Amy Brown wears several different hats.  At only 26, she’s the General Manager of a company, wife, part-time band manager, occasional sav drinker and her latest endeavour sees her becoming a business owner!  We talked to Amy about her successes and how she maintains that elusive work/life balance.

Tell us briefly about what you do.  How did you get to where you are?
I run a company called Hema Maps NZ Ltd. We are the NZ subsidiary of Hema Maps Australia Pty.  We are a travel publisher and wholesaler of travel related products. Alongside our own brand of maps, guides and travel products we source products for the NZ market from all over the world....world globes from the US, Berlitz language learning products from Singapore, Michelin maps from the UK and so on.

I started at Hema in 2003 after a failed attempt at university, I found myself too hands-on to cope with a ‘boring’ business degree for three years and much preferred the notion of ‘working my way up’. I started in Customer Service and was promoted to Office Manager, Key Accounts Manager and then to General Manager in January 2009.

What does a typical day in your professional life involve?
A typical day! What’s that? Having quite a small team I wear a lot of different hats so my days are rarely the same, which can be exciting but frustrating too.  I try to spend as much time in the office as possible between calling on major account customers and other meetings plus the fair amount of travelling required. I am in Australia about 6 times a year, Asia once and even Frankfurt this year! I also have to travel within NZ....but I do find the time to check Facebook everyday!

What do you enjoy most about your job?
I thought about this question for quite awhile as sometimes you tend to get bogged down in your job so much you forget why you are doing it! I guess I am rather bossy, organised and opinionated so being the boss suits me even with the challenges I face at this level. I really enjoy people and pulling in great sales.  When it comes down to it I am a salesperson at heart and nothing gets my blood pumping like securing a really awesome sale....oh and I still can’t quite get over having a company car, I love my Outlander!

You have achieved a lot and you’re still very young.  What skills do you think are necessary to succeed in a corporate environment?  Do you have any advice for our readers? 
Sometimes I feel like a 50 year old trapped in a 26 year olds body! That’s what I keep telling my board. I can’t claim to have the answers to success and everyone’s journey is different. My achievements have been through sheer determination, taking a proactive approach as well as grasping opportunities when they present themselves. I am fairly confident in the workplace and a “can do” attitude can take you a long way.

Knowing your business inside out is a must, great communication skills and realising your contribution to the company is important. Just because you think it’s obvious how certain things should be done doesn’t mean that everyone knows how to do them. You would be surprised at what you have to offer! Don’t buy into the “game”, we are all people with thoughts and emotions and sometimes doing things differently is what will get you there! (Oh and a Hema map too, of course!)

You wear quite a few different hats – General Manager, business owner, wife, band manager.  How do you manage your time?
I try not to have too many unrealistic expectations of myself. I have a pretty old school approach to time management.  I have a diary for appointments and try to plan what I want to achieve at work each day on a large piece of paper with a bold black vivid so I get the ‘treat’ of crossing jobs out when they are completed.
I don’t get emails to my cell phone as I don’t want to be ruled my technology and I believe you set the expectations with people as to your response time. If you always reply within 5 minutes to an email then that is what people will expect and then will get frustrated when you can’t keep it up. I have great team supporting me as well.

As someone with what has been described to me as a “fizzing mind”, it is important to me to try and be focussed on what I am doing and to avoid having too many distractions if I can help it (like answering interview questions...kidding!). I have the ability to “juggle” - that I inherited from my juggling extraordinaire of a mother.  But I am in no way perfect and sometimes all I do all day is react to emails or queries and get nothing else done!

How do you maintain a work/life balance?
By medicating with heaps of sav blanc! Just joking.  I have actually started meditating each morning, only for around fifteen minutes, (I never was very patient) in order to clear my mind and start my day calmly and with a little perspective. My number one priority is my husband and close friends/family and I take pride in being available for them whatever I am doing.

There is always more work to do so I try and mix having really busy long working weeks with shorter days here and there, or a hair appointment during the day, something to get me out of the rat race so I can function better.  Stress can be a killer so a balance is important.

I think it is also really important to have things to look forward to, for me and my new husband it is usually travel, so we know if we work really hard all year we have an amazing trip to Europe or something to look forward to at the end of it. I am still young and it is essential to me to blow out the cobwebs every now and then and have some full blown, uninhibited fun. The rejuvenating power of holidays and fun is incomparable.

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