Life after a corporate career: an adman’s story

Entrepreneur Antony Young has tips for those stepping off the corporate treadmill.

By Fiona Rotherham - appeared in nbr.co.nz - 9 March 2021

Media agency veteran Antony Young left New Zealand in 1995 to oversee media for Saatchi & Saatchi in Asia, based in Hong Kong, and spent 20 years in media including stints at Zenith Optimedia in Asia, the UK and New York, and later as North American CEO for Mindshare and then CEO for Water Cooler Group in New York.

Five years ago he decided it was time for he and his wife Nancy and their three children to return to New Zealand, swapping Manhattan for a blueberry farm in Levin. He recently posted an article, When work isn’t work, about his experiences returning home. He wrote work-life balance had been impossible to achieve working in the “highly unforgiving advertising industry in New York. “There wasn’t a weekend that I wasn’t tapping away at my laptop; school concerts I didn’t sneak a peek at my phone. My crazy idea of a vacation involved reading business books, oh, that’s when I wasn’t shushing the kids in the car to join an important business call.”

Young was surprised at the huge reaction to his article, with many other expats sharing similar stories with him and others looking to shed the corporate life asking for advice as they feel they’re too young to retire. As he wrote in his article: suddenly you have time on your hands even with the long overseas trip you have planned post-Covid. “Realistically how many gourmet dining experiences, island hopping cruises, road trips or golf tours can you endure before it all gets a bit tedious? What’s more the question you dread most is: ‘so what are you up to these days?’,” he says.

These days, the 56-year-old wears many hats: co-founder of Wellington social media company, The Media Lab (formerly The Digital Café); a blueberry farmer; an author (of three marketing books); a documentary film maker (executive producer and writer on the To The Line documentary, which followed local Kiwi high schoolers’ hopes of playing basketball in the US); chair of the Horowhenua New Zealand Trust; investor; and director.

On his return to New Zealand, Young met a friend and shared some of his experiences helping mates with small businesses with social media, and that friend introduced him to Matt McNeil, former managing director at media agency OMD. They wrote a business plan around McNeil’s kitchen table and the Wellington-based company launched in 2016 with the idea of providing real-world experience to marketing students while still at university. The Media Lab is forecast to hit $4 million in turnover this financial year and has more than 100 clients and 12 staff.

You had a high-flying media career – what made you swap New York for Levin? At some point, every Kiwi that works internationally wants to come home. We originally went overseas for our two years of OE. It ended up being 20 years and so we decided it was definitely time to come home. The industry is a tough industry overseas and, in New York, it’s a pretty unforgiving town and we felt, ‘okay, let’s last as long as we can and get as far as I’m able to, careerwise, and then we’ve done our bit, let’s leave’.

You wear a number of hats these days. How do you have time? When you step off the corporate treadmill you don’t really slow down, you just start to vary the things that you do. When you are in that corporate career, you really have one job and that is the career. Coming back, we just found we had more time and more opportunity to look for other things that would interest us. I’ve continued to learn and grow and I don’t miss that career. I enjoyed the people that I worked with but we’re discovering this whole new life – the second act in New Zealand.

Tell us about the social media business that you co-founded? The opportunity came when I was doing some lecturing at Victoria University at the marketing school. I did a lecture and students came up after and said ‘that was all quite interesting but what we really want to know is how do we get a job in marketing and advertising?’. It really struck me that [for] marketing students, particularly in Wellington, when a lot of the advertising industry has floated up north to Auckland, there aren’t a lot of opportunities. So we came up with the idea of The Media Lab as a way of giving paid work experience for marketing students who are studying for their degree. We focused on social media because we knew that’s where there was [not only] a big demand and interest from a lot of businesses but also that those students could really bring something to the party and excel. We started that business four and a half years ago and it has exploded. It has been great because we feel like we are putting something back into our industry.

What advice do you have for others looking to shed a corporate career? There are clearly a lot of Kiwi expats that are returning to New Zealand and those that are here in successful jobs are at some point looking to exit. I discovered a whole journey myself and shared that and it seemed to resonate with people.

The first thing is, when you leave your industry look for opportunities and not a job. Quite often we all get into our careers, make some decisions early on and, before we know it, we’ve been in that business for 30 years. I certainly did. So wanting to do new endeavours I found all these skills that I didn’t think I had and you can apply those to new opportunities. Look for something you haven’t been involved in because you’re going to grow and enjoy it.

The second thing that makes a lot of sense is to have a portfolio of roles instead of having one full-time job. You’ve got the luxury to be able to do multiple things at the same time, and that’s where I’ve had a lot of satisfaction. We have our business that we operate and founded and that’s a good steady income and that business is growing, but then I learned the whole new world of documentary making for the first time when that opportunity came up and loved that we created a documentary, we got it to air and we got it paid for. I learned a lot more about my creative side in that world. And we have a blueberry farm where we love being outside. It’s the lifestyle that we hoped for. 

The last thing I found that has worked well in these endeavours is to work with a partner. When you get into the outside world, you have skills and I’ve just found really smart people that I’ve clicked with. When you get to set up business on your own, it’s quite lonely and difficult to get momentum. Finding a partner to work with and join forces with has really helped me to achieve a lot and to be able to do a number of things.

How did you get the funds to make a basketball documentary? Funding is incredibly difficult in documentaries. We initially pitched the production to NZ On Air and Te Māngai Pāho but got no traction with them. We were first-time documentary makers and for those funds, you are competing with the best producers in the country who have a proven track record in the television industry. We went to Basketball New Zealand, they loved the idea but the sport has very limited to no funds. 

We found a team that we wanted to cover and the season was starting, so we had to make a decision to go ahead with the hope of getting the funding later. Everyone who knows something about TV production advised us not to do this! By chance I learnt that the then head of content and production at TV3, Andrew Shusterman was going to be at a Wellington restaurant. I went to the restaurant, tapped him on the shoulder and pitched him our documentary while he was about to order his meal! 

He politely listened, and said he liked the idea and invited us to meet with his head of programming and production. We then cut a teaser, posted it on Facebook, and asked the basketball community to share it to show TV3 how much interest there would be for the doco. It got over 100,000 views, and nearly 2000 shares, likes and comments. TV3 then agreed to commit to airing it, when we finally completed production. On that basis, we were able to secure two sponsors – Rebel Sport and Toyota – to back it and pay for the production. We created additional social video content that added to the appeal and value they received. We also agreed a revenue share deal with the TV network and the show aired July 12 2020.

Has the shift back to NZ worked for you financially or is that not the point? I like to think all that hard work for my career helped to build up a little bit of a nest egg. What I have focused on [in New Zealand] is less about making money and more about doing things that I would get a lot of reward from personally and experience.

Does that mean you’re as ambitious with The Media Lab as perhaps a younger entrepreneur might be? There’s a lot of reward for having a business – it’s creating jobs and starting something from scratch when nothing exists in the marketplace, and being in charge of your own destiny. And if it succeeds, terrific. We are ambitious. If it fails, it is on us. We don’t have any kind of excuse. When you’re sitting in that corner office, there are so many things that are out of your control despite being an executive; but having your own business it’s all on you. And that’s rewarding and I’ve loved that part of what we are doing right now.