Joe Pollard is one of Australia’s most successful media women. Her domestic and international experience is enviable, and what might be surprising is that Joe started as a receptionist at a media agency… and went from strength to strength – to Asia, to the US, to running global media for Nike, to Tokyo and back to Sydney to head up Ninemsn and Telstra. She has now stepped into a number of non-executive board positions for a diverse range of companies including OOH Media, Washington H Soul Pattinson and the Endeavour Group. She is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and Chief Executive women.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
As a young kid I wanted to be a vet. I grew up in the country and was a mad horse rider from the age of about four.
When I was in high school, I thought I’d be a physiotherapist or something in the medical field. (I would've been the worst physiotherapist in the world!) I missed out by two marks in the HSC, that’s two marks out of 500, so I decided to take a year off. My dad said, "You can't take a year off. You've got to learn to type, to be a secretary," because that's what a lot of girls did back then. So, I did a secretarial course at Metropolitan Business College and at 18, ended up as an advertising agency receptionist. I never went back to uni… and the rest is history.
Who would you most like to be stuck on a desert island with? Why?
My husband and my boys. I know it might be a mundane thing to say, but they're about the only people that consistently put up with me and I love them to death.
What single book has had the greatest impact on you? Why?
The two that come to mind are books I studied at school. The first is Pride and Prejudice. I studied it for the HSC and read it about 30 times. Jane Austen was a very early feminist. It's beautifully written, I was drawn in by the strength of her characters. The second book is To Kill a Mockingbird which I studied in year 11. It was the first time I read about racism, inequality, and struggle. I found it horrifying.
From a business perspective, Jim Collins’ book called Good to Great inspired me in a really simple way about what makes great companies.
When do you go to bed and when do you get up?
I normally go to bed around 11pm and wake up at 6am. Boringly normal.
Can you briefly explain your career path to date?
I started as a secretary in an advertising agency and progressed all the way through. I still to this day have a lot of empathy for receptionists, executive assistants.
My career can be broken down into four big chapters. The first was what I'd call Mastering the Fundamentals. I spent 12 years at J. Walter Thompson, which is now Mindshare and had some fantastic bosses who taught me everything I know. They were really hard on me but that gave me discipline and a life-long commitment to learning.
During those 12 years at J. Walter Thompson, there was an opportunity to move to Hong Kong. That started a 16-year journey living overseas. Let me tell you living in Asia in the nineties was incredible. I was given enormous responsibility and had to learn stuff fast. When I was 28, we pitched and won the Nike account in Asia Pacific and that led to the next chapter of my career, which were my Nike years. I spent 10 years at Nike and refer to those as the Acceleration Years. At 30, I was the Global Media Director at Nike, traveled the world, set up the media function globally and got to work with the most amazing athletes. During that time, the job expanded, and I ran nike.com and started a content division where we made television shows and books. It was fabulous.
This Acceleration chapter was probably my favourite because I’d done the fundamentals and I was able to grow and learn. Working for a company like Nike is very demanding. We continuously pushed ourselves and the work. Even after we’d done the most amazing job on a global campaign like World Cup 1998 or Olympic 2000 campaign, the first question that was asked was what could we have done better? It was a real athlete mentality. That 10 years of my career taught me a lot of the things that I still rely on today. What makes great communication, what it takes to be build a great brand, a differentiated product, a market leading service.
Then can chapter three: the Diversification Years, and that was moving back to Australia. I had worked in Portland and had spent my last two years at Nike in Tokyo, and the kids were primary school aged. We'd been overseas 16 years and it was time to come home. I made the terrible decision of leaving Nike without a job but the lovely thing about leaving Nike was that the President said "Don't worry, if you've made a mistake and you move home, you can come back." It felt like coming back with a parachute.
I had great media and marketing experience, but I knew if I wanted to be a CEO I had to get onto the side of the fence that was responsible for revenue. So that's when I decided to go and work for a media owner role, and I got the Sales and Marketing Role at PBL Media (which is now Nine Entertainment Co). It was the first time I ran sales, ran marketing, and that experience gave me my first CEO job running Ninemsn. I did lots of different jobs and then the job at Telstra running media and marketing.
Now I’m in chapter four: Consolidation. I'm not doing executive work anymore, I transitioned three years ago into a non-executive board career. I sit on three ASX boards and one private equity board.
I've worked on all sides of the communication fence, media agency, creative agency, CMO, media owner, and in the Telstra job, I ran both media and marketing. When you sit on a different side of the fence to where you were before, your optical view opens. You build a lot of empathy for the other side.
I see people in the fundamental stage wanting to fast track. You get a lot of people in their twenties changing jobs every one or two years. I stayed at the same company for 12 years and I worked in the Sydney office, London office, Hong Kong office. I progressed from receptionist to regional media director. The pieces of advice I sometimes give young people is don't leave that job until it's given you everything it can, or you've demanded everything you can out of that job.
What is the biggest obstacle you’ve overcome, as it relates to your career or industry?
I had kids at 36 and 38 while I was working at Nike. It was a global job, so I came back to work after 12 weeks with my first, Jake, and six weeks with Max. I did spend a lot of time in the early part of their life not there. There was a lot of guilt in choosing my career over being at home. My husband was a stay-at-home dad after we had our second son so there was a lot of getting over that obstacle of not feeling the guilt of missing out on what they were doing at home.
What motivates you?
Doing great work with people that teach me something or inspire me. It’s pretty simple for me: what do I get to do and who do I get to work with? That's my lens every single time and it's how I make decisions. I've never decided on a job because of how much I get paid. There are many times in my career I could have earned significantly more money to jump to a different type of job.
What do you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
You can have it all, just not all at once. I think Oprah Winfrey said that and she's so right. However, you spend your time, particularly as your life gets more complex, with kids, with living in multiple markets, whatever is, I wish I could just say to myself, it will all work out in the end. It'll balance in the end, and you can have it all. I feel like I've had a great career. I'm so proud of my boys. They didn't suffer not having their mum home, driving them to school, turning up to camp or cooking the bloody cake!
I see so many women, particularly in their forties, struggling to be the great wife, the great mother, great at their job, the perfect household, the perfect social life. It'll kill you. Just pick a few things to be great at, at certain points in time, because it'll even out in the end.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
My boys. It’s strange for me because I was never going to have kids. I decided in my twenties that I wasn’t going to be a mother. What I’ve learnt is that a job is just a thing you do. It provides a means to the end and definitely provides joy and self-fulfillment. But when I look at my two boys I am so proud of the men they have become. That is my greatest achievemnt
They grew up in a non-traditional environment, particularly in Australia, where their mum was the one who worked full-time, and their dad stayed at home. They had reverse role models and their values are very balanced and respectful of what roles you can play in society. They are not based on gender sterotypes.
What do you believe has been the key to your success?
There's a great quote I use a lot from Madeline Albright when she was the Secretary of State and I was so sad when she passed away recently. One of her famous quotes is, "Whatever the job you are asked to do at whatever level, do a good job because your reputation is your resume." I really believe that, in that every job I have been given, even when I went from receptionist to junior planner buyer, to buying Kellogg's Coco Pops ads from four to five on Channel 10, it was doing the best I could do at that job to get the next one.
What is your life motto?
My parents always said, "You can do and be whatever you want to be, but you have to work hard." I’ve always had this voice in my head that says “You can do this no matter what”, and that confidence has overcome any self-doubt. The other motto that bleeds into everything is to always be kind.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
I’ve been so lucky in my career with great bosses and great peers. Most of my friendships that are deep set have come from work. I remember when I was leaving Nike to come home, Gordon Thompson, who was the creative director at Nike, said to me, "You only get to leave Nike once, choose wisely. How are you going to use it?"
What he was really saying was, what will I use this experience to do next? It propelled me to take the big leap from CMO, head of media, into Nine Entertainment. At the time those jobs weren't combined when I went for the interview, and I knew I wanted to run revenue. That comment from Gordon encouraged me to ask for what I wanted and that led to the next acceleration of my career, because I went on to run Ninemsn. Those points in your career that you use to leapfrog, you have to choose wisely because they don’t come that often.
What's your favorite TED talk or Podcast?
I love Derek Sivers’ TED Talk How To Start A Movement.
I listen to The Daily podcast by The New York Times every day. 23 minutes of whatever you need to know in the world.
Who do you most admire in business? Why?
Phil Knight started Nike out of the back of a car at University of Oregon. No one would give him a bank loan. I admire him not just because of what he built, but I admire him as a person. He's one of the most inspirational people, but also gentle and softly spoken. He absolutely knew what Nike needed to be.
When I was running media and would go into big negotiations, he'd always call me before I went and ask, "What are we going for this year?" And he'd always want the story when I came home. "Okay, so what did we do? What did we conquer? How did we win?" I admired him greatly. He built an incredible culture based on the theory that you can’t innovate without failure and if you don't fail, you're not trying hard enough.
What do you believe is the secret to rising up to the top?
Every journey is different, but you have to have incredible resilience. You can’t succeed alone; you need a strong team around you. I've always loved leading teams or building teams.
I hear a lot of people striving for work life balance, and I don't think I had any work life balance from 25 to 40. That was a choice, and I felt guilty at times but if you really choose that your career is your priority, it will turn out that way.
Are there work ethics and attitudes that you most admire in women?
You know when you’re in a workshop and have to split into groups and you're given two days to solve a challenge? I always want to be in the girl’s group (with the side order of a few men as well). I will generalize here but women are really focused on solving the problem, not how they look doing it. They're driven by the task. What do you think? How do we problem solve together. Women can multitask and they nurture really well.
What's next?
My fourth chapter is only 3 years old. I’ve spent the last three years building a board portfolio and I love it. As an executive you go very deep into all elements of your job. You have a lot of time with just one job within a company. What’s great about a board career is you can take everything that you've learned from your executive career and transfer that learning into multiple business challenges.
It's a great privilege to have a diverse portfolio. One day I'm working on pets and the next day I’ll be reading about retail Dan Murphy's or Outdoor Media or Washington Soul Pats. I can bring my knowledge to bear on problem solving. I also love the flexibility. There'll be weeks where I'll work seven days straight, but then there are days where I don’t work.
I'll always miss the teamwork, but now I have a camaraderie with my fellow board members.
As told to Caroline Hugall at the Monkeys on 4th April 2022