When does mentoring become mental?

Bird faeces, sex elixirs and celebrity tears - obviously I had to share

I spent an hour on the phone recently with someone who pitched an idea to me that featured a “wanking” based “sex elixir” formulated using bird poo and celebrity tears. The person asked me how I would PR it, and also if I’d share their 100-page deck with Steven Bartlett. I’m still not convinced it wasn’t a wind-up. I’m also so perplexed by the whole thing that weeks later I’m still questioning, is this idea genius and I’m just missing something?!

I don’t think we need to dissect this; I couldn’t make it up, and I’m sure you weren’t expecting this instalment to start like that. But I remember that the call happened on a day when I’d shut myself in my bedroom as the house was a bit hectic and I’d had back-to-back calls (read - a day when I was already overloaded).

I have been passionate about mentoring since I started my agency, Known, and skincare line, Faace, several years ago. And not to toot my own horn, but I want to help people avoid making some of the mistakes I have, and generally I feel like I’m at a point in my career where I’m confident that I have some good advice to offer. My husband often expresses his concern at the amount of ‘free’ time and expertise I give away and recommends that instead, I start billing for it. But I’m not so sure. I asked someone to mentor me recently, but with a clear request that included what I wanted to get out of the relationship, how much time I would need and that I would be happy to pay for the support. The person replied with an excellent message, stating that they need to be ‘focused’ with their time and details of how we could arrange the partnership and fee, and I felt like that was completely fair.

I would ideally like to work seven hours a day and five days a week to allow me to also prioritise family, friends, household chores, and myself. I would also like to earn more money. The fact that feels like a dirty revelation is wrong. Even without having to justify my current intake - even if I was a millionaire - why shouldn’t I? I’m not saying money is the driving factor in my career choices (I wouldn’t have built a career in beauty PR if it was), but having more, would give my family additional opportunities and I shouldn’t have to feel bad about that. But to be able to work less hours and earn more, and do what I perceive to be a ‘good’ job for what I’m already doing, is allocating ‘free’ time hindering me in that?

When a current client asks me for advice, I am always more than happy to offer up an opinion. The reason I started this Substack is because I wanted to share my learnings to help others make informed choices. But do I need to draw the line somewhere? I think the line is drawn when I’m asked to think about celebrity tear and bird excrement-infused sex elixirs for wanking purposes. If you spot that in the news in future, you heard it here first.