Geraldine Laybourne saw something that the guys didn’t notice: Women not only make up a larger share of the population than do men,
they are also making more decisions and controlling a growing portion of the money spent in the marketplace. So after turning money-losing Nickelodeon into the top-rated 24-hour cable channel and doing a stint at Disney/ABC, Laybourne co-founded Oxygen with Oprah
Winfrey, Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner and Caryn Mandabach. Oxygen’s latest venture is oomph.net, which Laybourne calls a virtual back
fence where women can gather to chat, for advice and information, and to meet people with similar interests. Smart Business spoke with
Laybourne about the value of vision, putting problems in front of everyone and why you should avoid the brainiacs.
Trust your instincts. In general, what bothers me about business
today is there’s so much emphasis on PowerPoint presentations
and analysis and decks and strategic planners. I feel that we’re losing that intuitive gut that takes in so much information, so much
more than any PowerPoint could ever present, and that we’re fixated on the form and that people think they’ve made a good presentation because their PowerPoint is neat.
Don’t think, ‘Get rich quick.’ I am worried about the level of thinking about problems and the level of passion that people bring to
the table. I was on an airplane a few years ago and I had a press
packet for Oxygen. This guy sitting next to me said, ‘My goodness,
you’ve had a successful career. How can I make money quickly?’
I said, ‘I hate to tell you this, but you’ll never be successful with
that question.’ For me, it’s standing for something, believing in it,
taking your bumps, getting back on the horse and sticking with it,
not relying on outside consultants, really asking yourself honest
questions and being open to learning negative things.
If it’s worth doing, it’s going to be hard. You have to really stick
with it.
Choose people who put vision ahead of ambition. I think the single
most important quality is, is this person able to think of the greater
good, as opposed to building their career. It starts with the vision
and it starts with articulating that and then finding people who
want to be part of something.
You could pretty much tell who were the people in the room who
wanted to help you build the vision and then execute the vision
from the ones who didn’t really want to participate, who didn’t really want to be part of the team. They didn’t enjoy the process.
I took exactly the same group of people at Nickelodeon, and by
getting rid of the boss and me being the boss, the same people
turned the network from a low-rated network to the highest-rated
network on cable television.
Stay close to the ground. People will often talk about the glass ceiling as it relates to women. I think the thing that’s scarier today is
the glass floor that most executives stand on, where they’re protected from consumers, they’re protected from employees by a
layer of management that’s trying to package information for
them. My advice to executives is to trust your gut, keep your eyes
open. You have to be with your consumers … you have to listen to
what the people using your product are saying and not listen to
brainiacs who never had any operational experience.
Stay connected to the marketplace. I’m constantly reading, I’m
constantly out in the world, I’m going to focus groups. I’m trying to
find those people that have a different point of view and trying to
integrate all of that.
There’s no shortcut to knowing your customer, and anybody
that thinks that they can learn something by reading a research
report, they can’t. You might learn something, but you really
learn it if you see if for yourself.
Keep the problems on the table for everyone to work on. Oxygen
has five people on the executive team, and we sit once a week and
put all of the problems of the company on the table. At
Nickelodeon, we called it the PIT program, presidents-in-training.
The training program was a pact. If you come and think about the
problems of the network and don’t just think about the problems
of your department and don’t just be territorial, you will learn how
to become the president of a network. You’ll be solving all the
problems all the time.
Look ahead of the curve. I really believed that my cable brethren
had not done a very good job for women. Really, to have just one
brand, Lifetime, for 52 percent of the population, that’s not
super-serving your audience. Lifetime was very defined and for
an older woman, and had a definite personality, but I didn’t think
that was the only thing women were interested in, so I saw a
market opportunity. I convinced cable operators that when they
started out as cable operators, men paid all the bills, and since
then there’s been a huge shift and now women are paying 85 percent of the bills. I thought we could help them market to women.
I also thought that the advertising community was eventually
going to realize that women weren’t buying just soap suds and
feminine hygiene products, but they were buying electronics,
cars, houses, everything.
HOW TO REACH: Oxygen Network, www.oxygen.com; oomph.net
Editor’s note: Geraldine Laybourne will be the keynote
speaker at the “Building a World-Class Business” conference,
presented by e-magnify at the Westin Convention Center on
March 20. For details and registration, visit www.e-magnify.com.