Prior to becoming a developer, I worked in the retail industry for nearly a decade. Four of those years I spent working as an assistant manager in Centra. It was at the Centra conference in Killarney a few years ago that I had a daunting realisation. In the conference hall filled with 400-500 people, four overweight bald/balding men at the latter side of middle-aged, took it in turns at the podium on the stage, breathing their ideas on how to make more money down the microphone. One of the overweight, bald middle-aged men had the great idea of charging an extra 25c for coffee. And with his great idea he included his business philosophy – ‘It’s all about taking money from their pocket and putting it into our pocket.’
This comment struck a chord with me that I wasn’t expecting. Taking money from someone’s pocket and putting it into your pocket sounds a little too much like stealing and does not sound like good business. It caused me to question the road I was going down and motivated me to make the bold decision to move away from retail and see what else lay out there for me.
During this time, I always had an interest in technology and began teaching myself some of the basics in computer languages and began piecing together some websites.
I moved to France for a year and worked on penning a novel. I developed my creative writing skills and self-published my book ‘The Death Strip’ – a piece of historical fiction set in 1970’s Berlin. Feel free to check that out here.
It was when the book was complete and ready that I began to think about things like marketing. Developing a marketing campaign for the book thought me loads and I began to feel a pull towards that industry.
Upon returning to Ireland, after having my mind broadened with travel, I proceeded to seek out employment as a digital marketer. And so my fruitful tenure at Surge Media began.
I was initially employed with the aim of operating within a digital marketing role but giving that I had already developed a good understanding of how to use a range of coding languages, the obvious path for my skillset quickly became apparent.
Soon I found myself, developing bespoke websites, generating content, running social media campaigns, sending out email newsletters, setting up Google Adwords campaigns and generally fulfilling as many of the businesses needs as I could.
Now I find myself operating as a freelance web developer and I love it. I am very happy that I answered the call back when I did. It would have been very easy for me when I was working in retail to continue down the path that I knew so well, knowing that I would be comfortable but unsure if I was in the correct job.
Now I work from home, I have control over my day, I meet lots of people with really interesting businesses and start-ups with really interesting ideas.
I feel like my finger is on the pulse and I am on the cusp of something sweet.
Contact »