By the thinkBIG Team
When Marcia Griffin resigned from Pola Cosmetics in 1997, she was widely regarded as one of the most successful female CEOs and entrepreneurs in the world. Today she heads up her own skincare range called Griffin and Row, which, as Dominique Bambino writes, is already having a huge impact in the beauty products market.
It took Marcia Griffin 12 long years at university and several degrees before she realised that great sales people don't necessarily need academic degrees. However, to achieve what Marcia has achieved in her career requires a great deal of smarts: book smarts, street smarts and general intelligence.
Academia, according to Marcia, is not the be all and end all of a successful career. In fact she sees the time she spent within the confines of the learning institutions as a distorted life view, particularly when she counts the number of successful businesspeople she has met who have no formal degree or education beyond high school.
Marcia took a job as a corporate economist straight out of university, yet the bureaucracy and the lack of possibility was uninspiring. The good thing to come out of this position was the people she met.
"After 12 years of studying I realised none of my studies had anything to do with entrepreneurship," Marcia says.
"So, it was like a bolt of lightning trying to understand why these people were all so successful when they didn't even have an MBA."
Mixing and meeting with entrepreneurs started to change her mindset.
It was at this point she realised she needed to move into the world of ‘real business'. Working for a corporation where the outcome of a task was the end game and not integral to the future vision was frustrating. She wished to work for a company that was entrepreneurial. So she tried her luck with an import retail business.
Her mother had instilled in Marcia an attitude that she had great capability to conquer all things. Marcia knew that if she was serious about doing something she would do it well.
The first business Marcia ran (almost 30 years ago) was a retail store in Armadale, Victoria. She imported clothing and homeware such as lampshades, ashtrays and soft furnishings. It was the first store of its kind.
While remaining an active operator within the store, Marcia was also completing an MBA in the evenings at Melbourne University. She hadn't quite given up the idea that education at its highest level was a necessary good. However, one night when closing the store to rush to her evening studies, she realised she didn't need an MBA to be able to sell well.
"I was closing the store rushing to Melbourne University and I had an epiphany that I didn't need the MBA. It was a frontline experience."
In 1982, Marcia sold the business to her business partner and also found her mentor; an extraordinary entrepreneur named John Taylor who was a director of the Direct Selling Association. John happened to be the point of contact for a position with Japanese cosmetic company, Pola Cosmetics.
John put Marcia on retainer with commission and appointed her to the position of national sales manager.
"Here I was, I had been to a private school and boarding school and completed 12 years of University and I was sitting across a desk from a guy that left school at 14 talking about a job within his company," says Marcia.
John taught Marcia about attitude. Through 12 years of university, nobody had ever mentioned the correlation between attitude and success. Now she was attending attitude seminars led by Anthony Robbins and Tom Hopkins.
"I was absolutely astounded because what I started hearing was that attitude was the most important thing," Marcia says. Within six months at Pola Cosmetics, Marcia had recruited 30 people to sell the product. Within a year she had 200 people selling the product. The word had spread around the Japanese head office and she was asked to take over Pola's Australia and New Zealand operation. After 16 years Marcia had over 5,000 women selling throughout Australasia and became one of the only Caucasian women in the world to head up a Japanese operation. Pola Cosmetics enjoyed over 10 million sales in the 16 years she was with them.
In 1995 Marcia became the Telstra Business Women of The Year and even though she was passionate about her successful 24/7 business she was tired and exhausted. She felt like she had taken Pola Cosmetics as far as she could and was in need of a new challenge.
In 1998 she sold her share of Pola Cosmetics back to the Japanese and published her book High Heeled Success, which on the back of winning the Telstra award – gave her an enormous amount of exposure.
"In so many ways I think life is such a learning curve. I still didn't realise the power of what I'd achieved. What I did with a direct selling business was difficult because nobody had done it before," Marcia says.
For a change she started consulting and mentoring, a business she still successfully maintains, however soon enough the skincare industry beckoned again.
About three years ago Marcia approached Yvonne Row with a potential product idea her friend could place in her ‘Passion Fruit' store in South Melbourne. Yvonne was not too keen on the product but saw a business opportunity where the two could develop a product together. The pair teamed up to develop a new skin care range called Griffin + Row.
Marcia's many industry connections got the ball rolling and the pair's combined experience was invaluable.
"We had the right ingredients for an anti ageing product. I started to see the way this product works. It was powerful. The whole thing started coming together," Marcia says.
They got the formula, story and branding right. And after talking to many distributors, the product was made available. Fortunately they were given the opportunity to meet with Target, a successful retail chain throughout Australia.
In September 2008, Target placed an order and by October Griffin + Row skincare range was on shelves through 150 Target stores.
As with most businesses, Marcia would say it's all about having the right attitude. Attitude gave her the confidence to move into several arenas in which she had no prior experience. It is a trait that enabled her success within these arenas and brought organisations to her door seeking her expertise at board level. She has sat on many boards such as Melbourne Storm and PMP Printing. Not to mention being on the Telstra judging panel for the last four years.
It goes to show that having multiple degrees is not the key to moving ahead in life. It's about having the right attitude.
"Never give up, keep going and keep doing fabulous things."
