Coffee with Heather Allen

Heather Allen

General Manager, CMO, Board Member, Entrepreneur and Founder of s.mug.    

Age 51    

Coffees at Ravello 10 Telegraph Street, London, EC2R 7AR

Describe your career path in two or three sentences including any twist or turns ending with where you are now and where you see your future.

I had a pretty classical consumer products career path. I left Queen’s University, Canada in 1990 [Editor’s note: I met Heather at Queen’s when we were both first year commerce students] and joined Procter and Gamble in marketing. In 1995, I returned to school and did my MBA and then I joined another consumer organisation, RB (Reckitt Benckiser plc).

So I spent my the first 25 years of my working life, my Phase One, in FMCG. What was unexpected about my career was that it suddenly became this international career. I left P&G because I wanted a change – both in terms of career and to experience living outside of Canada, which is crazy because I love my hometown of Toronto. 

After my MBA in Europe, I started with RB in Poland. This started my international career and let me live in lots of places which was quite fantastic. I left RB almost five years ago now, so I am probably in Phase Two. In the back of my head, I always had the idea that I’d stop big corporate work when my kids were teenagers, so I could be around more, which is maybe the reverse of how some people do it.

I spent a long time trying to figure out what I wanted to do next and I think, maybe, I have landed on what this Phase Two looks like… rather than one job, it is a collection of roles where I can draw on my experience and follow my passions. I am on the board of a vitamins and wellness company, Jamieson Vitamins in Canada so that is one thing that is very much related to my past.

And then the rest of my time is divided between my business start-up and volunteering, both of which are focused on reducing plastic and reducing waste. So that is me… a long corporate career followed by the early stages of a more entrepreneurial Phase Two. 

What decision / experience proved to be the most helpful to your career?

The decision to try something radically new which may not make sense in the context of a corporate career. I became a marketing director of a company in Poland in 1996, I was 27 years old, in a new country and a new company. Things were moving really fast, the first large hypermarkets were opening and people were on the lookout for the next new thing and I got this huge volume of experience incredibly fast. I am not sure if it matters where it was or what it was but suddenly someone believed in me and stretched me and it was a risk because if it didn’t work it would have been problematic.  

What do you think are the most important qualities for sustaining a fulfilling career(s) as you grow older?

You need to continue to learn. Some things stay the same… in marketing for example the principles of good marketing, story-telling, etc don’t change but how you deliver your product, how you communicate to customers has changed so much as a result of technology. So learning is super important - curiosity and learning. And keeping your connections going. 

What advice would you give your 20 year old self knowing what you do now?

I love what I am doing now and I am hoping that the business I am working on can actually become financially viable because it has a clarity of purpose and is totally aligned with my values. Over the course of my career whenever I thought about maybe leaping out to do something more risky, I waited. I finally, leapt just before I turned 50, so my advice to my 20 or 30 year old self would be to really follow your passion and purpose and not be afraid to leap. I should have started Phase Two sooner. 

What do you think are the biggest challenges for people wanting to make a career re-entry or re-invention later life?

I think people try to pigeon-hole you, sort of like that shape sorter game toddlers play matching shaped blocks to the same shaped holes. In the work world, people play that shape matching game with people, they say your skills look like a triangle so you need to go where the triangles are and as a triangle you can do this or you can do that. But what if you are a triangle, trying to become a circle? Then you have to find a way to pivot and I think that is hard. It is even harder for somebody trying to re-enter the workforce because people don’t know what shape sorter to put your skills in. 

What do you think the opportunities are for people wanting to work in their 50s and 60s and beyond. 

If you have the chance to do something entrepreneurial that is fantastic. And those opportunities are there, although the entrepreneurial world feels like a young place. The good news is that I recently read an HBR article that looked into the stats and that found that older entrepreneurs (average age 45) have a substantially higher start-up success rate. The article said if you were faced with two entrepreneurs and you know nothing about them besides their age, you would do better, on average, betting on the older one! So, I came away from that article thinking oh my god, maybe this is going to be okay! 

I have seen a lot of people go into coaching. People who are really good with people can quite easily transition into successful coaching careers. I wish there were more places that had returner programmes or programmes for people to develop new skills. Ideally, I think you have to follow your passion with something you are interested in. I am doing something I am super interested in. I know people don’t always have those opportunities but if you are doing something you are interested in, you spend more time on it, you learn more about it and it keeps you super energized. 

What is your top tip for staying relevant in today’s job market

You have to learn. If there is any opportunity to learn, especially if someone is going to pay you to learn, you say yes, you are never too busy to learn. Learning is super critical because you need to be up to date. I don’t think you can let yourself be pushed to the side. You have to put yourself out there and put yourself forward for projects. You don’t want to be seen as the person who always does the same thing, even if that is good for the organisation and if it suits you at the time — if you are looking for ways to grow and progress you have to put your hand up and expand your skill set. 

Can you tell me a bit about your new venture, s.mug?

s.mug started as sustainable.mug and then became s.mug. Today, I am really excited because I have these people making fun of our brand on Facebook which may sound like a bad thing, but I think it is fantastic. Part of the point of our name was to generate conversation, be a bit cheeky and have a little attitude. We are trying to get people to say no to paper cups. The original vision was that if you forget your reusable cup, you could rent one from us at the start of your journey, say in Windsor, and then return the cup at Waterloo Station at the end of your journey and vis a versa. It’s like a rental bike system for coffee cups. 

In the first stage we are testing rentals from partner coffee shops in Maidenhead and Cornwall (Fowey and Cardinham Woods). It’s going slow but we are getting lots of lovely feedback. This stage is all about learning and figuring out what we need to do differently. The whole idea is that if you forget your reusable cup you can rent one from us and save a cup from landfill, so maybe it is cups today and salad bowls tomorrow. As we sit in this lovely cafe and I look at all this plastic packaging, I am having a mini heart attack. There has to be a new way of doing things so that’s we are trying to do. 

Recommendation: Favourite book to read, podcast to listen, website to browse while drinking coffee?

Because the business I am working on right now is around coffee cup rentals I am super interested in waste reduction, plastic reduction and habit change so I listen to three podcast obsessively. The first is Ethical Hour — it was started by this marketer who is super savvy about social media so I always learn something new just by listening to her podcasts. She also runs these ethical tweetchats where you can join the conversation and I participate in those too (when I can type fast enough).

The second podcast I listen to is Planet Pod, started in the UK about 6 months ago. They interview people trying to make positive change from big companies to small.

The third podcast is a more corporate green one called GreenBiz 350 out of the US which keeps me up to speed on what's happening in that space, but I spend the most time with Ethical Hour and Planet Pod.

They may be totally irrelevant for other people but for me podcasts help keep me current in what I am interested in and what I am working on. And I am learning.