Partner Article

Reuben Singh - A Day in The Life

Reuben Singh is a leading entrepreneur and CEO at the UK’s most trusted professional call answering service, alldayPA, which has answered over 111 million calls on behalf of 23,000 clients since 1999. His position as CEO incorporates a number of typical roles as well as others which are taken on out of choice and interest, including sales and marketing.

He has also recently launched a scholarship programme to support budding entrepreneurs to continue their entrepreneurial activities alongside their university studies. For more information, visit www.reubensingh.com/scholarship

6am - 8am

An early start is essential - I get up at 6am and check the alldayPA call centre overnight reports and emails. I then spend half an hour reading the news online and getting up to speed with any changes from the day before, and check emails I have received overnight as we are a 24-hour operation.

A few days a week I am based in London and am normally at my office desk there by 7:30am.

8am - 9am

Three days a week I am based in Manchester and do the school run with my children. It is a great opportunity to interact with the kids and hear about their school lives, and share with them what I am doing in my business life. This helps them understand why I spend so much time away from home or work late at night in the office. This is also how I learnt my early business skills and general business processes, when my Mother and Father used to drop me off at school - so I aim to replicate the early introduction to business workings. I do love this part of my day.

In Manchester I arrive at our business park and call centre headquarters by 9:15am. My days in Manchester are spent in internal meetings or with clients who are visiting us. I’m trying to implement a psychological change in my management team to allow them more freedom to manage the business, whilst as the CEO and managing director I focus on directing them and directing the future of the business. We will soon pass the 300 staff milestone and it is important for me to be looking at the 12 month to 3 year direction of the business.

9am - 1pm

Face-to-face meetings are used to understand internal head’s issues and give them advice on solutions and how to implement them. I also enjoy walking through the call centre and office floors, talking to staff and understanding any grass roots issues.

At midday I have a meeting with my head of operations and head of human resources. I believe HR and the people we employ are our biggest assets as a company and these are therefore my primary focuses. If we can employ the right staff, listen to them, and keep them happy and motivated they will deliver a top class service.

1pm - 2pm

At 1pm I break for lunch and will normally eat soup or sushi. We have created a relaxed environment at our call centre to break out into, with great subsidised food.

When working at my London office I will often be meeting clients or about potential acquisitions and investments. Lunchtime is a good time to meet some of these people, although I prefer to hold short and simple meetings over lunch. Lots of time can be spent travelling in London so I tend to stay in the West End and walk to meetings. This gives me time to clear my mind and prepare my thoughts for the meeting ahead.

2pm - 5.30pm

I spend my afternoons in the Manchester offices between internal meetings and multiple departments, sometimes dropping in unexpectedly on internal meetings to make sure each department receives adequate attention and show the team I care and want to be in tune with what is happening in all parts of the company.

4pm - 4.30pm

At 4pm every day I spend 30 minutes looking at the activities of the day and confirm all our operation centres are running well and everything is planned for the next 16 – 18 hours. This is only a short call but very important. We employ hundreds of people and manage 23,000 clients without having stopped for a 1 minute since 1999, therefore this requires constant monitoring and forward planning. This is something that could be delegated to others in my team however as CEO I want to be sure that our operations are running smoothly. With four operations centres, including our head office, and main data centre, the 4pm call is normally held with the three heads of operations. Usually this is just a validation call but if there are actions to be taken care of they can be expedited or I make a decision on them quickly.

4.30pm- 6pm

4:30pm-6pm is the time I allocate for sales and marketing meetings as I have specifically chosen not to have a director in this position, and like to keep that role passionately myself. We have a large marketing team including UX designers, copywriters, digital marketing experts, SEO executives, which I meet with multiple times throughout the week. I enjoy building campaigns and developing the brand. I also spend time evolving our offering and learning what our clients like about us to better our service offering.

6pm - 8pm

I aim to leave the office in Manchester for 6pm. In London I will work in meetings until 8pm as I normally have a dinner engagement or evening event to attend.

8pm - 1am

I make a rule not to go out during weekdays, instead spending a few hours with the children at home in the evening, generally being dad, listening to them read and looking over their homework. I enjoy playing around with my 3-year-old son as he burns off his excess energy most evenings playing Power Rangers. Unfortunately, I seem to be the punch bag each time. It is a good way to unwind and take my mind off work temporarily.

Once the children have gone to bed and the house gets quiet I spend time with my wife who is a board executive within the recruitment industry. We often discuss work related issues and general HR matters. She is an excellent source of knowledge and is a qualified psychologist. Her input has led us to introducing a whole range of medical and welfare benefits across all of the Isher Capital companies.

I also spend a couple of hours in the evening researching and answering emails I have been unable to answer during working hours. I like to research the marketplace, look for new ideas, and validate my thoughts, as well as look over information that has been been sent to me my my colleagues. looking over information that has been sent to me by anyone in the company.

1am

I rarely sleep before 1am, with much of my time in the evening spent between my laptop and phone reading emails, world and industry news.

Throughout the Day

I receive a few hundred emails a day and tend to spend 30 minutes every few hours managing and prioritising my responses. My PAs also help to reduce my workload. This is also something I plan to introduce to our 23,000 clients at alldayPA as another stage of service - soon, not only will alldayPA manage your calls, but also your emails. We already manage people’s diaries so this would be a natural extension of our existing service.

Regardless of a businesses size, entrepreneurs and business owners face similar challenges whilst running their businesses - time management and prioritising their workload being the most common.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Gemma Eccleston .