Twist Marketing was founded by entrepreneur Chrissie Plunkett and her business partner Richard Shell in 2017.
The London-born marketing specialist previously worked at Newcastle’s Airowear, where she was Head of Marketing, before co-founding her own agency in the same city.
Chrissie provides strategic marketing consultancy services to clients and has work that is regularly featured in publications and platforms like Forbes, The Guardian, ITV, and BBC. Twist’s portfolio spans a range of consumer clients including outdoor and tech clients, with services ranging from influencer strategy and content creation, to web design and brand strategy.
We heard from Chrissie about what a typical working week looks like…
Monday
My work week starts at 5:45am – this is my husband’s fault for being a naturally early riser, followed by my son, who always has a smile on his face and thinks it’s funny to jump on me before my eyes are even open. Once my coffee has arrived (always delivered by my husband) I’ve really run out of excuses to get any more sleep and so finally get up!
Before work, I drop my son off at nursery and depending on whether or not I’m driving to the office, I’ll either go for a morning run or a have a hearty breakfast before work. On Monday mornings our team have a creative planning session which involves a full team briefing, going into the finest detail so everyone is fully up-to-speed on deadlines and task allocation. This meeting is always fun and after a weekend, it’s usually when the team have plenty of new ideas that we want to shoehorn into a campaign or present to a client.
I don’t allocate time to go through my inbox, as my emails are constantly with me and I tend to deal with issues and requests as they come through or make a note to discuss with the team. I know some people think it’s not good to be on-call 24/7; but this is one of the choices I made when I decided to set Twist up and it’s not a big price to pay for all the other benefits Twist affords me, with flexible working, etc… I’m certainly not complaining!
Monday is a very team-related day. We’re always passing ideas around the office, sharing moodboards, asking for opinions and getting a lot done. It’s a good vibe. My office day usually ends by 6pm, when I call on my way home to check everything is OK. When I get back, it’s fun playtime with my son, followed by tea, a bubble bath, and then some chill-out time with my husband.
Tuesday
At the moment, my morning and evening routines remain pretty much the same but may vary depending on whether I’m heading into the office, working from home or catching up with a client.
As I expect most businesses experience, there are never enough hours on a Monday, so Tuesday mornings tend to be filled with wrapping up Monday’s activity. Every morning, we hold a team meeting to review the previous day and plan or amend the day’s activities. I’m encouraging myself to attend more networking events and have recently joined the Entrepreneur’s Forum, so tend to find there are some (virtual) networking events to attend and contribute to.
At Twist, we find that Tuesdays are a good day for looking at business development, and everyone in the team is involved in driving the business forward – so our afternoons can become quite competitive and exciting at times!
Wednesday
Wednesday is the last day of the week we spend in the office together, so this tends to be a day where we get as much face-to-face contact work done, ready for the team to get our heads down when working from home on Thursdays and Fridays.
We always seem to get a lot of project work completed by Wednesday, so tend to present campaign progress to each other and make tweaks and discuss the next steps. Since we’ve introduced reduced office hours and working from home policies, I’ve found Monday to Wednesday to be incredibly important for team morale and for keeping the team on-track with work.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t find it easy to manage a remote team, so to help with that, it’s really important to be as productive as possible for the days we’re in the office and to ensure my team are fully briefed, resourced and confident with the projects they’re working on for Thursday and Friday.
Thursday
My Thursday morning starts slightly later, as I have early morning playtime with my son before his Grandma takes over and I head to my home office. I tend to get through a lot of Twist admin work when I work from home. Whether it’s bookkeeping, HR or managing facilities and utilities, I find Thursday is the best day for getting these things done.
I think people underestimate how much work there is behind the scenes running a business. Throughout the day, we have at least four Zoom calls with the team and they can take a up a lot of well-spent time. It’s also the day when I attend virtual networking events, so quite often, I work well into the evening on Thursdays to catch up.
Friday
Friday is mummy day. With all good intentions, Friday is the day when I try to spend as much time as I can with my son but there’s always something that needs to be addressed on Friday that can’t wait until Monday, so this is the day when you’ll catch me on Zoom with my son in the background or the sound of the Teletubbies echoing through my microphone while I’m trying to resolve a problem.
I always catch up with the team over the phone on a Friday, at least two times a day to check in and end the working week on a high ready for the weekend ahead!
