I'm the Managing Director and co owner of what is fast becomming THE mainstream SMS text message service for the UK - www.textlocal.co.uk. All our services enable companies, clubs and individuals to communicate instantly with groups of people via their mobile phones.

Short term role looking at how to house the huge amount of data DSGi hold on their customers with a view to provide them with additional services and so produce an additional revenue stream. After 6 months, the opportunity to start up Textlocal, combined with the 4.5 hours daily commute, proved to hard to resist.

Moved to Southampton to be the Marketing Manager for their Financial Services and Installations divisions.My first real role in Retail which was great. A great company to work for. My role was predominantly marketing communications ensuring that all 330 stores had all the required marketing materials and knew how to provide finance for those customers wishing to purchase high value items.

Moved to Birmingham to work for Homeserve and launch their Electrical Insurance product through UK Utility Companies. The role was an interesting one involving New Product Development, Marketing and Account Management. As such, I really enjoyed the role, launched the product and during my time grew it to a multi-million pound product with relationships with pretty much all the UK Gas & Electric Utility companies.

Moved to Chester to be Marketing Executive on their National Accounts area. From a business perspective, this was a great company with many opportunites to grow. I grew the area I looked after year after year. I took on lots of more areas, staff and responsibilities and was promoted several times during my 3 year stint.From a personal perspective, I was in my mid twenties in a large marketing department full of other people of same age all with more disposable income than we really deserved. Hence, a great time was had by all.

Joined AIG in Croydon straigt from University. I started as a Marketing Analyst working on Extended Warranties for their Comet account. These were very interesting times and gave me my first induction to what work must have been like for Financial Service companies in the 80's - as at least 2 times a week we went across the road at lunch time and got legless :-)From a work perspective the Extended Warranties area wasn't really what I wanted to do as it involved weeks and weeks of data input and pretty much no analysis (this was done by the Manager of the department). As such, I got more involved in Landmark (which offered Motor & Household Insurance). I managed to persuade the VP there at the time that I would make a good marketing assistant and so moved to Northampton where the operation was.Had a great time in Northampton working for Landmark from inception through to its final days when it was sold to Liverpool & Vistoria. I gained a great deal of marketing experience and for 2 years pretty much run all their marketing which included DRTV, Radio, Inserts, Direct Mail etc.