Money Talks: Joan Withers - 'The expectation for most women was you stay at home'

Senior business leader Joan Withers talked to Liam Dann for the Money Talks podcast. Photo / Dean Purcell

"Well if I really wanted to be very rich I should have done some things differently," says business leader Joan Withers.

It's a surprising statement from a woman whose corporate success puts her in an elite group of executives and company directors.

But talking on the Money Talks podcast, Withers reflects on her attitude to wealth and the choices she made in her career.

She always wanted to be successful - and comfortable - but money for its own sake was never the goal.

Given her starting point - leaving school at 16, getting married at 19 and becoming a mum on her 21st birthday - she certainly doesn't take success for granted.

"The expectation for most women was you stay at home, have a few more children and maybe, when the children headed off to high school, you'd think about heading back to the workforce."

Frustrated with life as a housewife in the 1970s, she took on a part-time sales job at the local newspaper which started her on a path to the top.

In 2009 she ended her management career - as CEO of media giant Fairfax NZ.

From there she moved to high profile governance roles and is currently chair of The Warehouse Group and a director of ANZ NZ, Origin Energy and Sky TV.

She puts a good part of her career success down to working hard and never saying no to an opportunity.

The "biggest catalyst" for her career was grabbing the opportunity to do a master's in Business Administration degree (MBA) her mid-30s, she says.

MBAs were relatively rare back then, she says.

So it helped put her at the next level and set her up with the financial skills to handle the top tier of business management and governance.

"The financial management, understanding the imperatives in a business case. How you do a net present value analysis, just what a discounted cash flow means," she says.

"That was just one of the papers you do but for me that was the most profound and I still use that stuff every day of the week."

But looking back at her career Withers says her one regret might be that she never focused on the entrepreneurial side of things.

"I did the executive MBA so there's not a lot of focus on entrepreneurialism," Withers says.

"If I've got a regret it's that I didn't think harder about being an entrepreneur at any stage of my career."

She was very much following the classical corporate career path - to CEO and on into governance.

"That's probably the element of my career that I look back on and think, well if I really wanted to be really rich I could have done some things differently."

But while the challenge of that kind of business success might appeal, making money has never been the goal in itself, she says.

"I've never wanted to be really rich," she says.

"What I wanted was things that made me feel good."

A nice house, a nice car, a rural lifestyle "and not having to think twice about having the right clothes to wear" were all important, Withers says.

"But aspirations beyond that? I was never going to be a Graeme Hart."

While she might not have Hart's appetite for risk or debt, Withers says she definitely isn't risk averse, describing her investment approach as balanced.

Politically she isn't one for extremes either.

She praises the work that the previous National Government did reducing New Zealand's debt levels following the GFC and Christchurch quakes.

"It was a totally different scenario when Covid hit," Withers says.

Give or take a few of this Government's spending decisions she believes the fiscal response, and that of our central bank, was warranted.

Even with the new borrowing the big problem in New Zealand was household debt, not the public debt, she says.

The combination was worryingly high and reducing it was a challenge.

"I think one of the things the Government is endeavouring to do, well it talks a lot about it, is reducing inequality," she says. "And I think the way to do that is by investing more in education."

She references the work Capital, of French economist Thomas Piketty (the other Money Talks guest to do that was Chloe Swarbrick.)

"He talks about the diffusion of knowledge as being the only way to reduce inequality," Withers says.

"And it looks at the moment that that's going totally in the wrong direction and I worry deeply about the social implications of that happening."

Lack of financial literacy is another big problem for New Zealand, she says.

There's wasn't always a good understanding that for the Government to pay for things like health and education it needs income.

"And that income has to come largely from successful businesses," she says.

"The other side of it is: I don't mind paying 39 cents marginal tax rate at all, if that money is being deployed where it needs to be deployed."

Health, education and a more focused approach to social issues including more intervention in the early years to get young people on the right track.

"It's a matter of showing children a pathway and showing them some aspiration.

"Unless we make sure we don't get those social divides widening even further, we're all facing a very tenuous future," she says.

"That would be my overarching strategy if I was in government."

Was that ever an option?

"I would have loved to have done it," Withers says. "But my husband would have divorced me."

Joking aside Withers describes her relationship with her husband - dating back to her teens - as her "biggest success without any doubt".

"Everyone describes him as a my rock and he really is. I am incredibly lucky."

Money Talks is a podcast run by the NZ Herald. It isn't about personal finance and isn't about economics - it's just well-known New Zealanders talking about money and sharing some stories about the impact it's had on their lives and how it has shaped them.

Money Talks is available on IHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes come out every second Wednesday.

You can find more New Zealand Herald podcasts at nzherald.co.nz/podcasts or on IHeartRadio.