Day in the life
MORNING
I get up at 5.30am and I am normally out training for a triathlon or ironman by 6am; this could be swimming, cycling or running (sometimes all three) either in the Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club or around Foxrock where I live. I train six days a week, sometimes twice a day. On Thursday mornings I bring my daughters to school. I am usually at my desk by 8.30am having packed in two hours of training.
I eat breakfast at my desk and my first and favourite task of the day is opening the post. I like to see how many cheques we get in each day as it gives me a very good understanding of cash flow. I then reply to emails from our associated businesses abroad.
My mornings are made up of a series of meetings with the team to discuss functions, features and progress. We have spent the past two years developing Big Red Cloud, an online version of Big Red Book. This accounting software is used by 17,000 SMEs in Ireland and the UK and the cloud version is going to be even more successful, in my opinion. We expect that it will increase our team by 50% over the next 12 months, creating 12 new jobs.
It’s never quick enough for me; I always want things done faster, so it is quite a challenge to hold back to ensure we develop our products in the correct way. Thankfully, my team are very good at holding me back or asking me to go off for a cycle or a run and leave them to get on with the job in hand.
AFTERNOON:
I like to have a hands-on approach in the company so I take an active role in sales and regularly man the sales line in the afternoon. Sales are where I started, so I get a great buzz from dealing with our customers. I have a marketing background so a lot of my day is often spent coming up with new ideas and concepts to help drive sales and traffic to the website and the inbound sales line.
A lot of my day is now spent planning and coordinating the launch of Big Red Cloud. We did a soft launch to existing customers in June and that has gone exceptionally well, with 36% of those who trialled it converting to the cloud. We are now rolling it out to other businesses.
Once I have successfully done the Irish launch of Big Red Cloud, my next task is to launch in the UK, followed by Australia, New Zealand and other English- speaking countries with the same accounting rules as Ireland and the UK.
EVENING
I am home every evening by 6.20pm, when I sit down to dinner with my wife and four daughters and catch up with what’s happening in their lives. After taking time with my family and the youngest has gone to bed, a couple of times a week I would use the gym at home for my second workout of the day. Some evenings I have to go to business related events and with the launch of Big Red Cloud, this is happening more frequently. I go to bed at 11pm and fall asleep dreaming of winning the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii.
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