Beverly Topping Credits Taking Chances For Her Success in Growing Today’s Parent Group into A Multimedia Corporation

After growing Today’s Parent Group into a multimillion-dollar media giant, Beverly Topping continues to be a fearless entrepreneur, advisor and high-stakes mentor.

By: Wendy Helfenbaum | Photography by: Sean Sprague

Beverly Topping’s unconventional childhood helped instill a lifelong sense of fearlessness and adventure. Born in Baldur, Manitoba, a tiny farming community, Topping’s UK-born mother Lynn Matchett was a nurse in the British Navy, while her Canadian father Stewart Matchett was a flight engineer, flying second seat in a bomber squadron throughout World War II. After the war, they settled on the farm and Lynn became the local midwife, on-call day and night.

“My father was a farmer for the first few years of my life, so I was with him most of the time – in a box under a tree when he was harvesting, holding his hand at race tracks, grain elevators and boxing matches,” recalls Topping. “It was a real gift, because I was truly brought up in what was then a man’s world, and I grew up knowing how to work alongside of men.”

Topping was 4 years old when her father returned to the military. By the time she graduated high school, she’d attended 13 different schools in five countries.

“When you grow up in a military family, by the time you’re 10, you’ve seen what the average 20-year-old has seen,” explains Topping. “You understand human nature a little more deeply, because of your exposure to different things, which is a real advantage because there aren’t as many surprises later in life.”

Topping did, however, have a few surprises in store for herself on the road to becoming a highly accomplished entrepreneur and role model for countless businesswomen. In fact, it’s ironic that the very first job she held fresh out of high school was as a model – for the Hudson’s Bay Company in Winnipeg.

Modelling opened doors for Topping, however. A stint in sales soon led to a coveted spot in the company’s management training program. When Topping became engaged to her husband, John, who also worked at the Bay, corporate rules forbidding family members from working together forced her out.

“I simply walked up the street to Eaton’s, and took their management training program,” she says. “I was fine with that, because I was still doing what I wanted to do.”

Topping continued doing what she wanted to do after moving to Toronto in the late 1960s, raising two sons.

In 1983, when her boys were young teens, Topping purchased Great Expectations, a magazine for pregnant women. She had zero traditional publishing experience, yet was undeterred.

“My father used to refer to me as having more nerve than brains; that’s my risk-taking mentality,” explains Topping, who planned to use the magazine to become a one-stop-shop for Canadian parents and advertisers.

“New parents go through a psychological, physical and emotional change all at the same time, which means they’re vulnerable,” says Topping. “If you’re vulnerable, you need advice and resources. So it just made sense to tap into that and assist parents.”

Like many female entrepreneurs, Topping’s biggest challenge early on was raising venture capital money.

“It was extremely frustrating raising capital to grow the business. Bay Street was a closed community to women [back then],” recalls Topping. “It is difficult because you can take your eye off the ball of running your business.”

“TRUST YOUR INTUITION AND LEARN HOW TO TAKE CHANCES. THE ONLY WAY CHANGE HAPPENS IS IF YOU’RE PREPARED TO TAKE A CHANCE. AND IF YOU DON’T, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO GO ANYWHERE.”

Topping quickly realized to play the game to win, there’d have to be a front man.

“I approached Bob Shoniker, a venture capitalist, a year before I actually needed money, which is unheard of in the industry, but I was thinking ahead,” she recalls. “Bob, and others, understood both the entrepreneurial and corporate worlds.”

Indeed, over the next 17 years, Topping grew that one magazine into a multimillion-dollar multimedia corporation. Today’s Parent Group (TPG) became a communications powerhouse of 15 magazines, two television series, a children’s book publishing company, a hospital-based sampling program for new mothers, a digital photography business, and the largest family database in the country. Through the database, Topping launched a wildly successful convergence marketing strategy, one of the first in Canada.

“Other than raising my children, it is my proudest accomplishment,” she says of her years running TPG. “Especially watching my team grow beyond their own expectations and dreams.”

After Topping sold TPG to Rogers Media in 2000, she took two years off to travel around the world, climb Mount Kilimanjaro and basecamp of Everest, and build homes for Habitat for Humanity in New Zealand. She flew in and out of Toronto in between, renovating her home and building a cottage, and even completed the 2002 Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C.

“That time was a gift that I never, ever expected to have in my life, and I just decided to take advantage of it,” she says. “I loved travelling on my own, because you are open to more adventures that way.”

While Topping has the greatest respect for women who have made it to the C-Suite, she also understands the ones who choose to walk away in favour of seeking a different quality of life.

“A lot of women reach a certain point in the business world – and they’ve had to work really, really hard to get there – where they literally stop and say, ‘Where is the balance I want in my life?’ And it’s not there,” she explains.

The balancing act Topping continues to navigate also included serving on many prominent boards, such as Cara Foods, CT Financial Services, the Toronto International Film Festival Group, the Women’s College Hospital Foundation, and the Institute of Child Study. She strongly believes that business leaders should pay it forward – especially concerning the advancement of professional women.

“My experience today is that there are more women supporting other women, particularly women my age supporting the younger generation, and I’m so grateful to see that,” she says. “But there’s a huge amount of room for improvement: This is still very much a man’s world, and it’s so important to have both men and women helping each other in their careers.”

Today, Topping is a highly sought after speaker, advisor and mentor. She is currently mentoring a young entrepreneur from Ottawa for the IWF Fellows Leadership Program, a global program in partnership with Harvard and INSEAD.

When asked what lessons today’s female entrepreneurs need to learn, Topping replies, “Trust your intuition and learn how to take chances. The only way change happens is if you’re prepared to take a chance. And if you don’t, you’re not going to go anywhere,” she insists. “I’ve never thought of myself as a woman of influence; I’m just a woman who’s lived.”