ATG Stores president, Michelle Newbery

For a long time, the idea of building a team gave me anxiety. Even though I was overworked and overloaded with projects, I never felt ready to become a boss. I had an idea of what those people were and it wasn’t me. For the first year of my business, I was working from my makeshift home office, often in yoga pants, biting my other half’s ear off the moment he walked through the door because, well, that’s what 12 hours of not talking to anyone does to you.

Last year, going at it alone became untenable and I now have two people who work with me part-time and incredible partners who manage the parts of my business I gain no joy from focusing on. As my business grows, I’ve started thinking about leadership and more specifically, what makes a good leader. Is it based on results or how happy and motivated your team is? Is it something you’re born with or something you can learn and develop on the go?

These are some of the questions I hashed out when I caught up with ATG Stores president Michelle Newbery. I felt like she was the best person to talk to for many reasons. She started her career in public accounting working for the likes of Deloitte and Ernest & Young and has gone on to hold a whole host of leadership roles including Chief Financial Officer at ATG becoming president. Her history is interesting, too, because she operates in an industry where women are still largely invisible in leadership roles. As of last year, there were only 58 female CFOs serving in Fortune 500 companies, making up a paltry 11.6%. She’s the first to admit that she’s worked under very few women under the course of her career and it made me want to know some of the barriers she’s faced and her take on the factors holding women back.

Since joining the online homeware retailer, she has not only redefined the definition of the company’s name but also spearheaded countless initiatives and brought on new strategic hires, too. It made me curious about how she’s deals with the smart-versus-warm trade-off and how she’s managed to push for change with teams who are used to working in a specific way.

For many of us of at the start of our journeys as managers and leaders, inspiring a team and delivering results feels like a total mystery, but Michelle is someone who, in my opinion, has mastered it. Here she talks about politely persevering when being told ‘no’ for promotion; her take on the key ingredients for leadership and why it’s okay if you don’t have all the answers.  


ATG Stores president, Michelle NewberyHOW SHE GOT STARTED IN FINANCE: I started out in public accounting and really navigated towards finance roles from there. I knew I wasn’t on a partner track in a public accounting firm but I definitely liked understanding the data and being able to make decisions based on that. That gave me a solid basis, which I used to shift to more financial and operational roles. It was hired by Sunbeam Products and did a couple of different roles there and ultimately became their assistant controller, which was much more operational than anything I’d done before but I loved being able to see a business from that side. My husband’s from Philadelphia and while I was at Sunbeam were living in South Florida and I didn’t want to raise our kids there. It’s a great place to live but we were just looking for a change of pace and change of value systems. With my husband being from Philadelphia, he missed the change in seasons but I refused to do Philadelphia because I’d die from the cold so we negotiated and settled on North or South Carolina. I started looking for opportunities and I got a job within Lowes and their finance organisation within two weeks so we decided to make the leap and move to North Carolina.

ON MOVING HER FAMILY ACROSS THE COUNTRY FOR HER CFO ROLE: Lowe’s is an amazing large corporation with a lot of different areas that I knew I could learn and grow from. At Sunbeam, I was more in the manufacturing side, so I understood the backend of how products were made and distributed, which was more of a retail focus. I was then approached about a potential acquisition that Lowes was working on to and was asked to come on board as the CFO at ATG. Originally I was very hesitant because it meant a move to Seattle, which felt extremely far, or as my mother-in-law would say, ‘as far away as you could possible get from South Florida’. But needless to say, the more I thought about it, the more it felt like an opportunity that I couldn’t say no to. Moving your family across the country for work is hard. I treated it as a learning opportunity. That might be how I justified it. I definitely was not mum of the year that first year. They were young but they still understood what was happening and they had lots of questions about why we were moving. If you’re considering doing it, I’d definitely advise giving yourself a least a year to settle in and get situated. You’re going to have to rebuild relationships and rebuild your community and your support system and that doesn’t happen overnight.

WHAT HER CURRENT ROLE AS PRESIDENT ENTAILS: It’s different every day, which I love. It helps keep things interesting. We’ve got a lot going on from e-commerce to manufacturing and retail. It’s been a complete transition for me. Thanks to e-commerce, everything operates much more quickly. You can’t be afraid to fail fast, correct and learn. My focus has never been purely about sales. We have everything on site at our corporate location and we don’t have sales goals, we have relationship goals. I want my team to build relationships with our customers, understand what their project is, understand what they need, what they like, what their style is and to make sure we get them what they need the first, second and third time they order from us. I’m very fortunate to have an amazing executive senior leadership team who is on point, very talent and very motivated and that I trust. It allows me to focus more on strategic partnerships to make sure we’re working with the right people and the right companies to get us further faster. I allow my team to get on with the day to day but I’m still really hands on. I’m more than happy to speak to customers one-on-one.

ON CREATING A SMOOTH TRANSITION FOR THE EXISTING TEAM WHEN SHE JOINED THE BUSINESS AS PRESIDENT: I think it’s critical to take the time to observe and learn from your new team before suggesting or implementing changes. You have to remember that you’re coming from the outside. Things might look glaringly wrong to you until you watch your team, see their processes and understand why they got set up that way. When you first arrive, you don’t have enough information to make informed decisions. I felt it was important for me to take time, ask questions, build relationships with the team and let them know that I care and that I’m sincerely interested in making things better and supporting them. Once I had enough information, then I presented the change and was able to explain the reasons why I was doing it, all while letting them be part of the conversation.


ATG Stores president, Michelle Newbery


ON HOW SHE CREATED A STRONG COMPANY CULTURE IN A BUSINESS THE SIZE OF ATG: We do a couple of different things to make sure that our culture stays in line with how we want it to be: fast, intense and fun. That’s what I’m going for. It means we are going to work hard but I want people to feel good about coming to work every day so I solicit feedback all the time. I ask the team what they like and what they value. We can’t do everything but I try and take their suggestions on board like now, every summer when the weather is nice we do a parking lot barbeque. We bring grills and have a DJ. It’s just nice for everyone to be able to get out and interact. It started off as someone’s suggestion and it’s now a summer series we’ve done for the last three years. We’re a big company but it’s important for me that I get at least 10 minutes with every new team member we have after they’ve been with us for 60 to 90 days and had a chance to settle in. I want to be able to check in and see how things are going and make sure they know who I am, where I am and just reassure them that they have a great management team and that we’re all here to help. I also exit interview everyone who leaves, because I want to understand why they’re leaving us.

THE INGREDIENTS OF GOOD LEADERSHIP: Some people don’t want to manage people, and I understand that, but for me, getting to watch people progress and improve is so fulfilling. It’s just something that’s naturally evolved over my career. As a leader, patience is important, but not to the extent that you are hesitant to make decisions that need to be made. I think being a good listener and really hearing your employees whether you agree with them or not and taking the time to understand their perspective is equally as important.


ATG Stores president, Michelle NewberyON LEVERAGING THE INDUSTRY CLOUT OF HER BIG HIRES: As the brand has evolved, we’re trying to target a more specific type of consumer. I refer to them as our niche customer. They’re a little more particular and want something more unique in their homes than what they friends or neighbours have. To enter that space, I knew that I needed a strong partner, especially in the design and influencer area. That’s why we decided to partner with Alexa Hampton. She’s our creative director and she’s really helped us introduce us to higher end brands so that we can curate out selection and offer something different. Her introductions to the industry have been invaluable, too. We brought Eddy Ross on board too. He’s our style director and he has this incredible knack for coming up with cutting edge ideas and trends and create editorial content that is so valuable for our readers and our customers to help them learn about the products.

ON BEING TOLD ‘NO’ BEFORE LANDING HER CFO & PRESIDENCY ROLE: I think many women are afraid to be persistent. Just because you get a ‘no’ now doesn’t mean it has to stop there. That doesn’t mean being overly aggressive. For me, polite persistence has paid off. I was originally told ‘no’ when I expressed an interest for the CFO role at ATG. But I didn’t stop there. I persevered and ultimately landed the role. The same was true for the presidency. I had to ask more than once to land it and I’m so very glad that I did. I think we have the tendency to stop the first time we hear ‘no’ rather than simply questioning the ‘no’. I’ve been pretty persistent when it comes to moving to the next level with my career when opportunities have presented themselves. That said, I certainly never planned to be president of an e-commerce company when I started in public accounting.

THE CHALLENGES OF BEING A WOMAN IN A LEADERSHIP ROLE: Not everyone is going to like you and you are not going to make everyone happy, especially in a large organization. It’s just not going to happen. You’re going to have to make hard decisions and not everyone is going to like them – but that’s okay. I’ve learnt that the majority are going to understand and come right along with you.

CREATING BOUNDARIES A WORK IN THE QUEST FOR BALANCE: It’s an ongoing challenge but I force a work/life balance and I hope it resonates with my team and has a trickle-down effect. For example, every day I drive my daughter to the bus stop and that’s the most precious 15 minutes I have. It’s my time with her and people now know not to schedule meetings with me at that time. If something is super important, of course we can figure it out but that time is protected. My goal, and this doesn’t work perfectly, is to leave at 5 o’clock every day and to go home and make dinner, help with homework, see how their day was and then log back on if I haven’t finished what I needed for the day once they are settled. It doesn’t always work perfectly but I think setting boundaries is important. When I’m with my family I try my best to be present and put my phone down and be engaged. It’s something I’m working on.