Growing a business is something that can have very many different interpretations for people
and perhaps, you know, there's an interpretation that is I guess something we might expect
to be about getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So I wanted to ask both Cathy and
Melanie to give me their interpretations of what does it mean to Grow their Own Way. So,
Melanie, do you want to kick off the conversation? Hi everyone, thanks for having me. So, I have
a Canadian accent even though I live in London right now so it feels oddly like a homecoming.
It's my first time to Australia, so thank-you for having me and thanks you for the word.
In terms of growing a business and why women would start a business or why anyone would
start a business and how do we value its success I think its um, I think it's really important
that the economic contribution is valued and, and properly valued as well. Right now we
do have gendered values so you'll find that the, you know, the jobs and the input that
women have in our communities in regards to childcare, in regards to taking care of our
home, taking care of others - the caring services in general - they're not as valued, and when
I say valued I'm just talking about the Australia dollar kind of value, and so with
business, and with starting our own businesses, there is an important negotiation that I think
a women has to go through in herself to say "Well, what do I value, and what is my value
that I'm bringing out to the world, and what am I getting back from it, what's important
to me?" And that's an important walk of confidence. I think that every woman who has a small business,
who is starting a small business has to make those decisions and it's not necessarily
about just money. It's also about what you value. Is it time? Is it time for you to leave
work at three so you can pick up your children and you can get back to it at seven o'clock?
Is it healthcare, and, you know, a pension? So it's all of these things that on a women's
journey, sort of what do I value, and how do I value it? How do I contribute to society
with that value? And how am I getting back? And it's an important independence walk
actually, so it's quite philosophical for me, in terms of business. I think Cathy and
I were talking a bit earlier about that concept of, you know, does size matter? And I think
with Cathy we were talking about, you know, it might not matter really, and what you were
saying there it depends on what you value as a, as a person. Um, and as a woman, as
a, um, a mother or a daughter or a friend, or whoever, a partner. So, Cathy, what's your,
what's your contribution to that? Um, well, just first of all to say I, I'm not a visitor,
I am from Brisbane! I'm here because of her. (laughs) Even though I've still got this pommy
accent that I can't get rid of. I've been here. been here for twenty years, and I've
run my business here for twenty years, um, with, ah, with somebody who is now my former
husband (laughs) but was my husband at the time when we first came here. Um, and we came
here to actually set up a business. We'd run it in the UK before then and we came here
to establish it um twenty years ago this year, um, as a result of people saying to us there's
room in Australia to do what you're doing. Um, then, but then, the growth issue for me
if we're going straight to the point of growth, I mean came out of a conversation that we
were having about this as to how you, how you do grow. And I think there is a traditional...
I really truly feel that, that women in business today and the growth of women in business
today, is happening at a time of incredible structural change. There's a massive paradigm
shift going on around everything to do with work, and everything to do with legal structures
as to how you form your business to earn your income or how you're paid for your labour
in the future. And I think there's a really interesting convergence of thinking about
that at the same same time as women running their own business and actually potentially
bringing to business, and to the structures around business, a different way of thinking
about it. Um, And in my own experience, we have not, as a business, grown in size for
twenty years. In terms of how one would traditionally think of the scale of that business. i.e.
the level of turnover, the number of employees, the, the, sorry, the thing has changed, is
actually the amount of assets, sorry, I will say we have grown in that sense because of
what we've done with the profitability from the business that we've run. But we have not
grown in a traditional sense. And we went through that in the UK twenty years ago, we
did grow, we grew to being, employing about twenty people at one time and I, I and I had
experience with other colleagues in small business suddenly realise that we could carry
on going down that track and I didn't want to do that. That's not what I was about. That's
not what I was about. I wasn't interested in, in, and its partly to do with the nature
of the business that I was in, but I was not interested in growing and growing and growing
and bringing in more and more contracts and work etc. etc. for a never ending expanding
structure of that way. I was more interested in actually working, um, ah, in a much smaller
way, and when we did grow or when the opportunity arose so that we could scale what we were
doing, we did it by forming partnerships with people. So we work in partnership um to do
major contracts with other people who have the specific skills to bring in to do those.
Now we've been doing that for quite a long, I mean I think that's probably something
that's beginning to happen more and more now, but that's the way we've been working
for the last twenty years. So we can scale up and we can come down regardless. Now that's
nothing to do with the actual business, financial business model, in relations to the, the way
in which we do that but I just think that it's really interesting when we started
talking about the, it, the notion of growth. There are many ways in which you can grow
in scale or whatever, um, without thinking about what's necessarily about turning your
business into a corporate model or the traditional model. And I think that's a really interesting
one for women in business to think about because that allows some of the value propositions
that Melanie's talking about to perhaps enter into the way you structure what it is
that you do. And do you think you're talking about, and ah, you're talking about when it's
such a time of great change and there's very fluid environment around where we're
in and I think there's great opportunity to actually reshape the structure of how you
run a business and what you do with your business and I think Melanie you're um, awards, Small
Business Awards you are having in the UK that is all about isn't it? Having that, a bit
of a, changing the conversation around um women and money you know, all those sort of
value judgements around what women can do with their business um do you want to talk
to us a bit more about how that hooks into what Cathy was talking about how it is a time
of great change so we can be the change. Yes. It was ah, the awards were for me I was just
looking up you know when I wanted to start my own business. Actually, I don't even
say, don't think I even wanted to start my own business, I never said that to myself,
right? I just said "Mmm, I'm not sure I want to be here anymore." And that was a, you know,
I was working for Ernst and Young at the time as a consultant and the only thing I knew
when I was a kid, when I was four years old I had a Winnie the Pooh table and I used to
set it up in front of the house and sell my mother's things. And, it's always just
about, I was always not necessarily selling, but that transacting, and finding, you'll
helping another person find value in what I was selling, and that, that. Trade. I loved
it. Ah, and then later on, you know, when you kind of realise where you are in the world
and how people are starting to treat you it was about me never being poor, and me knowing
about my money, and ah, loving kind of numbers. So I never really said to myself I want to
start running my own business. I just wanted to do my own thing as well. I, I just realised
that I also loved kind of project work and I didn't really want to have kind of that
day-to-day grind. And so I thought consulting would help me with that in terms of working
with different clients. And that's when all of a sudden you know, twenty years later I
was alike "Hmm, I started in the branch and didn't know I was going to stay here for twenty
years". And that also gave me the courage to go off and start my own business and I
think that path has to be acknowledged that, you know learning the kind of apprenticeship.
It, it may not be an apprenticeship that you like, but its, ah, it gives a woman confidence.
Um, it's not necessarily that you are kind of coming out of any kind of you know schooling,
or on your eighteen and starting a business, like you wouldn't necessarily think you're
an entrepreneur at eighteen. Sometimes you need to like, get into the workplace, and
you know, you're starting to grow, and realising that the coat doesn't fit any longer. And
so just have to buy a new coat. And that for me was starting my own business. I didn't
- then I looked up and was like ooh there's not really a lot of people I can look around
and talk to about this. Hmm, interesting, and so I had to search for them, and when
I found them I was like "Yeah, people need to see these people, and they need to share
their journeys and their independent journeys as well, they are so different. And most of
them were social enterprise-like and some of them were technology and some of them were,
you know, this massively simple ah, you know, I, you know, I Cath Kidston she's a famous
designer and she literally started just designing flowery things at her kitchen table and she,
'cause she has, she's severely dyslexic to the point where she, you know, she asks
me to read the menu for her cause we're sitting beside each other and now Cath Kidston is
an international brand and its literally because dyslexia, you know, the way that teachers
were treating her, they just didn't there wasn't room for her. In the typical ideas
of success. So, that being said, all to say that I do think that with on the road to empowerment
for any underrepresented community, whether I, I'm representing black people, being a
black woman, being a woman, you know, it's there is something um, in the, ah, there's
a common route no matter where you are in the world that where you go through to economic,
you start to talk about economic empowerment, and, and you start to say "Wait a minute,
I bring value here, you should be paying me for all this value I'm bringing". And um you'll
see it no matter where you are, in any continent. And I think that small business is that, is
a way forward for women to really start to ah, really kind of participate in the value
that you inherently bring as part of a society. I'm done now on my little soliloquy. Shorter
questions next time, sorry about that! It interesting because Melanie you were talking
before about one of the, obviously one of the um one of the winners this year at the
British Black Business Awards was a social enterprise and that's an area that I mean
I think very much in terms of structures and thinking about in some senses how we've run
our business over the last twenty years has been much more like a social enterprise which
has been so that what we've, we've created out of the business a couple of non-profits.
Um, One non-profit which, it, one non-profit which is to do with governance in non-profits.
Hey does everyone know what that is? A social enterprise? Yes, I think, people know what
a social enterprise is? yep, yeh, um and non-profit in governance, and then another non-profit
which is "Of One Mind" which is a company which is actually ah responsible for doing
the Women of the World festivals in partnership with... So, so what we've done is even though
the the legal structure for our business has been a private company ordinary pty ltd company
structure we're actually run it by ploughing the majority of the money we've ever made
into it back into particular areas that we are passionate about and grown almost grown,
grown things that way. And back to that growth thing, even though you don't grow in scale
if you're brand is growing, if the brand of what you do and the value that you're delivering,
because of the brand that you're working under is continuing to deliver that value to your
customers, you grow anyway. Um, without that, and how you then invest that the money from
that has to be a decision that you take and there are many many different strategies to
do it. Which is, which is obviously what's interesting about the soc - the new social
enterprise structure, and certainly from our point of view, and cultural enterprise, because
I'm more in the business of cultural enterprise that I am ah, social enterprise. And that's
how I see a lot of arts organisations that are structured as non-profits, but you bet,
many of you from creative industries or creative businesses here um you are delivering a whole
range of different values, cultural, social and economic value um, and you have to make
a profit now to actually do that. How that profit's distributed is entirely up to you
so I think we get a little bit hide-bound with all of that. But as women in business
we can I think we have the capacity to think differently around how we think, think about
structures. I might, might be making this up, but I'm convinced that we do. So what's
just stopping that? Like I mean, I think in, some of the research that was done when they
were putting together the Advancing Women in Business initiative was, I went out and
spoke to a um consultant with women and one of the things that came up was around confidence.
Um, and look, you know, there was, like a um, real key theme that confidence in women
was, ah, was something they really needed to work on and was something that they felt
there was a lack of confidence. Um, and I guess the assumption is that well it seems
to be that, you know, that you wouldn't even ask that question of a male in business, do
you know what I mean, like, they're just naturally confident. So I guess my question is why does
that come up amongst women and is that a real consideration around the things that you're
talking about Cathy and also Melanie around you know, being the game changers and going
in there and creating your own business and. It is so tough, you know you, we do have to
acknowledge again, it's about, that kind of credibility that we also feel in ourselves.
It has nothing to do with the actual ability, it's about how do we feel about that, so
you know I have two masters degrees, I'm a global consultant for EY Financial Services
and my backside still couldn't start my own business because I was scared. So you
know if that's me and I realise looking, I do that in retrospect, I do that as in yeah
ok, that's craziness, but if that's me than you know most of the successful business
women that I see don't have that background and they're still caning it and all of us
together, you know just , the leaders, they're leaders in their fields, they all had to go
through that, it wasn't necessarily confidence that pushed them into starting their own business
but it was a life circumstance. Or a passion, so I cannot live by not doing this any longer.
It was I cannot, or I cannot do, you know kind of not doing this job where I know that
there is something inside of me, or I need to take care of my children in a different
way so I need to change, there was something else it wasn't something like I am confident
enough to start my own business today. Like it's never like that, it's always something
else, like I have to take care of my mum, she is ill so I am going to start my internet
business. And so exactly. It's never, exactly. You're right there is something about the
confidence in terms of when you do the leadership and management training at the MBA schools,
the women and the men and. The men don't, there, it's striking actually, it's striking
they think, they we owe it to them, I owe them a job. I owe them a job at IBM, I owe
them as a professor, you know my time where women I literally have to just reach out and
squeeze it out of them, come visit me, come to my office. Want me to introduce you to
people like that, so even at that level, at an MBA level, you know at some of the best
schools in the world. You all would have been shot, at some point
in your career or in your life, you would have probably been shot down for being told
you're too bossy and because you have been assertive in your past and because you are
concerned that that is going to happen to you again, but I would also say that I don't
go to bed every night or wake up every morning thinking oh maybe I will be found out today.
It's that constant thing that you are, you're concerned that you, oh god have I done it
right or is going to be ok, there is something in there that I worry me, I oh, my twenty-five
year old that is now a digital native wandering the world running his own business. I can't,
I, the level of confidence that he has in himself for him to be able to do that is to
me is absolutely beyond belief and it is completely that difference in that sense. Though anything
that I think where women can also, not just within the mentoring, the mentoring is crucial
in going on programs, going on leadership programs or or or technical programs like
financial things and learning how to specifically do things. But having some angels around you,
having the people around you who are going to tell you, and are going to tell you constantly
that you are doing ok. That you are doing well, and um and that you are going to be
fantastic, because there is nothing to find out is absolutely crucial.
Well you start small as well, I always say and you know we do this to ourselves. I think
all of us at one point and it doesn't matter where we are coming from. You know if you
look at ah, if you look at Steve Jobs, and Jeff, Steve jobs from Apple, or you you look
at you know Jeff Basile from Amazon, what we use as our examples for entrepreneurship
and starting a small business is actually quite ridiculous. You think, you think, you
just don't think of the person who invented the toilet roll holder. You know think of
those , they are actually millionaires themselves in their own right. We just think of those
big big entrepreneurs, and then we don't, we look at those guys but then we also don't
look at the ninety-nine times they have failed before that. We also don't look at the fact
that Steve Jobs got fired from his own company that he started. So when you think about that,
that would gut someone else, and I don't know many people that go back after that and
have the success. I I I certainly am looking at myself my pride would probably make me
curl up in a ball in my bed. And so there is something that the resilience that you
develop in starting small and just getting bigger and bigger. I always say to people
that nine, if you are working nine to five than you start your business at five to nine
and it's one thing at a time, you know it's the name and it's the website and it's
the you know your product and your actual business plan, and how are you going to make
money and it's the market research. It's you can literally breakdown starting a business
in small two-hour daily steps for three months and all of a sudden and at the end of it you're
like oh, ok then I have a business now and we're including and you know, and so, and
also if you can work with the collaborative ways that we tend to work in regards to focus
groups, in regards to you know you are saying we are taking apart this piece of the pie
and working with others so that we can all share a piece of the pie, there are infinitely
more manageable ways for us to jump into a business and looking at that, you know Netaporte,
you know massive business and we don't even know the junk that we went through in the
beginning just to get there, you know. There is a level of authenticity that successful
entrepreneurs have with us in terms of the amount of times they have failed or screwed
up and had to get back up again. I think there is also a level of ok, let's just start
small and reflect the whole twenty year journey towards that success, rather than just like,
the year of success. Is it, so how important, where does I guess,
I want to talk about technology now and you talked about it before and how it can play
a role there in connecting people, you know it's a great way for you to find people
who are similar ilk, or to promote yourself, for um to meet other angels to do all sorts
of positive wonderful things that can help you with your business. Um, but ah, then there
are also other elements of social media or being in that technology space, so can we
just talk about that for how women in particular are in that technology space. What does it
mean? What does it look like? It's um, it's ah, Melanie described it as a neighbour and
I think Cathy, you're very, very busy in social media, you know when you are in London
you're always tweeting, so what does it mean for you, you know as somebody that has
also been in business for a long time, so like you know when you first started business
there was no social, I don't know if there was computers. Yeah that's right.
No there was a, there was certainly a computer, a very old amstrong. A really big one. It
was that big, so yes I first started with computers in the late eighties. So yeah. So
you have kind of a hyper line view. Yes I have watched from a pipeline point of view
yes and it's incredibly so and um, but um obviously even I can remember being here the
first few eight years in Australia and the very first contract we got from Hong Kong,
because we were the only company that an economic development consultancy in Hong Kong could
find a webpage for with our particular services. They found one in the US, and they found one
in Australia, um and that was the moment when we suddenly realised that oooh there is something
big here. With the websites. We had a website, but it was our very first website, it would
have been pretty, but suddenly we had this contract in Hong Kong and we have now been
working in Hong Kong for the last fifteen years. Umm so it was just that, so it was
the simple simple one click away, the one click away and you know now that it is what
it is, but it was just the absolute eye opener that this certainly was going to be the way
of the future for us in terms not just understanding distribution or promotion of who we were but
certainly from a technical, changing the nature of our business and our understanding of the
impact of technology was having on the sector that we were working in so we had to be in
front of all of that.
Do you have some advice for women in technology? Like using technology today for their business?
Um, I don't think I am necessarily the best person to talk to on that. I think Nat has
got some great advice. With technology it's really scary you know? It's really scary
because I love the internet so much and that was my focus in financial services intranet
banking. It used to be PC banking so I have grown up with it. The success I have had is
because of the Intranet, it was the accelerating of my career, you know I managed this little
team at PC Banking and than all of a sudden I managed this huge team of twenty people
of developers and it was making the bank huge amounts of cash and I know I was accelerated
throughout my career because I was comfortable with the internet when no one else was really
doing it. So I love it. I love it as an enabler. I love the flexible working that has come
out of it. I love so many things in terms of the information that and the research.
The people that I speak to, the shared, kind of, the sharing of just inane situations,
just the sharing of, wow and gender equality, it's amazing. However on the other hand
it's just a poison challis, a tool that can be used for such violence. When I am on
the news, on the BBC I could be talking about triple, I could be talking about pensions
or Brexit, or Brexit, and if I wear this big hair on tv, I will get trolled for the hair
no matter what. It doesn't matter what I say. I could be saying the most lovely things
about your parents, or your children, or your dogs and puppies. I'm talking about puppies
and I will still get trolled for my hair and the gender based violence, and it is so gendered
and it is never about oh you're an idiot, you're stupid, you're ugly. It's never
neutral. Oh no, It's about you need to get raped or you are very, those are the nasty
things that happen in terms of my, whether, it's just about, it's those deep kind
of identity attacks. And you know, it doesn't matter if you're a women's athlete with
a little bit of muscle, you know, it is so gendered it's unbelievable, and so it encourages,
kind of a lack of accountability in terms of you are just dashing things out there and
you are not really realising the impact of your words. So, um, on one hand I love it
because I see how many women have been empowered and linked across so many, so many of our
lives and then on the other hand, the amount, it is just a reflection I think of, a reflection
of our society in which we reside, so it is beautiful because we are being empowered and
it is empowering us, but the underside is also being reflected out on the internet.
So we wouldn't be here unless we had the internet. And I think the second down thing
I mean which is nowhere near as bad as, as that is what's. whats happening from a trolling
point of view, is the, is you've got to learn to turn it off. And I think that is, that's
the hardest thing when, sorry, turn it off. There is a switch you can turn it off, and
I think thats a very hard thing if you're running your own business um in whatever shape
or form to think that there are moments where you have to stop and if you are running your
business through the same device that you are running the rest of your life! How do
we do that? And I have tried it. I have tried split devices, I've tried split addresses,
split accounts, some absolutely everything. Split personalities. And that's the problem,
you just get constantly you don't know whether you're coming or going, so how any of us
manage the fact that that is intruding into our lives the whole time um, that is the other
really massive downside when you are, in particular when you are, when you, when you're trying
to run your business and you feel that you have to be on call the whole time for everybody
and then fix every problem and etc. etc. Its lovely though, you know its lovely when you
um, particularly if you're speaking about women who you know, look, this is a big city,
Toronto's a big city, London's a big city, but when I you know, kind of make the time
to go out to rural communities, Rural communities in India, and you know they know my face and
it actually makes you tear up, because that all they, that's all they can have access
to on a daily basis, like women in Nepal and Kathmandu, and that's like wow, your like
on the side, seriously on the side of the Himalayas in the range and this woman is like
"Hey, I saw you on BBC News and you were talking about WOW Kathmandu" and you just think wow!
Really, wow! It is amazing in terms of the access that it gives women and and it meets
people. Um, and then, my business, I don't think I could have started it without the
internet. And I'm not saying the technical of it. I'm talking about the, jus the learning,
the, the, in my, the privacy of my house learning that you know, in terms of ok, you know looking
at other people who start businesses and well how do I start a business and Company's House,
and you know, like how do I register it with the Government, and trade names, like there's
a lot of secret research that I can do. Sometimes you know you do use it on ex-boyfriends and
stuff but then actually you really started in a way that's not so, I have to walk into
the small business building or, you know you could do it on your own time and just sort
of figure it out. So I do love that aspect as well, but it's a huge resource for us
and I. um, if you're not ready to do it yet, or start a business yet then there are online
courses as well and. Oh and I would definitely absolutely. Networking. yeah, once, you've
done, which, which I've done, I mean, had somebody talk to you and somebody much much
younger talk to you about what sort of social media you should be using depending on the
nature of your business and what you are doing. It is absolutely crucial because you could
spend your time waste of time energy using all sorts of things because some friend has
told you this and this new one's just come out blah blah blah and half of it's going
to be a waste of time and I thing actually having an analysis done up, a digital analysis
done on what it is is actually going to work for you depending on the nature of your business
is crucial. Yeah, and your target market because quite frankly my target market you know it,
it because of visibility I have to use all of the channels but I have a social media
person and well, because again women are trying to work so she's started up this whole thing
"My Social Media PA" and she is so shy I cannot describe to you how shy this young woman is
if I call her she will not speak. If I email her on the other hand, she has heaps to say
and she is so quiet, and but when, she's so quiet that means listens really well of
course. What's up with you you don't talk as much! and she's really good at listening
to people and then hearing my voice and so when you see me when you see comments that
I make online on any of my social media profiles its usually not me I hand the camera off to
someone else, I take pictures of me and I literally forward them straight to her and
she literally says it in my voice. Because I, I don't want to have that capability.
I just like accounting for example, I don't have it. Here is an accountant that I really
trust and he just makes sure. You know, I make sure I know it because I'm not going
to be Rihanna with people stealing my money and writing sic songs about it you know, but
it's just, it is about kind of knowing acknowledging that its really really important and deciding
whether or not you outsource it just like law for example. With any business really
lawyers, accountants, social media, marketing, branding, there are some things that you can
take in house technology there are some things that you're like, mm you know what? I'm never
going to do this, I'm never going to find pleasure in it, and I might as well go focus
on making more money so I can actually pay for somebody to do it instead. So it's a
nice, yeah, it is. Its Its a good point that I mean you've got to acknowledge that you
can't do everything but I suppose you have to have the sort of um I guess um business
structure behind being able to do that. Not really. No. No, it's about me, I look at
- with women, just consider yourselves as, you know, how much do you make an hour? Just
pretend you make, like twenty dollars an hour, right? So just try to figure out, after tax,
how much you make an hour. So, if I say twenty dollars for example say and you know that
having a maid to clean, or a cleaning person to clean your house is ten dollars and hour.
So if you're going to pay a cleaning service for ten dollars an hour and you can get back
three hours, and you can make twenty pounds, or twenty dollars an hour, then what does
that mean really? You're making a profit. But the problem is is the discipline. That,
now, now, you have to say instead of me spending you know, three hours on cleaning, I'm going
to spend three hours on developing my business and making money so it's not necee - you
can apply it to like big businesses or you can apply it to small businesses. By the time
you get my backside around my figure - like accounting or get my figures or like figuring
out the law and opening a, you know, the things or figuring out social media and figuring
out how to use snapchat properly and filters I could probably have paid for someone else
to do it really quickly and I just focus on making a lot more money. And so you know.
And you don't have to employ them. It's all about structure. You outsource outsource
everything. And you outsource little jobs as well because remember there are women on
the other side who are saying OK wait a minute, all I want to do is be a copywriter and I
only want to do it for a few hours a week because I have other commitments that I'm
focussing on and so there's like up there's a this thing called Top Task where I can hire
students to do things for you know one hour, or two hours, it can be researching, there's
Fibre, and 0-lance and O-lance and O-desk where can literally outsource some of these
things quite quickly. I wouldn't say so it with your accounting I'm not going to lie.
You might want to hold the money close to your chest and understand it a bit more, but
everything else, you can do as a sole trader or not even a sole trader, just like, a woman
on the move? Could do it as a big business as well. Yeah, and you're helping other
people in business.
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