Meeting the rich and famous was great fun and a significant learning experience, especially about people. Most people who came on the yacht were lovely, like David Bowie; others thought they were superior to the rest of the human race.
On board, we had guests whose attitude ranged from ‘show us where the fridge is and leave us alone', to those who would send a boiled egg back because it was too hot. We once had a group of Americans on board and their kids were obnoxious. They thought they were better than everyone and treated all the staff like dirt. On the flip side, we had one of the wealthiest men in Kuwait as a guest, and his son was a lovely young man. The father asked me to type up a list of expenses for his son who was off to college in the United States. I was expecting to read that his son was allowed a fortune. To my surprise, his expenses were moderate. In fact, for the son to survive, he would have to get a part-time job.
Finding the resilient problem-solver within
When Janine's husband Jeff reflects on what characteristics Janine showed early on, the biggest one is being a great problem-solver. According to Jeff, ‘She travelled around the world with tuppence in the bank, she was a mum at 25 and she didn't whinge — she just got on with it. She is a real can-doer.
‘There is no doubt we were attracted to each other through our drive to succeed at whatever we were passionate about. Early in my life, I was passionate about assets, so I bought my first house at 19. Janine was passionate about travel, so she circumnavigated the world on a rock star's boat (slight exaggeration but within the realm of reality!)'.
After two years and a great deal of fun and hard work, I left the Deneb Star. I was seeing the engineer on the yacht at the time and we both left to work on another yacht with him as captain (this yacht was anchored in Monaco). We purchased a property in Valbonne, a lovely village just outside of Antibes, paying way too much for the house because we had no idea what we were doing — and it didn't help that my French was far from perfect. A few months later, I found out that I was pregnant. Sadly, I realised that I wasn't in love with this engineer; I knew that he was not my future. Although the pregnancy was not planned, I gave it a couple of years to see if I could learn to love him. But he just was not ‘the one', so we discussed it and I told him that it was time for my son and me to leave. It was as amicable a separation as you could possibly want. We had a beautiful friendship and he is a lovely man; he was just not my man.
In 1993, I turned to the first love of my life, my two-year-old son, Samuel, took his hand in mine and headed back to Australia. It took me 35 hours of travel and I had nothing but the clothes in our suitcases. Financially, the house we had purchased was not worth what we paid for it, leaving me without a cent to my name. My dear friends in France lent me the money to return to Australia. I felt like a failure — I was 27 years old and going home to live with my parents until I got myself back on my feet.
Landing back in Oz with a thud
Back in Australia after my travels, and feeling like a failure, it seemed the party was well and truly over. Finding a secure job and supporting my son was now my biggest priority, even if I had to finesse my CV a little to come up with relevant skills. Sink or swim? I swam like crazy.
During my time on David Bowie's boat, I met a film producer named David Puttnam (referred to now as Lord David Puttnam; two of the many films he produced were Chariots of Fire and Midnight Express). At the time he was a director on the board of Village Roadshow. He told me that he knew Graham Burke at Village and that if I ever needed a job to contact him and he would set up an interview with Graham. Little did I know that Mr Burke was the CEO!
Regardless, I did get an interview with Graham and he was delightful — and I found myself with a job as a junior manager at Village Cinemas Knox City, not far from where I grew up. I did think it was strange that they didn't read my beautifully presented CV, or notice that I may have exaggerated the emphasis on my ‘leadership' skills, but I found out later that Graham was simply doing David Puttnam a favour. I took the job happily and worked my butt off. I owed it to David Puttnam and Graham to prove that I was worth the punt.
Even though I had never been a manager of anything before, as it turned out, I was good at it. At Village Cinemas Knox City, I worked with a small management team of three. I ran the marketing, a woman named Robyn headed up accounts and Sylvan was operational. Between us, the cinema did exceptionally well. We did so well that after six months I was transferred to run my own cinema in Frankston. That was a real eye-opener — the cinema was dark and smelly, and the curtains were infested with spiders. It was a challenge to say the least; completely unloved when I took it over, the cinema could not have been in worse shape. My first priority was to clean the place up; after that, there were bigger issues to tackle.
Spiders aside, one of the scariest aspects of the job was the accounting system. At the nice, new, shiny cinema I was used to, everything was automated. I could push a button and the accounts would magically appear. When I got to Frankston, I didn't even get a handover. I was presented with a key to the front door, a manual ledger and that was it — I had to just figure it out. Sink or swim? I decided to see it as a fantastic learning experience. Again, I got to work and within four months the cinema turned a profit for the first time in years; it was exhilarating.
The Frankston cinema was an excellent development ground for my marketing skills because I was so unconstrained there. I could try pretty much anything, and I did. I set up a movie club, sent a staff member out each week to put up as many posters as possible, used promotional material to create competitions and established loyalty programs. It doesn't sound too extraordinary now, but at the time no-one else was doing it, so it set us apart. It was like running my own small business in a regional area. Instead of seeking permission to do things, I simply went ahead and did them. There was no assistance, no manuals, no occupational health and safety policy — absolutely nothing. It was challenging but definitely rewarding.
I was, however, on a very minimal salary. I had recently bought a tiny house in Ringwood East (very tiny — it was built behind another house), borrowing money from the bank to do so. I did my sums and, on my salary, I could just afford the mortgage — and it would only take me a mere 25 years to pay off. After completing my budget, I discovered if I was very tight with my money, I could save $50 per month.
The house was close to my mum's house, so I could drop Samuel off in the morning and then make my way to work. With driving an hour each way to and from work, the time spent with my son during the week was a quick morning rush and a cuddle at night — thank goodness for weekends. So along with the long hours came the guilt. It was a new era for me. Gone was the freedom of letting life take me wherever it wanted. I was now responsible for another human being and the weight of this responsibility was never far from my thoughts.
Finding out what I'm made of
I'd worked for 14 months with Village in Australia when an opportunity arose in Singapore to assist in growing the cinemas there. With my three year old under my arm and a bewildered look again on my mother's face, I went to Singapore to start another adventure. When I returned home 12 months later, I was a basket case. I was burned out to a crisp. So what went wrong?
It turned out that the standard working week was six days and I worked between nine and 12 hours a day. Given my work schedule, one of the biggest challenges I faced was finding suitable care for Samuel during the day. After hearing horror stories about some of the local nannies, I ended up ringing my cousin Rachel, who was 19 at the time. The company flew her over from Australia to be my son's nanny. Even with her there, I was still doing two jobs — working for Village and raising my son, Samuel, without the support of other extended family such as my mum.
I also hadn't done my research about my finances. I was so flattered by the opportunity, I didn't realise that I would be even more financially constrained living in Singapore than in Melbourne. The stress and the hours simply took their toll; I became an emotional
wreck. Also, I wasn't prepared for the isolation I felt in Singapore. The expat community can be a wonderful support network, or it can make a place feel like the smallest town in the world. Everyone knows your business and feels they have a right to an opinion on you.
It was tough but, having said all that, at the same time it was exciting doing business in another country with all the differences in cultures. And Singapore taught me an enormous amount and was a great grounding for my future with Boost. Often in business and life the lessons you learn from your negative experiences have more of an impact than the positive experiences. Take, for example, my direct boss in Singapore, who was not as warm and welcoming as she could have been. Or my senior boss who, upon first meeting, said my shirt was inappropriate for the workplace. We were making massive improvements and increasing profit, yet his only comment was a derogatory one about my choice of clothing (which was, by the way, a business-style, sleeveless shirt). I vowed that day I would never judge people for what they wear but, rather, only by what they can deliver to the business.
Through networking in Singapore I landed a job back in Melbourne, as a publicist with United International Pictures (UIP). I wanted a role where I wouldn't have to work nights and could have my weekends back to spend with Samuel. I'd never had a job in public relations — like all the jobs I'd had thus far, I wasn't qualified for this one either. However, my marketing background was strong and my portfolio of promotions work showed the UIP interviewers that I had the necessary skill set, even if I'd never had the title. So, one year after moving to Singapore, Samuel and I returned to Melbourne. This was a great time to be at UIP and, as on David Bowie's yacht, I was once again surrounded by movie stars. My overseas adventure had ended but a new one was about to begin.
What I learned from my adventures …
Travelling teaches you skills you don't learn anywhere else, or not as quickly anyway. I pride myself on my problem-solving skills and I put that down, in part, to the travelling that I did. You learn to look a little way into the future and see danger before it hits — an invaluable tool in business. When you have only yourself to rely on, you learn to trust your instincts and find resources within yourself you never knew existed.
Here are some specific lessons I learned while in my early twenties, which can be applied to many startup business settings:
You don't have to put up with upsetting or unlawful behaviour at your workplace, and you shouldn't.
Do not set your teams up to fail, even if they think that they're ready. The worst thing you can do is promote too early.
All people, even the successful or rich and famous, are just people with their own fears, dramas, happiness and sorrows.
Some people seem to think that because they have money they need to act in a certain way, like a young boy going through puberty trying to act like a man. Similarly, some women think that to be successful in business they need to act like a man. The most important thing: be yourself.
If you're ever given a job or an opportunity through someone you know or are related to, make sure you work ten times harder to prove you are worth it.
Look at what people do, not what they wear. At Boost and Retail Zoo, we don't have a dress code in the support centre at head office. Having said that, I'm aware that not everybody shares my philosophy, and common sense sometimes needs to come into play. If you have important meetings, dress appropriately. While you might not be judged within your own company, you can't rely on the same attitudes existing outside your business's environment.
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NATURAL BORN WINNERS
I often reflect on my travelling years and look at what those years taught me later in life, and how what I learned helped me as a young businessperson. I think the first thing my travelling showed was a level of adventure and courage; an ability to give it a go and see where life takes me. Getting on that plane in the 1980s — where you could still light up a cigarette and some rows were simply marked as ‘nonsmoking' (which clearly made sense … not!) — and travelling to the other side of the world with no mobile phone or internet and snail mail as the only form of communication took a level of courage and adventure. Starting Boost was the same. Selling your home and putting everything on the line with no experience in running a business took that same sense of adventure (or naivety) and trust in the spirit of the journey.
Some of the experiences I mention in the book show that the young Janine needed to think on her feet and make quick decisions, aware that failure was not an option because the consequence in some circumstances were life and death. The same skills are required for businesspeople. You need courage, a bit of faith in your own ability, quick decisions and the power to stay at the problem until you find a solution. I would never have travelled if I knew the real dangers and some of the problems I was going to face. And I may not have started a business if I knew the struggles, sleepless nights and fear that came with having everything on the line. But then, how dull would life be? I have never had a desire to climb a huge mountain but I completely understand why you would want to: for the feeling of achievement, no matter how hard the journey can be.
What does it take to succeed?
Some say, ‘To succeed, you need money, a university education and to be really, really smart …'
Bollocks! I started Boost Juice Bars on my own kitchen bench and have grown it to over $2 billion in global sales since inception — and I've never spent a day of my life at uni or a business school. Worse yet (according to advocates of a traditional pathway to success), I've never had a job I was qualified for.
What you really need to succeed is:
to marry well — you need the support
a huge care factor
tenacity to keep at it, even when all looks lost
to be a quick learner
common sense
impeccable integrity
to work really, really hard.
Not having formal training to fall back on forces you to rely on your own innate abilities to achieve the unachievable.
A huge part of what makes a business succeed is the attitude of the person behind it. It's not about how many degrees they have or what blue chip companies they've worked for. It's about the hunger and the drive and the willingness to keep bouncing back from adversity and attacking the problem until you find a solution.
Doing Shark Tank was a bit like re-living my early days of Boost. The contestants were like all businesspeople in the early days of a venture. You have that confidence that the rigours of business have not quite knocked out of you yet. Every day brings a new challenge and it doesn't matter what education you have; it's like you're starting at kinder all over again. I'd never thought of myself as old before but I did feel it during some of the pitches. Seeing the naivety that some of the contestants had about their businesses was like going back in time to see myself when I started.
Winning people, not winning ideas
You often hear people say that they invest in people, not the product. The reason for this is that a great person can make an okay product good; a person who does not have that ‘X factor', however, will not make a great idea a success.
Spotting a person who is hungry, driven, positive, engaged and determined is easy. They ask questions, take notes and are switched on to the answers, and you can just tell that the minute they leave the room, they'll be putting all your advice into action. That's the kind of person who can make it in business.
When I saw Emma from Fly Babee walk through the door during Shark Tank, I realised she had that spark I look for. Steve slammed her for not knowing her numbers and thought she was flippant but I saw determination and a passion for what she was doing. She was the second pitch of the first day, so all us Sharks were still getting settled in. She mentioned that she had sales but the business was brand new. I decided to back her, but a few weeks after the show finished Emma called me in despair — the shipment of the stock she needed to get going had arrived but everything was damaged. She said
she would understand if I pulled out. I had invested $80 000 for 33 per cent of the business so it was money I did not want to lose but most importantly, Emma was honest and upfront with the problem and she had a solution on how she was going to fix it. She didn't go into victim mode and she was talking solutions — which was such a great early sign. This is the type of partnership I am looking for.
I told Emma that these types of setbacks are part of business. This was only the first issue (of many) she would have to face — and how she dealt with it would be the making of the business. I told her she had my total support and, sure enough, Emma sorted it, learned from the lessons, adjusted her approach so that the problem never happened again and off she went, as a true entrepreneur does.
Ideally, investors want a great person and a great idea; but situations like these show why I would take the person before the product any day.
Attitude matters
A clever acronym I heard years ago describes a particular mentality, and it has since become a part of my professional vocabulary. This acronym is VERB, or Victim, Entitled, Rescued, Blame.
In life and in business, I don't like a VERB mentality. A victim thinks ‘poor me' instead of finding a solution. They feel entitled to receive instead of driven to achieve and, when things go wrong, they wait to be rescued instead of finding a solution. Lastly, they blame others instead of taking responsibility.
The Accidental Entrepreneur Page 3
