#15 It starts and finishes with care – Marcus Blackmore, ex CEO and Chairman, Blackmores (s01ep15)

DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE

• Who Marcus considers to be the star entrepreneurs
• Valuable lessons that he learned from his father and time in the army.
• Why a leader should always have lunch in the staff room.
• Why Marcus travelled to Canberra to support Christine Holgate (he was her boss prior to Auspost) during her senate inquiry.

RESOURCES

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Transcript from the interview

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SPEAKERS

Graeme Cowan, Marcus Blackmore

Graeme Cowan 

It’s an absolute delight to have Marcus Blackmore, on the Caring CEO today. Welcome, Marcus, it’s great to have you with us.

Marcus Blackmore 

Thank you, thank you.

Graeme Cowan 

Marcus, what does care in the workplace mean to you?

Marcus Blackmore 

Look, I think here in the workplace is one, it’s almost a bastardized expression, you know, I mean, it can mean many things, it can mean security, it can mean honesty, command, trust, all those sort of things that aren’t the same as, you know, measurement of, you know, return on assets, and all those sorts of things that we so often apply to business, I think it’s terribly, terribly important. It is particularly important with women in your company. Now, I don’t know what it was when the good Lord put us on the planet, he gave the women the responsibility for the family’s health, you know, mostly the guys don’t care, they don’t care about their own health. You know, if the guy cuts himself, he sort of won’t worry about it until it gets old, fested. But if a woman cuts herself or the children get hurt or something, she’s there on the spot all the time. So how does that transpose to the workplace? Well, it’s pretty important that they have good access to their children. So you’ve got to have an management’s got to have a view that if that if mum suddenly says she can’t come in, what we do, and in most workplaces, Mum rings up and says, Look, I’m sick today, mom’s not sick. She’s just got a problem with the kids today, you know, the carer didn’t turn up, okay? So she has to stay home and look after the kids. And we sort of breed this dishonesty thing, you know, they’re being dishonest with you. So you’ve got to have a caring workplace that allows her to say, Hey, I’m sick today. I’ll make up the time later, Marcus, but you know, I really need to stay home. That’s fine. You know what I mean, the thing about it, but one of the things about caring, I suppose, is women are very concerned about security. Blokes don’t care that much. Women are very concerned about family security, and are more so more. So if if they’ve got children. So I think you’ve got to manage the workplace. So that they can express those, that level of care for the family, you know, have family days and invite all the family into the company and get the kids to come in and see where mum sits at work and things like that. So if you engage the family, in that sense, then I think you’ll demonstrate a level of caring to the people that work for you. Now, when it comes to security, and I’d look I can go on about this for a long time. One of the things that Blackmores did years ago now, at my behest was we implemented a plan of salary continuance. So I went to the insurance company, and you know, it was pretty expensive insurance. And I said, Well, what about I take the risk for the first three months, so my mom gets cancer and can’t work. She knows absolutely that Blackmores will pay her full pay for the next three months. And then after that, we get salary continuance, and we insure them so that after that they know they’re going to get I think it was like 70% of their salary. Now that gives them a great deal of comfort. Now that situation actually happened, at Blackmores; one of our women got cancer, her son worked in the business, mum was the main breadwinner sort of thing. And she was, you know, she was going to struggle to pay the rent. So we sat down with her sit, don’t worry about it, you’ve got to focus on getting Well, don’t worry about the money, we’ll fix that. So if you can demonstrate, all you have to do is demonstrate that once to your staff, and it’ll go through the whole place, all of a sudden, you’ll create a caring environment, because other people will know and the organization that you treat them the same way. You know, it’s the caring sort of thing. I guess there are a number of things you can do, you need, you’ve got to treat people with respect. And the people, you know, it’s not their fault that they are picking up the papers empty in the garbage bins, as opposed to being the managing director, but they all require equal level of respect. And that’s not hard to do. And little things like, you know, appearing, make sure that you go out and have your lunch in the staff lounge with people, you know, what happens when you have lunch in the staff lounge, you will learn more about your business than you will from any of your leadership in a bloody month i can tell you that.

Graeme Cowan 

I heard you say that you…

Marcus Blackmore 

Providing you’ve got that level of trust that they were comfortable, they can talk to you, Marcus, we got all these out of stocks, we got people ringing up and complaining, you know, where’s the manager that there isn’t, doesn’t tell you that? We’ve got some out of stocks, we’re working on that, you know, sort of thing. But they’ll tell you that you’re losing customers of your life, you know, look, I’m making it up as we go. Anyway, terribly important issues that you’ll

Graeme Cowan 

I’ve heard you say that you don’t care in the workplace from your father, what did you learn from him?

Marcus Blackmore 

You know, I learned a hell of a lot from my old man. You know, he was a quite an amazing individual. He was very disciplined. He taught me to care for staff. I remember once, in the old days, you’d go and sell your car to a car dealer and the car dealer and say, Look, here’s the deal. And I’ll give you a bag of cash and whatever. And so I got back in the office, and I got this brown paper bag with cash in it because I just traded my car in for some special deal. So I said to the old man, I said, What do I do with this? And he turned around and looked at me and he said, you give it to the staff. So he was very focused on the people issues in the company. And that’s, you know, that’s all about culture. So, my dad told me that he taught me a lot about leadership, I think he taught me to respect women. I bashed my, I didn’t bash or whack my sister. I had a younger sister. And I went to one day and he sprang me, and then he you know, like, you know, I was only a teenager or something. And he just the lead back and he went whack. Hit me so bloody hard I went through a fibro wall in the house and any just turned around and said You never hit a woman and walked away, you know, said some lessons you’d have to learn pretty hard, I guess. Anyway, he was an amazing guy who had wealth creation was not his issue. He wanted to build a naturopathic profession. On his deathbed. He turned around him and he said Son, the sad thing about my life is I haven’t seen a drop of the as a true profession. And I’ve taken up that challenge in the last few years particularly, we’ve now established, my wife and I, with a significant donation to Southern Cross University of many millions to set up a nature centre of the Nature Pathak Medicine at Southern Cross University and they will graduate masters have made rapidly and maybe ultimately doctors of nature up at the end that’ll lift the profession to a whole new stage. We’re strong supporters of Western Sydney University, the National Institute of Complementary Medicine, they’re so they’re the sort of things that my father if he was alive today, and you know, he died in 1977. But he’d be proud of me, he wasn’t always proud of me very be proud of me now, I reckon.

Graeme Cowan 

I’m sure he would. He was obviously a big influence on you. So read that he sacked you three times.

Marcus Blackmore 

Three times that I can tell you let me tell you the story about the last time he sacked me because that’s when I ended up with Johnson & Johnson. I thought, you know, I’d got out of the army. I thought I was super smart. I knew everything. And I was typical of young turks, I suppose in the business and working for their fathers, you know, it’s a very common thing that happened. Anyway, we were selling toothpaste. In those days, we used to sell 20,000 tubes a month. And it was in a blue, green and white thing that looked like my father’s palmolive shave cream. You know, I went and designed,I had designed a new pack. Now, in hindsight, I have to admit it was purple. But still, anyway, I turn up with this thing my old man didn’t like it just fobbed it off. So I’m sitting, I was I was at home, I was living at home. And we had one little bathroom for my mom and my father, myself and my sister for the four of us. You know, every kid gets an ensuite these days sort of thing, you know? So, anyway, I’m standing behind him. And I said something like, well, if you’re not going to listen to, listen to me, you might as well get rid of me. And then I walked away. Then a couple of minutes later, he finished shaving and suddenly he walked out to the lounge room. And he said, Well, son, and you know, fathers say this sort of thing. Well, son, I’ve given you everything else in your life by miles, we’ll give you that too. Oh, well. And then and then he doesn’t really mean that, you know, they need to endure. And he said, No, I want you out of the house as well. Over done, you know, anyway, I was all an amicable parting of the ways. You know, I took another week or two to sort out things at my desk and hand over to other people or whatever, was only a small business then at that time. And then I became unemployed for something something like six months, I wanted to stay in our industry. Every time I applied for a job in the industry, they said are you go back to your father, you know, so they wouldn’t employ me. And then finally, I got a job as a medical detailer for Johnson and Johnson selling of all things, contraceptives, do Obstetricians and Gynecologists and people like that. And general practitioners, of course, and then I’d call on pharmacies in the afternoon. So it was an interesting exercise. And I certainly learned a lot about the pharma industry, the pharma industry are Blackmore’s biggest competitors, in my offer Health Solutions, and sound away, we just offer solutions. So it’s an interesting time in my life to be unemployed. And I lived under a house at Mosman in like a bed center. And but I was alright, I wasn’t broke. And I remember to this day, you know, we talk about defining moments in your life, I could take you to the very spot where this happened in Willoughby road in Crow’s Nest. And I was standing on the side of the road, and I had a girlfriend that work for Avis up there. And so I was going up to see her because she used to do my CVs that didn’t look that good at stage in my life, you know, a couple of years in the Army didn’t necessarily help. But anyway, I’m standing on the side of the road, and there was some poor individual on the other side of the road who was obviously incapacitated, and couldn’t get across the road without somebody helping him. And I sat there and I looked at this poor buggar and I thought, you know, I’ve got a girlfriend, I’ve got a car, I’ve got a place to live, I’m not broke. And I suddenly thought about my life and it suddenly went from being unemployed and unhappy and all that sort of thing to the very next day, it I changed my attitude, having seen this young guy with all those problems. I got a job at Johnson and Johnson the very next day. It had a lot to do with the psychological attitude. That was one of the defining probably one of the few defining moments in my life, when it came to career and that sort of thing.

Graeme Cowan 

And what did you learn at Johnson & Johnson?

Marcus Blackmore 

Well, I learned that J&J actually train their people really well. Look, I can I can tell you a story. But you know, I love telling stories. So you did a fairly thorough two weeks of training in the office and the various products that we sold and we sold a product called Delfin foam, which was femicide or foam, that we had to detail doctors, right? Then you go out on the road with the sales manager, when he does, he’s detail. And then finally you get to go out on your own. So here I am first day, I’ve got a general practitioner down in Crunulla somewhere. And so I demonstrate to this I have to demonstrate this, this particular is a beautifully presented in a glass bottle of spermicidal, a foam and nice plastic bottle. So I put it there, and then you have what’s called like an inserter on the top of it. So the bottle is under pressure. So you’re standing in, and all this spiel comes out of your mouth that you’ve been taught in the last couple of weeks, right. So the spiels coming out of our mouth, and I’ve got this thing here and, you know, you put the inserter and spears coming out. And then you you push the thing over and what happened was like one of those whistles you have at the Royal Easter Show you know, sort of thing. So the at the end of it comes to the the inserter part of it, and it was clear plastic was very well designed. So you can see the foam rising up in there while I’m looking at this thing, and I can see the foam oozing out at the bottom And I’m thinking to myself, while this spiels coming out, I’m thinking to myself at some stage in here. I’m gonna have to take that off the bottle and I get to like a boomp and I take it off as a bloody thing exploded. Doctors sitting opposite me with a suit on as they did. And you know, I got my handkerchief out. I leaned over and I wiped the foam off the suit and I packed up my bag and I buggered it off. That was my first detail. So I actually learned a lot at J&J.

Graeme Cowan 

Yeah. And I’m not sure if you recall because I worked at j&j twice once in the medical side, once on the consumer side in in sales and marketing. And they had and they still have what’s called the J&J credo. and basically, what it was, was their first responsibilities to our mothers and babies who use our products and then to our employees, and then to our shareholders made shareholders last. And, the interesting thing about that, which was a little bit of research on it was, I think, put together was put forward in the 1930s. And it was one of the Johnson brothers that created it, and half the board resigned, because he was putting shareholders last. But it’s, turned out to be an incredible success element of the J&J organization. And, you know, they research each year to see how they’re living up to that credo, it really shows the value of values and caring leadership.

Marcus Blackmore 

I remember that. Oh, my God. But I remember the same thing. You right?

Graeme Cowan 

What did you learn about leadership in the military?

Marcus Blackmore 

What did. Say that again.

Graeme Cowan 

What did you learn about leadership in the middle of military?

Marcus Blackmore 

Well, I suppose one of the great lessons I learned was when I was at church of in grammar school in Brisbane, I was in the Air cadets. And I remember to this day learning that the most important discipline in our lives was self discipline. And I think that’s the thing that’s missing in our society today. We bring up the kids, you know, the discipline, largely comes from family from mother and being brought out. But these days, my mother didn’t have to work. We weren’t wealthy, but my mother didn’t have to work. These days. Everybody wants to buy a house and mum goes to work as well. So they’ve abrogated some of that responsibility of discipline to the school teachers. Now, half the school teachers are a bit left to center anyway. And now we don’t have the cane anymore. When I went to school, every master in the junior school had a cane. You mean you didn’t do your homework? Put your hand out. Whack. You know, well, no, that’s capital punishment. NASA. We didn’t we’ve got rid of all of that sort of thing. And now what we find is the reaction is the kids are bashing up the school teachers Never mind. And okay, I will say I’m living in the past. But it’s that discipline that I think we miss, the discipline that my father taught me by by hitting me so hard, I went through the bloody wall. You only need that to happen once to never get it again. So I’m concerned that a lot of the problems, I spent a lot of time with Ted Noffs, at the Wayside Chapel is focused and his belief was that if we could teach young children, that they’re young, our youth of today, that if we could teach them self discipline, so that they could say, know that they’re in a group of people and they start smoking dope or something, here have a puff for this, they could say no, but they don’t they go with the like, go with the group sort of thing. And it’s, you know, becomes group therapy, if you like. And I think it’s, unfortunate that we don’t teach our youth enough self discipline so that they can say no, and that was the whole focus of the life education centers, that Ted enough so beautifully started all these years ago, I was on the board, I just think he was an amazing individual. And, you know, a lovely man sadly had a stroke and a lot of these works being taken up by Bill Crews at the Exeter center in Sydney. And I’m a longtime supporter, financially, particularly for Bill Crews. I think, you know, we talk about entrepreneurship in business, if entrepreneurship is about coming up with a good idea and implementing the idea, then Bill Crews, and for that matter, Father, Chris Riley with these youth off the streets, they are great entrepreneurs. I give speeches about entrepreneurship. I always refer to those two guys Bill Crews.  John Singleton went to the races one day, and he won $100,000 some time ago. And he’s a mate of Bill Crews. So he goes to Bill and he says, Now listen, Bill, I want 100 grand today, if I give it to you, what will you do with it? And Bill said Oh, I’ll start a soup kitchen at Ashfield. And so singer gave him 100,000 and then add one of these parishioners gave him another 100,000. And he set up his soup kitchen. Now I go to that soup kitchen. And it’s really, it’s a, my wife has a daughter and I was worried that, you know, she lives in a lovely home and, you know, I drive a fancy car and that she really she doesn’t want for anything and her life really, does she really appreciate the value of money. So rang Bill, I said Bill I want to bring Caroline’s daughter over and Caroline will come to want to come over and have lunch with all the with all the people that that he supplies lunch to now he supplies he does at least 1000 meals a day either in the soup kitchen, or else he has a van and Blackmores provided one of the vans for him that with all the warming stuff and he goes down and and feeds homeless people at night. He does 1000 meals at a restaurant, he does a 1000 meals a day. Nobody pays nobody has questioned whether they should or shouldn’t be allowed to come in the front door. My virtually all his labour is free a lot of the food he gets from people like food bank, I suppose. And so most of that’s donated. If that’s not entrepreneurship, I don’t know what his look he’s just an amazing individual.

Graeme Cowan 

Yeah. You talked previously Marcus about the importance of self discipline. How do you apply that self discipline to yourself in terms of how you manage your day or run a day?

Marcus Blackmore 

Not very well, I have to say. In fact I think the the best description is I’m hopeless. You know, my assistant always struggles to get me organized. She’ll put me down, you know, knowing this was coming up. She said I’ve sent your list of questions. You got to go through that. See she’s been at me for the last two weeks. You’ve got to go through that thing. So I did it this morning an hour ago, so to answer your question, I don’t have a lot of self discipline. And you know what, when it comes to Chief Executives and whatnot, I think you that the real successful Chief Executives are the ones we call it management by walking around; the ones that are engaging with people but not necessarily doing doing the actual work themselves, listening to people understanding what how important it is to people on the factory floor that they’ve got a regular source of income and little things like that having lunch in the canteen and back And have a culture an environment where people can talk to you. That’s the role of a Chief Executive, more so than it is being able to sit down and have meetings and run meetings and whatnot. So, anyway, so I’m not right at the bar itself, discipline,

Graeme Cowan 

it, somehow things worked. And they, you know, you’ve been very successful. You’ve grown the business hugely, you know, entered into Asia, by the way, and China in a big way. So, some things have happened. Why do you think that is?

Marcus Blackmore 

Is what?

Graeme Cowan 

Why do you think that? You know, you’ve had this massive success with a business?

Marcus Blackmore 

Yeah.

Graeme Cowan 

If you don’t personally have your your hand to organize sort of thing by the people around you?

Marcus Blackmore 

Well, somebody said to me other day, how did you make all your money? I said, I’m buggered if I know. I said, I don’t pack the pills. I don’t do those jobs in the class. I said, they, they do those things? But I have an undying belief that if you look after people that look after you, that’s the mind of a wealthy person today.

Graeme Cowan 

Yeah.

Marcus Blackmore 

Those simple you know what the problem is? It’s too simple. It’s simple. We want ever we want to complicate things. I think I know that, you know, in my working life, I’ve had some outstanding people work for me. And I’ve lost some of them. You know, I lost Christine Holgate, she went off to run Australia Post, set a few challenges there in late, as we know, a job but you know, she’s a beautiful person. And, you know, I’m I don’t doubt that if she was on these calls, she’d she’d say that I’ve contributed to her success. I want to do, and if I can do those sorts of things, they’ll now contribute to my success. Let me tell her story. First time, she walks into the company very first week, I said, Now listen, Christine, I’ve just organized to go to the other states and have a night with  our principal and principal customers in pharmacy. And so that might be a good opportunity for you, look I know it’s a bit short notice might be a good opportunity came with me and you get an opportunity to meet our biggest customers. She said I’d love to come. So while we go, we go to Melbourne, I make a bit of a speech, she makes a speech or something. Anyway, some smart bloody pharmacist at the back of the room and the question and answer time, he gets up and he said, Christine, he said, we know Marcus, why would you want to work for him? She turned around, he said, she said, you know, his office is right next to mine. And she said I don’t know another person in this industry that knows more about this business than he does. And she said I’ve got access to that knowledge base anytime I wanted, anytime I want to. And then she’s made a very defining statement. She said to this guy, and you know, he’s got more interest in making me successful than I have been making him successful. That’s the Christine Holgate.

Graeme Cowan 

Absolutely. And before we came on, he shared how Andrew Banks helped you recruit Christine, and I previously worked with Banks. And now Andrew, can you tell us a little bit about that recruitment process?

Marcus Blackmore 

Yeah, he’s, I’ve known Banksy for many, many years. And I, he had somebody else, he did a lot of work for Blackmores. And he had somebody allocated to the account and the one thing and so I said to her one stage, you know what, I bought the book, Linda Goodman star signs. Now, I’m not a great advocate of star signs, but I believe there’s something in it. And Indian astrology or, or Indonesian astrology or whether it’s Western astrology, I think you can type people at times. So I was having a bit of a problem in the company, we were getting people who weren’t suited to the particular job. So I went to Andrew and I said, Andrew, what can we do to refine our process of employing people, anyway said, Well, you could do you could do this Myers Brigg assessment. And I didn’t know what the hell Myers Briggs was. I said, Well, I’ll tell you what. And you know, you might think I’m filling my importance, but I said, Well, let me do the test. And then I’ll tell you whether it works or not. Anyway, I did do the Myers Briggs type and it really taught me very well. Then I tried to tell is this accounting Executive that if you would have combined Myers Briggs with astrology, if you knew the hour they were born and got a really good astrologist to tell you, I said you’d have the whole game Santa. Yeah, I thought it was the greatest idea. But anyway, let’s do it with Andrew.

Graeme Cowan 

And how do you feel when he first presented Christine, for the first interview with you?

Marcus Blackmore 

Well, I think I like to straight up on my Chairman at the time, Steve Chapman is now Outstanding Individual and very good at typing people. They the pair of us after we done after we’d had a couple of interviews with Christine, she was in the final whatever it was two or three, I don’t remember. And I said. He said to me, Well, what do you think? Now? I said to him first, what do you think? And he said, Well, she certainly different. He said, What do you think? I said, Well, I reckon if we employ Christine, I reckon I’d be sitting there hanging onto the reins. There was certainly a fair bit of that going through the nine years that we spent together. Discipline woman, she’s really good. She did a lot of good things for Blackmores. And I’m proud to say that she she’s still a great friend today. And that’s why I went to Canberra to support her the other day when, when the senate inquiry was on. So she’s in good shape.

Graeme Cowan 

And I understand you played a bit of a role in helping her transition to the Australia Post role is that the auspost role is that you mentioned something before we started that you’d heard about this AusPost roll coming up. And you suggested that she look.

Marcus Blackmore 

Look I for many years, I was on the board and ultimately chairman for a number of years of Australia’s sail training ship, which was a youth development program run by the Navy, the ship was run by the Navy. It was a wonderful place to be and see those, you know, the Australian youth on the ship that the Brits gave us the ship in 1988 as a Bicentennial gift, the ship wasn’t big enough, actually, we had far more, far more youth wanting to go on the ship than we could cater for. And hopefully the Australian Government thank, you know, they seem to be able to find a lot of money at the moment. Hopefully they can find a bit of money for a new ship. And I think that’s probably on the cards. I had a friend on that. One of the other board members is John Dixon in Melbourne at a trucking company. He’s sitting in a restaurant one day and he’s listening to two guys at the next table, discussing whether Christine Holgate could run Australia Post. So he rings me up, he said, and I and he just, you know mentioned it to me. Now, you know, I had a relationship with Christine, there was no secrets between us. You know, it was an open arrangement of a trust of one another. And I know damn well if she was on this, on this sheet on this line, she shared the same view. And so I just said to her now, Christine, you’re going home to see Berrel and Mum. Mum lives in England. I said what do you need to do Christina sit down and think where do you want to be in five and 10 years time. And if Blackmores is a stepping stone to that you stay here if it’s not a stepping stone to where you want to be in five and 10 years time, then go to Australia Post. Anyway, she went away and thought about it for a week and then come back and came back and sat back. Sat down with me and said she was going to make the move it was obviously a much bigger job it paid more and she she took the job at a significant less salary than than what Ahmed for who or did pre who previously ran it. But Ahmed did I think he did a lot of good things for Australia Post Australia was stuck in a rut selling stamps. When did you go and I got a parcel delivery the other day with stamps on it. And for ages. And I waited you only saw me ever hear telegrams is during a wedding or something so those revenue things for Australia Post were disappearing. You know, people weren’t writing letters, but all the other, you know, digital alternatives. Now we didn’t have to write letters. So I’m up for her I think had a lot to do with transposing or changing Australia Post to be a logistics company and then Christine took up the challenge when she joined it and you know that it’s amazing. It’s still a government business. I have something like 60% market share against the likes of DHL and big international companies. They’ve done an outstanding job. And it will continue. Well, the problem is Christine’s no longer there. Because I think the chairman and the Prime Minister didn’t help her cause. And so now she’s gone to Toll. You know, how stupid is the guy who knows more about logistics than most people. And now she’s gone to the government’s biggest competitor. Because the Prime Minister wouldn’t say wouldn’t use the word apology, which I mean, I quite like Morrison. But I think he failed in that in that particular situation. You only need to do a sound. You know, I’m really sorry. I want to sit down with you pristine, and but he didn’t want to do that. And But anyway, that’s life.

Graeme Cowan 

what makes Christine Holgate such a great leader.

Marcus Blackmore 

Well, one of the one of the thing, let me tell you a story. I like telling stories. One day, I wanted Christine to come to a function that night. And she said, Oh, I can’t. I said, What do you mean you can? She said, Well, I’m going to have dinner with I can’t remember the person time, let’s call them Mary. Mary had had cancer. And, and she was struggling with cancer. And Christine had absolutely helped us so much, that she turned around and Christine, and looked she was just not a senior executive, the company, turnaround, Christine. She said, you know, I’m so appreciative of everything you’ve done for me,  would you I’d like you to come to my house, I’d love to cook dinner for you. I’m sitting here because I want to go, I want her to come to some bloody function or something. And she’s going to somebody’s house for them to cook dinner for that. That’s why Christine is a successful manager. That one incident that one incident flies through the organization like you wouldn’t believe. So all of a sudden, everybody in the organization’s got a whole renewed respect for Christine. Because respect is something you earn. And that’s how she would earn respect.

Graeme Cowan 

Yeah.

Marcus Blackmore 

Simple. You don’t really simple. It is simple. I keep saying that. That is simple little simple things like that make all the difference in the world.

Graeme Cowan 

They really do and Gallup who’ve been looking at, you know, employee engagement and discretionary effort for 40 years, they found that the one question that most predicts whether someone’s engaged or not, is my supervisor or someone at work seems to care about me as a person, or people that strongly agree with that the higher the profit, productivity, customer service levels, everything. And I know that that’s one of the really key reasons why you’ve been successful. And I’ve heard you talk about the three P’s of leadership. Can you just explain what they are, please?

Marcus Blackmore 

Well, I was asked one, at some stage in my working life, maybe 10 years ago more, why is black more successful, and I stopped and thought about it from and I said, Look, I call it the three pays people product and passion. And I think they’re the elements of a successful company. If you haven’t got the right people engaged in the right job appropriately rewarded, then you’ll go nowhere. If you haven’t got if you’re trying to sell 100 milligram vitamins, say when the world wants 1000 milligrams, you’re wasting your time. So you’ve got to have the right product. And then you’ve got to have but the underlying thing and the most important element of all, is passion. And I think what I’ve been able to develop in that company over the over the years, is an element of passion and belief in what we’re doing a sense of purpose and why you get out of bed in the morning. And just to make money. Because before if that’s the sole purpose, then the world will be a poorer place. So drills into those three things. Now I can elaborate on the the biggest issue, of course is passion, but it’s it’s the people you employed. It’s the people that have made the business successful. Not me. I’m only I’m only sitting there like a like a what he call was an Aggie our

Graeme Cowan 

puppeteer, the puppeteer

Marcus Blackmore 

that that your job is to see i’d admit. I’ve never thought about it before but the right to be the puppeteer. Because the people down there, they’re the ones doing the work.

Graeme Cowan 

Yeah. In terms of self care, I know that you’re a very keen and successful sailor. Why? Why do you enjoy sailing.

Marcus Blackmore 

One of the things I enjoy about sailing, as soon as I get on my boat, I forget about work. So it’s a great effort for that, for one of a better description to use the vernacular work life balance. But it’s also, there’s great similarities in running a successful sailing team is there is a successful business, I steer my own boat. And I guess that’s the relevance with the company, I’m steering the company. But the steer is not necessarily the most important guy on the bag, you can have, you can have a dud steer a bit of view, but in a very good tactician, and you can still do well. But if you, you don’t need to have the best steer in the world. And it’s You’re so dependent on the team. If you haven’t got the team, if you haven’t got regular crew that don’t, you know that then you won’t win regularly. been fairly successful. In sailing as a team. You know, we went a number of national championships and things like that. And it’s all because of, you know, doing the training and then buying the best sails you can and having the best equipment and, and, but it’s not necessarily having the best steer. I mean, you know, if you’re sailing in America’s cap, if you got a dad steer, you’re not in the guy. You know, and the average sort of sailing that I do, the steer is not as important as some people think it is.

Graeme Cowan 

I heard another story where you were sailing in Fiji and you ended up going to a church on a remote island. And you’re asked to come up and say something and you started off by saying I’m very disappointed with you people. Explain more about that.

Marcus Blackmore 

Good story they, my wife and I particularly enjoy going to the countries in the South Pacific and you know, one of the great experiences of my life was diving with the whales in Tonga about in the into this in Fiji. Fiji has got two big islands on the west coast is the mamanuca is in the OSI was where always were all the resorts are on East Coast. Most people don’t realize there is equally another chain of islands, but they call the Lao LAO group. Now the LAO people are rather unique. You know, every every football team in us in Sydney’s got really great big black. Because we can’t find enough good white guys. And so they’re all in our teams and sending money home. I think that’s all wonderful. But in the in the LAO group, they don’t play football, like the rest of eg they actually play cricket. And the interesting thing was the first prime minister when they got when they first got Federation from the UK, they, the first prime minister came from the LAO group and he was a cricketer of some note. So when you go to the lab group in every village, there’s got two things, a church and a cricket pitch. My wife loves going to the church I sing so beautifully. She’s a good Catholic like that. So we go to this church on a Sunday on one of the islands in the LAO groups. Now previously, you are not allowed to go to the LAO Group allow people said we don’t want our islands all developed like those islands on the on the west coast. So you couldn’t get a permit to go there. Then about seven years ago, they opened it up. So I was keen to go there because I couldn’t let us go there before. So we go to these one particular Island, and we go to the church on the Sunday now. You know, I’ve got four crew and I’ve got two other families, two other couples with me so we’re fair number in the congregation. And of course the pastor up the front he is carrying on in some bloody language that I don’t understand. And I’m deaf anyway. So I’m not hearing everything is gone. My wife sent me sighs she started whacking me. She said he wants to know whether you want to say something. I said, Oh, I missed that. So I get up and I go out. I go out to the altar and then be big time getting up and going out to the auto thing. What the hell am I gonna say to these? I started off and I said, you know, you people disappointed me. I said, I’ve spent my life Working hard, I believe, because I wanted to buy a new car or I wanted to buy a bigger house. I wanted to buy another boat, and I’m pretty good at that department. But I had a genuine belief and it’s true, I had a genuine belief by doing that, I’d be happier. By simply then went on, I come to Fiji, I said, I noticed that you don’t have any of those assets. But I do notice that you’re all very happy. And I said, it really disappoints me that I don’t have those assets in my life. Do you know anyway, the side that it went from what say on about appreciation, I said, Never, ever be uncomfortable about the culture that you have. in unity, you have a far greater culture, then what we do in our community, you know, we all help one another. They look after one another. There’s a bit of a downside with that in one sense, because the moment you give people those people money, they’re going to come back and ask you for me. They have a sense of what yours is mine to a certain extent, you know, it’s not lightened does that but I just think that’s beautiful. Now we, my wife and I went to an Ireland for lager in the southern part of the LAO group. And the the the we went to the school, we love going into the schools, we take them over crayons and pencils and paper and stuff that they all need. Anyway, we go to this particular school, and the toilet block bargain, you know, the kids have to go out in the bush. So we gave them 5000 bucks. That’s what they needed to rebuild the the toilet block in that school. Well, I can’t tell you the level of appreciation we got the next time we went back to that village was unbelievable. So we then contributed quite a bit of money to build a it was really a community center, but we call it an evacuation center. And by calling it an evacuation center and using it for that purpose, the Fiji government also contributed so that they I can tell you, Marray is one of the women there that sort of befriended Caroline, and, you know, they exchanged things on, on social media from time to time, this all this, these people in this place, they only have internet, when the schools on, the schools’ the only place that has internet, I have one boat that goes to that goes to that island once a month. And if you miss that, that’s it. So they had a cyclone went through there, they didn’t get hit as badly as some parts of Fiji. But they rang Caroline and said We’ve just come out of the evacuation center with because of this, and we just wanted to say thank you for helping us,

Graeme Cowan 

you know, amazing

Marcus Blackmore 

amount of money I spent, and the amount of money I’ve given to charities, it was a pittance in comparison to what we’ve done in the past. reward is enormous. Yeah, I’m not being self serving about it. But you know, not difficult. And it’s not difficult to help people at times and, and they will be forever grateful we go back there. I mean, there’s no such thing as a red carpet, but the red carpet comes barbecued for us. They don’t say the pigs in the ground. knives and forks you eat with your fingers. They don’t have plates. I make plates out of I don’t know, banana leaves or something, you know, but they sing. And most of them have got a musical instrument. So you can imagine the barbecue goes over pretty well. My wife’s got a little tiny tattoo on her wrist as a result of that.

Graeme Cowan 

Wow.

Marcus Blackmore 

Well, the things that we can’t wait to get back to that village. And we’ll take a whole lot of things like books they love. They love paperbacks and books that you you know, you’ve got sitting in their house and you haven’t read for 10 years, all that sort of thing and I just appreciated so much. It’s just that just those little things that are so well appreciated by people when they haven’t gone.

Graeme Cowan 

It’s been an absolute pleasure catching up today. Marcus

Marcus Blackmore 

brings it down to a certain level. And I think that’s one of the reasons why I go to the Pacific. It makes me stop and think about how lucky we are in life. You know, have all the all the all the things that we do around us and and how safe we are and our communities and And what sort of medical services all those sorts of things that we enjoy, and perhaps take for granted too much.

Graeme Cowan 

It’s been an absolute pleasure catching up today, Marcus, I’ve loved your stories and your history and your three P’s of leadership. And the many examples where you show that leaders of people, the actual, real part of the business, you know, the three P’s really emphasize that, knowing what you know now, and I understand you’re about 78 or so, what advice

Marcus Blackmore 

76

Graeme Cowan 

Sorry. Sorry. What advice would you give your 18 year old self where you just got your first job at Blackmores, What advice would be give your 28 year-old self, knowing what you know now?

Marcus Blackmore 

You better have a bit more respect for your father than I did at the time, I suppose. But I mean, as typical of all, you know, young young guys working for their father or what I learned, I failed University. I absolutely believe in continuing education. And I think it’s important that young people find something that they really enjoy doing. I learned very early in the piece, that I wasn’t good at doing things that I didn’t really like doing. I had a guy he would go to university and my father wanted me to do science. So I do mathematics. You’ve got to be kidding. Then, you know, so I failed mathematics. I passed physics because I really liked physics because we’re sort of working things out. I filed a turn up for the Zoology I failed a turn up to the exam. I turned up a day late. So obviously, I wasn’t that keen. And anyway, my dad turned around and he said, Well, I said, Sunday, I’m not paying if you want to go to university and pay your own way. And I put oh bugger this. So I started going at night, I thought it was the right thing to do to have a university education. So I started going at night, the only problem was I go to bed early. And I get up early. Well, you know, I’m sitting there in the class at night, half asleep, so I learned bugger all. Anyway, so that didn’t last too long. In the meantime, I’ve been called up and, and I’ve been conscripted in the Australian Army. So why I went to the army for two years, but it really is about doing things that you want to do. And then you’ll get out of bed in the morning, then you’ll be successful. But if you’re doing things that you don’t like doing, you’ll never be successful. So I think that’s probably the most important message to young people. My own stepdaughter, she was going to, she was doing commerce at ad tech or uni or something. And she wasn’t she wasn’t liking and I sat down with her one day said me, just forget it. Just going through some say when she went and did fashion, because a mother did fashion and she was able to get into beauty has to do to do fashion. And she really enjoyed that. Then just recently, she’s in her late, late 20s. Now, recently, she and her mother went away for a week she came home, and she announced that she was working for a company in fashion, you know, importing dresses and stuff that you’re doing passion and on selling it and one thing and then eggs. And she said I’ve had enough of that. She’s gonna be a primary school teacher, he has to go back to university. So I said, Look, I’m more than happy. I think that’s really wonderful. Because I you know, I’ve alluded to the fact before, I think, I think our education system for young people suffer somewhat. And I just think it’s wonderful that somebody like that would be prepared. She’s gonna go back to universities halfway there now to do a master in, you know, education or something. And I think she’ll make a fantastic school teacher so and she’s dead keen about the whole thing. So that I think that’s the important part of life.

Graeme Cowan 

It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today. Marcus, thank you very much.

Marcus Blackmore 

Pleasure no, always a pleasure.

Graeme Cowan 

It was a wonderful chat.

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