Other Women’s Jobs / Máire Morris

NAME: Máire Morris ( Mo)

AGE: 39

INSTAGRAM HANDLE: @mo_derrymore @morrisglobalconsulting

JOB TITLE: CEO & Entrepreneur

MOVED TO THE UAE IN: 2018 after 5 years of travelling to & from Dublin.

With a career spanning two decades in the global fashion industry, Mo has a huge passion for both creativity and business. She trained initially in textiles & print, then fashion design, buying & merchandising, and entrepreneurship & innovation in Ireland where she grew up.

Mo is a passionate advocate of business entrepreneurship and an avid supporter of Independent brands globally. Working with world-renowned partners such as Premier Vision - Paris and local & international Design & Craft Councils, government ministries and private funding bodies worldwide as a speaker, moderator, trainer & business consultant to support the fashion, retail, lifestyle and culture and arts industries.

Mo has huge experience from her varied background which encompasses both creativity and business innovation & management which she believes has become instrumental in her success, as knowledge is a wonderful thing, but on the ground experience is an absolutely vital component in advising others correctly.

She truly believes that our economies can thrive if we support people’s visions & guide them honestly through the ups and downs of business.

7.30/8 AM: Crawl out of bed, haha - I am not a morning person so I spend at least an hour catching up on emails & whatsapps and trying my best to have no one speaking to me in person until my PA comes to work at 9.30 am. As I work with so many different timezones there could be a substantial amount of correspondence from suppliers, clients, my team in other countries, and so on during the night, so this is my time to clear the clutter from the evening/night before I face a new day. The only time this varies is when I’m travelling for work to visit factories, clients, or trade shows where I fly early and catch up on the plane on all before touching down. Pre-covid my travel schedule was extremely busy and I swore in Feb 2020 after a particularly gruelling week of 18-hour days in Paris that I would find a way to cut down on the tiring travel that year…… little did I know! Now I’m more than ready to get back out there again!

9.30 -10.30 AM: Debrief & quick coffee with my lovely PA Mai on what is happening in general and what the priorities for the day/week are. Catch up with the design, production & digital team on project progress, review content for our own channels any issues with clients that I may need to step in on, and general questions that they may have on various items they are working on. I am lucky to now be at a stage in my business where I can delegate more and I have an extremely loyal and hard-working team who I trust completely to work to the very high standards that I put in place for our deliverables. This does not happen overnight either. I started from zero just like everyone else, doing pretty much everything myself, and slowly built from there.

11 AM: Start client calls or business development/ partnership calls. These could be anything from new client discovery calls, to calls with technology or investment partners or universities for our educational & training work to calls with retailers on why they should be developing their own private labels & training their staff on customer service (a pet peeve of mine) and maximising their bottom lines, to working on the development of new partnerships and projects. In this business (or any) you cannot sit back and expect that clients and projects will just come to you, you have to be smart and work in advance, even if sometimes that project could be 1 or 2 years away.

2 PM: 10-minute breakfast/lunch and back at it. Mentoring calls, strategy work for clients on business, production, marketing, sales, structuring or reviewing client pitches for investors, More calls, endless whatsapps from the team & suppliers, review requests for moderating/speaking at events and on it goes.

6- 7 PM: I do generally try to finish on time now from Morris Global Consulting work unless I have a client event to attend to show my support, or I really need to give something my undivided attention like tendering for new work with private or government entities and so on, but this is a very recent lifestyle change of mine due to some health issues from work stress & burnout which led to panic attacks and general anxiety during Covid. It was a real wake-up call for me and something I had never dealt with before and I now FINALLY get that I cannot work until 10 or 12 pm every day and expect to be running on all cylinders.

8 PM: Dinner & catch up with my other half as he listens to me rant about the day, lol, try to get out for a walk and clear my head. Depending on the day this is usually where I touch base with my other business’s also to see what is going on, though this can be going on throughout the day also. One is an organic, vegan, and ethical beauty & hair salon called @cedorabeautysalon in Meydan, Dubai, and the other is a gourmet food company in Ireland called @Camo_foods which I am currently working on getting into the market here. During the week these don’t take up too much of my time so I usually catch up at the weekend on these with my co-partners in each business.

10 PM: Movie/TV/Switch off, catch up with family/friends messages