My day starts at 6.30 am and I'm straight into my first demanding appointment of the day. Today is a particularly challenging Lego set with my 4-year-old. We play for half an hour, then make breakfast for everyone and get ready to leave for the day. I have a cuddle with my 8-week-old son as my wife gets ready for the day, luckily he doesn't poo on me like yesterday, so we leave on time, phew.
I take my son to nursery and start my working day there. We're at a nursery called Playhood which also has a co-working space, so I do my first few calls there from 9am. My first call is with our operations directors on a new process to help make things easier for the team. Then one with our MD for APAC and MENA on a client renewal and onboarding of our new commercial lead in Singapore.
After that, we have a call with the machine learning consultancy we are working with. They have been developing a new model for predicting fraudulent users of our app. We own one of the most popular survey apps in the world, Curious Cat, which gives consumers rewards for taking surveys. It turns out that if you are giving away rewards, the world's fraudsters want to take them from you. The new model doesn't do want we had initially hoped, however, it predicts something else which is incredibly useful for fraud prevention. We now have a method for predicting with some certainty if someone is likely to be a bad guy after their first session in our app. Machine learning is mind-blowing, confusing and the outcome game-changing.
After that I travel into town, I live in North London so it's only 30 mins into our office in Red Lion Square, Holborn. I listen in to a new business meeting with a digital audio company and then take one of our commercial team for lunch. We discuss his future and how we can develop his career. We also discuss holidays, his wedding plans and mozzarella.
I try to front end my days, so the afternoon is much more calm. I catch up on emails, do some legal and finance tasks that come along with the job. I even manage a 30 min walk. I generally need some exercise each day to keep me sane, unfortunately, there's no time today but at least I get the chance to have a think about a couple of meetings I have later in the week.
At the end of the day, I have a quick call with our marketing manager on our content calendar for Q4. We're launching a series of educational videos on brand measurement which are really coming together. I then go and pick up my son from nursery.
Once home I do a quick turnaround as I'm going out in the evening for the first time since the new baby. Luckily my wife's mum is home to help out with bedtime, so I can go to dinner with my business club. I'm in a forum with 6 other CEO’s where we talk about marketing budgets, hiring, and all-important future ski trips. I only sneak a couple of drinks as the thought of a hangover at the moment gives me the fear.
Home for 10.30. It's been a decent day and wonderful to have a growing family and a growing business.
