Australia loses a great entrepreneur

On Tuesday night Diana Gribble passed away. You may have heard of her; certainly if you worked in the arts and media where she achieved icon status.

Diana sat on a number of prominent boards often as the lone female director in a sea of suits. But it is her role as one of Australia’s most successful female entrepreneurs that I want to tell you about today.

Imagine this. It is 1975.Still very much like the Mad Men days. Women in their mid-30s were married, had kids and put work behind them. Not Diana. At the age of 35, Diana started her first business, publishing house McPhee Gribble, with business partner Hilary McPhee.

I was a difficult teenager at the time, dying of boredom in my suburban bedroom, looking for ways to escape. I remember poring over anything I could find about these two feisty female publishers that were redefining what Australians should read and introducing us to brave new Australian authors including the wonderful Helen Garner and Tim Winton.

When I was 19 my mum took me along to an event where she was speaking. I managed a few words with her. “What do you want to do?” she asked.

“I want to write,” I said. “Well, write,” she said. So I did.

Book publishing was hard going. Diana would occasionally talk about the relentless stress of making ends meet, how they ran that business out of a shoebox and her fury when the bank asked for her husband’s signature on a loan. It was sheer relief, she told me, when Penguin finally bought them out.

It was 1990 and you could still shoot a cannon through a boardroom and not hit a woman when Diana, at 48 years of age, decided to do it all again. She joined forces with Eric Beecher and the pair sunk their money into another publishing venture, Text Media. Diana and Eric had complementary skills, created a brilliant entrepreneurial partnership and took the business to an IPO.

Managing a fluctuating share price and the expectations of demanding shareholders was a new experience and Diana told me that it was here she honed her commercial skills and learnt how to operate at the big end of town. She and Eric spent 14 years building that business and when she was 62, the company was sold to  Fairfax for $70 million, and it was time to move on.

What next? At the age of 63, Gribble decided to do it all again. And this time on the internet. In 2005, she and Eric bought Crikey from founder Stephen Mayne for $1 million. Crikey was their springboard into digital media and the early days were both exhilarating and exasperating. Diana spent a lot of time understanding and influencing the emerging business model, while nurturing the creative talents of her people, much as she had always done.

In 2006 I met Diana for the second time. I had been talking to Eric about starting an online publication for small and medium business owners. One day he told me his business partner wanted to invest. Who? I asked. When he told me who, I blushed a hero-worship-red. Quick to take advantage I insisted on meeting her. Five minutes later she was sitting next to me. I barely knew what to say so I asked her this: “If you are going to invest,” I said, like I knew what I was talking about, “what’s the most important thing to tell me?”

“Tell me if you are really concerned about anything at all,” she said. So I did.

We started SmartCompany in 2007 and Diana was often in the corner, sitting at a tiny white table on a fold-out chair. When it was hot she would type away with an umbrella hovering over her shoulder to keep off the sun as we were too poor to afford air conditioning.

At the end of our first year, $1 million of advertising partnerships were coming to an end. It was mid-December and I was terrified. “What do I do?” I wailed over lunch. “I have eight staff and no revenue guaranteed after January 31.” She gave me a steely look. “You hold your nerve,” she said. So I did.

You know the rest. Now we are a business of almost 50 staff and we have six publications: SmartCompany, StartupSmart, LeadingCompany, Crikey, Property Observer and The Power Index.  

On International Women’s Day two years ago, I asked Diana to be on a webinar panel with two other successful female entrepreneurs and share her tips on how to be successful as a woman in business. She was very reluctant. She couldn’t stand self-important pontificators who dispense sweeping advice on how to get ahead. Diana’s way was to carefully listen and then provide advice so thoughtful, so considered and so tailored, that people walked away feeling that their problem had been solved and she was their personal champion.

I can’t remember how I coaxed or bribed her to do it. But about 400 women joined the webinar and the feedback was extraordinary. A lot of the comments related to Diana’s responses, which many women found inspiring, while a few described feeling perplexed and surprised at her pragmatism.

Listen to the webinar here but I have also pulled out her thoughts for you to read below.

I was reminded reading them again today, how many of these lessons I have absorbed and just how much I learnt from her. That she said it… so I did.

There is one more tip she had that isn’t included below which I think, if I have to choose, is my favourite: “Just get on with it,” she would often say. So I will.

Di’s tips on how to get to the top:

1. FOCUS ON THE END GAME

“When I talk to women in their 20s and 30s and say to them how do you visualise what you want to be doing as a person when you are 45 or 50, a lot of them say, “Oh I haven’t considered that.” But to me, that’s imperative and then you work back and say: “In order to be running this division in a big company, or having my own business or being a CEO in a company, these are the skills I need to pick up along the way.” So I think for women to be promoted, they need to be much more focused on the end game and then work back and say, I need to do this along the way in order for me to get there.?
 
2. DEVELOP YOUR VISION

“Successful male people in businesses spend very little time on reflection. They are always thinking forward and over the hill, whereas women will be more inclined to reflect on what’s happening at the moment. I think developing the vision means clearing a space in your head to fill it with that vision. The vision is how you and your business can be completely different in three, or four or five or even just one year’s time. You have to think about what are the extra things, what are the opportunities. You have to be looking towards and over the horizon all the time and have fantastic peripheral vision as well.”
 
3. USE YOUR SKILLS TO CLOSE THE DEAL

“I think you have to have that bit of ruthless streak in you. You have to train yourself to do that – take someone by the throat – kind of move in a nice way. But I think women are quite good at it. I think women are often seen as having these great powers of empathy and introspection and I think that they can use those in dealing with people. If you’re in a meeting where you are wanting someone to do something or you are wanting to close the deal, you use those tools to close the deal, to read body language and understand where that person is coming from and use it.”
 
4. DON’T SEEK LESS MONEY THAN YOU REALLY NEED

“I think sometimes that women undervalue themselves because they are often undervalued by other people. Therefore, that can be a problem talking about money. My feeling has always been if you’re building something, if you’re starting something, you want it to go on forever, so that should be the impetus behind getting proper money behind you. Think about what you want to build for the future and fund it appropriately.”
 
5. HOW TO BREAK INTO THE MEN’S CLUB

“When men recruit they tend to go to their own community. Make sure you get in the last round of interviews because I’ve never seen a mostly male network not see the talent in a good woman when they come up for an interview in the final round.”

6. HOW TO GET MEN TO RECRUIT MORE WIDELY

“If I were working with men who were employing people in their own mould, I would call them on it. I would say, “It’s not good enough, let’s work out how to fix this so you get to broaden your horizons.” But always avoid being the token women on boards with all your might. I’ve been the only woman around a board. It’s a very ridiculous situation.”
 
7. ON FLIRTATION IN THE WORKPLACE

“It’s impossible to stamp out the flirtatious elements that can always exist between men and women in any situation, and I think the thing to do is to learn to manage it. Firstly, you have to be absolutely certain that the kind of flirtatious behaviour you engage in, is flirting as an activity with no end. Flirting doesn’t mean “I want to sleep with you”, flirting means I’m teasing you sexually a little bit but it goes no further. And I think if you can learn to deal with flirting as something which goes no further, then you get a long way ahead. If there is anything misunderstood or goes too far, you have to deal with it immediately and not let it get out of control.”
 
8. DRESS FOR SUCCESS

“Behave like someone who is already at the next stage. You see people do it all the time and it’s a very good way of preparing yourself as well. So you model your attitude towards the company you’re working for, towards the products you’re working on or whatever is that of a person at the next stage or the one above that.”
 
9. ENJOY YOUR SUCCESS

“I just love winning the big contract or doing the big deal, it just gives me such pleasure. That’s a real, “I want to be a winner” kind of thing. That’s often regarded as not a very attractive characteristic in women but I think I’ve got that.”
 
10. DON’T EXPECT MORE SUPPORT FROM WOMEN

“It is important for women to stop having this expectation that all the other women are out there to help them because men don’t think that and it’s not reasonable. You earn your keep. So just get out of your mind the fact that the women out there are going to treat you in a more supportive or different way because they won’t. It comes down to personalities, it comes down to the values of the organisation and how these things are dealt with. So I think it’s about expectations and if someone bullies you, male or female, or if someone is behaving in a super bitchy way male or female, then you need to just find ways to deal with it. But I think we often have a false expectation of support from women.”
 
11. BEWARE TROUBLE WITH A FEMALE BOSS

“I think women who have trouble with female superiors in their work also have to look very hard to make sure that they’re not actually being sexist themselves. Some women find it quite okay to be managed by a man but they don’t find it okay to be managed by a woman. I think there’s quite often a lot of underlying sexism in female subordinates towards a female supervisor.”
 
12. DON’T EXPECT OTHER WOMEN TO HELP YOU UP THE LADDER

“I don’t think we’re being fair when we have this expectation that women above should help us. I think we should be looking to earn our keep and whether it’s a male or female above us, we should say we deserve this support, we deserve this promotion and I’ll make sure I’ll work hard to get it. And it should not be this expectation that women are there necessarily to help other women. Everyone should be working non-gender specific and it should be about performance and not about gender.”
 
13. ON WOMEN BEING PROMOTED

“You are working for a company and you are friends with your peers and then one of you gets promoted. That all comes down to your ability to communicate with the people you?ve in effect left behind, to talk to them about your vision, to talk to them about where you want to take them in your new position, to include them. And then it’s down to the individual’s ability to be a leader. People tend to manage that quite well because they’ve been promoted, with any luck because they had that capacity to lead.”
 
14. WHAT TO DO WITH THE SEXIST MALE BULLY

“Absolutely call them on it. Name what they are doing for what it is in their presence, shame them, make them understand that what they are doing is not acceptable but do not give them an inch. That’s my way of dealing with those people.”
 
15. BRINGING UP WELL-ROUNDED CHILDREN

“As usual, with most things, the need to organise things so that your children feel totally secure in what you’ve organised for them. So you have plans and fall back plans and sub fall back plans so children never feel that they’ve been left in the lurch. When you’re with your children (and this is something I learnt from my father who ran an enormous company), be 100% with them. Not distracted, not having one ear on them and having one ear on something else. It’s about having incredible organisation.”
 
16. ON GETTING RID OF UNSUPPORTIVE SPOUSES

“I’ve watched a lot of my contemporaries shed spouses along the way just because they are work focused or moving on in a different way. You’ve got to try talking about it before you shed.”
 
17. BEING FRIENDS WITH STAFF

“I think it’s very difficult being good friends with staff. I think it’s something that if at all possible should be avoided. I think you should have mutual respect and friendship but not become good friends because it’s hard enough being a boss without having additional hurdles to overcome if you’re really close with someone on a personal level. So I wouldn’t recommend it.
 
18. DEALING WITH WORKPLACE FRIENDS

“I’ve always found that one good thing about being a woman employer is that your female staff tend to be very friendly towards you. So I’ve always got a fantastic line into office gossip, which I’ve always found fantastically useful. Just because it’s helped me understand people’s performance, so I know if someone in advertising was having an affair with someone in editorial for example. And that was because people treated me like a friend. I mean, a workplace friend not a social friend.”
 
19. WASHING THE OFFICE TEA TOWELS

“I think that we should, all of us, resist washing the tea towels. There will be someone there that should be washing them that isn’t. And if there is no one there who should be washing them, get paper ones.”