Building an all woman media business

Starting Airport Media was a scary, thrilling and exciting time. Even though I had saved a large sum of money to last me through my one year restraint of trade, when you are supporting two additional non-earning adults, the money was never going to be enough. It was a big decision for me to make given that I was prohibited from working by an unpaid restraint too.

The last few months were extremely stretched, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it through. Mr Keeping Up Appearances wasn’t interested in the Corporate Gifts Business I had started for him, but I managed to keep it ticking over enough money, that we made it through.

Getting started

My new business partner and I had secured an international short term booking to start in December 2002, just after our restraint ended. In December 2002, and we had secured the sales rights at a privately owned International Airport that was rapidly expanding to include scheduled commercial flights. Airport Media was launched.

Starting a business that required funding was difficult, and still is even now. Starting a business that needed funding in 2002, that was reliant on being awarded Government tenders, and was going to be run by women, was almost impossible. Legislative requirements in the recently democratic South Africa, meant that if you were to do business with the Government, or Government concerns, required a 50% black, or historically disadvantage shareholding. As a naturalised South Africa white woman, and white women being previously disadvantaged in a male dominated South Africa, at the time, I counted to a certain extent as historically disadvantaged, but we needed to bring someone on board to make up the points. This was called Black Economic Empowerment at the time. To all intents and purposes this meant that we had to give up shares for no financial return, to someone, or some entity that would afford us the ability to acquire the rights from the airport authority.

Then we had to find a financial backer, if this wasn’t the same person or entity we brought on board for the BEE requirements. We started our business with all the skill, knowledge and expertise, with only a 20% shareholding. We were one of the lucky start-ups at the time though, and we did manage to claw back an additional 20% based on our performance. Most female owned and run businesses that started at the same time were not that lucky.

It started around my dining room table

We started the business working from my dining room table. We leveraged our excellent client relationships and knowledge of the market, and when the time came, we submitted a phenomenal tender document. We had gone all in with a view to acquiring a significant piece of the business on offer. This was where we suffered our first major disappointment. On the day that the tender was due to be awarded we waited to receive news on what we had been awarded. The champagne was on ice, balloons at the ready. We knew we had submitted excellent options. The announcement was due at 5pm, and we were gathered with our shareholders waiting for the call. Nothing, we heard nothing at all. At 6pm one of our competitors called to ask if we had heard anything as they hadn’t received news either. The hours ticked by, it was excruciating. Sometime later in the evening I received a call from a senior executive from the airport authority saying that we had been disqualified on a technicality. The BEE shareholding of our investors, who were a listed company couldn’t be verified at the required percentage.

Time to review and regroup

We were absolutely stunned. We had put everything on the line against being awarded rights in this tender. It took a good week or so before we began to regroup. Fortunately we had an excellent relationship with the airport authority’s team at Johannesburg International Airport and we bided our time for a few months, signing up short term advertising opportunities. We turned one of these opportunities into a permanent campaign at South Africa’s three biggest international airports and this kept the business ticking over whilst the winners of the tender rights installed all their new advertising opportunities in the new domestic terminal.

We conducted research into the domestic travel market by spending six hours a day for 10 days, surveying early morning and late afternoon travellers on their travel habits at Johannesburg International Airport. We wanted to know what they did when they got to the airport and where they were travelling to. We would spend hours sitting in high pedestrian traffic areas looking at how passengers and airport users moved around the airport. Within a few months all the advertising units had been installed and with our research we could get a real picture of where alternative opportunities lay in terms of acquiring long and short term rights.

With this in mind we got started. Within 18 months of being disqualified from the tender we had creatively acquired 36% of the advertising revenue spend at Johannesburg International Airport, and, in 2005 we were awarded the Advertising Concessionaire of the Year Award for Johannesburg International Airport.

We only employed women

In our years in the corporate world we had an almost completely all women team and decided that this was how we wanted to run Airport Media. We were looking at female breadwinners as both my business partner and I were the breadwinners for our families. We started off as just the two of us, with my mother doing the books after hours. As we acquired more sites we knew that we needed additional help on the sales side and we appointed an amazing woman, Rista, who had worked for a different division of the corporate group we worked for. She had experienced a disastrous divorce and a turbulent time with addiction thereafter. She was making a fresh start and we were in a position to help her with that. She was much loved by clients and suppliers alike and we loved having her as one of the original Airport Queens.

In late January 2004, we were working in a tiny little office that we had secured at the airport. My business partner and I were working on a tender submission, and Rista was working on some other big proposals. Just before she left she asked me to email her some information for the proposal. I remember popping my head out of the door calling out to her that we wanted to tell her what a great job she was doing, and that she was looking great. The very last words I heard her say were, “It’s because I am happy”.

At 8pm that night our world changed forever, Rista had been critically injured in a car accident. We rushed through to the hospital and Rista passed away a short while later. She was the breadwinner for herself and for her parents, who she was assisting financially. Her much loved younger sister had just moved to Milan on a modelling contract and needed to get home, but there was no money for flights or proper funeral arrangements. My business partner and I stepped in and helped the family with all the arrangements and Rista had a memorial fit for a Queen. This was a tough experience for us and I remember delivering the eulogy and remembrances from her advertising friends.

Even through this difficult time, business stops for no woman. We were thrown in to the fast pace of the advertising world with fervour. Our holding was growing and as were our reputations as The Thinking Man’s Media Owner. We had many teething problems along the way, however we overcame them all and soon had a great all woman team in place, all of whom were female breadwinners.

Bigger is Better

After travelling to London on a research trip we brought back with us a first at African airports, whereby advertising material is applied directly on to the cladding of the building. No need any more for heavy advertising structures. This opened up a host of advertising opportunities on the terminal buildings, including the biggest outdoor site at the time at Johannesburg International Airport.

We also put a toe in the waters of Outdoor Advertising by acquiring the long term rights to the biggest billboard in Africa, the landmark billboard on top of the Ponte Building in down town Johannesburg. It was our one and only outdoor site, but what a site it was – the crown jewel of the Johannesburg skyline.

Given all our innovation and the acquisition of Ponte, we were featured on the front page of industry magazines and we were flying high.

Corporate Buyout

As we were receiving more media attention, so we received more cold calls from Financial Planners and Managers wanting to assist us with mapping out our futures. It became so annoying that I eventually I told all of them to call back in a month, and if they did, I would tell them to do the same again. One man kept calling and after about 5 months I eventually took his call. I nearly fell off my chair when he told me that he represented a listed company that was interested in buying Airport Media. At that time we were in no rush to sell, we were loving what we were doing, but we met with them anyway.

The first few rounds of discussions didn’t come to much as we really didn’t want to be pulled back in to the corporate jungle. Something would put us off and we’d pull back. South Africa was awarded the 2010 FIFA™ World Cup and their interest increased. A deal was struck and we sold a large portion of the company to them. We were so fortunate that to all intents and purposes nothing changed, in that we carried on running the business the same way we always had and we continued to grow in value and reputation.

The greed started to show

As the 2010 FIFA™ World Cup approached there was a distinct change in the landscape for the airport authority’s perspective. Everyone could hear the cash registers ringing and wanted more and more money for advertising opportunities. We had travelled to Germany during the 2006 World Cup and met with Concessionaires and Airport Authorities in Frankfurt and Munich. They were very candid about their experiences with advertisers and the mighty FIFA. They shared the good, the bad and the ugly around what they had experienced and we came back to South Africa with great insights around how to secure long term business and prevent a fire sale closer to the time.

Rather than hiking up our rates for just one year, we instituted rate negotiations that would give us better returns over a four year period, and our give clients great exposure in the build up to the 2010 FIFA™ World.

This didn’t always go down well with the airports though as they could smell the money. I was becoming more and more disillusioned with the industry by this time. My family life and love life were taking its toll on my usually enduring patience. I was feeling bullied, used and manipulated on all fronts and as a result I was not listening to my intuition at all. A very unfortunate issue occurred with a client that I just knew was going to do something unethical with a concept they wanted to install at the airport. The money was great for the campaign and my business partner was very keen for us to sign the deal. It was a two year deal for the Confederations Cup in 2009 and then for the 2010 FIFA™ World Cup. The turnover for the 2010 FIFA™ World Cup would form part of our earn-out on the sale of the remainder of our shares. The deal made financial sense, but in my gut I felt uneasy. My intuition was telling me they were going to try to on sell advertising on their system, to other advertisers. This was strictly against the terms of our agreement with the airport authority in South Africa. The client assured us that they weren’t going to do this and I eased my conscience with a clause in our contract specifically prohibiting them from doing this.

Falling out of love with the business

It was becoming harder and harder to meet the demands of clients, the airport authority and keep our heads above water when signing up new opportunities. The airport authority wanted huge revenues for the 2010 FIFA™ World Cup period, and they wanted them to extend past this time too. They were forcing media owners into signing long term deals that were not sustainable.

Things came to ahead just before the 2010 FIFA™ World Cup started when we were accused of cheating the airport authority out of hundreds of thousands of Dollars. The client that I had had concerns about, was doing exactly what I thought they were going to do. The fall out was huge, resulting in a senior executive at the airport authority calling me a liar, a cheat and a thief.

Although this was smoothed over to a certain degree when all the paperwork, contracts and clauses were declared, the executive never retracted his words, and I never felt the same way about the industry that I had loved for 16 years. I knew my days were numbered then.

Selling our shares and working on contract

We put our shares to the listed entity in 2011 and worked for them under contract for a further year. I have spoken about how my tenure abruptly ended in Our Story – Starting Over. During my year on contract my focus was to acquire long term rights for the business to ensure longevity and sustainability, but at every turn I could not get the corporate wheels in motion or get decisions made. This was everything I hated about the corporate world and eventually I lost interest. I went to the office and contributed where I could but my skills and talents were laid to waste.

The end of an era

We left at the end of March 2012, and within three months the beautiful company that we had grown from nothing to turnover $ 55 000 000 in ten years, had closed its doors. All my female breadwinners were retrenched. I was appalled. Interestingly, corporate businesses like the allure of successful entrepreneurial businesses and pay a fortune for them, but most of them have no idea how to bridge a fit between the entrepreneur and the corporate arena.

Finding out some home truths

A few years after I left Airport Media I was contacted by the corporate in regard to some ongoing litigation around an old matter. They asked me if I would help them with the history around the matter. They were prepared to pay me for my time and I agreed. I went in to the old offices to collect files and documents, and I had backups of scanned documents and our accounting package from my mother’s computer.

I had never looked through the backups from my mother’s computer and if this matter hadn’t come up I probably never would, but what I found was disturbing. I found ultimately that my mother had not as it turned out, looked after my interests at all. She had in fact had very much taken advantage of some things she had found out about and used them in her best interests.

The corporate world has rigorous external governance audits so that any and all irregularities can be brought to the attention of the leaders of the business, and so should small and medium sized businesses do this. Although we had checks and balances I trusted my business colleagues, and only questioned glaring overs or unders when it came to the monthly figures.

What I know now is that the only way for colleagues to truly operate in a completely transparent manner is for absolute visibility of all transactions to be the order of the day. Visibility means that everyone and everything gets questioned – even “those” expense accounts – and be very aware of who handles your money – never a good idea to have a close family member doing this as they’re not always looking after your best interests!

I’ve learned this now and I will never ever allow another business of mine to run in any other way than complete visibility, supported by a leadership approach whereby anything and everything to do with money is to be questioned and rigorously so. In addition, I had to experience what I did, in order to gain the self-confidence which now allows me to question whatever I want to, whenever I want to and with whom I want to and to not be afraid to do so. In business, if you’re not asking the questions you want to because you’re too afraid of upsetting the apple cart, know this uncomfortable truth – your apple cart is already starting to wobble.

Yes, discovering this was a bitter pill to swallow as what I discovered had gone on for years, but it is what it is and I am so much wiser for it.

Having read Building a Media Business I would hope that you realised that building a business means you have to roll with the punches because you will get hit by the unexpected and so unless you’re able to master the change and rapidly re-create you way out of the unexpected, .you’re not going to last long. Moreover, people do business with people and so you will encounter events where you feel you’ve been royally screwed over and there’s nothing you can do about it. Well, it is what it and unless you can forgive that person or those persons, you’ll never be able to receive the abundance which business can and will deliver to you, because you’re always “expecting to experience and receive the worst.”

You are programmed to live from the outside in. That programming causes a tendency for you to become the plaything of outside forces. You should observe and be aware of what is going on in your outside world but be capable of creating and maintaining an individual existence. You have been gifted with higher mental faculties which are Perception, Will, Imagination, Memory, Reason and Intuition. It is your responsibility to learn how to utilise these higher faculties for greater success.

When you look at your results and allow the results to register in your mind, the results cause you to think. The thinking produces the feeling, the feeling causes the action and the action produces the result – the same result! This is precisely why the majority of business people keep getting the same results year after year, regarding their efforts as being a constant “struggle”. Stop permitting the outside world to control your mind. Objectively observe what is going on in your outside world but don’t be a part of it. Look at your results like a stranger might. Instead of focusing on the results you didn’t want and locking yourself in to that thought circuit, move beyond them and think of what you do want. Think thoughts that will create the idea of what you want. The thoughts cause the feelings, the feelings cause the actions and the action produces a new result. At that point you consciously observe the new result, you mentally adapt to the new results and immediately begin to think the thoughts that create the idea of how to improve upon it.

 Questions:

• Who has hurt you so much in business that the thought of forgiving them just seems impossible?
• As you think of them, can you feel all those powerful negative feelings washing through your whole body?
• Do you think it’s good for you to keep all this unprocessed negativity inside you?
• Do you realise that by not forgiving them, you’re actually only hurting yourself terribly?
• Does forgiving them now sound like a good idea to you given all that you stand to gain from this?

Exercise:

1. Forgiveness requires feeling willing to forgive. Sometimes you won’t, because the hurt went too deep, or because the person was too abusive, or expressed no regret.
2. Do not attempt to forgive someone before you have identified, fully felt, expressed, and released your anger and pain.
3. If you decide you are willing to forgive, find a good place and time to be alone with your thoughts. Then, try following these four steps to forgive even when it feels impossible:

• Think about the incident that angered you. Accept that it happened. Accept how you felt about it and how it made you react. In order to forgive, you need to acknowledge the reality of what occurred and how you were affected.
• Acknowledge the growth you experienced as a result of what happened. What did it make you learn about yourself, or about your needs and boundaries? Not only did you survive the incident, perhaps you grew from it.
• Now think about the other person. He or she is flawed because all human beings are flawed. He or she acted from limited beliefs and a skewed frame of reference because sometimes we all act from our limited beliefs and skewed frames of reference. When you were hurt, the other person was trying to have a need met. What do you think this need was and why did the person go about it in such a hurtful way?
• Finally, decide whether or not you want to tell the other person that you have forgiven him or her. If you decide not to express forgiveness directly, then do it on your own. Say the words, “I forgive you,” aloud and then add as much explanation as you feel is merited.

Forgiveness puts the final seal on what happened that hurt you. You will still remember what happened, but you will no longer be bound by it. Having worked through the feelings and learned what you need to do to strengthen your boundaries or get your needs met, you are better able to take care of yourself in the future. Forgiving the other person is a wonderful way to honour yourself. It affirms to the universe that you deserve to be happy.

Given that business is all about relationships, here’s the podcast of an extensive interview we had live on radio with a mentor of mine, who I believe is one of the most successful CEOs ever in terms of creating successful business relationships.

My profound lessons:

In this piece of the article I want to share with you what I believe are 4 hugely significant business success traits and given that I’ve learned powerful lessons around every one of them, I now spend a great deal of my time focussing on them and asking myself the right questions around them. Often overlooked, because it’s “so convenient to do so”, they are:

• Integrity
• Responsibility
• Creativity
• Forgiveness

For me, the number one quality for success in life and business is integrity. Developing your integrity is the surest way on earth to succeed and though it might seem that what you’re doing is going to cut into profits, it invariably ends by increasing profits. It should always be people and integrity first and profit last and the more you do this, surprisingly, the bigger and better your profits will become.

Next on the list of important business success attributes, comes responsibility. The amateur, when he fails at what he does, says “Well, that’s how the cookie crumbles.” He finds ways of finding exterior reasons for his failures. We tend to look inside ourselves to explain our successes and outside of ourselves to explain our failures. The pro accepts responsibility, he does not blame and shame others when things did not work out according to plan.

Thirdly, creativity is huge for me – that’s how my partner and I build a business which ripped the rug out from under the feet of the sleeping giants of that industry. Let me share a true story with you. There was a lumber dealer in New York who became outstandingly successful in a surprisingly short space of time. He made millions in lumber whilst his competitors were literally scrambling to keep up with him. When interviewed, he openly shared his success secret with everyone. He told the interviewing reporter that every night he would sit quietly by himself in a darkened room. During this time, he would meditate, trying to imagine if you will, how the lumber business would be conducted ten years from then. He would write down all the ideas that came to him and put them in to effect within his business, at once, instead of waiting for the ten years to pass. In this way, whilst his contemporaries were competing with each other in a cut-throat way he way always creating, and so, he never had any competition because he was always innovating and leading and setting the latest and greatest trend. What does this profound success story teach you about business and innovation?

That said, here are 12 wonderful things which I always want you keep in mind with regard to business because they are always relevant and therefore you should have them top of mind:

• The value of time
• The success of perseverance
• The pleasure of working
• The dignity of simplicity
• The worth of character
• The power of example
• The influence of doing
• The obligation of duty
• The wisdom of economy
• The virtue of patience
• The improvement of talent
• The joy of originating

Lastly, I learned to forgive, to really forgive. To learn how to forgive, you must first learn what forgiveness is not. Most of us hold at least some misconceptions about forgiveness. Here are some things that forgiving someone doesn’t mean:

• Forgiveness doesn’t mean you are pardoning or excusing the other person’s actions.
• Forgiveness doesn’t mean you need to tell the person that he or she is forgiven.
• Forgiveness doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have any more feelings about the situation.
• Forgiveness doesn’t mean there is nothing further to work out in the relationship or that everything is okay now.
• Forgiveness doesn’t mean you should forget the incident ever happened.
• Forgiveness doesn’t mean you have to continue to include the person in your life.
• … and forgiveness isn’t something you do for the other person.

By forgiving, you are accepting the reality of what happened and finding a way to live in a state of resolution with it. This can be a gradual process—and it doesn’t necessarily have to include the person you are forgiving. Forgiveness isn’t something you do for the person who wronged you; it’s something you do for you.

To your great business success. May it pour success and abundance upon you!

Suzanne.