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The price of fame

As a moderate-level author, it’s always nice when an excited stranger comes up waving a phone, asking for a photo. Sometimes there’s a cluster of them waiting for a pic, so just getting from one place to another in public can take ages.

I should point out this has never happened to me. But I was on hand to take all those fan photos last week, acting as road and PR manager for my mum, Erica.

Literally queues of people. “Can we get a photo with Erica?” I’d take the photo, they’d stay for a chat, while others hovered around waiting for their opportunity.

Long-time readers may remember that time I took her on Weekend Sunrise to discuss how a large insurance company had taken advantage of her trusting nature to triple her premiums.

 

 

I got a lot of messages from friends after that interview, basically saying “your mum is the real star here, we want more of her and less of you.”

So while you signed up for weekly business tips, this week you’re getting an entire story on how awesome my mum is and you’ll just have to deal with that.

How to get 65,000 people into your organisation

I’ve written before about my dad’s role in founding and building Australia’s national motorhome club, an organisation that got to 65,000 members before he died about a decade ago. It’s massive now, and provides a valued community for a lot of people.

Dad got most of the credit, and the Order of Australia. Despite his deep suspicion of any kind of honour. Getting him to show up to get that medal was the single most complex negotiation of my life.

Yet that club is as much Mum’s achievement as his.

You hear it said in situations like this: “I couldn’t have done it without the support of my wonderful wife.”

There’s usually an assumption, especially in older generations, that the wife was there to deliver the necessary domestic support to allow the man to achieve all his achievements. Supported by the wife faithfully making the cups of tea, raising all the children etc.

This was not the case here. Dad was the visionary and the brain behind making the club happen. Mum is its heart and soul. And that’s every bit as essential in creating what it’s become.

No one person has all the answers

Organisations are like any combination of lion, scarecrow and tin man. You can have the idea and the plan, but it takes different skills to bring people together and have them truly believe. No one person has all the answers.

Mum was out there spreading the word with indestructible energy and positivity for decades. Conversation by conversation. It helped set the whole tone of the place and drew people in. She balanced out my introverted, borderline-hermit dad.

Like our own business today, where having business partners with completely different skills makes a stronger organisation. And makes working life much more fun because you don’t have to spend your day doing things you hate and are bad at.

A natural-born chat marathon champ

The club has numerous rallies, including a national one each year that pulls in about 650 motorhomes for an event that runs more than a week. They go to regional cities, taking over the local racetrack or showgrounds. This year was Mount Gambier, a charming city half way between Melbourne and Adelaide.

Oh my god Mum loves those rallies. She has a 1987 denim jacket with badges of all the rallies since then, like a benign version of bike gang colours. She hasn’t missed a rally, so now it’s more of a wearable structure of badges with denim lining.

She talks of little else in the months leading up to the gathering. Once on site, she feeds on the banter like Godzilla munching on high voltage lines. She is still beaming with happiness after six, eight hours of relentless chat. For weeks after she returns she’s on a high.

Until this year, she’s driven her trusty Golf to places like Dalby, Deniliquin and Bingara. Mount Gambier is a 23-hour drive, a bit of a stretch even with her natural determination.

So I signed on as her tour manager to get her through all the flights, airports and motels. I wasn’t quite prepared for the level of celebrity PR assistant work on site, that was a fun bonus.

It’s quite the exercise to get from Tweed Heads to Mount Gambier. Lots of planes large and small. Mum’s trundling into her tenth decade, and relies heavily on her walker for mobility.

 

 

Nice one QF

Side note: shout out to Qantas who were magnificent every step of the way. I normally fly with the other side of the terminal. I have no Qantas status, and I wondered how this would go. They were brilliant, and it is nice to write that of a brand that has taken a lot of stick in recent years. Every bit of support that was meant to happen did happen, and all the Qantas staff from start to finish could not have been nicer.

An inspirational figure in her absolute element

I’m so glad I did the trip. It’s great to see Erica not just as lovable Nan at home, but as an inspirational figure in her absolute element. Even now, I’m still realising new lifelong benefits of decisions my parents made when I was nine years old.

Being pulled out of school for six months some years to travel the world in a motorhome was not normal. It was a good lesson that you don’t have to be normal.

The wonderful relationship I have with my two sisters was largely forged by surviving for long periods in a pop-top Kombi that had no right to contain five people.

Living at ground level in other countries, rather than having your every meal brought to you by a servant in hotels, was an educational gift that keeps on giving to this day. And an essential reminder that you are not better than anyone else.

Mum did a keynote speech at the opening event. She slayed, of course.

 

 

Do the eccentric things others disapprove of

They asked me if I wanted to say anything. I hadn’t planned to, but I ended up doing a few minutes on those family motorhome travel benefits.

I’ve made a lot of speeches and I can do them in my sleep. But just saying these things out loud in that room with my mum next to me really choked me up with emotion at a couple of points, just from the sheer gratitude of what her and my dad did for me. Even if I showed zero appreciation for it back in the day.

I support the deep symbolic value of funerals, but I’ve also always been puzzled why people save their tributes until after the subject is dead. Why not say it all when they’re right in front of you, smiling, with a plate of cheese and crackers?

And if you have ideas about eccentric things to do with your own children, don’t dismiss them because your relatives or friends wouldn’t do it. Or because education authorities frown on it. Maybe those plans are weird, maybe they’ll bring life-changing benefits that last for generations, or both.

Doing very nicely thank you

Interesting too how Mum is leading her life in the decade-ish since we lost Dad. She is flourishing.

“We had a wonderful marriage and Don was the best husband I could have ever wished for. But I’m really enjoying being able to have people over any time and talk to everyone for as long as I want,” she says.

There was lots of this at the rally. Strong older women driving around Australia in their own motorhome, living their best life after partners have died or left.

“My dad liked to fix things, and when I was young he taught me how to bleed brakes, change air filters and that sort of thing. You need to be able to do that by yourself when you’re in remote areas,” was one comment of many.

Inspirational, all of them.

It would have been more difficult to take that trip if I had a proper career, particularly now it looks like it will be an annual thing.

This was not a specific benefit I had in mind when we started the businesses, but having the flexibility to do expeditions with your mum is an amazing blessing.

 

 

Five star experience, would recommend.

Might do some business material next week.

 

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Have you read Undisruptable? It’s by Erica Whitworth’s son, Ian.

Zoë Foster Blake said: “Ian is a cheeky, funny, disruptive (and proven: important) business rascal and thank goodness for that.”

On paper, electronic or audio book with me reading it. Get it here:

 

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