The Do-Over(5)
Author: Suzanne Park
Quickly is an understatement. She was promoted to account lead, then vaulted from director to VP to eventually EVP at the award-winning Splash Communications over a span of six years, leading and growing the Apex Mobile and Homegirl Entertainment accounts. She left two years ago to consult for new tech companies, assisting them in creating breakthrough brand identities and go-to-market strategies for new products. At that time, she came up with the idea for HOW TO BE A WORK SUPERNOVA, secured a literary agent, and landed a multi-book publishing deal.
Lily Lee has inspired others to forge similar paths. Twins Cameron John O’Hara and Mary Louise O’Hara, of the prominent O’Hara family in the Boston area, received a whopping deal in an undisclosed preempt for YOU GO, GIRL! and it’s rumored to be in the high six figures. This book is also about ways women can find success in the workplace, focusing on similar themes to Lee’s debut book and interweaving the authors’ own work-related anecdotes, starting with internships at the family’s billion-dollar beer and spirits business. YOU GO, GIRL! will be releasing in the fall, followed by Lee’s next book (currently untitled), which will release sometime the following year. The O’Haras announced their deal on their Instagram accounts, where they each have approximately 150K followers. In the coming weeks, Cameron and Mary will appear on CNN to talk about their debut.
You can preorder books by the authors here.
The last paragraph of the article was the cause of my near-choking caffeine death.
I wiped away the cough-induced tears from my face and took another sip of iced coffee, this time swallowing it properly. “Can someone tell me what experience Cameron, the king bro of all bros, has to be able to write a book about women overcoming obstacles in the workplace? Do Cam and Mary even work? Everyone knows they were handed a plum job by their dad out of college and they didn’t have to do anything to earn it . . . It’s the corporate equivalent of being born into royalty. Can you imagine getting a job without even interviewing? And then they had access to the elite O’Hara network . . . so of course they’ll be able to get any job they want for the rest of their lives.”
Mia sighed. “I wish I had a rich dad. Or at the very least, a sugar daddy with mad LinkedIn connections.”
I exhaled loudly out my nose. “Watch Mary and Cam’s book sell, like, a gajillion copies. Their dad will probably buy thousands of them and give the books out to the employees as holiday gifts. Sometimes I feel like publishing is like a high-risk game of musical chairs, and everyone other than me is given a heads-up on when the music will stop.”
Mia’s eyes widened. “You’re starting to sound jaded like me. I don’t need a doomsday twin, I want my even-keeled Lily back! Begone, you horrible monster!”
Mia knew all about working her fingers to the bone, and the chip on her shoulder against the Camerons and Marys of the world was larger than mine. Mia and I were among the have-nots who needed to do work study or have part-time jobs in order to attend. We couldn’t afford tutors, off-campus party-pad apartments, or spring breaks at high-end resorts in the Caribbean like everyone else. When my classmates asked me where I “summered” before going to college, they looked at me like I’d committed a felony when I admitted I worked in retail and hadn’t traveled. “It was Brooks Brothers,” I added, thinking that would help. But it didn’t: they were wondering if I was a Hamptons, Nantucket, or European villa second-home person, not a paid-by-the-hour type. I’d committed a social faux pas and didn’t even know it at the time. But the universe eventually graced me with meeting “my people” in college, lifelong friends like Mia, so it didn’t matter.
Escaping “lesser-than” status was a huge motivator and we were both determined to change our futures. Taking a time machine jump to present day: we were now sipping eight-dollar iced coffee drinks at a place that served your beverages on pale pink napkins with inscriptions that reminded us to “Be kind,” letting patrons know “You are enough” on the napkin dispensers. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her petite frame swimming in an oversize gray hoodie, sporting a messy black ponytail, and sitting with both legs propped on a nearby chair, but Mia was incredibly successful at PR and publicity. So successful in fact that she’d quit her job, founded her own company, Mia Chang Communications (known officially as MCC), and built a lucrative freelancing business from the ground up, mainly working for start-ups and up-and-coming fashion brands.
“Sorry I’m not rich and powerful. You know if I had a billion dollars like the O’Haras, I would have given you all the free jobs.” Mia broke off a piece of ginger cookie and stuffed it in her mouth. She had no fixed 9-to-5 schedule, so she’d offered to help me move into my bedroom in a shared apartment near campus, under the condition that I would be her first author client, and that she’d help me with publicity for my new book to broaden her portfolio. I agreed and treated us to this nice café breakfast the day before we set out on my “College, take two!” adventure.
She broke off another piece and handed it to me. “For what it’s worth, I think your book will speak to more people, not like You Go, Girl! by the O’Haras. Yours is about how real people get jobs and climb their way up. It’s not this fairy godmother shit that never happens to regular folks. You offer realistic shit.”
I sighed. “People don’t want realistic shit.”
She snorted. “What? Of course they do.”
I chewed the cookie and stared at my coffee cup. “They want to see success without all the grittiness, ugliness, and struggles behind the scenes. They want fairy-tale stories about prosperous, beautiful women who have the means to climb higher, and then do. I guess it’s more aspirational that way, and predictable. Or they want to live vicariously maybe, like in a fantasy world . . . who knows. But I don’t know that kind of life. I only know mine.”
Mia tapped on my hand so I would look up at her. “Your books speak to so many women. Your audience is growing. People need stories with real adversity, like yours. Fuck the twins and their Daddy Warbucks money. And their mansion. And private island. Don’t let ’em get to you.”
Yeah. “Screw their money and mansion and private island,” I said with a slight smirk.
“And all because you didn’t actually graduate college, and technically each of the O’Haras has that on you—plus billions of dollars and easy access to beauty professionals and plastic surgeons who make them look perfect—don’t let ’em bring you down. They’ve rattled you bad and you can’t let that happen.” Mia paused and winced. “Did the whole ‘didn’t actually graduate college’ thing go too far?”
“And the other stuff didn’t?” I barked out a laugh. “Nah. I’m used to how the world is. It’s like one long string of unlucky breaks with occasional blips of hope. Sometimes I feel like a down-and-out gambler, hoping to finally catch my break.” Throwing my wadded napkin on the table, I said, “But I’m used to it. So let’s go. I need to go home and pack.”