I constantly fail but I'm fine with that and I think that overlays into a work environment
which is if you don't fail on some of your KPIs the view is that you have not tried hard
Early in my career I was very good at getting to the absolute bottom dollar but I certainly
learnt early on if you screw to the bottom dollar that comes back to bite you as the
contract goes on.
Hi I'm Sally Patton, editor of BOSS from the Australian Financial Review and welcome to
15 Minutes with the BOSS, a podcast about success and failure and everything in between
and along the way we're hoping to get some great advice from our leaders.
My guest today is Susan Wheeldon, the country manager for Airbnb in Australia and New Zealand.
Hi Susan, lovely to see you today.
Likewise, thanks for having me Sally.
Now Susan, you're the country director of Airbnb in Australia and New Zealand.
Australia and New Zealand I believe are one of the biggest markets for Airbnb globally,
It is, Aussies love to travel so quite fortunate to be based in a country where we spend a
good amount of money and time getting out and about.
Excellent, I guess you're fairly busy helping us all to do that in that case.
So thank you so much for allowing us to spend 15 minutes with you.
Time is precious, we're on the clock, it starts now.
Okay, my first question is, what does your morning routine look like?
What time do you get up?
What do you do when you get up?
I do not like mornings so I will push back getting back as late as possible but with
two children who have to get to school there is a point where you two have to get up.
So what time would that be?
That's at seven, I get up at the same time that they get up and then I check the emails,
obviously global business, what's coming overnight, what's the media report saying
and then a calendar check just to see if anything shifted throughout the day and then it's dropped
the kids to school and into the office.
So do you have breakfast at some point during this caper?
My breakfast is normally the leftover of the children's breakfast and it's normally as
we're running out the door.
How old are the kids?
Do you find mornings particularly chaotic with kids that age?
I think I learnt this from being one of four children, we're very structured and so they're
very self-sufficient.
So they do a lot of things themselves so everyone kind of knows what they need to do to get
to the door to get out on time.
So do you find time to exercise at all or is that something that just gets pushed to
the weekend or you don't do it at all or how does that work?
I just actually finished a half marathon in Queenstown so I do manage to get some exercise
but it's very intermittent.
So for me when I travel because I don't have the children so it just allows a little bit
more time and frankly that's the only time I get up early because jet lag doesn't give
So I've had some beautiful runs at five o'clock in the morning through Hyde Park in London
where no one else is there purely because I can't sleep.
But on the whole I'm not a regular I would like to be but it's just really hard to find
Tell me about a pivotal moment in your career that shaped you as a leader or somehow changed
the trajectory of your career.
So the one that changed the trajectory of my career was actually a random phone call
while I was on Matlave.
I picked up the phone and they said hello it's someone from Google and I was like I've
And they said no no we found your CV through your MBA program we'd like to have a chat
to you about a role and my immediate response was I'm not looking for a job thank you.
They said what the job was I said that's to Junior and I effectively hung up on them.
And where were you working at the time?
I was on Matlave from Groupon so e-commerce space and then they called back two weeks
later and said actually we've got a more senior role and that we'd like you to interview
before and that time I didn't hang up on them and obviously went through the interview process
and that for me was such a significant shift because prior to that I had worked in retail
in terms of AMP and then Groupon which was effectively e-commerce and then I had been
in law firms and I'd been in an airline.
And so this was the first move into that tech space and I never would have thought that
I could have worked at Google I didn't have a tech background I just assumed that would
be engineering type roles.
So when they called a second time they offered the role of industry head which was a more
senior role and that role I thoroughly enjoyed and was such a great brand to work for not
just because of the work in Australia but the access to what they were doing globally
in terms of innovation in the health space or the self-driving cars it was just to have
access to the forefront of what the future might look like was something that I think
I'd struggled to not work in a tech company now because that was something that I found
So what did you learn most at Google?
I learned that you have to simplify things to explain them.
Google is a really complicated technological solution and if I can't understand it I certainly
can't get someone who is at a board level to understand why they might need to do it.
So for me the ability to be able to simplify to explain what you do and why someone else
should do that that was probably the biggest takeaway for me.
Okay next question.
What is the best piece of career advice you've ever been given?
I don't think it's a piece of advice.
I actually think that my career is a lot down to do with my dad and it was watching how
he operated and what he did and that was from us working with him from definitely below
the legal employment age but his ability to train anyone to do anything, his compassion
for everyone that he worked for, the importance of hard work and then the most important thing
I learned from him is he started a business when I was about 15 and it was a really measured
risk but it was that measured risk which got the reward and he strategically waited that
long to be in a position that if it all went awfully wrong you know we would all kind of
still be okay and so I think it was just watching him go through that journey that has been
a lot of the learnings that I have taken.
So would you consider yourself to be someone who takes measured risks, risks but only measured
Yes because I think there is bad risk but I look at moving from AMP which was a well
established blue chip organisation to Groupon which was a start-up, it was the fastest Forbes
had touted as the fastest growing start-up of all time.
That was definitely a risk but it was one that at the time I thought matching retail
and e-commerce was a really strong set that wasn't that common so it kind of gave you
end to end in the retail journey.
So I think all of those risks do definitely pay off as long as they've been considered.
Susan, that is the end of our first section.
We're going to take a short break and when we come back we're going to open the Chatterbox.
So Susan, welcome back to 15 minutes with the boss.
You are, as I've mentioned before, the country director of Airbnb for Australia and New Zealand.
Now, this is our super fun section called the Chatterbox.
So Susan, what did you think of the music?
I actually loved it and to know that it's sourced in-house is amazing.
Now Susan, in front of you, you see this beautiful brown shiny box inside which are 20 questions
all folded up on bits of paper.
I'd like you to pick out a few of them which I will then of course ask you to answer.
Please start foraging.
Tell me about a time when you failed at something.
How did you recover and what did you learn?
I fail all the time.
I like to do two or three courses a year and I'm awful at all of them.
So adult ballet, digital photography, learning to make unicorn cupcakes.
Also all non-work courses.
All non-work courses and I am awful at all of them.
No skills in any of them.
But I love the process and I love the enjoyment.
So I think for me, I constantly fail but I'm fine with that.
And I think that overlays into a work environment which is particularly at Google.
If you don't fail on some of your KPIs, the view is that you have not tried hard enough.
And so for me, failure has just always been an accepted part of if you want to try something,
if you want to take some of that risk, there is going to be a failure rate.
But as long as you've learned from that and been able to get up and keep moving forward,
that's kind of where the benefit is.
And I think for me, that's the culture that I hope to embed anywhere that I'm fortunate enough to work,
which is I'm super grateful if you have the courage to go and try something.
I want to make sure you feel supported if it doesn't work because I know I've had the benefit
of people supporting me when things have not gone how they should have gone.
Oh, that's interesting. So you love to fail.
I guess I reframe it as it's not a fail.
It's I've still learnt.
So I may not have got to the outcome I wanted.
I can make a better unicorn cupcake today than I could before the course.
You may not think it looks like a unicorn, but it's marginally better.
And I think that means the only way you get really great innovation is everyone needs to be coming up with ideas
and they need to be given the space in order to be able to have a go at executing them
with the knowledge that they're not all going to work.
OK, interesting. Right. Next question. Start fishing.
OK, who is the best negotiator you've ever met?
Oh, gosh, my children are particularly good.
I grew up in a family of negotiators.
So it's a wielding trait that my mum will quite often tease the rest of us about.
So I grew up in somewhere called Morven, which is about eight hours inland from Brisbane.
And that has a current population of around about 160 people.
You go to auction, you buy cattle, you auction for grains.
Nothing is a set price. Everything is either traded or by negotiation.
And so I think that's always just kind of been ingrained.
So what then is a secret to negotiating well?
I actually think you need to genuinely care about the people that you're partnering with.
I actually like getting to know the people that you'll be doing work with.
You can understand what their motivations are and what might be important to them,
because then it's also never about the price, it's all about all of the other things that go in.
So if it's someone who's trying to exit a business, do they not want the three-year lockup?
Do they want equity?
If you can work out what they're trying to do in the next couple of years of their life,
it may actually serve your interests better to give them what they want and cost you less.
OK, so it's really about the price.
I don't think it's the number. I think it's about value.
So what is the perceived value that the other person is getting from the transaction?
So if you can understand what someone's motivations is and what they see as value in the deal,
you can then structure it in a way that has more appeal to them,
that may actually let you do a price that is reduced to what you would have been prepared to pay.
Or does it mean that you can just sell them the deal at the price that you want,
because you can pull out where the value to them might lie?
I think you can do it either way.
So sometimes reducing the price makes them feel like they've gotten more.
And if you've been able to get more out of the contract,
so let's say you've got a five-year and you've managed to add on a five-year extension,
or let's say you've managed to put in retail land a turnover clause in there,
or instead of getting 3.5% increase, you've managed to do a CPI,
which would be a killer these days, plus a 2% increase.
And so it may be that you still hold your price,
but you've got a better price longer term than what kind of the flat price is on day one.
So I think it's about looking at all aspects.
And I think from my years in the law firm,
probably what I learnt best is there's the price in the contract and there's all the terms.
And those terms are actually where some of the real value is
in terms of how the contract is actually delivered
and the benefits that it can give to potentially either side.
But you've still got to negotiate the terms, right?
So that's just where the value is written.
But you'll quite often find someone may not have very much interest in the terms or in the details.
They're fixated on this one thing because that is what's important to them.
So if you can give them that one thing, whatever that may be,
the rest kind of falls away and you can get your win in those other things.
And it's not to the detriment of them.
So are you always careful to make sure that no one is a big loser in any negotiation that you do?
I think early in my career, that was probably one of the areas where I had failed.
Early in my career, and perhaps because of that family negotiating background,
I was very good at getting to the absolute bottom dollar.
And what I realised is it's not good for the relationship.
It creates far more issues longer term.
And so people need to feel like they've got a good deal.
And you also need to have got a good deal because that's the business that you're in.
But I certainly learnt early on if you screw to the bottom dollar,
that comes back to bite you as the contract goes on.
Oh, that's interesting.
So making sure that both parties can walk out with their head held high
and with thinking they've gained something is absolutely the way to go longer term.
Because those people also have to go and report back to their business
and they want to be seen to we've had a win, we've got this.
And if they can't go and do that, that's going to cause them issues as well.
And no good for your longer term relationship.
100%. And that means that they will find ways to try and exit the contract.
They'll find ways to try and cut corners on the contract.
They'll prioritise other customers where they've got better contractual terms with.
And so it plays out negatively across a very long period of time.
Okay, interesting.
Okay, next question. Start foraging.
My pet hate is when you've seen the 12th or 13th email thread
on something that has taken people six or seven hours of back and forth
that would have been done in a five minute phone call can be really frustrating.
So do you tell people in your team not to CC you?
You don't have a rule that says I don't want to be CC'd on anything?
No, because the problem is then you miss things.
So you do have to be on it.
But my preference is someone picks up the phone
and we can have a far more robust conversation
and get to an outcome in a portion of the time.
And it saves everyone's inbox.
And so for me, I kind of try and train that behaviour by just picking up the phone.
So if you send the email, I will just call you and say,
hey, have you got two minutes to talk about this?
And is there a correlation between people who are prepared to use the phone and their age?
Are younger people less likely to use the phone?
There's a little bit of that.
But I also think it's just about, I think it doesn't matter what your age.
Once you realise how much more efficient that can potentially be,
it just makes more sense to do that.
So that ends our section called The Chatterbox.
Now, there's just one last question which we ask everybody.
And that is, if you had 12 months off, unencumbered,
you could do whatever you wanted.
With whomever you wanted, what would you do?
So on the learning journey that I spoke about earlier,
I would just love to take a year off and learn tennis and golf
and learn how to cook pasta in Italy and just have a total year of decompression.
And I think part of the reason why I would enjoy that is I think the ability to percolate on,
you know, we have all these ideas sitting in the back of your brain that are half formed,
but you don't ever have quite the amount of time just to reflect and think,
what would I like to do?
Or if there's a business that I would like to build, what would that look like?
And do you have ideas about what you sort of would do?
For me, there's a lot of interest, I think, in the AI and tech space
and how that can be used to simplify people's lives or the things that they don't enjoy doing.
And so for me, it's more about what are the frustrations that I have?
And if there was something that could solve that, what would that look like?
OK. And just one last thing on the hobbies and the things that you want to learn.
It seems to me that all the courses that you take are all very sort of physical or hands-on
and nothing to do with using the brain in a very sort of work sort of sense.
Are you really trying to learn to use your hands
and have a complete break from your day job when you do these courses?
For me, I think because I grew up in the country and, you know, you were very active
and in an office-based role, you're far more sedentary.
And so for me, I think a lot of those, a lot of them are food-based.
So I feel like a lot of them is working off the calories that I'm eating by doing the cake class.
So yeah, I think for me, it's almost a form of meditation as well.
If you're not thinking about anything other than this task at hand
and you don't have the ability to think about, do I need to get that business case out today?
What's happening in the media with that issue tomorrow?
And then at the end of the day, you're slightly better at a whole marginal range of non-useful skill sets.
Like cake making.
Like cake making. But my children enjoy that.
That's a win for everyone.
And that is our 15 minutes up.
Susan, it's been great chatting with you.
I've loved your advice about failure and the fact that if you don't fail your KPIs, you're just not trying hard enough.
I also love your attitude towards negotiating and the fact that if you screw someone down to the last possible dollar,
the chance of that contract being honoured in the way that you think is fairly slim.
And I so hope that one day you get to spend that year decompressing
and that you get to learn the art of unicorn cupcakes.
Because let's face it, who doesn't want to be able to bake a unicorn cupcake?
So Susan, thank you so much for allowing us to spend 15 minutes with the boss.
Thank you for your time. I've absolutely loved it.
And thank you to everyone for listening.
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This podcast was hosted by me, Sally Patton, produced and edited by Lapfan,
our theme is by Alex Gow, and our executive producer is Fiona Buffini.