Roxy Jacenko: “In business, no day is a joy; that’s the honest truth.”

She’s known as the outspoken ‘queen of PR’, but there’s a lot more to Roxy Jacenko’s success than meets the eye. Roxy joined editors Cec Busby and Adam Bub on the First Act podcast to share her journey from McDonalds to media maven to mum – in her usual no-filter way.

Roxy Jacenko knew she wouldn’t become a doctor or lawyer from a young age, but what she did have was the gift of the gab and a heck of a work ethic. From her first job at Mcdonald’s at age 14, Roxy has worked her way up to become the undisputed queen of PR in Australia, as well as an author and serial entrepreneur.

“I wasn’t book smart,” Roxy admits. “I chose to be lazy and not to apply myself. I had determination, but I didn’t have the ability to apply myself enough to read the book and then be able to write an essay on it. I didn’t have the smarts to be a journalist or a doctor; I would never have gotten into uni.

“What I had was a work ethic and a determination to be rich, as weird as that sounds. I just wanted to never want; I wanted to be able to have.”

Roxy Jacenko with her children, Pixie and Hunter

‘If you want, you work’

Roxy is well known as the face of Sweaty Betty, the PR firm she started at the tender age of 24, as well as for her slew of appearances on social media and reality TV shows such as Celebrity Apprentice Australia and SAS Australia. She’s renowned in the business community for her seemingly endless energy in her work as the leader of five businesses – energy, she says, that stems from watching her parents work hard as owners of a fashion business throughout her childhood.

“I watched them being in there at seven o’clock in the morning; I watched them work Saturdays and Sundays. My determination, drive, and ability to apply myself in my own businesses have come from growing up and seeing that. They weren’t people who were born into money, far from it. Don’t get me wrong, I never wanted for anything, but it wasn’t given for nothing. It was ‘if you want, you work’.

“After school, I went to work for my mum and dad, and I lasted for about five minutes before my mum sacked me, and I’m glad she did. I was an 18-year-old know-it-all, and it would not serve me well to stay there and cruise. She knew if she sacked me, I had to put that CV together; I had to go out there and sell myself for someone to give me a job. At the time, I thought she was a real bitch. Now I think she did me the biggest favour she could have given me because it made me go out there. I needed to do this on my own.”

The ‘always-on’ mentality

The drive to work hard and build a name for herself has served Roxy well, but it hasn’t always been an easy road – she admits she has an ‘always-on’ mentality when it comes to her work, which means she’s on the go day and night.

“My mentality has always been, if something comes your way, you take the opportunity and worry about the finer details afterwards. It’s like my books – I’ve never read a freaking book, but guess what? After Celebrity Apprentice, I was approached by the publishing house Allen and Unwin, so I went for it. I think one of the biggest things about being an entrepreneur is to take the risk. You worry about the finer details later because if you don’t take the risk, someone else will, and you’ll be forgotten about.

“This is a fast-moving, changing world; we are all struggling to turn a dollar off the back of COVID. It’s now or never. Maybe everyone thinks I’m a mad person, but I make every opportunity that comes in one that I action there and then, and I let everyone else be the lazy one. I’ll be lazy when I’m 65 and retired, but for now, when I’m willing and able, and I want to be the best in my game, my phone’s in my hand.”

“Make no mistake, every day is fucking hard,” Roxy admits with her usual candour. “Staff are really challenging, and managing different personalities and client expectations can be totally unrealistic. In business, no day is a joy – that’s the honest truth.

“I have my finger on every move that is made across my businesses. Yes, I’m a control freak, but I would rather be fully immersed than pick up the pieces when there’s a fuck up.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cc3om-6hRaJ/

Family is everything

You’d be forgiven for seeing Roxy’s Instagram feeds filled with extravagant holidays and designer labels and thinking that the life you see there looks easy. But Roxy is clear – she works hard for the money, and her reasons for striving hard are the same as anyone else’s: family.

“When people look at my life of fast cars, handbags, extravagant vacations,” says Roxy, “every element of those materialistic things has come from pure aggravation. They haven’t come because I got lucky. They’ve come because I’m the person who will fill that skip bin to empty our old office rather than getting someone to do it, because they’ll take two days when I can do it in two hours.

“And I do it with a smile on my face for two reasons. Number one, I don’t want to disappoint my parents. And at age 41, it seems a strange thing to say, but I feel that my parents gave me a good chance to make something of myself and to really make them proud. The second thing is my two children. I want to give them the opportunities that I was afforded – a lovely school and upbringing, opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities, and the opportunity to travel and see different cultures and countries.

“I have a huge pressure on me to make sure that I deliver; every day is filled with pressure. There are many unrealistic expectations out there when people pay for a service; they want blood. But my drivers are absolutely my family, and being able to make my parents proud. I feel that it is my duty to do so, and that’s why I keep doing it.”

Hot PR tip

There’s no doubt that Roxy Jacenko’s PR prowess is formidable. So, what’s her top piece of advice for small businesses keen to up their PR game in 2022 and beyond?

“Be fluid; the days of a press release and a press pack are over,” she advises. “Create short and sharp documents, and make it experiential – send them with targeted recipients rather than a blank carbon copy. Don’t think sending a copy of one press release with three pages will get you any cut through. You’d rather get two nice pieces of coverage than send a generic email to those 500 people and get nothing.”

Roxy unpacks it all on the First Act podcast, from her battles with mental health, addiction and breast cancer to the highs and lows of parenthood on her road to becoming a great Aussie success story. Listen to the full episode now.

Join us each Tuesday for a brand new episode of First Act, because every story has a beginning.

Listen and subscribe now: