E-mail a friendCathie Black
original airdate December 20, 2007
Dubbed "The First Lady of American Magazines," Cathie Black helms Hearst Magazines—one of the world's largest publishers of monthlies, including such well known titles as Cosmopolitan, Esquire and O, The Oprah Magazine. In more than four decades in the media business, she's credited for the success of USA Today, where she served as president and publisher, and has been on several "most powerful/influential" lists. Her book, Basic Black, explains how women can seize opportunity in the workplace.
Hearst Magazines president gives advice on overcoming roadblocks at work. (2:48)
Cathie Black
Tavis: We continue our "Road to Wealth" series tonight with Cathie Black, president of Hearst magazines. She is responsible for the development and performance of nearly 20 high profile publications, including "Esquire," "Cosmopolitan," "Good Housekeeping," and "Harper's Bazaar." For the past few years, she's been named by "Forbes" as one of the 100 most powerful women. Her new book is called "Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work and in Life," and she joins us tonight from New York. Cathie Black, an honor to have you on the program.
Cathie Black: Thank you, Tavis; it's great to be here.
Tavis: Let me start with what I've been dying to ask you. How does one oversee an empire of magazines that are as disparate as your list is?
Black: Well hopefully you have fantastically talented editors-in-chief, as we do. And so my responsibility is to work with them and through them. I don't choose who's on the cover of "Cosmo," as I shouldn't, but I'm responsible for the financial performance so I work closely with the advertising staff, with the publishers. And on a daily basis, that's really what I do. I'm talking to all of them, maybe not every single day, but that's essentially how it works.
Tavis: So you can't do anything about getting me an "Esquire" cover?
Black: I could try very hard.
Tavis: Just teasing, just teasing, just teasing. (Laughs) I'm just teasing, but you start the book, speaking of teasing, with a very funny story about leaving your - well, I'll let you tell the story - the funny story about your resume. I thought that was hilarious.
Black: Well, one of the reasons that I wrote "Basic Black" was really to create a survival guide for the younger woman starting out in business. But what I've learned already is that it's a refresher course for a lot of people, and now that there's been a lot of exposure to the book, I'm getting emails from men saying, "Why didn't I have this book 20 years ago?"
But the story that you're referring to is one of the first things that happened to me when I was just out of college. (Laughter) I get a phone call - after I had been copying my resume the night before, I get a phone call the next morning from a male voice who says, and he starts - I could hear him reading my resume and I could feel my face turning red, and I thought who is this on the other end of the phone?
And finally he says, "This is Harry Egner. I'm the CFO of Curtis Publishing," which was the parent company of "Holiday" magazine, where I had my first job out of college. I could feel my face turning beet red and he started chuckling, fortunately. Now frankly, I didn't even know what a CFO was back then - chief financial officer.
But he was very kind and what he said is, "Miss Black, let me give you very good advice. When you're copying your resume, don't leave the original on the copying machine." So a lot of "Basic Black" really is about mistakes made, about a very honest approach to one's career. Because I think we do learn by our mistakes. So that's what the whole copying story was all about.
Tavis: Beyond the obvious of leaving your resume on the machine, what did you take away from that experience?
Black: Well what I took away from it is don't be dumb. (Laughter) And cover your tracks. If you're going to be using the office copying machine, you better be careful. But on the other hand, the positive side of that was that my boss had quit after I had been there for about a year, a year and a half, and I really felt that I was ready to kind of move up the food chain, if you will. So part of it is just always kind of having that DNA in you that says, "I want to go to the next level."
Tavis: How ambitious were you when you started, and what do you say to young persons now who are as ambitious now, perhaps as you were back then?
Black: Well I think I have the DNA that has the drive and the ambition gene in it. Not everybody does. But for those people who really do have it, I think first of all you want to really do a good job at what you are doing. By that I mean you don't want to be in your boss' cubicle or your boss' office every third Monday saying, "What's next, what's next?"
You've got to figure out with a little maturity that there's a time when you really begin trying to advance your career. But I think you need to sit down with your immediate supervisor and kind of lay out your goals for the year ahead. But there is nothing wrong with saying to your supervisor, "I really - I want to move ahead. I'm very ambitious. I want to learn this job, I want to do it as well as I possibly can, but I also want to look to the next job, too." And that's okay to share that information.
Tavis: Did you back then - everybody has a different way of doing things; I'm curious about yours. Did you back then have a five-year, 10-year, 15, 20-year career plan?
Black: Not exactly. Especially for women of my generation, and we were kind of the first ones to be with any sort of numbers, that we were really the first ones who started breaking down some of those barriers. So I think for a lot of women certainly of my generation, we got that first job and we kind of looked to the next job.
And then we got the next job, and we kind of looked to the next job. So I can't honestly say that at 22 or 23 or 24 I said, "I want to be president of Hearst magazines when I'm a full-fledged adult." But I did know that I liked what I did, I liked the media industry. So I figured that this was really a place where I was going to make a contribution.
So I think for women, it's much more sequential. You get to this level, then you go to the next level, then you go to the next level. It's not like you sort of sit back at 22 and say, "I'm going to be the president of Hearst magazines."
Tavis: Have you always liked magazines? Has that been the only thing you've ever wanted to do? Or did you detour out of the business and come back into it once or twice?
Black: Well, I detoured out of the business and came back to it once or twice. But as a kid, we own "Seventeen" magazine in our company today, we also have "Cosmo Girl," we own "Teen" magazine. As a kid in my bedroom, in my school, we were always ripping those pages out of "Seventeen," saying this is what I want to look like, or here's a boy question that I want an answer to.
So I think that we all grew up with that and it's why I've always loved magazines. But I also spent eight very important years at "USA Today." I was first president and then publisher of the newspaper, part of the start-up team of it. And then I also ran a trade association that represents all of the newspapers in the country called NAA. So I've had some different experiences, but they have all been within the media context.
Tavis: In the book, there are three questions specifically that you suggest that people ask themselves, and I want to throw them at you and get your take on them in brief. The first is what three problems would you like to fix at your job? You challenge folk to wrestle with that question of three things at their job they'd like to fix.
Black: Well first of all what I mean by that is you always want to take your boss solutions. When you think about the problems, you don't want to go into anybody's office and say, "I've seen this, this, and this, and they're all problems." You want to think about that with perhaps with other team members and say, "All right, how could we solve this?"
Part of any job is also making your boss look good. So if you can bring solutions, that's going to really help you. They're going to think of you as this is really a person that can help me. The other thing that I believe very strongly in is that you really have to define success for yourself, whether as a man or as woman, but especially for women.
It's not about what everybody expects of you. It's not what perhaps your parents said, it may not be what your spouse or your partner, girlfriend, colleague, whatever. It's how you feel when you look in the mirror. Oprah has a phrase, which is, "Live your best life." And I think that really resonates with me. It is what do you want to do?
And also, you can say no. When you're on the outside looking in, it's okay to say no. You can say no to a transfer. You can say no to additional responsibility, if it's something that you really don't want. You take a little chance if you say no, but again, you have to be true to yourself.
Tavis: Meritocracy, as you certainly well know, is not a word that is often taken seriously inside of corporate America, and I raise that, Cathie Black, because I wonder what you'd say to persons watching right now who hear you when you say that part of succeeding and progressing is making your boss look good.
But what happens when you know you're doing the work and these ideas are yours, and because there really is no meritocracy in your workplace, you don't get the credit for the good stuff you come up with and therefore, it makes it difficult to answer the second question which you challenge folk to wrestle with, which is how much farther up the ladder do you see yourself in two or five years.
Black: Well, that goes back to your question about did I have a one-year plan or a two-year plan. Again, it's all about knowing who you are and what you are. What kind of an environment do you want to work in? If you're spending seven, eight, nine, 10 hours in an office or in a situation, you want to make sure that it's a place where you really can feel fulfilled and where you can move ahead.
I've said to people over the years - I've been a role model and a mentor for many young women. There are times when you hit a roadblock. There are times when you hit a wall. What I want to say is, all right, you really have two simple choices. You can sit there and be angry or be disappointed or become nasty if it's not going to work out for you, or you say, "You know what? I've hit a wall here. It's time for me to polish up my resume, it's time for me to start networking, it's time for me to really evaluate am I really unhappy here, and if so, are the problems mine or are the problems the company or the product," or whatever your responsibility is.
So I always like to say pick yourself up by your bootstraps, and move on and find a new situation. I really believe - we only come this way one time. So make the most and make the best of those hours that you put in during the day. And another theme that I develop in "Basic Black," which is something that has really kind of been in my blood forever, and that is you want to enjoy the rest of your life as well.
I call it the 360-degree life, and I think this is so important to women and men. We put eight, 10, 12 hours into our jobs, but we also have to feed the other side of our life. If you want children, if you want to be married, what kind of responsibility do you want? But do you take time off to enjoy what you have worked so hard for?
So I say take your vacations. Enjoy your evenings out. Go to the movies. Feel culture. Because if you kind of feed that side of your life, spend the time with your children and your family and your friends and to some extent your associates. Because if you remove yourself from your office situation, then you feel more refreshed when you come back to it. So I want to say, like, if you want to grab a big bite, go for it, but make sure that both parts of your life really feel fulfilled.
Tavis: It's a perfect place to end our conversation. I know those watching are saying, "But, Tavis, you said that there are three questions she said we had to wrestle with. You only gave us two." I know. Because the third one you can find when you pick up the book, (laughter) called "Basic Black." "Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work and in Life," the new book by the president of Hearst magazines - that would be Cathie Black. Cathie Black, nice to have you on. All the best to you.
Black: You bet, thank you.
Tavis: My pleasure.
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