness, indie film greatness was. So there was a renegade spirit and kind of a celebration of artists and voices, that he was really into journalism. So he had a real attraction for strong, independent voices. And so I was drawn to what I thought was maybe a very undervalued organization.
Charles: (26:49)
What'd did you think it could be?
Lisa Mehling: (26:50)
A couple of the directors were already working at the world's highest levels, so there was an established foot hold and I thought that there was a misperception on the outside world between what true talent was in there and how it was perceived. And I thought there was an opportunity to take Chelsea and keep its ethos intact, but present it and push it in, in a way that it could claim a position that was… that it had the right to participate in. Steve was a hippie, an outlier, almost like an anti-establishment. And I think he was happy living in the shadows. And I, coming on as an executive, wasn't, and he was happy to let me pull it up into, without giving up any of his culture. But I thought there was a place for it at what I would consider the center of the industry versus pushing so hard into the shadows.
Charles: (28:05)
So there was a constructive tension there between who he was and who you were and what he had built and what you thought it could become?
Lisa Mehling: (28:11)
Yeah. That was my responsibility. He charged me with it. He was happy to see me do it. And I was happy to do it with him, for him, I was his employee at the time. And I felt like I was, the experience I had had, I felt like I was capable of doing it. It didn't feel like that big of a bridge. So he wanted to empower me and he thought what I wanted to do was great. The directors definitely thought what I wanted to do was great, because they felt it would bring them more success. And so without it being a big, heavy conversation, I think we just recognized where we had similarities and that I appreciated what he had built in the culture and that I had a vision for it to be bigger, stronger, more well-known and that suited everybody.
Charles: (29:10)
When did your evolution into ownership happen?
Lisa Mehling: (29:13)
It was around the five-year mark.
Charles: (29:16)
And you and one of your other executive partners became co-owners with Steve, right? Alison Amon.
Lisa Mehling: (29:22)
Yeah. It was a sole owned company that got split into a three person partnership of equal shares.
Charles: (29:30)
What was the transition like for you in terms of going from being employees to being owners? And what was it like suddenly joining in a man who had been around for a long time and was older than you? What was that transition like?
Lisa Mehling: (29:42)
I feel like it's something I want to talk about because I want to try and dispel some of the perceptions of what that is for other women. Because I came to it with a tremendous amount of, “Oh, I couldn't possibly.” And if I were to fill in the ‘why I couldn't possibly’, it would be because I was a younger woman and all the other characters in the industry were men, many of them older. Some of them were contemporaries absolutely, but if you looked around, it was mostly men. There always have been really powerful women in production companies, but there really weren't very many at all that were founders, owners and certainly not directors. So it just felt like a universe that wasn't one I was supposed to be in. But there I was and what was I to do?
So I think in the end, what it was, was it really wasn't another universe. And it really wasn't that complicated, but I struggled with trying to understand how to have a place in the room and to not second guess myself, or have some form of imposter psychology. And it took a really long time not to feel like a second class member of the company ownership lineup. So I would say it was, in a lot of ways, it was great, but in many ways, it was really tough. It was a really hard struggle. It was a hard struggle for me. It's wasn't what I set out to do. I was really just focused on the company success and the directors and the creative we were taking on. And that's what I really was so passionate about. But as far as walking into a room as the leader, the owner, that took me a really long time to feel comfortable in those shoes.
Charles: (31:51)
Did anything change to give you that comfort, or was that just a question of learning to understand yourself through a different lens?
Lisa Mehling: (31:57)
For me, I've always had some incredible friends in the business, champions, that whether asked or not asked, would sometimes come in at the greatest time and just give me a prop-up and share some wisdom or perspective. So little by little, I would get affirmations. But probably the most defining periods of me learning how to lead were in times of crisis. The September 11th attack, Chelsea was in the lower Manhattan area. The office was shut down, all the awful things that came with that time period and the related business hardship that hit the industry. And then the '08 financial crisis.
In both instances, production companies and their survival were under direct threat. So it pushed myself and my partners at the time, really to the brink of, “Wow, we might go under, GM might go under.” And so the will to persevere, survive was so intense and so essential that it didn't really allow me to fall into patterns of self-doubt or patterns of, “Oh, let me subordinate myself in this situation and let whoever I conjured up should have the center stage.” And it was really fight or flight. And in both instances came out, but the lessons I learned in each of those time periods, and neither of which I would really want to relive, but it gave me some inner confidence in what I could do and I gained confidence to then take that into whatever I was doing next.
Charles: (34:03)
So the challenges actually gave you focus like, these are problems I have to solve. So I can't feel sorry for myself. I can't worry about whether I should be the person, I am the person so I've got to do this?
Lisa Mehling: (34:13)
Yeah. It was sort of the hot potato. And someone throws you the baby and you catch it and think about it later. So framing this up for other people coming up in the industry now, in particular women and people of color, whatever I can do to help people, in my mind, I call it accelerating your path by 10 years, where I don't fault myself. But had I known then what I know now, I could have accelerated some of the things I did by a good 10 years, and I probably could have jumped over periods of time where I thought I was waiting for permission when in fact I wasn't. But I had absorbed too much from patterns in society to realize that some of those rules weren't rules at all. And that by committing yourself to something, building a team, building a network, building allies, doing the work, being prepared, all of those things coming together, are essential and anybody can do whatever they want, build whatever business they want.
But a version of myself, at that time, as a woman in this industry, I thought one, I wasn't allowed, and two, I needed permission. I'd love to see more people come up knowing that that is totally unfounded, like complete BS.
Charles: (35:58)
So the recognition of those two truths must've served you incredibly well during the last 18 months during COVID. How did you meet that challenge?
Lisa Mehling: (36:07)
I remember right when it kicked off and we all went into work-from-home mode. And one of my colleagues who works for me in LA said, "Hey, Lisa, how's this different than the '08 crisis, or how's this different than September 11?" I hadn't framed it up that way. And when he asked me, I said, "Actually what's going on here is, I have no idea. I could give you guesses. I could tell you my hunch, but I have no idea where this is going or how dark it's going to get for the world, let alone Chelsea. And so what's very different about this is, it's a global pandemic that is burning out of control and no one on the planet knows how to stop it."
So unfortunately, I will tell you, I don't think they have anything to do with each other at all. And that was kind of sobering for me because I hadn't thought of it that way either. So for me, what I did was, given the scale of the unknown for everybody in the world, from our personal health to our community health, to our ability to do any kind of business at all, the first thing I did is I sat with my husband and we made the back of the envelope. This is what the end of this business looks like. Let's map it out, let's talk about it. Let's recognize it for real. And let's set up the parameters around when we will pull the plug.
So we did that, and while it was hard to do, it was really empowering, because then I knew what my timeline was. I knew what my reserves were. We had made a decision as a family about how far we would risk what we were in for. And we were unified in knowing when we would stop, so that on top of, “Are we going to survive?”, which is a hard conversation to have, “Is Chelsea going to survive?”, it's important but far less important than, “Are we personally going to live, what's going to happen to our children?” And so, we were able to put the business in a really important place, but put it in its relative place. So within a relatively short period of time, our goal was, let's stay alive, let's keep everyone we know alive and we'll deal with whatever comes from there.
So with Chelsea, I had a conversation with the full Chelsea team, probably similar to my immediate family and said, “I don't know where this is going. No one does. Let me tell you what I know. Let me tell you what I know our timeline is for us to be able to stay here.”
And I said, “My goal is to keep everyone employed and keep everyone with health insurance.” And I gave them what I thought was an estimate of how long I could guarantee. And I said, “Everything may right itself, and I want to be really honest with you. I don't want you sitting here wondering if your last day at Chelsea is tomorrow. I don't want to put you through that kind of stress. So here's what I can tell you and here's what I can guarantee and here's the timeline for all of you. And when that changes, and when I think it's going to change, I will give you a heads up. So I'm never going to come to any of you and say, tomorrow's your last day. I will give you as much lead time as I'm capable of, and the only thing I can guarantee is that I will be honest with you. But I cannot guarantee where this is going or that my company or anybody's company is going to survive.” And everybody rallied. They were like, “Great. That sounds… we're in.”
Charles: (40:38)
What did you do with the time, because suddenly you had no work, right? There was a company filled with talented people who had ostensibly very little or nothing to do in many cases. What did you do with the time until work came back?
Lisa Mehling: (40:52)
I had a hunch and we decided just to give it a go. We had two young people who had been offered jobs before the pandemic, and they both were going to work in the New York office. And in the time in which they accepted their jobs and were to start at Chelsea, the pandemic kicked off, it was probably a two, three week period. And so there we were, their first days on the job were coincidentally the same days. They didn't know each other. And it was the first day of lockdown. And so, on the Friday before, we had to call them and say, “We're so sorry, but no one's coming to the office.” And I had a conversation with myself and with a couple of the execs and we talked about, “Wow, we hired these people, well, we obviously don't need their services because we can't work.” And I just said, “There is no way we're terminating them or telling them they don't have a job. We're just not going to do that. So we don't know them and they don't know us, but they're part of the team and we'll figure something out.”
So we didn't share that with them. We basically just said, “Monday's your first day at work. And you'll be working from home, make sure you have internet, here's what we're going to do.” And one of them, her name is Sammy, she had just graduated college. Her parents had driven her across the country to move her into her new apartment. She arrives to two roommates that she had not met before, and they basically were packing up and leaving to go to their home base. And so she was sitting in Bushwick, New York in an empty apartment by herself. She'd never lived here and the pandemic was in full force.
So we really thought so much about her and thought, what can we do? And such levels of personal anguish and stress and hardship, that without being incredibly thinking it through, the first thing we did was we rallied around Sammy. And so we kicked off a series of midday and end-of-day group Zooms. So we said, well, at the very least, let's get on, support Sammy sitting by herself who knows no one in this city, doesn't crack. So we just started showing up for Sammy. And then of course, everyone was showing up for each other. We all needed it.
The first couple of weeks was a version of checking in with each other and trying to process what was going on. Obviously, talking about business and what we can do and what we couldn't do. Very early on, it was realized that things could be made, the drop kits, directors who could work with archival. We have a number of talented documentarians who could work that way. So we started to piece together what we could maybe do if we found the opportunity and we started to talk to our agency friends who were reaching out, really intent on finding out who could do what, and how would you do it. We were very focused on whatever form of business we could possibly still be in. And then we were spending a lot of time together on Zoom talking about that, and then just also talking about checking in on each other.
So 10 days, two weeks of that, we decided, well, let's get down to business. As I said to my team, “Again, I don't know how long I can keep you employed, but why don't we focus on giving all of you as much learning or knowledge as we possibly can so that if this ends, at least you've taken on new skills.” And so we set up kind of a mock syllabus of all the components of the industry, and we would have a group session and the person who was most knowledgeable about whatever we were discussing would come and talk about it. And it would turn into just a round table, open discussion about that thing. So our CFO came and presented a balance sheet, here's receivables, here's payables, here's how they come in, this is what it looks like, here's how expenses get calculated. He gave you like a 101 on bookkeeping, and they could all ask questions.
There were breakdowns of contracts that we engage with on our projects. This is what a contract looks like. Here's what we look for. Here's where there's variations. Here's some of the real-time ramifications, if you agree to such-and-such payment terms. We would talk about what payment terms meant. We had the reps come on and talk about what it is to represent directors and how they started and what they do. We had pretty much each director come on and talk about their development as a filmmaker, where they started, what they're passionate about, what was their trajectory. For those that had features or television series, we launched what we called the film clubs. So we'd watch the film and then the director would come on and tell us as a group about the making of the film.
So we had ten sessions a week, so two a day, and we just went at it. We were never short of something to talk about, and we just kept going deeper and deeper and it spawned from there. We talked about bidding. We talked about, how do you decide what to put on a reel? So it really was great. It kept us occupied, everyone learned. I learned, everybody learned. And then through it, of course, the connection between us really just took on a whole new level.
Charles: (47:06)
So a true masterclass, in fact. There is at the heart of all of that, underpinning all of that… obviously, it's incredibly smart, it's strategic, it builds culture, obviously it creates foundations in a business, but underpinning all of that, my sense is that it just is driven by an inexorable spirit of kindness amongst anything else. How do you marry that, which seems to me to be a kind of a consistent theme across your career? How do you marry that with leading the Palme d'Or winning company in a business that is often known for being fierce?
Lisa Mehling: (47:44)
That's a good question. And again, I think it's a question that, I don't know, that's probably a great question for the industry. Another, I'll go kind of more immediate then broader, but something that also came out during the pandemic was within the company owners, a network, some of which I would have called friends, some of which I would have called more comrades in the same industry who I admire, but don't know. And there was kind of a grassroots need to come together and say, “What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you hearing?” And sometimes formalized by the AICP who set off their own version of daily industry-wide Zooms, giving people a place to come and say anything from, “I'm freaked out or afraid,” to, “This is what I heard and what have you heard?” And so a tremendous amount of information was shared as a community.
Then separate from that were smaller communities that I was engaged with, where we found a safe place to be fierce competitors, but also members of the same community. And we realized, while we are fierce competitors, I don't want to see anyone fail. I don't want to see anyone's business go under. And I don't think anybody else wanted to see anybody else's business fail. So I think it was a really interesting time for businesses that would have been pretty quick to clip at each other's heels or, actually attempt to knock someone off the mountain, to just mellow out and not be in killer mode. And just take a pause. And I know, because we've all talked about it, that it brought out something that was incredible. And I don't think anybody really wants to go back to where it was. But, always everyone would say, I am in business to win. I am in business to beat you, even if you're my friend, that's what I'm going to try and do.” I'm not going to try and do it in a way that lacks integrity, but I'm going to hope that my approach and my director have the best idea and the best pitch and the best production plan and that we win. And that's what I always will focus on.
And it was great because everybody was… I was never anywhere in the vicinity of being a pro-athlete, but I suppose that's what it would be like. You're on the circuit, you're all friends, you get on the court and you're going to do everything in your power to win. So everybody was unapologetic in their fierce competitiveness, but there was a level of humanity and exchange of just who we all are and that everybody has their own version of their home life and personal life and their health, and it really stopped. There was no predatory attempts at toppling people at that time.
Charles: (51:17)
As you look back over the last 25 years, do you have any regrets?
Lisa Mehling: (51:23)
I would say quickly, no, because I always feel like if there's something I can reflect on and say, oh, wow, now that I know this, I could have done that. I always think of it more as, it's too bad I didn't have that wisdom. Had I had wisdom, I would have maybe done something different, but I don't have regrets. No. I think if anything, I think about, as I said before, trying to decode things for others so that while my path was my path, and there's so much about my path that I am grateful for, I do know that there are things that I could have done differently that would have had different results and I would try and share that with anybody who wants to know about that. That feels gratifying to me. So I don't spend time beating myself up, but I do know there's many, many things that others could do differently and they probably could jump over periods of time that weren't always great and frame people up so that they can claim their identity faster.
Charles: (52:43)
How do you lead?
Lisa Mehling: (52:46)
I would say I'm a very reluctant leader. But in a time of crisis I have certain instincts that are pretty formed around tactile strategy. Go this way, go that way, go under, go up. So I trust my instincts. Where I've struggled is to allow myself to express them. So for me, the most important, challenge I have as a leader is to trust my instincts and to be able to just articulate them. And for me, my ideal environment is in a group where everybody shows up and shares some of the same goals and that they feel empowered, that they feel welcome and respected, and that we make an agreement that we're all attempting to go in the same direction. And that we have an understanding that if somebody is challenged or feels that they have to veer off course or if they’re dead-ended, they just raised their hand. And then we talk about it.
I don't really like to actively lead people. I'm not comfortable in that. So I try to set up an environment around a common understanding and something that's meaningful to all of us. So I would say my vision of it is setting an environment to empower people who are ambitious around some of the same things I am. And then just to keep checking with them that they have what they need, they feel good, what's on your mind. And if I need to, I will remind everyone about, oh, but remember the path is this. So let's get back in sync and see if we can bring your ideas in, but let's all try and identify the same path. That's kind of where I'm at in my journey. And again, I feel like the team that has come out of the pandemic that I have now, is far and away the most unified in that ideal. And so maybe it'll be something that I get to enjoy that just grows and builds off of itself, and, you know, we'll see.
Charles: (55:24)
And what are you afraid of?
Lisa Mehling: (55:26)
I feel, right now at this phase in my life, that there is almost nothing that I am actually afraid of. I feel like I've organized my life so that the things that truly matter to me exist and are real and I protect them fiercely, that being my family and my close friendships. And everything else… I have a lot of things that are important to me, but nothing so much that I fear it going away or never happening. So fear is really no longer any kind of driving factor of mine. I feel part of why I can feel that way is I work with really bold ideas and visions, and I always know where the back door is. So if whatever I'm doing isn't going to work out or trouble’s on the horizon, I don't make my plans from a fear-based place, but being a realist, I know shit can happen. So I always have my, ‘shit happens’ plan. And I know that outside of the big awfuls in life, death and destruction, there just isn't that much for me to be afraid of anymore. Certainly not in a business life.
Charles: (57:05)
I want to thank you for joining me today. I know you were hesitant to do it, but I think it was so important for people to understand that the kind of leadership that you bring to the table can have such an impact both from a standpoint of success, and also, I think in terms of the impact you have on the people around you. So thank you for joining me today.
Lisa Mehling: (57:23)
Thank you, Charles. As I said, it's not a platform that I really relish, but I'm really glad you don't have cameras. And I'm so thankful that you're my friend and that we can just have a conversation around things that you and I both really enjoy and share some of the same values around what we're doing and why we're doing it.
Charles: (57:49)
Yes. Thank you so much.
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