Donna Hay: the woman behind the brand

Donna Hay has changed the way we eat, cook and think about food.

With a popular bi-monthly magazine, more than 2.25 million cookbooks sold and her own range of homewares, Donna is a global success story. SW founder Cherie Kellahan sat down with her to discuss being creative, the elusive work-life balance and the ultimate entertaining trick.

SW: What is the most exciting thing you are working on right now?

DH: I usually work on a few things at once and at the moment I am working on a new cookbook which is nice and easy recipes for time-poor people. It’s going to be launched in November. I am also working on the autumn issue of the Donna Hay magazine and working on re-vamping the home offering of Donna Hay Homewares.

SW: Do you prefer to have a few different projects on the go at once? Is that the way you work best?

DH: Absolutely, I have a short attention span!

SW: So would you see yourself as being more creative? Obviously you are very commercially focused too, but is your natural way to be more creative?

DH: Definitely, I mean that’s the most exciting part of the job. Of course management is important but definitely what keeps me going is being able to have so much creative output and keeping my creative brain alive working within the magazine, drawing and product sketching. I think that if my job was just purely management and PR then I would not last very long at all.

SW: It’s great that you can have such a high profile and successful brand and yet still be the driving force creatively behind it. I think it’s a really rare combination.

DH: I guess it’s a really good way to stay in touch as well, being part of the team. You get to see readers’ emails on what they like, you kind of stay closer to the public because as you mentioned before, things need to become commercial, it’s an expensive magazine to produce. Working on the creative is like the icing on the cake for me.

SW: What do you think is different about the Donna Hay brand? There are obviously many cookbook authors and celebrity chefs these days, but your recipe pages have always been beautiful, unique and have a really strong following. Why do you think they were so popular and well received when you first launched the product?

DH: I think the thing that surprised people most was that the recipes were really, really simple, based on fresh ingredients, because I believe that fresh is really the key to tasty food. Readers say to me ‘I made it look just like the picture!’. Eating is not just about filling up a hole, it’s about an experience and for most people who are just pulling six ingredients out of the fridge, you want it to taste great but you also want it to look great.
You serve it up to your partner or your children or whoever you’re serving it to and you want to enjoy it, even if you are eating on your own, you want to have that sense of achievement that it looks great and that it tastes great. I don’t want to ask people to commit to the kitchen for a couple of hours – there is a very good place in our lives for restaurants and that sort of thing. It doesn’t mean you have to just throw a few things together and compromise on your dinner. We all need time in our day where we chill out and take ten minutes just to sit with our partners or children to find out what happened in the day, and I just feel that dinner is a really important part in that.

SW: It’s a great opportunity to really connect and you know these days if you can do that at home and have something beautifully prepared and presented as well, I guess it makes the whole experience that much richer.

DH: Yes, and as my children grow up that’s how I am going to get them to come to dinner without me yelling! They’re two and five and not really that involved in food unless it’s sweet.

SW: Let’s talk a little about the dream or vision to bring your brand to life. Did you always have dreams and visions? Did you plot your course in the business world strategically or did you just let opportunities arise and took advantage of them?

DH: You touched on something really great for me and that was, it was always a dream for me. I was chatting around the office one day because I was running a test kitchen and I would get annoyed sometimes when I would go to shoot a beautiful story and I would think, ‘Why did they lay it out that way? It doesn’t look right’ and I thought, ‘Well, if I had a magazine….’, so be careful what you wish for!

SW: While talking with you, you remind me a little bit of the interview I had with Kate Ceberano recently. She was talking about how creative freedom is really her highest value, and it’s what gets her out of bed in the morning and that makes her feel good above all else.

DH: When you put a creative person in a box they don’t last very long. I guess success has come from what we have said no to and what opportunities we haven’t taken.

SW: Oh, that’s interesting. Could you expand a little?

DH: I think it’s really been a success and not about slapping your name on a product here and there or doing a TV show that’s more like Donna Hay meets Big Brother meets Survivor.

SW: So you haven’t sold yourself out: you have kept the integrity of your original vision.

DH: Absolutely, consumers are too clever, I don’t want to disappoint them.

SW: A lot of magazines and media outlets still underestimate the intelligence of the consumer. I think that’s why you have had longevity and why people love your recipes so much and love the magazine.

DH: When the magazine first came out because it looked so nice, people thought the recipes would be really, really hard. They were surprised it could be beautiful, but also really easy. It was tough because I didn’t want to drop the beautiful pictures, styling and design but also we had to get people to trust us and come with us. Usually once people flick through and see how short the recipes are inside they usually come on board.

SW: I think that also says a lot about your influence and staying power in the media world. The fact that you have been successful with your magazine for six years says a lot. Do you think that it is difficult to be a woman so high up in the media world and stay true to your vision?

DH: The magazine world is not too hard because a lot of the editors that run magazines are women but I think outside in the business arena it’s still a pretty tough game out there for women. I am not saying that begrudgingly and not in spite, but because it’s just more of a challenge overall.

SW: I think it’s difficult for women, but even more so for women who have a very strong idea on what they want to do, women with a strong vision.

DH: Yes, I do have a very strong vision and I guess when you’re a woman unfortunately you get brushed with the label of ‘difficult’ rather than ‘visionary’. I don’t care when people call me difficult anymore; I just say I am doing my job!

SW: What I really want to ask you about is work/life balance. This is something we get asked over and over again by our readers. I’m a woman, I want to have a successful career but I don’t want to sacrifice my partnership or the care I give to my children. Is there actually any secret? Is there something you have done that you can share with our readers?

DH: Yes, get help! I think it’s really tough right now for women. Whether they bring it upon themselves or society or workplace demand, they must be super mum or super businesswoman and be super at everything – to do all that without help is just not possible.
We had a couple come over on Saturday night for dinner. When I woke up on Sunday there were toys everywhere and mess in the kitchen. I could have spent the next two hours mopping the floors and putting toys away. I thought I could either do that or go out to the park with my children, spend a really lovely day with the kids or worry about the house. My nanny doesn’t mind tidying up on Monday, my son sleeps for a few hours in the middle of the day, it’s fine. She doesn’t begrudge me for doing that, she thinks it’s great that I am out with the kids playing ball and I think you just need to find the right people to support you.

SW: Get your priorities sorted out, which is exactly what you’re talking about.

DH: When people ask ‘How do you do it?’, I always say ‘With a lot of help’ because I do. Having a lot of understanding people around you is the most important thing. Not apologising for what you want to do or what you have to do. You have to have balance and if I feel better about going to pick my son up from sport or school, ultimately I am going to be a better boss and be better creatively, the whole thing is better – no more apologising, ‘Oh sorry I have to run out’. It’s I AM going.

SW: Guilt is a kind of curse for most women in this day and age and to be able to transcend that by looking at the situation holistically is valuable.

DH: Katie Page, who I love, she is a very clever woman and she told me that if everything was fine at home then everything would be fine at work.

SW: That’s a good way to think of it. You mentioned having people over for dinner… the last question I want to ask you is, what do you think the greatest secret is for successful entertaining at home?

DH: It would have to be – keeping it simple. If you don’t have time to do a little bit of prep then just keep it really, really simple. Because it’s about sharing time with your friends not being so stressed out that by the time they leave you are exhausted and you’re like, ‘God, I hate having people over, look at the mess’. Just bite off what you can chew.

SW: So for someone like me who loves to entertain but does get stressed about making sure it all comes together at the right times, would you say maybe try to cook one dish and buy some of the other things around that?

DH: Absolutely, I mean there is nothing wrong with preparing a meal with beautiful gourmet ice cream that you can buy or something on the side like a biscuit or truffle. You know, it’s so much easier to buy part of it, if you’re not a good cook or if you don’t have time. Really it’s not a dinner party competition, it’s about sharing food with good friends and having heaps of fun.