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Interview:  NZ Herald Business Section March 2006

Like the leaders she admires - Sir Richard Branson, Anita Roddick - it's hard to separate Annette Presley the brand from Presley the chief executive, business entrepreneur and mother.

The brand is a feisty, full-on, feel-the-fear-and-do-it battler. This is the woman who's long been the public face of a business partnership (with Malcolm Dick) that has kickstarted companies at the leading edge of telecommunications (Call Australia, Callplus, Slingshot) and turned them into successful multi-million dollar businesses.
She fronts for Slingshot ads, does regular public battle with Telecom over constraints on competition and has become a popular public speaker at venues that range from ICT summits to women in dairying.

It's a very 'out-there' image which, when we meet, is reflected in a fairly out-there choice of outfit - bright shiny pink jacket, matching lipstick, black pants with heavily buckled belt. In the often conservative grey climes of New Zealand's corporate world, she is both in appearance and manner like a breath of fresh air - or possibly a tornado.
It's how one of her longtime work colleagues once described her entry to the office, a tornado-like whirl of commands, suggestions, ideas. Interestingly, she describes her own management style as "scarey". It's perhaps not for the faint-hearted or indecisive - more for those who, like her, don't mind jumping in the deep end in order to discover how well they might swim.

And there have been some big jumps.
"I think the hardest was to leave the country to start up Call Australia," says Presley. At that stage in 1992, she'd already achieved many of her goals having founded and built successful IT recruitment business, Stratum. "My grandad thought I was losing all I'd built. A lot of friends thought we'd go bust. It was a hard decision to make and it was a big risk. We nearly went broke three times. Our business partner backed out because it was all too risky - and our supplier, ditto."
At that point, Presley had also been involved in a traffic accident and recalls she was on crutches when she went to see a small scale re-seller who was a potential supply source.

"The toughest decision was when our supplier said they were not prepared to supply us and I'd gone to visit this guy who was a former telecomms engineer with no business experience. But he'd started up this little business using the power of aggregation on this product and I recognised we could work with him. "I nearly went home again but decided that day we had nothing to lose by giving it a go and we grew a $100 million business out of that. It all worked. I think there are lot of business stories that are like that. It'a why it's important to have role models because people tend to think - "it's easy for someone like that, she had this break or that opportunity" - but they don't see the struggles, the near failures on the way."

It's why she'd rather have staff who give things a go and make mistakes than have them rely on her ongoing direction or support.
"I think if you are somebody committed to excellence, if you work exceptionally hard, have a good sense of humour, don't take yourself too seriously but take your role very seriously and take on board accountability for what you do...then I'm a good person to work for. "If you're just looking for a job, are comfortable with mediocrity, can't make your own decisions...I'm the sort of person you either love or hate because I delegate entirely. I'll just say can you organise this - then probably I won't give you a lot of feedback."

She laughs, loudly. Apparently Bob Jones has made some rather unkind utterances about her laugh. He's a fellow judge in the local version of Dragon's Den and she's just spent what obviously felt like a very long day's filming with him. The chemistry promises to be interesting. That's the thing about Presley. She's a polarising character. In person, she is delightfully forthright but less hard-edged and more thoughtful than her battler image suggests. She and longtime partner Malcolm Dick have recently ended their personal - though not, stresses Presley, their business partnership. It seems to have prompted some more self questioning.

But there's little doubt the role model she wants to represent is not just that of a successful business women but of someone who isn't going to let life's possibilities pass by like scenes in someone else's movies. Nope, she's right in there, fiercely pushing at her own comfort zone. It's what she stresses in motivational presentations - and why she said yes to a TV show. "If you put yourself out of your comfort zone, you never know what will happen. If you do that daily, then maybe you end up finding something you love to do. Most of the things we love the most are also those that scare us the most. I don't know when I thought that I wanted to be a role model - I'm not even sure there was a moment but in my speeches I talk about having a dream of what I wanted my life to look like when I was 25 and I guess I made that happen."

Presley grew up in South Auckland and while she doesn't talk much about her family, she does somewhat ironically suggest they're owed thanks for helping instill her fighting spirit.  "There was a lot of fighting in the house. I learned a sense of strength in standing up for myself." She reckons the sort of resilience you need for business is often born in early adversity. Many of the successful people she's met or read about have had to contend with some sort of challenge in their childhood. "If things don't go your way - no-one agrees with the direction you're taking in business, there's a glass ceiling so you stop trying for promotion - rather than just throw your toys our of the cot or walk away, you use that resilience to bounce back. I believe all the great things in life, including giving birth to my children, were achieved by overcoming challenges."

There's no shortage of challenges in an industry that seems to be accelerating at an ever faster rate. After their success in Australia, in 1996 Presley and Dick set up Callplus which is now New Zealand's largest 100 percent Kiwi owned full-service telecommunications company. It was also behind i4free, set up in 2000 as the country's first free internet company.

After a start up that saw the service running one access number ahead of Telecom moves to disconnect it, i4free joined in an intense battle with the dominant Telco that ended up in the High Court. Meanwhile it gained some 150,000 subscribers before Clear Communications pulled the plug on its revenue-sharing arrangement early in 2001 making it impossible for i4free to continue as an open-ended free service. Customers were migrated to its new pay ISP Slingshot which was and still is Presley's baby.

Now the company is in the throes of rolling out a wireless company with a goal to deliver improved broadband, particularly to rural areas. "But we're obviously consistently frustrated by the environment in New Zealand and lack of ability to deliver world-class services in either broadband or mobile. Businesses here have actually gone backwards, both in terms of the speed they are offered and pricing. And I am constantly dumbfounded as to why business organisations and the media are not highlighting this more. If you compare the business plans in New Zealand to those in Australia or the US, it's a joke - which is why we're doing wireless."

It's a business in which companies have to stay a step ahead of the game. Decisions tend to be made on the hoof, says Presley.
"The company is not run by conference; we respond quickly to what people want in the marketplace and respond aggressively to bring products and services to market that people want. We have that nimbleness as a small company to make it happen,  though that is challenged by growth. We now have around 200 people and at that size you can start struggling with flexibility."

That is often a personal struggle as well. With two children, aged six and 10, Presley doesn't always get the work-life balance equation quite right.
"I gave a speech recently where I said you can have it all - just not all at once. There are times in my life when work gets more focus than my children and others when the children get more. That works for me as long as I remember myself in the middle. "The only times when the balance gets completely out of kilter is when I'm so busy with my work, with children, with running the house, with being the social organiser that I forget to do things that are just for me - walk on the beach, have a bath, ring a mate.. whatever."

It is possible to turn off. She recently spent a couple of weeks in Fiji with her kids - no phone, no emails. "Life's short and the kids won't be kids for long." Asked what advice she'd most like to give to other women, she pauses to think then says firmly. "Don't under-rate yourself. I meet women all the time who do that. My advice is you can do anything, if you want it enough." It's not about whether you can make it in a man's world - but whether you can do the job, deliver the results.
"So women who are in jobs where they're not achieving their dreams, where they take knockbacks and think 'I can't do that because the guys won't give me the opportunity' - then they're in the wrong job or the wrong company. Look for something else, because I believe you can do whatever you want - if you want to do it badly enough."