Norah Casey shares the secrets of her success, over a nice lunch
IF you could bottle the essence of entrepreneur, Norah Casey, you wouldn’t need to pitch it to a room of fire-breathing dragons: success would be guaranteed.
As is obvious since Casey became a household face as an investor on The Dragon’s Den and as a mentor on Norah’s Traveller’s Academy, she doesn’t do things by halves. Casey, who is also a publisher, author and television presenter, is on another mission: to inspire women to be the best they can be.
She is sharing the secrets of her success at a series of networking lunches that begin in Cork on Friday.
“I’ve learned some things through the harshest teachers, adversity or failure, and I think if I knew then what I know now I’d have been grateful if someone had imparted that knowledge to me,” Casey says.
“Most people who go to those lunches come with the in-tray — the fight with the mother-in-law, the sick kids — so I try to declutter their brains. I say ‘give me your head and I promise you’ll walk away a different person’. I think it’s nice to share with women, who are on their way up the career ladder, a few hints on how they can get on in life and in the corporate world.”
The topic of the first working lunch is ‘to know your worth’. Casey says this didn’t come easy to her.
“It’s taken my lifetime to understand my worth. Women grow up in an environment where money is often a dirty word. I regularly talk to women who are starting their own businesses, and they tell me they’re working hard and giving up a lot of time. Then, they’ll say they’re not in it for the money. I ask, ‘Why on earth are you doing it?’, and they say ‘Ah, I just love it’. It clarifies your thinking if you can sell your product.”
Upstaged by Charlie the horse @Killarney_Music Launch and @RingOfKerryLamb @TangneyTours @KerryTIO @TreyvaudsResto pic.twitter.com/nj8dy5YkVE
— Norah Casey (@NorahCasey) March 25, 2015
Women in the corporate sphere has been a buzz topic in the last few years, with books such as Lean In, by Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, attracting praise and derision in equal measure.
“I’m not a fan of Lean In at all. If it was as simple as putting your back into the wind to get there, we’d all have gotten there a lot quicker. It kind of nullifies the complexity of organisational issues and systematic gender inequality.”
However, Casey has finally been convinced of the idea of gender quotas on boards, despite her previous fears that this could be seen as tokenism.
“Collectively, women also need to know their worth. We need more women on boards, because better boards mean better business. When women are involved at the head of businesses, they’re economically more successful — McKinsey did a report which showed over 50% of businesses had higher profitability when they had gender balance, compared to those which didn’t. There are higher returns on equity. It just makes sense,” she says.
Although Casey has been a high-achiever in the corporate world, she says success can be a more subtle and personal concept.
“What’s important is that people fulfil their potential. It’s a moral imperative. When my husband, Richard, died [in 2011], I found it hard to live life fully. I just endured for the first year.
“The permission I gave myself was to live for all the Richards who are taken without fulfilling their potential. If you are fit and healthy, you owe it to those people who aren’t to grab life and live it to the full,” Casey says.
Celebrating the great women @Intel_IRL today @shleahy and Ann Marie Holmes #MakeItHappen pic.twitter.com/RCzvTnm3t6
— Norah Casey (@NorahCasey) March 18, 2015
It is hardly a revelation that lack of confidence is an issue for women. But Casey says women can overcome this.
“It’s a truism that in the workplace a man will go for it when he’s 85% and a woman who’s 100% ready will feel she’s not good enough. Lack of confidence is the one thing that holds them back, but it comes with mentorship and role models. Look at Michael O’Leary, the great business leaders, they’re brimming with confidence. The positivity overrides almost everything else.”
Casey says that how women dress and present themselves in business can also build their confidence.
“It’s not about being attractive, but presenting yourself in a way that makes people take you seriously. Sometimes, women don’t understand that the clothing, the outside message, does count. Men don’t have that problem, because once they put on a suit they’re fairly anonymous, apart from their tie.”
But isn’t appearance just an added pressure for women, putting on make-up while doing the lunchboxes, getting dolled up and donning heels when they may have been up all night with a puking toddler? Wouldn’t it be nice to have the power of a Mark Zuckerberg and turn up at the office in a hoodie and jeans, without causing a stir?
“I was that soldier,” says Casey. “I don’t think many people can pull off the Mark Zuckerberg look, to be honest. Most men in business conform. The reality is that if a woman doesn’t look good, then she doesn’t feel good. Dress is important in that context; not looking uber-sleek, but feeling comfortable, having the right clothes on for the situation you’re in.”
The constant quest for perfection is one of women’s worst enemies and Casey emphasises the importance of failure in achieving success.
“I grew up in a corporate environment where you didn’t fail, but now I’ve gone through ten years where, if you haven’t failed, you’re nothing. In our personal lives, we’re so hard on ourselves that it can be hard to talk about mistakes.
“Part of my growing-up — by which I mean in adulthood, not teenage years — has been accepting that you’re going to make mistakes, that you’re not always going to be brilliant at everything we set out to do. That we’re all flawed human beings,” Casey says.
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