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Robert Berkeley 0:02
Gglamour comes to this episode of InsideJ jobs, the podcast served up just for you creatives who work out or within house agencies brought to you in association with IHAF and production partner Express KCScase, yes, we meet creative leaders who work directly for brands learn about how they got to where they did and understand what drives them. Meg Graham was lucky to find an employer at the start of her career, who could keep her interested all the way through to the present day., Sshe’s had a more eclecticcollective range of job titles than many of us who just hopped from one place to another. And in the process, she learned about writing, got to manage an entire IT department and prove her worth in creative operations management. So we've a lot to cover actually on this. But just before we get going just very quickly, Meg, where are you? And what's your current role? and with whom.,

Meg Graham 0:53
Yyes, I actually work for Mary Kay cosmetics at their corporate headquarters in Dallas, Texas. And my current role is director of creative content. That means I get to lead the awesome team that creates all of the content that we move into the hands of our 3 million beauty consultants around the world in 35 markets.

Robert Berkeley 1:11
Wow, that sounds like a big job but we're gonna get into the detail of that. So let's go right back to the beginning though you're currently based in in Dallas Meg,make is that right? Yes,

Meg Graham 1:20
Yes, that's right.

Robert Berkeley 1:21
And where were you born Megmake?

Meg Graham 1:22
Well, I was born in Jacksonville, Florida. I doubt everyone needs to know all that level of detail.

Robert Berkeley 1:28
Well. Was it a dark and stormy night I mean, this this is the kind of thing our listeners really need to understand about people now.

Meg Graham 1:33
No I'm sure it was humid and rainy, as it always is in Jacksonville, Florida. No, I'm just kidding. It's a beautiful town. But I've lived in Dallas m. Most of my life. I went far away to Cleveland, Ohio, the booming metropolis of and loved living in Cleveland, Ohio, actually, but needed to come back home. My family is here and was lucky enough when I came back home to find a job at Mary Kay, it was an opening for a copywriter.

Robert Berkeley 1:56
Okay, so you've been Mary Kay for your entire career?

Meg Graham 2:00
Most of it 17 years. So

Robert Berkeley 2:03
say seven years sounded more like a no. So just going back to when you were in Cleveland, I guess that was when you were at college. I

Meg Graham 2:10
was in college there. I went to a small university called Jjohn Carroll University.

Robert Berkeley 2:14
And what were you studying? And why were you studying it?

Meg Graham 2:16
I studied English because I liked to read. And I figured if I had to spend my college years doing something I should enjoy when I was studying and I studied every kind of literature I could get my hands on. And then I also studied a lot of art history. And I had a focus in art history and Renaissance and mediaeval art, I walked out of there with, you know, for all the credits, and the degree money well spent money well spent, and mom and dad, we're happy that I got I was finally off the payroll. And yeah, and I readily found employments, which was the exciting thing, because when you go to school for an English degree, no one ever knows what what are you going to do with that? And actually, I started working for a little public relations company. That was my first job. And I was in Dallas. No, is actually in Cleveland. I actually stayed in Cleveland for a little while. And then I moved back to Dallas and when I moved back to Dallas was when I had the opportunity to become a copywriter at Mary Kay.

Robert Berkeley 3:09
Okay, so let's see. So you did that little bit of PR that was just was that like, Interim short period of time you were doing that?

Meg Graham 3:16
Oh, I want to say it was about a year, a year and a half. It was great. Yeah,

Robert Berkeley 3:19
formative that he clearly showed you that that was the direction you wanted to go in what we would now go into content creation,

Meg Graham 3:26
post writing, and marketing and advertising and all of those things. I literally had an obsession at that time give you a range for my age. And I have an obsession with the Absolut Vodka ads I bought, they were fabulous as pieces of art and advertising. And so I really enjoyed the mix of bringing creativity and artwork to life in a way that consumers or the average person would always see in the marketplace. I thought that was just a fabulous way to apply talent.

Robert Berkeley 3:55
Do you think you still see that kind of artistic approach to commercial advertising these days?

Meg Graham 4:00
I think it does happen. I think it actually happens in more unique ways. I see it actually in terms of social media. So I see it becoming more and more authentic, where it might not be elevated artwork where the vodka Absolut Vodka had some quite elevated work that they did in the line of that particular line of ads.

Robert Berkeley 4:19
And so you moved back to Dallas, and you said, you went straight. You got the job straight at Mary Kay, how exactly did that happen? Did you apply for a lot of jobs? And that's the one that came up. I

Meg Graham 4:26
I did. I had two job offers at the same time. One was for a company that organised school trips for kids in high school. And I was fascinated by that. Because I would have been the person selling those trips and then taking the kids on trips. And I thought, Wow, what a great way to see the world. How fun would that be? Oh, international trips, international trips. Yes, it was all over the world. He said there was that option. And then there was the option to come work at Mary Kay. And I thought about it and I thought you know, I really I actually think my greater talent lies in the world of creativity rather in this travel thing. That would be fun, but maybe I could do that in my spare time. And thank goodness I did, because that was actually January of 2001. And that I don't think that company made it through the rest of that year. So I was very lucky. I chose the career that I did, or the job that I did that turned into the career that I have. For

Robert Berkeley 5:19
For those of us who are not, who don't have active accounts with Mary Kay. Like, I'm ashamed to admit myself. Can you just quickly describe Mary Kay, as it was back then? And what role you moved into and what environment you were in there?

Meg Graham 5:32
Yes. So Gosh, when I joined Mary Kay in 2001, it was still a booming business. And even at that time, I think we had over 30 markets with a few million consultants. And it has grown dramatically in that time to where we're in over 35 markets with well more than 3 million consultants, and continuing to grow, which is very exciting and fun. But when I joined Mary Kay, I, growing up in Dallas, I was always aware of Mary Kay herself, Mary Kay aAsh, the woman, she was kind of a legend in Dallas, she literally had a pink house. And on Sunday afternoons after church, my parents would drive us by this pink house and say, Look, this lady is so rich, she built herself a pink house. Maybe I can grow up to be like her. And it was just so much fun to see that. Now, when I came to work here, I really didn't know much about the corporation. That was my childhood memory. And I really didn't know how big the organisation was. And even at that time, we had over 2000 people working in the corporate office. I think that's grown since then. And we were I didn't realise how many markets a company was in China and in the US our two biggest markets, it has always been a direct selling company. And the leadership is committed that it always will be and

Robert Berkeley 6:52
when they were in China back in 2001, as well, they were Yes. Wow. Very early, very early. Yes, sir. Very forward looking. And and and Mary Kay herself was still around.

Meg Graham 7:02
She was not active in the business at that point. She actually passed away shortly after I started. So I never got the opportunity to meet her. I work with people who did know her personally, and did work with her, which is pretty special. But yeah, she passed away. And so she had been active in the business for most of the duration of the business at that point. And we were just about at our 40th anniversary. This year, we're celebrating our 55th anniversary as a company. And so in that time, I started as a copywriter. And of course, I got to know a lot about the business because when you're a writer, you learn all these different aspects of the world that you're working in. I got your

Robert Berkeley 7:44
What copy where you're writing? Wwas it advertising copy, orf product description, PR or all over.

Meg Graham 7:48
It was it was mostly marketing for product we were I do a lot of I would do a lot of writing for the Salesforce, I actually had some things that I would write prize copy for. So we award our Salesforce different things. And I really enjoyed writing copy that was motivational and inspiring around, you know, what would light someone up about earning this ring by, you know, achieving a certain amount in her career in the course of a year she could earn a piece of jewellery or a car, I really had fun doing that I really loved it. And then I also wrote product promotion copy did a lot of advertising. I did a really fun advertising campaign for Mexico. It was one of the first international projects that we did here in this office in Dallas. And then as I went on the involvement of our corporate headquarters, international subsidiaries and business and providing them what they needed for their business grew. So I started as a copywriter, about five years in I started looking around and I said, Hmm, I'm not the best copywriter here. And some part of my competitive spirit showed up and I was like, Well, if I'm not the best here, I don't think I can be the best copywriter, then what would I be the best at and I be can my own little rotational programme is what I call it. I found a role in marketing open as a project manager and I became the person who was setting the marketing strategy for our lookbook our quarterly catalogue. Okay, this

Robert Berkeley 9:20
Okay, this is great career advice, though you pick your battles, you pick the things you know, you can win and gracefully retire from the things that you don't think you can win. And just before we move on, when you started as a copywriter, were you within what we would term an In House Agency in house agency at that point? Is that how it was structured?

Meg Graham 9:36
Yes, Mary Kay has had an In House Agency in house agency, longer than most., I believe the organisation has been around for at least 30 years at this point. There are actually people I work with, yes, that have actually been part of the In House Agency in house agency for longer than 30 years. So I can say 31 or 32 years, so quite a long time.

Robert Berkeley 9:54
So you are already within the straightstreightip the strictures of the In House Agency in house agency presumably relatively straightforward, mostly print Bbased I suppose the internet must have been on its way at that point, your development of exploiting the internet.

Meg Graham 10:05
Meanwhile, Yyes. And that was the interesting thing that when I was in creative, I was the person who could write about those the internet better than anyone else. And then when I moved into marketing, I also became the person who is the best at partnering with our IT group. And actually, our IT group, our internal technology group had developed the first .comm site, and they were putting content on it. But there was Yes, the huge opportunity for marketing and creative to be involved in that

Robert Berkeley 10:34
I've got a lot of friends in ITit. But I have to say when it comes to marketing copy, they're not the first people I'd think of, and this isn't the first time I've heard this. So interviewing. Now let's see who was it? I think it was Wade Frank's from TTI talked about a similar situation and manage and really became an opportunity when this new development came along, in this case, the internet and the website needed developing it was an opportunity for the In House Operation, in house operation In House Marketing in house marketing operation to seize the day and say, well, we can actually make this work in working with it as well.

Meg Graham 11:03
Yeah.

Robert Berkeley 11:04
So that's what happened to you.

Meg Graham 11:04
Yes. So, I. I was the person who could speak that language well., Sso I got my foot in the door talking with ITit, and really started that collaboration between what is kind of that tripod that you need for a website to be successful, the technology, the marketing and the creatives., Aand started making inroads there and doing a lot there actually, with email, because that was also the blossoming of email. And, so we were making a lot of inroads there and I was having a lot of fun. And then one day, I got a call from partner in ITit a. Aand they said, you know, we have this opening for a manager over here. Would you like to come run the systems? So, I it was the craziest career move I've ever made in my life. Yeah, jump from a marketing creative to literally being the person responsible for the technology behind the .dot coms the email systems, and it

Robert Berkeley 11:55
and it wasn't polished and easy to access.

Meg Graham 11:58
Oh no. There was no pretty CMS, this was actually almost all homegrown systems.

Robert Berkeley 12:02
Goodness.

Meg Graham 12:03
So it was really complex. And I love to learn.

Robert Berkeley 12:06
And when was this make? Which which year was this?

Meg Graham 12:10
This was probably about 10 years ago. Or or more than that 2000? Maybe? 2000? Yeah, 2006- 2008? right around there. Yeah.

Robert Berkeley 12:18
Wow. Okay. Yes. Yeah, go on, you make? Do you clearly felt confident enough? arrogant enough? What What was it? What was going on? Why, why did you make this movie? I mean, I can understand the excitement of it. But a lot of people would be kind of risk averse on a move like this. Yeah, it's

Meg Graham 12:334
Yeah, it's funny, I was not at all, I was really excited, because I saw the possibility of learning a lot about why ITit did what they did, so that I could really help the business because we were still stumbling over ourselves really maximising these channels. And so, I was I thought, you know, if I can get in there and understand this, the, I think I can make a difference. And I can make this better. And so I did, I just jumped in. aAnd like I said, I love to learn. So it was a huge opportunity for me to dive in and get my hands wet. And I learned more than I wanted to, like I, I can run a project with the Agile methodology. Now, I understand what a code read is, and what has to happen next. I understand a lot about technology. And I'm really glad that I have that understanding. Because nowadays, you have to have an understanding of technology, in order to be successful in almost any aspect of business.

Robert Berkeley 13:31
I started out as a technologist, myself, and although I gave up programming when it got very difficult, which was very early on, for me, I I have to say that you instinctively know what's possible and what's not possible when it comes to technological solutions to various things. So I would definitely any grounding in coding or any grounding and working closely with ITit people has got to be recommended as

Meg Graham 13:52
Iit does. It's really valuable. And just even understanding, like you said, what's possible with technology? Because, I get in the room with consultants frequently of technology systems? And they'll say, Well, I'm not sure that's possible. And I say, No, I know, it's possible, you just, and here's how I know it's possible. It's also just understanding the logic, like really getting your head into that space of how technology works, and how logical it is. And if you can get your brain in that space, I find that people who do can be really successful in impacting so many, many other areas of the business. So

Robert Berkeley 14:25
so that's interesting. So you went from copywriter, you went project management, then you became where you were? Were you an IT manager then was or what was your designation? there?

Meg Graham 14:34
I was I was an IT manager. And then from there after about two years, I said, All right, I was not built for this. I was not trained for, you know, at an education level to do this. These people need greater support than I can provide. And so I started looking around and there was actually an opportunity that came up to run the creative web team. And that was you've never done that before. So

Robert Berkeley 14:567
you've never done that before. So, you don't do that. So I

Meg Graham 14:58
So I said, Oh, I think I can do thatis. Because I have friends who

Robert Berkeley 15:01
friends who didn't end up CFO maybe maybe that's to come?

Meg Graham 15:06
Who knows?

Robert Berkeley 15:07
Aambition unbound? Come on, man. Yeah. So you decided to move from being IT manager to creative for which you were equally unqualified?

Meg Graham 15:13
Yes. So I will have that one. I was like, well, I, I was a writer, I understand like how creative comes together, I understand the digital world. And now I understand digital from all three angles, the creative, the marketing, and the ITit. So let me see what I can do here. And what was interesting there, it was almost there that I really started forming, I think some of my greatest strengths. And that was around getting teams to work together in different ways. And how

Robert Berkeley 15:37
And how big were these teams at the time, likemy,

Meg Graham 15:39
my team at that time was pretty small, it was probably 10 people on the creative team, the IT team was probably about 10 people, the marketing team was maybe three or four people. So they were pretty, pretty tiny teams, relatively speaking. And we created new ways of working together. And we had a lot of fun. And we did a lot of cool stuff.

Robert Berkeley 15:59
So you were running a creative team, where were the creative requests coming from at this point,

Meg Graham 16:03
they were coming in from marketing. So luckily, it was not putting in the requests anymore. Marketing was actually submitting the requirements.

Robert Berkeley 16:10
So they were submitting requests, the marketing initiatives, the campaign ideas, all of that was coming from marketing, or were they coming to you saying here's a business problem, or a business objective, they were coming up with solve it,

Meg Graham 16:21
it was both they would come to us and say, you know, we have to promote this product, how will we do that, but at the same time, they would come to us and say, we're launching a new lipstick. And we really want to do a big promotion with our virtual makeover. And so, you know, we would come and there was a lot of brainstorming that went on between the marketing team and the creative team. There was a lot of just we couldn't do work alone. And that way

Robert Berkeley 16:42
Would you would they mandated to use you or could they have gone outside if they wanted to.

Meg Graham 16:46
It's funny, no one here has ever used the word mandate that I've ever heard. But the creative teams and Mary Kay manage the forecasts the budget for the dollars available. And so the dollars available for digital at that point, were all internal labour dollars. So there were people here and they really didn't have dollars to go anyplace else. So therefore, we were the default option. So yeah, I was learning a lot about leadership and management that point in causing things even in teams that I was not responsible for officially.

Robert Berkeley 17:20
Yeah. Okay, so actually, I'm just looking at your LinkedIn profile here, because I remember when we started and before we spoke, I thought okay, so you've been at Mary Kay, then you're at Mary Kay, then your Mary Kay, Mary Kay, Mary Kay. And this is going to be an interesting interview. Because what tends to be fairly homogenous, you know, the career path, really straight line. But you've actually been able to demonstrate here that within a corporate environment, you can have as kind of eclectic, and wide ranging career but all with the same employer. If you're working for a company like Mary Kay, is that something you'd attribute to your employer or to yourself,

Meg Graham 17:52
I would give credit to both of us, I would say that Mary Kay is very committed to hiring internally. And I know there is no company I could have walked up to and said, Hello, my name is Meg. And I have experience in creative and marketing. And now I would like to run your technology team. That was never going to happen. So I am, I was so lucky that I was here that I got that experience. And the reason that they do it and Mary Kay is that they realise that the more experience people have in different organisations, the more effective those people can be. And it really has contributed to my ability, because I haven't even stayed in the same role within creative since I've come back here. And so

Robert Berkeley 18:33
So you were a manager of Creative Services. And then you said you move to creative business operations. What's the difference?

Meg Graham 18:41
So first, I came back to creative and managed the web creative team, that was kind of a subset of the creative team. Then I moved into account management. And in account management, we were truly the partners with our project owners, bringing projects into our creatives, managing budgets, doing things on a project level, and I was working with that team for a while. And then I moved into a role. At that time, actually, we had always been USus focused. But when I was in that role, we changed our focus as a company and our organisation split. So there became a global creative team and USus creative team. And I moved into the global creative team and took on a broader business operations role. And so I included Account Services, but that was just one area. Then there were many other areas. There were areas like the art production area, all of our producers that negotiate contracts with models and photographers and other vendors on our behalf, the systems area that I mentioned. So all of those all these different pieces that we brought together inside of business operations,

Robert Berkeley 19:47
I see okay, and where are you now then within the business.

Meg Graham 19:50
So from there I moved basically to the other side of creative where I lead a creative team. Now I did retain the account management team. But in addition to that, I have art directors and an entire team of designers, art directors, photography, art directors, as well as copywriters, and specialists in digital creation. So we have the creative team and week we're responsible for creating the content that becomes the marketing materials for our sales force, or support materials for our sales force so that they can sell our products to consumers.

Robert Berkeley 20:24
I see. Okay, all right. So you you've kind of more or less hoovered up all of the bits and pieces and brought them with you right? By the way, it says

Meg Graham 20:32
I have.

Robert Berkeley 20:46
So that brings us up to the present day believe you're in a position where marketing comes to you to for inspiration and for execution. Is that the case across all channels?

Meg Graham 20:42
It is yes. So we work on video, digital print all of it.

Robert Berkeley 20:46
Okay, and so describe the Department for us, then what are we talking about here with Mary Kay's creative operations.

Meg Graham 20:52
The creative content team is made up of about 25 people. And we have as I mentioned, writers, we have people who are experts in digital design, social media, we have art directors, people who are specialists in photography, layout, graphic design, illustration, as well as account management team who also function to some level as project managers.

Robert Berkeley 21:17
And this fits within a greater Creative Services Division?.

Meg Graham 21:21
It does, there's actually an even larger division because my team does not contain packaging design, which is a piece of it, we do not officially produce the videos. We are our directors, and we and copywriters that contribute to them. But there is an exclusive video team. There's also actually so a lot of that operations team that I used to be responsible for, I am no longer responsible for so systems, things like that other teams are part of my prayer team still takes care of.

Robert Berkeley 21:50
And so in all just to give give listeners a kind of sense of scale. How big is the entire creative operations? Would you say.

Meg Graham 21:57
The the global team is about 60 people.? And then the US team is I think right around the same size. I think it's about 50-60 people right now. So we have a lot of people in this building. And then there are teams around the world as well. Most of our markets do not have this size of teams, but our largest markets do have creative talent In House in house.

Robert Berkeley 22:18
Okay. All right. So yeah, that's quite a sizable sizable operation. So again, back to you then. And you're 26 people and with a with a quite a range of skills there. Specifically, how are they organised? And how does work come in? And how is it managed? And how does it go out?

Meg Graham 22:34
Oh, let's see. Well, we have a pretty simple organisation. As far as the structure goes, we have a person leading the account management team, a person leading the art directors and someone else leading our content, copywriting creatives, those people are awesome. Of course, the whole team is awesome. Work comes in mostly through the account management team, we do have a system that is our workflow management system. And the account management team usually gets a briefing, you know, we do the whole thing. They get a briefing, they sit down with the team, brief the team, kickoff the project, work out the schedules in advance, put together timelines.,

Robert Berkeley 23:12
Is budgeting a part of that or not?.

Meg Graham 23:14
And we do actually all along the way, we're talking about budget. So at that 360 stage, we're saying we think we can execute the deliverables you say you want within the budget, and sometimes we go in and we say we can't sometimes we say we thought of different deliverables that we want to execute within your budget. And we would recommend for this project for these strategic reasons. And then we revisit that budget several times leading up to the photo shoot, which is typically one of the biggest expenditures and I say the photoshoot but inside that photoshoot, we're shooting still photography video frequently behind the scenes for social,

Robert Berkeley 23:49
you're using our own studios for this or is this location or other people's studios?,

Meg Graham 23:52
we, we do location and other studios, we're usually hiring external photographers and videographers for a bulk of our creative but we do have our own internal studio here. We do most of our social shoots internally. And we're starting to do more and more of our our other work here. Because you

Robert Berkeley 24:13
know what? That's interesting. So you do social internally, I presume that's because of speed and cost.,

Meg Graham 24:18
Sspeed and costs, we can get a great quantity out very quickly,

Robert Berkeley 24:22
it begs the question why you wouldn't do once you learn how to do it quickly and at low cost where you wouldn't do other work.

Meg Graham 24:28
It's really about we are in the beauty space. And that's the space we're competing in and we have to make our beauty consultants irresistible. So the materials that we put in front of her have to be relevant, we work with some of the best photographers in the industry to make sure that the models are showing up in the most amazing way to feature that. That cosmetic product that skincare so what we're doing is we're pushing and pulling and going to these different resources. So that we have the best people for the job. So that's why we haven't brought it all in house at this point.

Robert Berkeley 25:06
And what are the biggest challenges you're facing at the moment, they make.

Meg Graham 25:09
Cchallenges. Of course, everyone always wants more money. But mostly it's not about the money. The challenges are that there's such a need for so much content, that it takes a lot of energy to create that content, or it creates really different ways of working. And so that's what I think we're starting to crack the code on, what are those different ways of working so that we can generate the quantities of content that are necessary for the current marketplace?

Robert Berkeley 25:34
And give us some insight? What are some of the keys to that particular door?

Meg Graham 25:38
One of the keys that I have discovered is the next generation of our team members?

Robert Berkeley 25:44
Hang on? You're talking about the M word, don't you?

Meg Graham 25:47
I I yeah..

Robert Berkeley 25:48
am fills me with dread.

Meg Graham 25:50
No

Meg Graham 25:50
Millennials

Meg Graham 25:50
It should gofill you with excitement.

Meg Graham 25:52
No, everyone tells me how terribly difficult Millennials are to manage. And they they're from outer space. And they have different brains will tell what are you telling me that they have, they bring a positive thing to work.,

Meg Graham 26:03
I'm telling you, they're quite brilliant. And if you can,

Robert Berkeley 26:06
Ccontroversial,

Meg Graham 26:07
yes, if you can learn to leverage that brilliance, then you will benefit from it. They are amazing. Most of the team members that I have that are coming in as Millennials are so multi talented, our writers absolutely can shoot photography, our art directors are totally comfortable editing videos, they get better and better all the time. Because it's part of what they do in their life, and how they communicate with the people around them.

Robert Berkeley 26:34
People tell me that the millennials are so hard to manage, Megmag,

Meg Graham 26:36
Yyou know, what I find is that millennials are very ambitious and want to move fast. And this is where I found that I have learned a lot in the time that I have been managing all these different teams, right. And luckily, Mary Kay has a pretty significant focus on developing leaders internally. So part of that rotational programme that I went through, I was learning a lot about how to manage people, and how to empower people so that they're set up for success. And what I found is, this is a generation that is built for empowerment. And if you can set them down a path, then they will rock that out so well, so fast, you will be amazed at the outcome of it.

Robert Berkeley 27:20
So what you're saying is, it seems if you try and manage the millennials that we were brought up being managed, and how we were how we were motivated, incentivized, and given whatever degree of autonomy we had, that's not going to work for millennials, that will constrain them. But if you rethink the way you manage and lead them, you're going to get more from them, perhaps from our generation,

Meg Graham 27:39
I think you get a different kind of work from them than you get from any of the generations that come prior. So it's not a knock on the generations prior, I have people who are very mature in their careers and phenomenal contributors. But I find the next generation is totally comfortable with massive amounts of content, and generating that at an incredible speed

Robert Berkeley 28:02
with quality.

Meg Graham 28:03
I would say it's interesting the quality thing is it's debatable. But if you look out in the marketplace, at what's in the marketplace, you know, I'm using social as an example. There's a mix of quality, that hits the market. And so we have to be careful about well, what does quality mean anymore? Because some of what is quality in the marketplace right now is authenticity. And it used to be that oh, well, you know, people wanted to retouch things, and yada, yada, yada. We don't retouch much anymore, because why would we want to see beautiful women that are amazing in their own skin. So we want to be proud of the work that we're doing. And we are finding the way to get there. And the millennials are one of the ways that we are doing that

Robert Berkeley 28:45
This is very inspiring. It's interesting point about quality. I read recently that the Guardian website, did an experiment with videos that they were putting up there that were polished and highly produced, versus videos that were a bit rough around the edges and handheld. And there is sort of like an A B test. And they ended up finding quite decisively actually, the real rough and ready ones were the ones that were more popular, more easily shared approachable, perhaps

Meg Graham 29:11
I think that speaks to humans right now. There's so much there is so much technology around us that we really want authenticity, we long for it.

Robert Berkeley 29:19
So so Meg, I didn't ask you where next because you'll probably tell me you're going to marine biology or who knows. But I will ask you this because you've been I think unusually for the people I've interviewed on Iinside Jjobs podcast, you've been at the same employer, woman and girl and you. I'm just curious, if if that hadn't come up, Mary Kay, if you could have been at any other brand. Where else would you have liked to work?

Meg Graham 29:45
That is hard? That is a tough question. I have to say I feel very lucky because I've landed at this company that has phenomenal values that I that aligned with my values. It's funny because I have thought about organisations like Habitat for Humanity that are out in the world doing phenomenal work in a variety of ways. I anticipate that I might have ended up at a nonprofit somewhere like that. Those are the things even though we've talked all about the creative, and the artwork, and the writing, and all of those things that are fun and inspiring, and we all really enjoy. At the end of the day, the thing that keeps me coming to work at Mary Kay for 17 years is the fact that we have a really big commitment to women and to providing opportunities for women that they wouldn't have. Otherwise, that's what this company was founded on. And it's worth coming to work to make that happen. I'm about to start participating and supporting our annual seminar event, which happens in Dallas for the US Salesforce on an annual basis in July a. And

Robert Berkeley 30:47
it's going to be a big event.

Meg Graham 30:48
It's huge. There are about 40,000 or 50,000 women that come to Dallas. It's a lot and it's super fun. It's so much fun. It is my favourite favourite time in here.

Robert Berkeley 30:59
What are you reading right now?

Meg Graham 31:00
Oh, wow, what am I reading, I am reading many things. I'm reading the Argo,

Robert Berkeley 31:04
Tthese multiple cars that have like three books on the bedside and one downstairs and

Meg Graham 31:09
I used to be really focused and have one book and these days it's all over the place I so I have the art of possibility, which is a business book about how to generate possibility within your organisation very fun. I am reading Cchasing Hillary, the story of the journalist who was first at the Wall Street Journal and then in the New York Times following Hillary Clinton's runs for president so and then I have a third one Oh, I'm behind in some pseudo classics. So I picked up Outlander.

Robert Berkeley 31:39
If anyone wants to get in contact with you make and ask any questions relating to this podcast or anything else about your thoughts on leadership and running creative operations, how best to get hold of you.

Meg Graham 31:52
So easiest ways to get a hold of me are on LinkedIn. I'm on there and I'm regularly aware of what comes in there. And then also just through my email address at work, which is mag. dot grahammme, spelled graham@mkg ra h A m at mK corp.com. So I'm happy to respond to anyone with questions or ideas that they might have on any of these topics too, because I would I love to collaborate with my partners in the In House World in house world.

Robert Berkeley 32:18
Well, you've got a reputation for that Megan. And also, thank you very much for your collaboration on this interview in this podcast. It's been a real pleasure to get to know about you and your career. Thank you. It

Meg Graham 32:278
Thank you. It was a lot of fun for me to Robert and I look forward to talking with many people in the future in the In House Agency in house agency world.