10 Martha Debayle's bbmundo
Helping Parents and Their Children
Mauro F. Guillén
Martha Debayle was a TV and radio personality, and a divorced mother of two young children. She realized that Mexican women like herself needed advice and resources pertaining to rearing children and taking care of the various aspects of family life. She launched an Internet portal and, later, a magazine, hired a small staff, including her sister, to run the business, and put together a roster of seventy doctors, psychologists, therapists, educators, nutritionists, and other professionals to generate content and field users’ questions. Her revenue came from magazine sales and corporate sponsorships, but could stagnate unless she paid more attention to the business, and pursued new growth opportunities.
“I am blunt, very direct, and very real,” said Martha Debayle, the Nicaraguan born, New York raised, Mexican television personality, and entr preneur. An accomplished communicator and divorced mother of two, she hit upon the idea of setting up a company to provide useful content and advice to parents and families, while facing, in her own life, the enormous challenges of managing the demands of work and children. In addition to her daily radio and weekly television shows, Martha was the founder and top executive of bbmundo, a company that, in 2008, generated 5 million dollars in revenue, sold nearly 90,000 copies of its lavishly illustrated monthly magazine aimed at parents and families, and boasted 690,000 registered users of its free Web site.1 Armed with an inexhaustible passion for what she did, Martha learned the ropes of entr pre eu ship through experience—not at school. And yet, she became a master at the game of growing and diversifying a business that did enormous good while doing well.
Martha was a gifted communicator. She was especially adept at pronouncing all of the key management buzzwords with a remarkably funny and scornful tone: business plan, cash flow, barriers to entry, competitive advantage, and all the rest. Her body language complemented her spoken English, Spanish, and “Spanglish” seamlessly. She remembered being scheduled to speak as a guest lecturer at Columbia Business School on entr- prn er ship after two male ente prn eurs gave presentations using the customary PowerPoint slides. She stated: “I realized I had not prepared. It was my heels and me confronting the audience. I just spoke about my business, my passion, and how I make decisions.” The result was that the MBA students loved it.
The Entrepreneur and Her Environment
Martha’s radio and television career was built on the basis of conveying direct messages in straightforward language to women, in general, and mothers, in particular. She was often dramatic and very resourceful when using metaphors, but she did not let the ornament overshadow the substance of what she had to say. bbmundo’s headquarters mirrore the founder’s philosophy. It was located in a two-story, modernist-looking building in the central district of Polanco in downtown Mexico City, not far from the ruins of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán. The decor was min- malist throughout. White, unadorned walls predominated. Windows were large and provided almost no separation from the bustling street outside. Her office was unassuming. A couple of Bauhaus-style white leather sofas arranged in the shape of an “L” provided for a comfortable seating area. A large desk surrounded by six chairs sat at one corner, almost as an afterthought and with no obvious signs of activity. Martha, however, was full of ideas and enthusiasm for what she did. Or, rather, as she liked to put it, “My ideas come direct out of my soul. I do not let rational models drive my business decisions. I let my instincts reign free.”
Martha’s trajectory was strikingly unconventional. Her early childhood took place in Nicaragua. Her family then migrated to New York City before she was barely a teenager; her father was then transferred to Mexico. While her male siblings pursued MBA degrees, she enrolled in an undergraduate program in graphic design and advertising in Mexico City. Disillusioned with academia, she quit. She yearned for a career in communication and music, but had no patience for schooling. As a child, she was the one in the family who made and sold things. Her father used to say, “You will be a great entrepreneur.” She did not believe him at the time.
In 1990, she landed a job on a radio program called DJ Live. She then moved on to other shows, including hosting the Grammys, the World Music Awards, the Oscars, and various beauty pageants for Mexican audiences. In 1992, she switched to television, and, in 1997, she persuaded executives at Televisa, Mexico’s largest media group, to air a 20-minute segment on child rearing called bbtips. The idea came from her early experi-e ence as a mother—her first daughter was born the year before. “Why not do something about raising kids?” she asked herself. She worked enthuastically—researching, writing, and presenting the show all by herself. She then gave birth to a second daughter. Her marriage floundered and she returned to her parents’ house with her two children. But, by the late 1990s, she had become an opinion leader among mothers throughout Mexico, with an average viewership of 1 million.2
Getting Started
However, television was not the ideal medium to realize Martha’s goals. While it gave her tremendous visibility and fame, it did not allow for the kind of user-initiated interaction that the Internet provided. It was early 2000 when Martha became obsessed with the idea of launching a Web portal to provide Mexican mothers with the content and advice they needed to improve their lives and those of their children. One night in early 2000, she decided to use her credit card to purchase the bbmundo.com domain. She then got in touch with México Analítica, a Web services provider. Within weeks, GBM Grupo Bursátil Mexicano approached her with an offer to pay 1 million dollars for her company, which did not really exist, did not produce any goods, and did not generate any revenue. Kimberly-Clark de México approached her within days with another offer. But Martha was not ready to sell her idea to anyone. She wanted to pursue it by herself. It took her no more than 24 hours to dismiss both suitors. Various Internet companies, including AOL México, Terra, and Starmedia, received the same answer. She even resisted Televisa’s Es Más portal division which offered $750,000 for 75 percent of the company. And so a stubborn Martha, aided by twelve employees, launched the bbmundo.com Web site on September 4, 2000, months after the NASDAQ had collapsed and Internet startups were rapidly depleting their last reserves of cash. She stated, “Maybe I was naïve, but I resisted the temptation of selling out. It just did not sound right.”
bbmundo.com did not sell banners; rather, it offered businesses microsites that they could use to convey as much information as they desired to their customers. Martha stated, “We did not want to become a marketing site but rather one in which women could become better mothers.” Within a few weeks of its launch, she had 40,000 visitors to her Web site and reached breakeven after 8 months of operation.3
The bbmundo.com Web site offered a variety of services, including bbnombres (to search baby names and their origins), bbpensamientos (to share thoughts and feelings), bbdudas (for frequently asked questions), bbchats (to exchange advice and information), bbdirectorio (for a directory of businesses), and bbrecetas (for recipes), among others. The site also offered interactive tools that enabled the user to obtain and tailor information to their needs, including diaper calculators, height and weight tables, and vaccination calendars, among others. Its flagship service was a free 24/7 online advice and support system which provided assistance on any medical, psychological, or legal issue, and was staffed by a group of specialists. The service processed 3,000 consultations per month. Many bbmundo services required user membership and registration in bbclub, a user’s club.
Initially, Martha relied on ad hoc advertising from the microsites to generate most of her revenue. She quickly realized that a more systematic approach was needed. Her family was not very supportive at the time: “‘Martha you are going through a divorce, you have two daughters, you just signed up to be the brand image for Pantene shampoo in Mexico, and they paid you well . . . Stop wasting time and money on this business . . . it is going nowhere . . .’”
“But I insisted that it would all work out in the end,” said Martha, and went on:
It’s a logical thing, don’t show me any numbers, it’s just common sense; I could not believe the people surrounding me were so blind. So I used any money at my disposal to pay off my debts, and I remember my Mom saying, “But whose mind could possibly conceive this business that does not turn out a cent and look how exhausted you are, how irresponsible! You’re everything your two daughters have in this world . . .”
Growing the Business
In April 2001, she approached Nestlé SA and asked for $9,000 a month over 1 year in exchange for advertising space. Her argument was that brands needed to establish direct communication and rapprochement with the user—this was a radically new concept in Mexico at the time. She then struck a deal with Ford Motor Company, which wished to reach parents who were concerned about the safety of their children in automobiles. Gerber Products, Disney, Johnson & Johnson, Wyeth, Seguros Monterrey New York Life, and a few others followed suit. Martha stated: “I simply made the sales pitch straight out of my soul, and it worked. They believed in the potential of my business.”
Martha admitted to having received some help during 2001 from two former consultants who founded LabRed, a business incubator, although they delivered far less than the expectations they raised. In exchange for a 9 percent stake, they gave Martha some office space, $60,000 in cash, and a promise to help her raise more capital. But the timing was not great, and fresh money did not come in. By 2002 she owed $15,000 to various service suppliers and 3 months in back wages to her seven employees. The non-profit venture capital firm, Endeavor, provided some further advice and legitimacy beginning in 2002, but Martha overcame the initial difficulties by pressing forward. “I was living in anguish,” she recalled. She was evicted from her office, so she moved the computers and files to her parents’ home. The employees continued to work out of their homes.
In 2005, with few resources on hand, she made the most momentous decision: to launch a monthly magazine targeting “women who are smart, awake, and have self-respect.” The slogan was “Inspired by love, guided by knowledge.” She enlisted the collaboration of two designers who had founded Mapas, as well as back up from Endeavor. They advised Martha that she would need about $100,000 a month to survive in the difficult and unforgiving world of magazine publishing. She decided to call on her corporate sponsors. Disney, Wyeth, Kimberly-Clark, and Brystol-Myers Squibb responded positively. The most successful Mexican magazine in the parenting and family category was born, replete with attention grab bing photos, trendy articles written by experts in plain prose, and tips on a wide variety of topics. An annual subscription was 330 pesos (about $25). However, given Mexico’s poor postal system, most copies were sold through newsstands for 30 pesos (about $2.30). Ninety-five percent of revenues came from advertising. In February 2005, Martha launched the bbmundo card with some 120 participating companies that agreed to offer discounts on baby-related goods to cardholders. This new product helped propel the magazine’s circulation.
bbmundo Magazine relied on a roster of seventy doctors, psychologists, therapists, educators, nutritionists, and other professionals who wrote articles for free in exchange for accessing its readership. Some of the articles were written in-house. Topics included pregnancy tips, sleep deprivation, autism, obesity, nutrition, time management, and recipes for having silent sex, all of which addressed the obvious and pressing needs among parents of young children. A typical article would first frame the issue at hand, and then offer different ways of reframing or resolving it:
Although they tend not to admit it, moms and dads usually have some gender preference concerning their soon-to-arrive babies. These preferences do not form overnight; rather, they are constructed over one’s lifetime. . . . Gender preferences have many different causes, from childhood games to the family’s social situation. Although many parents-to-be keep their preferences to themselves, most have an answer available to the inevitable question of “Do you want your baby to be a girl or a boy?” These fantasies are natural and will not necessarily carry negative consequences for the baby. It all depends on how one manages the contrast between the imaginary baby and the real one. . . . It is entirely O.K. to feel frustrated, guilty, sad or angry: just help each other identify your emotions and talk about them without feeling scared. At the same time, try to build together new fantasies about the actual gender of your baby, think about the positives, imagine possible games, choose a name, and start decorating the baby’s room.4
Over the years, the structure of the magazine changed. Article topics were classified under the rubrics of development, pregnancy, nutrition, health, psychology, sexuality, and fashion. A series of short sections were introduced, including:
A calendar of relevant chats and radio shows.
Editorials written by Martha or her sister on important issues affecting parents.
Readers’ letters.
News about ways of getting information or new products.
Questions and answers in which complex parenting topics were broken down into specific issues and how to address them.
“Numbers”: generally about milestones in the development of babies and children.
“Shopping”: new trends, stores, and product offerings.
“Don’t Torture Yourself”: damaging myths regarding motherhood and childrearing.
“Entertainment”: tips on books, movies, and music.
“Mom”: tips for the various roles that mothers play in the household.
“The Doctor in the Home”: health issues and minor illnesses.
“Ellos”: advice for dads.
“Shop Directory”: topic-focused listing of stores.
“Picture of the Month”: pictures submitted by readers.
“Tips”: other suggestions not covered elsewhere in the magazine.
In August of 2006, Martha returned to television with the show Cerca de Ti, sponsored by Avon Products. It covered a wide range of topics, including family, health, emotional well-being, fashion, beauty, sexuality, and personal finance. The show ended in December 2007, and Martha then started a daily, hour-long radio show which featured a bbmundo segment every Monday—the show averaged 1.4 million listeners. She also led a Thursday morning television show on Televisa’s Channel 2 which was written, casted, and produced by bbmundo.
Martha liked to say that her greatest virtue was being generous, while her biggest fault was impatience. She ardently argued that the most important feature of an entrepreneur was having “a certain degree of craziness. If entrepreneurs analyzed everything that can go wrong, they would not accomplish anything.” And she added that persistence and a strong will were essential:
Losers make excuses, winners make a way and there is always a way. My leadership style is authoritarian but very inspirational, close, loving; I like spending time with my people and I care deeply about them—I have a big heart. At bbmundo we are a big family, passionate for what we do, which translates into new forms of communication, alternative marketing paths, innovative products, and support for our community.
Growing Pains
Until late 2007, bbmundo lacked what most business textbooks would identify as the attributes of a serious company. After experiencing annual growth rates in excess of 60 percent, Martha finally caved in. The company now employed accountants, marketing experts, designers, editors, and even a CEO—a concession to her father, an investment banker who spent a couple of days a week providing advice. Her younger sister Eugenia started as marketing director in 2003 and, beginning with the September 2008 issue, became the magazine’s editor. In her first editorial, she explained her view of the magazine:
Something I’ve always liked about bbmundo is that we have contributed to strengthening the new mom, that of our times, a redefined mom, the one who has opinions, who questions things, the one who likes to read about topics in-depth, and wants to be a better mom.
That issue also saw the launch of the 26-page bbKIDS section which responded, in Martha’s words, “to my own needs.” She stated:
My daughters have grown: Antonina is now 12 and Camila 9. Just as when they were babies I felt I did not have the information available to me, now I am coming across another set of questions. They ask me about sex, they talk to me about the boy they like, I see them getting exposed to so much information; they disagree and want to negotiate with me, they talk about bullying at school, and they demand my attention more than ever. I quickly realized that I needed to be more prepared than ever, especially for what’s to come. It is in this context that bbKIDS was born, for all moms and dads of kids between the ages of 6 and 12, who, like myself, have many unanswered questions.
The contents of the September 2008 issue included articles titled “Bullying,” “Mom, I have a girlfriend,” and “Tips to motivate your kid to do the homework.” The success of bbKIDS led Martha and Eugenia to entertain the possibility of launching an entirely separate magazine.
In 2004, Martha received several awards: Gatopardo named her one of the ten most successful Internet businesswomen in Latin America, Mujer Ejecutiva designated her Businesswoman of the Year, and Mexico’s leading business magazine, Expansión, named her one of the ten most outstanding female entrepreneurs. Her role models were Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart, though she had no intention of going through any up-and-down cycles of obesity or of acting on privileged financial information.
Martha was not shy about discussing the challenges facing her company: “Should we try to decouple bbmundo from the Martha Debayle brand image?” “Should we hire a professional CEO?” “Should we launch a line of branded baby clothing and accessories, or focus on expanding our multimedia offerings to include books, videos, and podcasts?” “Does it make sense for bbmundo to pursue the rapidly growing Hispanic market in the U.S., which is already 44 million strong?” “Should we perhaps become a magnet for women of any age and life situation as opposed to just focusing on mothers?” While pondering these options, Martha stretched on the sofa as if she were waking up from a dream. But it was all very real for her, and for the million-odd Mexican women who followed her on the radio, on television, over the Internet, and in print. She declared that “In order to succeed, you need to believe in yourself, in your dream.”
