CEO of Business Chicks Emma Isaacs
Many thousands of Australian women seeking to give their careers a boost are attracted to Emma Isaacs’s can-do style. From office juniors to university graduates, mid-tier executives and company owners, networking events are an increasingly popular solution to provide job and business aspirations with a bit of zip. This style of girl power shines a beacon to those who want to succeed in what is still a male-dominated world.
A lack of meaningful careers for women in business and public service persists, despite positive government discrimination and the imposition of gender quotas on big company boards. More is needed to shatter the glass ceiling. A recent KPMG report on workplace discrimination found women earn on average $26,000 less each year than men and their superannuation payout is 50% lower. Halving the gap would boost our economy by $60 billion over the next 20 years. One solution is for women to take matters into their own hands and learn from each other.
Business Chicks, Emma’s networking community, stages 100 live events each year for members in 11 cities in Australia and in 2016 was launched into the US. Plans are afoot for Asia too.
She says the organisation today cannot easily be compared with what it was when she bought it 14 years ago, saving it from closure. “We used to get a couple of hundred people coming to our events. Our latest had 1800 people. We used to be in just three cities. We are lucky now to have the support of some really big corporate sponsors. There were none of those at the start.”
Speakers have included Julia Gillard, Gloria Steinem, Jamie Oliver, Arianna Huffington, Richard Branson, Nicole Kidman, Nigella Lawson and Bob Geldof.
“Networking and connections are critical needs for women,” says Emma. “I would like to build a global community. We will continue to seek to be innovative, as we have in the past. Whatever products or services can service our members best, we hope to create for them. It’s really about how we can be there and serve them. A lot have been with us for 12 or 13 years. They started off with us when they were in a different stage of their business or their career. It’s really about how we meet the needs of all those women at all stages. Our youngest member is actually 14 and the oldest has turned 82. The demographic can be challenging but it is fun.”
The notion of having a go has long driven Emma. After studying business at university, she decided it didn’t motivate her. She dropped out and, in her words, became self-taught. After meeting a young woman at a party, she was offered a job at an employment agency, Staff It. Throwing herself into the work, often being the first in and the last to leave, she became a part owner when one of the partners left.
Six years later Emma was invited by a friend to a Business Chicks meeting. She says the experience provided an instant boost. “The music was pumping and the women were smiling and happy. There was a level of possibility and positivity that I’d never seen before.” She signed up along with other staff members. At the next event, which Emma attended with clients and staff, an announcement was made that the business was closing and if anyone was interested, it was for sale.
She recounts the story in her new book, Winging It. It outlines her general approach to business – stop thinking and start doing: action beats planning every time. On her spur-of-the-moment decision to buy Busi-
ness Chicks, she writes: “If you had looked at my situation at the time, you might have cautioned me to hold fire. From the outside, there’s no way I was ready to take on Business Chicks. In fact, I was advised by a lot of people not to even consider it … Here’s the thing about entrepreneurs though – cruising and coasting, even if it’s profitable and stable, is not the speed we drive at.”
Expanding on this theme, she said: “Winging it for me is the philosophy of saying yes and figuring it out later. It’s not the complete absence of planning. It is about people finding the courage to try new things. We should do things before we are ready to do them. There are several ways to get to where you want to go that aren’t always linear and expected.
“So it’s really a call to arms for people to say: ‘Have a try.’ You don’t always have to have an absolutely bulletproof plan. You don’t need a 10-step process. My advice and thinking has been to take the plunge, put one foot in front of the other and figure it out as you go. That has worked relatively well for me. I encourage others to do the same.”
That doesn’t mean that Emma lives in a planning vacuum, which could be chaotic. “It is not about having no plan at all. We all have a vision and an idea of how things should turn out. But what I am saying is avoid being stuck in inertia if your plan hasn’t worked out the first time. You can have plans. You can have ideas. But at the end of the day, actions are what are going to propel you forward and produce results. Have the courage to know that if you take action something will come from it. Is there a bad way? Yes. You need to mitigate risk.
“I have been in business for 20 years, and I have a portfolio of properties. The older we get and the more assets we accumulate, the more difficult it is to take those risks. You need to be cautious and understand the situation. But it shouldn’t be at the expense of not having a go.”
Does failure play a part in being successful? “Yes. It is a blessing if you can have experiences that shape you even if you fail. My version of it would be to try to recover quickly. There is no doubt that failure puts a dent in the performance ego but failure is part of any business journey. It is really important to know that you are not always going to get it 100% right. It really does strengthen your skill set and your resolve if you have a few experiences where it is not all smooth sailing. When I started another business, just a couple of years after I started Business Chicks, I didn’t give it my full attention. It was a complete failure from the get-go because I wasn’t passionate and I wasn’t focused on what I was doing.”
When it comes to her financial future, Emma focuses on property investment. “I bought my first property when I was 19. I still own it to this day. It’s a two-bedroom apartment in inner-city Sydney. I bought my second a year after, another Sydney property. These decisions are totally unemotional. Most of my properties I have never seen or stepped foot into. It’s purely a numbers-based decision. I like to keep hold of them and not sell them. Our home is different. We have sold a few of those but in terms of investment I try to have a strategy. Hopefully I will turn around in 20 years’ time and see that it has expanded a huge amount.”
But, readers, be warned. Emma’s advice to investors looking to buy property now is heavily influenced by rising interest rates and high prices. “It’s a very different ball game these days. You are looking at investment properties being $1.5 million. It’s quite ludicrous. I guess my advice is to start as early as you can. I am grateful that I started as early as I did.”
She also expounds the benefits of knowing the market. “I do a lot of reading and I do my own research but I don’t take a lot of external advice. You can get lost in other people’s opinions. The one time that I did take external advice, a property consultant advised me to buy in areas of Queensland I was not familiar with, and they turned out to be absolute duds.
“So you can be led by so-called experts. But I have lived in a lot of the areas where I have bought and I know them. I know that rental demand is high, and that’s why it works for me. I don’t go outside of the areas where I have knowledge.”
“Take the plunge, put one foot in front of the other and figure it out as you go”