In ConversationWith -Ronan Perceval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Going from law to beauty
This month, Irish Beauty catches up with Ronan Perceval, founder of salon software company Phorest, to find out about his life at work and at home with his young family.
I ended up in the beauty industry because…When I was in my early 20s I worked as a receptionist in a hair salon as a part time job. They had a huge problem with no-shows. With another friend of mine from college we designed software that sent out appointment reminders by text message. It worked amazingly, cutting no-shows by 70%. From there, other salons started contacting us looking for the software so we decided to start a company properly. That was in 2003.
If I wasn’t in the beauty industry… Well I studied law at university and I turned a job down in London to do this so I’d probably be there now slaving away on weekends - thank god I’m not doing that!
The best thing about my job is… Working with salon owners every day, it’s great to work with people who are out doing their own thing. They can be very demanding but in a good way – it means you always have to be on top of your game because the work and products we create make a meaningful impact not just on their job but on their livelihood.
An average day for me is…I get up at 7:30am and get my seven month old son Fred his breakfast. At the moment most of my day is split between working with the development team on the new features for our software and with the team we are working with in Finland where we launched a few weeks ago. I get home about 7pm to see Fred briefly before he goes to sleep, then my wife and I have dinner and chill out.
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Ronan Perceval
My ideal weekend would be…A four-day trip to the Alps with some friends for some skiing.
My favourite book is…My favourite business book is Good to be Great by Jim Collins. Away from work my favourite changes all the time but the one I enjoyed the most in the last 12 months was The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliffe.
My favourite film is…Memento. We loved it so much that we called our first salon software after it – Phorest Memento!
The most famous person I have met is…I never got to speak to him but managed to shake hands quickly with Nelson Mandela. The aura around that guy is something else.
My favourite part of the world is… The west of Ireland where I grew up.
When I was a teenager I couldn’t wait to get away from there, but the older I get, the more I enjoy going back.
I could not live without…My seven month old son.
My favourite beauty treatment is… A deep tissue massage.
When growing up my role model was…Although I didn’t realise it at the time it was probably my father. He worked very hard to build his own business. One day he got meningitis and nearly died and because he was the only one in the business, it never really recovered after that. Thankfully he is alive and well but it taught me an important lesson – that a business can never rely on one person.
I would like to be remembered as…A good father.
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