June Dennis has two amazing careers – in marketing and higher education. After working in marketing and PR management roles for a decade, June Dennis started to teach professional courses in the evenings and got the teaching bug. She has over 25 years experience in higher education, and now in senior management roles. She is a leading specialist in academic partnerships with significant knowledge of the Higher Education sector, curriculum design and development and student experience. She is also a chair of the Chartered Institute of Marketing Board, a marketing NED & board advisor, expert witness, a business trainer and coach. June is on a mission to help small businesses succeed through accessing the full power of marketing and not just social media.
in this chat with Stellar Woman Magazine, she opens about her colourful life.
So what is your back story?
Well, Gosh, it’s a long back story, I guess. I’m actually from Glasgow region, although you can’t tell by my accent, that I was born in Glasgow. I lived in one of those tenant buildings that people talk about. Both my parents were nurses. We moved to England when I was three as my dad worked as a district nurse. One of the things that I’m amazed about is that I am actually in the communication industry as I always had the wrong accent wherever I was. When I moved to Surrey, I had a Glaswegian accent. However this disappeared very quickly. Then I moved to a posh part of Surrey and I had to lose my London type accent. Meanwhile when I lived in Yorkshire, people from the north would think I came from the south and people from the south would think I came from the north. I had a speech impediment as well which made me a very quiet and timid young person. I was scared to speak up, because I had a speech impediment and always had the wrong accent. However, this doesn’t bother me now, but when I was younger, it was a big issue.
I was always good at maths, but it was very rare that girls in those days were actually encouraged to do something with their maths skill set. So, nobody ever talked to me about engineering or a mathematical type of career. It was retail management. When I went to university, I did an engineering management degree, that was quite unusual at the time, but then attended 10 lectures of marketing during my engineering management degree and I just loved it. I later did a placement with a company that made swimwear for the likes of Marks and Spencers and BHS. I loved it as a marketing assistant. That’s where my love for marketing grew. So, I continued with marketing roles in engineering, business to business, and then with a wonderful brand – a headwear manufacturer called Christy’s. I was there for over 20years. It just had so much history. It made toppers and bowlers for royals. Winston Churchill had worn their hats, most of the kings of England had as well. The company had so much history and had such lovely products to sell. I however, realised that if I wanted to start a family, I couldn’t do that job because it was in another part of the country. I had to fly out to exhibitions and more. So I set up my own business for the first time. It was during this time that I probably set up my whole career. I went to colleges and universities asking if I could teach CIM courses in the evening? I got so much response and for three years I did hourly paid lecturing and then realized that that’s where my heart was. I loved working as an expert witness in marketing as well. Although I loved covering internal marketing research, my heart was really in teaching and marketing communications and general business skills.
I later on moved to Leed’s Beckett University, which was Leed’s Met at that time for a one year contract as a lecturer in Marketing and stayed there for 11 years until I was Associate Dean. Subsequently I moved to other institutions until I became Principal of a college and then later as a Dean of Staffordshire Business School. Later on I had a eureka moment. It was about three years ago when I decided that I had spent nine, nearly ten years working away from home. I was working in Yorkshire. I used to travel on a Sunday night or Monday morning and come back on a Friday. I decided that I didn’t want to do another ten years like that. Although I loved traveling, I didn’t want to be away from home that much so I started to set up my own business – Mountain Top Perspectives, which overlaps in a good way. I have two niches – higher education and marketing. It is beautiful when they come together, but most of the time I’m working with different types of customer bases. So that’s how I got to where I am.
The theme for this issue is courageous decision-making, reflecting on your life experience, how important is decision making in both your personal life and business.
It’s so important. If you don’t make decisions, you’re still making a decision by not making a decision. Many people are scared of making the wrong decision, but what I have learned over time, it’s more important to make a timely decision with the information you’ve got at hand, than not making a decision at all even if that timely decision ends up wrong or not good.
Why and when did you make the decision to start this consultancy Mountain Top Perspective and was it a courageous decision to make?
I think it was. I mean, it’s one of those things if you’ve got nothing to lose, you can do whatever you like. I stepped down from a high paying job with not just pay, but with responsibility and also with a status, which is something that I noticed subsequently. If I walked into a networking event in Staffordshire, I walked in as Dean of a business school. So I had status all wrapped up. Then to actually step down from a role like that and say, I’m going to start my own business, it was probably more courageous than when I did it 28 years ago for the first time. And yes, it still was a lot of income to start off with, but there was less risk then. So, yes it was courageous. I think as I mentioned before, it was one of those unique, immediate moments when I thought, I don’t really want to keep on traveling away from home for the whole week. More of a lifestyle decision. However, little did I know that COVID-19 was around the corner and that I could work from home for the next year. From a university perspective, I was seen as a key worker. So it would have been impossible to go to work because I wouldn’t have had anywhere to live or stay down in Staffordshire during the lockdown. Where I would normally have stayed would have been closed down. Hotels were obviously closed as well. So it was the right decision to make in terms of starting the consultancy and the right time of my life as well. Today I can work on projects I want to work on, I can also make sure I give back. For example some of the work I do is with Charleston’s marketing students. It probably takes up a day a week of my time. I couldn’t have done that as a Dean of a business school, but I can find the time to do that now. I can now also find the time to go to help people in my local community, which is just down the road. It’s got one of the highest youth unemployment rates in Europe, not just in the UK. Sometimes it is just helping them write their CVs or do a little bit of practise for interviews.
This explains why I did it. I wanted more “work- life balance.” Although you’ll still see me working over the weekend and at night. I am able to be with the family more and to just have a little bit more breath in what I do and energy to do it. Before I felt like I was on treadmill -get up in the morning, go into work, stay there till 09:00 at night, leave, have something to eat, go back into work for 08:00 in the morning. It isn’t healthy. So sometimes you have to realise that and step back and decide that you don’t want to do that anymore. Yes it was a courageous decision.
So how do you foster culture of decisiveness in your life and work place?
I know if I don’t make a decision there and then, usually I have to diarise it, otherwise it’ll never get done. That’s from everything like booking a concert to go to. If we agree that we’ll go to that but I don’t make a decision, it won’t get done. Then six months later we’ll realise that we didn’t go to that. The same applies with a strategic decision for a business. So if we’re in a meeting and we’re not able to make a decision, or I can’t make a decision by myself on something, I will diarise it to make sure we come back to it because if I don’t diarise it, it just disappears.
What inspired your decision to specialize in intellectual property client relations?
It was being in the right place at the right time.
What are some of the challenges you have faced during your time in the UK higher education sector?
To make sure the courses we design meet the needs of employers but also interest the students.
If you take us in any moment, where you have failed, how did you manage to get yourself back up?
People have always helped me out. Don’t underestimate other people. Find time to wallow and then decide what to do.
So if you have to leave one challenge for women, reading your story, listening to you, to help them become courageous in their decision making, what challenge would you leave them?
Well, I think to me, the challenge for all business people is to be yourself, not somebody else. So, like, in my case, if you love gifting, keep gifting.
In terms of decision making as well, it’s what’s stopping you. So we talked about that childcare aspect, about the fact that we can create a list of why we can’t do things. We should list those and then start taking each of those bullet points apart and doing something about them. Because often we are the main person who is stopping ourselves from moving forward. Most of the time we stop too soon, we knock on a few doors, get knocked back, and then that’s when we go. Well, it wasn’t for me.
Also if your heart is really there and that’s what you want to do, you’ve got to keep on doing it. List what’s stopping you and start to knock off item by item. So, for me, not having a doctorate, I must have been one of the very few deans in the country that isn’t a professor or a doctor. So not having a doctorate was stopping me from doing anything else. The chances of me, if I wanted to get in another deanship anywhere else were probably limited. So I got my doctorate. Now, that took a long time. It was probably the longest doctorate in the world in terms of time. I started by doing a PhD, then my supervisor’s retired, then I moved on to a DBA for three months, and then I changed jobs. Then I had to do a Doctor of Education on the same topics. So I’ve had an experience of a PhD and Doctor of Education, but I kept on going. This now gives me that academic credibility, if I am looking to work with universities. When I work with universities and other institutions, I’m not just Mrs. I never mind being called Mrs. It is never problem, except for when I’m in an academic circle and everybody else has been called doctor and then they go, Mrs. It immediately goes – you haven’t got a doctorate yet.
Next, stop being somebody else. Be yourself and just look at what’s stopping you then slowly pull those things apart and do something about them. If they’re limitations, you can have actual solutions for them. You just have to look at them and make decisions. If you have to carry the car seat from the car and take the baby in for the interview, you’ll have to do that to get into that job. I think just finishing up there. I was actually in a very privileged position because, as I said right at the beginning, both my parents were nurses. To be a male nurse in the 1960s, 70s, even the 80s, was very unusual. When we talk about women moving forward, I saw the dynamic of how it is when a man enters a woman’s world, in a way, and creates a career through that. So ironically, my father was the motivation for me to be able to do things differently in a different environment because he had done it. It helped me understand what women go through on a regular basis.
In the full interview video below June provides details of how she became the woman she is, her role in the different areas, the challenges she encounters in her personal and professional life, the support she gets, her advice on the future of higher education, further education choices and curriculum design, the role marketing plays in business and why it shouldn’t be limited to social media, how to manage your time and make decisions that include looking after yourself and more.
Click below to watch the full interview