Profile: Gisela Pink

The job took a toll on her work-life balance, but there were still plenty of lessons learned along the way.

“The company had around 250 stores,” she said. “I joined and I was one of only five women working for a business with 2,500 men!

“I was flying around the country working with the different teams and I had a strong hands-on experience of what it took to work with different people of different backgrounds with different needs.

“It took me a lot of learning, adjusting and working on myself to connect with people. After four years, I ended up coming to the UK for a holiday to visit my brother and I fell in love with the autumn here!

“It was in Surrey and every day I would walk through the woods to get to the train station and I felt like that was what I was missing out on when I was running around everywhere. In Buenos Aires there was no time for that. My mobile phone would go off at three in the morning and it would be my boss saying he’d booked me on a flight for 6am that day!

“I woke up one day in a hotel room not knowing where I was anymore!

“I had two months of holidays and thought that I’d use it here in the UK. Within three or four days I said I wasn’t leaving.”

It was the next chapter in an evolving story.

Gisela enrolled on a course in London that provoked her to ask questions about her life.

She said: “It was very intense and looked at the conversations I have with myself – what I thought I deserved, what I didn’t deserve; what I thought I was good at and not good at. It was very much about self-belief and understanding yourself.

“It looked at the stories I was telling myself about all the things that didn’t work out, such as relationships and family – all those things that you sweep under the carpet. After three days, they got me lifting the carpet and addressing those things.

“I always felt like a I had to prove something, to belong. It was very intense but I enjoyed it and started training in coaching. I found it very interesting to learn what makes us human.

“The more you get in touch with other people, the more you realise that the things that matter to you matter to everybody. There is so much we have in common.”

The next key moment in Gisela’s life could have jumped off the pages of a book.

She was sat in a café drinking a cappuccino reading Neale Donald Walsch’s Conversations with God when a friend knocked at the window.

It led to Gisela being introduced to James Pink, who she went onto coach and eventually marry, but not after she had given him a less-than-impressive review of the company he’d just established.

“He asked me to come and look at a business that he had just set up. I was honest and told him it wasn’t that great! I was thinking he might be out of business by the end of the month!

“He said that if I was so clever I should come and run it myself! I did eventually move to the Cotswolds with him and joined the company.

“It was called Pink Communications, but we rebranded immediately as Pink Connect and we virtually started again from scratch.

“Businesses previously only had the opportunity to buy their telecoms packages from BT but now companies such as Pink Connect could come along and support you. All of a sudden, you could be billed for your phone line by a third party and save money in the process.

“We started developing a relationship with Openreach and at the beginning we were offering cheap calls to customers, then it was rentals, then we had dial-up and I remember the launch of ADSL and trying to get our heads round it. None of us were from that industry.

“It started evolving and something that was just the two of us suddenly turned into nearly 20 employees. However, it remains a family run business and we’ve always grown in an organic way that everyone is comfortable with.”

The company now supports a whole range of businesses but its sweet-spot is SMEs of between 25 and 100 employees. In 2008, the firm launched a franchise model creating Pink Connect offices across the UK. And the whole business is built on the purpose and values that Gisela lives her life by.

“It’s very difficult to share the ethos with everyone and not become a large corporation where you are faceless provider,” she said. “Most of the services we provide are provided by others. It might be a larger price, smaller price, but the same product.

“The difference here is the team of people. That is where we add an enormous amount of value.

“Integrity is key. The value of your word. If we commit to something, we will give it 100 per cent effort. We do what we say we will do. If we can’t, we will communicate that.

“Some businesses talk about purpose but don’t really follow it. It matters because you cannot force a staff member to have a vision. You have to share those values in a way that will align everyone with you.

“If you ask any staff member at Pink Connect, we all want the same thing. We have the same shared values and the purpose is something we create together.

“We want to be providing extraordinary service to our clients and for them to understand that nobody else will look after them like we do.

“One thing that I always say to the team is: ‘this is it’. Life is happening today, right now. What happened in the past, we can talk about it, discuss it, understand what went wrong, what went right, learn from it.

“But today is the day, in every aspect of your life. It’s no good planning to be nice to someone another time. This is it.

About Gisela Pink

Married: Yes, 20 years

Children: One

“Most of my staff, I see outside of work. I invite them to my house and I cook for them. We have a gathering where I either cook for them, take them out for lunch or I cook a barbeque at the office.

“You have to have that balance that you bring across every area of your life, who you are, what you stand for, what’s your purpose?

“I also care about the balance in the world, I genuinely do.”

So much so, that Gisela changed her car from an SUV to an electric vehicle because she was challenged by her son about her commitment to the environment.

On top of that, the Pinks are hosting a Ukrainian family in their home and the business has committed to giving a portion of its profits to good causes.

“Many years ago, we started speaking to the staff,” said Gisela. “We said: Pink Connect is doing well but what are we doing with that? What do we do with the profit?

“We felt that there would be no balance in the world if we were not contributing. So, we have been sponsoring 18 children through World Vision since they were born to help them build their lives.

“It’s been nearly 18 years now so they are turning into adults. They don’t know who we are but that’s not the point. We’re trying to change the world. I cannot end world hunger or injustice but I can contribute not to create it.

“We’ve donated to a project in Africa to provide clean water to children through the Rotary.

“We also realise that our own area has issues too. We spoke to the local council about homelessness in Stratford and realised that we could support. The council was paying to book people into hotels so we have stepped in and ended up buying a few houses to take people off the streets.

“I can’t stop homelessness but, again, I can try to be a part of the solution.

“We want to leave the world a better place than we found it. What else is there to do?”

Hobbies: Karate training, I’m a Second Dan. Cooking

Favourite Book: Mmm, a good police drama

Favourite Film: The Martian

Last Holiday: Fez, Morocco

Gadget: A foot massager under my desk!