Meeting Steve Yahn
On building, not burning bridges
Meeting my Heroes is an occasional essay series from Matt Carmichael.
The single moment that most changed my life took place on a street corner off-campus from Northwestern on a random afternoon, much like any other.
It’s a moment that would never have taken place if I hadn’t first had that chance conversation with Dr. Welch about applying for editor-in-chief. Nor if Doc hadn’t have written that letter to Northwestern. Nor if my friend and dorm neighbor Freddie hadn’t suggested I run for President of Willard. But those things happened and they set me up for this moment.
I was standing with Andy Carvin. Andy had graduated and was visiting from D.C. where he lived. He had previously lived in the late, great Willard room 121 years before me. We were waiting for Chris Crone (of which the same could be said) who worked near this corner. If I had to guess we were going to then go to My Bar for a litre of Pilsner Urquell. He was squinting at everyone who walked by because he wasn’t wearing his glasses. He squinted at someone he thought might be Chris but turned out to be another recent grad who was visiting from New York, a guy named David Levin.
So if you’re following, I’m on a corner a ways from campus. It’s not a highly trafficked area to start with. I’m standing with someone from out of town and someone else from out of town walks by and amazingly enough, these two guys know each other pretty well. How’s that for coincidence and chance?
We get to talking, Andy introduces me and says I’m a journalism major interested in this new thing called the Internet. David Levin works at Advertising Age and says, “Oh, in that case you should talk to my editor, Scott Donaton.”
Amazingly, he follows through and introduces me to Scott. It was early spring and all the college kids were trying to hook up their summer internships so the timing was great.
Scott called my room to set up an interview. I was down the hall but a friend of my roommate’s answered the phone: “Matt and Jon’s love shack,” she said.
Thankfully, Scott didn’t hold that against me. Nor did he give up on my when I spilled my drink on myself during our lunch interview.
Instead, he took me back to the office to meet the Editor of Ad Age, Steve Yahn. And here’s where it gets weird.
I’m standing, nervous, outside the door to the office. Scott is inside talking to Steve, “I’ve got this intern candidate I’d like you to meet…”
I hear Yahn inside. He’s a little manic and excited. “Well that’s great, bring his ass in here, we’ll show him how the hell we do things around here…” And as he says this I come into view and he snaps into a different persona mid-sentence. “Hey, Steve Yahn,” he said, offering his hand to shake, “Great to meet you.”
We sit down at the table in his office and as we talk, Scott mentions that I have my own web site which was incredibly uncommon at that moment in time, and basically why they were interested in hiring me. Ad Age itself barely had a web site at the time.
Yahn asked me what it was about, and I was a little embarrassed. I wanted to say it was about something serious and lofty like journalism ethics, or politics or something. But I told the truth. It was about Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground.
Yahn slapped both hands on the desk, pushed back and stood up. “LOU REED! I saw the Velvets back in ’66 at the Dom!” he yelled, now manic again. I couldn’t have been more shocked and honestly more jealous. I can think of few concerts I would have wanted to see more. But then we talked Lou Reed for a bit.
I was hired for the internship.
But here was a quintessential case of chance and being prepared to take advantage of it – mixed with a dash of privilege to get passed to the top of the list, if there was a list. I honestly don’t remember if this internship even existed before it was offered to me.
The internship was not easy, but I liked the people and Yahn put me on retainer ($100 a week of basically free money. That was a TON of money) my senior year so he could call me up and ask me questions whenever he wanted to. I wrote pieces for Ad Age from time to time, which was incredible experience for a college kid. Most importantly, I didn’t burn any bridges, which I could have if I hadn’t stuck it out for the internship, or had left poorly.
However, it’s good that bridge was still there. In the very short term because when Steve was no longer with Crain he and I worked on a few Web projects together. Steve would hang out in my dorm room because I had a network connection instead of dial-up. Or we would meet at a bar. We helped build what I think was the first-ever live auction on the Internet with Leslie Hindman as our client. True story. Every last word. He was a great mentor, a fun guy to have a beer with, and a man of many talents. I quite literally wouldn't be where I am today without him.
And in the longer term, it was good because eventually Ad Age hired me for my first full-time job and I would have a crazy ride through the dotcom boom right up until 2000 when my job went to New York and I decided to stay in Chicago, which had become home. More on that story later.
As an aside, remember that thing I was saying in the Dr. Welch post about teachers and how they can nudge you with their belief or push you with their lack of faith?
My freshmen year advisor at Medill was a professor named Mary Ann Weston. She’d won a Pulitzer Prize for covering the 1967 race riots in Detroit.
She never thought I would amount to much of anything because, by my first week of school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I certainly didn’t plan to be a hard-nosed reporter like she had been. Mad respect for those who are, but that’s not what I wanted to do with my degree. See the Mitch Albom post….
Anyway, I ran into her right at the end of my senior year on the steps of Fisk Hall, home of the journalism school. She asked me what I was doing after graduation. The look on her face when I told her that I had an “editor” job at well-known, well-respected publication was worth every bit of work I put in at Northwestern. Proving her wrong was a great feeling.
But back to Ad Age, I still didn’t burn any bridges (despite being asked point-blank if I wanted to during my exit interview?!?) when I left that full-time role at Ad Age. Which was good, because a few years later its sibling publication Crain’s Chicago would hire me back into the company and then I’d move back to Ad Age itself and then back to Crain’s Chicago.
I’ve never held a job that someone held before, nor have I ever been replaced exactly. I’ve chosen my own adventure and made my own career path. But I’ve also always wound up working in some way with the people from jobs I’ve left, or been hired back outright.
You never know when you might need something on the side of the river you left behind. Always leave the bridges there, so you can scramble back to safety if you need.
That’s two big lessons in one big story. Each is important on its own, and together they’ll set you on the right road, help you blaze your path, and give you a way out if you should need it.