Max internet result!

• Josh Mehlman
• 26 March 2009
• Page 1 of 2 : single page

“Storytelling is still at the heart of everything I do... it’s just these days I use technology to help me tell those stories”. Photo credit: Anthony Geernaert

Most corporate leaders’ biographies are as exciting as former Australian captain Mark Taylor’s cricket commentary. They tend to go something like, “John Smith was born in Adelaide. He studied management at Adelaide University and worked for 20 years as a manager at one large company before joining another large company as CEO. He lives in Adelaide and his interests include management and the Adelaide Crows.”

What makes small business people so interesting is they tend to have led more varied lives – but very few careers have taken as many fascinating and counterintuitive turns as Max Walker’s.

The many lives of Max Walker

Born and raised in Hobart, Walker studied architecture at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, but then signed on as an Australian Rules football player for Melbourne Football Club. During his six-year, 85-game career, he also started playing cricket professionally, but couldn’t sustain both games at once. He opted for the sport with harder balls and played 38 Tests and 29 One Day International matches for Australia. After working as an architect, he made the transition to cricket commentator. Following that, he co-hosted Channel 9’s weekly sports digest show Wide World of Sports for 16 years. But that also couldn’t last.

“You know, nothing does last forever,” he says in his characteristic Aussie drawl. “Once you’ve had five broken noses, your hair goes grey and you’re slightly big around the middle, no amount of makeup is going to make it work for you and they are going to give the job to a younger person. That’s fine, as long you don’t carry a chip on your shoulder and say, ‘Poor me’. Life’s like that.”

Impressionist Billy Birmingham, in one of his 12th Man comedy albums, characterised Walker as having become slightly unhinged after losing his job at Channel 9 and going to increasingly desperate lengths – including hijacking the commentary box – to get back on the air.

To hear Walker talk about it today, he still feels the sting of being fired from Channel 9, but it provided the impetus for him to begin another whole new life. “I was lucky: I had 16 years of hosting Wide World of Sports,” Walker explains. “Kerry Packer created an environment of innovation and creativity, and if it was a good idea and you were able to convince him, the next day you would be on a plane.

“When that era ended and James Packer put the broom through Wide World of Sports and many other shows, I was back on my feet again; I had to create a blueprint for what I might do with the rest of my life,” says Walker. “I had to ask myself, ‘What do I do well?’ So I thought, “I speak and I write”, and that was the beginning.”

Running his own business, after so many years in the dynamic television industry, was a rude shock.

“Working at Channel 9, I had all of these people around me,” says Walker. “We had publicity consultants on a daily basis hooking into the world and just energising this juggernaut that went forward with the nine dots almost tattooed to my forehead.”

From that heady life, Walker found himself in a situation familiar to anyone who has started up his or her own business.

“Suddenly you find yourself answering the phone, doing a business plan, doing public relations and actually out there doing what you do.”

Writing and speaking

Ever since his cricketing days, Walker had a tidy sideline in book writing (yes, that’s yet another career). He turned his knack for storytelling – inherited from his dad, who ran a pub – into a string of bestselling books. He continued to write while making the move into motivational speaking.

“I love speaking at corporate events and planning days,” he says. “You get to sit in the engine room of some of the biggest and smallest companies in the world and you hear their thinking about the next couple of years in terms of strategy and changes.

“I love to talk about changes, opening and shutting the windows in the mind; getting rid of excess baggage, things that we’ve done over and over and over again and we only continue to do them because it’s comfortable.”

Taking his own advice, Walker decided less than a decade ago that he needed to make technology and the internet a major part of his business model.

“Maybe 10 years ago, I unashamedly wouldn’t have known how to turn a computer on,” he says.

“In architecture, it was all to do with ink on paper and the necktop computer. On TV, you’re only as good as your ability to bring some ideas together and regurgitate them straight down the barrel to camera.”

Even his books, he admits, were handwritten with one of his much-loved Mont Blanc fountain pens. But he eventually realised the potential for online technologies to improve the way he worked and reach a new audience.

“Storytelling is still at the heart of everything I do,” he says. “It’s just these days I use technology to help me tell those stories.

“Seth Godin talks about being a purple cow – how do you become authentic? One of my favourite words is ‘unordinary’. Unique. Real. So I’ve tried to put that energy now into my showcase which is the website, maxwalker.com.au. That’s the first port of call now for most people that want to find out about me.

“If you take the television experience, the radio experience, the ability to stand up and speak with a marketing hat, and public relations, plus writing and being an entrepreneur, you try to put that all into one job and maybe even three years ago, someone like myself wouldn’t have been able to do that. But now with [personal assistant] Elaine and a good team of website people, we have so much fun just creating.”

Walker’s two daughters, aged 17 and 11, and three sons from his first marriage also provide a useful focus group and technology expert panel.

“Between them, nothing is sacred so when they say, ‘Dad, wake up to yourself’, at least I listen,” he grins.

Very social networks

The first thing you’ll notice on visiting Walker’s website is Tangles himself talking to you in a oneminute embedded video. Each section of the site has its own video introduction.

This is obviously an effective technique for Max Walker, who is his own brand, but would it work for someone running an online business that sold kids’ clothes or lice remedies?