38 sunday life

hindsight

what I know about... Men

Interview GeorGia Cassimatis

a line of socks for Kmart and now i’m the chief executive of my own company.

I didn’t date a lot at school because i was painfully shy, awkward and not popular. i also think my dad had a big impact on my dating because he raised the bar.

The first person I fell in love with was my husband [dr Greg Olsen, an emergency physician]. i met him when i was 23. Mum, who was working as a nurse, introduced us. i was having lunch with her one day when i saw this cute guy walk by. i stalked him for about two months by visiting Mum all the time. it worked, we started dating and two years later we were married.

I like that my husband is very solid and calm. He’s loyal and supportive. it was important to me to have a man who was confident enough in himself that it wasn’t a problem for him that i was travelling all over the world for work. Our work is so different. He’s the CeO of his lobster fishing enterprise: when he’s not saving lives, he’s killing lobster.

We’ll be married 25 years next year and i feel like i still have so much to learn. Over the years i’ve had to learn to get over myself, i’ve had to learn not to be petty. i’ve learnt to pick my battles, to work as a team, to change expectations and to really look at life through the other person’s eyes. i’ve also learnt that men and women are so different: men have an easier time saying no and they’re great delegators, whereas women try to do everything. Men are also better at sleeping.

My son, Erik, is 18 [ireland also has two daughters, Chloe and lily]. He’s a gifted

singer and performer and i see him pursue his dream with single-minded focus and determination, which i think is wonderful, because i’m always multitasking.

I’ve worked with many men over the years. One of the guys i work with now asked me if we should “check with your husband” about a project we were doing. i said to him, “Well, that’s nice, but if my husband was working in emergency and there was a challenge, would someone say to him, ‘do you need to check it’s all okay with your wife?’ so i think it’s okay that i can make my own decisions.”

Today my business mission is about finding solutions for families. i work closely with non-profits such as 9-1-1 for Kids, and through my Kathy ireland Mentor Program i also mentor men. People talk about women being stereotyped, but i think these days men are. i turn on the television and see them being portrayed as clueless, and i think that’s sad.

Growing up in santa Barbara, California, dad was always incredible and heroic. He worked for the labour unions and the farmworkers’ union.

from a young age he taught me about having a strong work ethic. My two sisters and i were raised to believe that we could accomplish anything if we put the proper work in place: the White House was not off limits.

I got my first job doing a paper route, when i was 11. dad gently shoved the ad under my nose, which said “paper courier wanted”. They wanted a boy, but i wrote a letter and told them i could do this route as well as any boy. i faced a lot of discrimination: i even had a customer scream at me, “This is a boy’s job! you’re never going to last.” i didn’t let that man see me cry, but i’m grateful to him because it made me stick it out. i did it for three years and won “courier of the year” every year for my district. i took dad’s advice, which was to always give the customer 110 per cent: the “under-promise and over-deliver concept” is the foundation of my business today.

For my 16th birthday my parents gave me a course at a modelling school that had opened nearby, just to give me a little polish. everyone was as surprised as i was when a new york talent scout asked me if i wanted to model for the summer in new york City. i was a gawky teenager who happened to have the look of the moment: the monobrow was in and i had one big eyebrow. Who knew that would be what people wanted!

Dad had his concerns about new york. it was a tough business – there were some pervy guys that i ran into. There was a time when i had a slug of a photographer and so i walked off the job – he crossed the line. i believe anyone who manipulates a child and persuades them with trappings is perverted. My parents had instilled good boundaries in me and i knew i could look after myself when things like that happened.

My parents knew modelling wasn’t part of my life plan. They knew i wanted to have a business and saw me trying, and failing, at many business attempts while i was working as a model. i finally started my brand, Kathy ireland Worldwide, with

Kathy Ireland

Model and entrepreneur, married, 49

“i had the look of the moment: the monobrow was in and i had one biG eyebrow.”

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