How She Attracted a Mentor & Learned to "Manage Up" by "Feeding the Bear"

Emily Parkhurst is the Founder & CEO of Formidable Inc. , a news publication & membership group that keeps high-level women executives connected and informed by tackling national and international news through a woman's lens. Before launching Formidable, Emily spent 20 years as a journalist, moving from reporter to Editor-in-Chief to publisher of the Puget Sound Business Journal

You worked your way up from a freelance writer to a reporter to Editor-in-Chief to Publisher to your own media startup.  Did business relationships play a role in your career? And is there one person who made a real difference?

Business relationships have been absolutely critical to my career, starting back when I was a baby reporter covering small town governments in my home state of Maine. After I got my first full-time job, an editor I had worked with previously as a freelancer started reaching out to provide feedback on my stories. We would talk periodically and he’d encourage me, challenge me and push me to dig deeper. His support early on gave me the confidence to pursue this career path.

Since then, I’ve been fortunate to have many mentors and sponsors both inside and outside my companies who have believed in me and pushed me to do more. When I moved from a pure journalism position into the business side of running a media company, the previous publisher worked closely with me to help me with the transition. Even though he had been promoted to a big, new corporate job, he took the time every week for months to sit down with me, talk through the challenges I was facing, and help me navigate this new results-driven world.

In addition to internal business relationships, I have been fortunate to build strong, lasting relationships outside of my core business. Part of my job as publisher of one of the largest business journals in the country was to simply know the leaders in my community. As such, I considered it a failure when I didn’t have a lunch meeting scheduled every day. That meant my job was to meet interesting people and better understand their businesses challenges so I could help position our publication to provide actionable insights, events and useful content for the region’s business leaders.

Through that process, I met some astounding people who have become close allies and friends. I have leaned on those relationships as I launched my own company, Formidable, which is a news publication aimed at women leaders. My board of advisers is made up entirely of those leaders I’ve connected with over the years, and they have helped me shape the business strategy for this company. Some have even become investors in the business.

Why do you think that publisher, who had the role before you, decided to mentor you?

There were two reasons I think he felt like spending that time with me was worthwhile. First, his success was tied to mine, so it was his job to help me get up to speed as quickly as possible. But that also meant that he had an outsized influence on getting me into the position in the first place, and he wouldn’t have done so if he didn’t think I’d have been successful there.

He told me afterward that I picked up on things faster than he’d expected and that he was blown away by how hard I worked to prove that I deserved the role.

I also had my own method of managing upward, which was especially important when working for someone who had the role before me. I called it: “Feed the bear so he never gets hungry.” I made sure he was informed and I asked him to brainstorm on things periodically when I was coming up with a new concept or publication. That was beneficial to me, of course, but also prevented him from meddling and getting too involved or micromanaging. It was a good system and has worked for me in many other roles as well.