What is your favourite part of being an entrepreneur? You also need to be able to have passion for your venture, it’s really important to be able to enjoy what you do! I would say that I see failure as a good thing to have in a journey, as you can learn a lot from it and build back even stronger than before. It isn’t an easy thing to run and build a business, and you have to keep motivating yourself, which can be really hard at times. Not in a naive way, but as an agency a strong value of ours is a can-do attitude that you can bring to both clients and your team. What would you say are the top 3 skills that needed to be a successful entrepreneur? Why?Ĭonfidence, self belief, and a positive outlook. I had existing clients who wanted to continue working with me, so I wasn’t having to start from a completely blank slate, which helped give me confidence in myself. Additionally, I knew that if it didn’t work out, I could go back to another company, so I might as well give it a try. I moved to Oxford a year before establishing CubanEight and began to work at another PR agency, but I soon realised I wanted to do my own thing and build a company myself. How and when did you know your idea was good enough to develop it? What is your definition of entrepreneurship?įrom my experiences and observations, I would say it’s about wanting to build something different that you have belief in. After my time there, I freelanced for a while before deciding to utilise the skills and experience I had by setting up my own agency, and so I self-founded CubanEight 12 years ago. It was a great entrepreneurial environment that gave lots of opportunity and empowerment to its team to learn new skills. Later, I moved to an agency called Hotwire that my former boss had set up, and I was there for 5 years. After that, I moved to a global tech PR agency, Weber Shandwick, which I loved! It was great getting to work with lots of innovators, and the company had a very global outlook due to running multi-market campaigns. From there, I found myself in tech PR through working in publishing focussed PR agency at a time when books were becoming more digitalised in format. I studied English at University of Birmingham and wasn’t quite sure what to do after graduation! I got my first PR role working for Channel 4’s Schools division supporting their educational programming with teaching resources and events. What is your background? What made you decide to get involved in supporting entrepreneurs? My perfect car would be a Rolls Royce – driven by Claudia Schiffer!īembridge in the Isle of Wight.Sian Gaskell is the Managing Director of award-winning & fast-growing PR agency CubanEight. Money’s not an issue, what’s your perfect car… and where would you like to drive it? Tennis, golf, sailing and family – assuming I have any spare time! How do you like to spend your spare time? I like a fine curry with a pint of Chateauneuf du Pape! Selling men’s pants in Marks & Spencer – employee of the month I have you know!įine dining and good wine, or curry and a pint? I am not sure how I managed but at least both the customer, Joe and I will never forget it. He is actually Westcoast’s owner, founder and chairman. Joe Hemani walking into an important customer meeting early in my career at Westcoast pretending he was the cleaner. Whilst I value my chartered accountancy qualification, I just love selling. I would have joined the computer industry earlier and probably in sales. If you had had a crystal ball, would you have done anything differently? What’s the best bit of business advice you’ve been given?įrom Jane Green, my managing partner at EY, who said: “In business, there is no problem too big to fix!” This has a calming nature to stressful situations knowing that we can get through anything. What a fabulous place to be the Managing Director – no wonder my targets are huge! To use a Fast Showreference: “Next year, I will be mostly selling Westcoast services and cyber security!”Ī teleportation device that allows you to be in two places at once! There are so many opportunities and for an entrepreneurial company like Westcoast, there are no boundaries. Where do you see the next big opportunity? Just look at our warehouse staff throughout the pandemic – heroes, every last one of them. We never give up and nothing can stop us. The greatest impact are Westcoast people and the values we have as a business – particularly the team spirit we engender and the unrelenting excellence we demonstrate. What’s currently having the greatest impact on your business?
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