Five Minutes With…Phil Stark
Welcome to the first in a new blog series, giving you the opportunity to spend ‘Five Minutes With…’ one of our team.
Although TALKINGTECH has been revolutionising the payments and collections industry for 30 years, innovation, transparency and ‘thinking differently’ is at the heart of our business. Here you’ll be able to meet the people behind this approach. First up is Phil, our CEO:
Name?
Phil Stark
How long have you been in the technology industry?
16 years, give or take…
What do you most love about your job?
I love being involved in technology, day in day out. I guess I’m not your typical CEO, in that I am very hands on in the day to day operations of the company. I enjoy being involved and assisting the team where required and it also keeps my head in the game from a technology perspective.
What do you find the most challenging aspect of your role?
Keeping a balance between getting too deeply involved in the tech and keeping my eye on the rest of the day-to-day running of the company can be a challenge.
Do you have any quirky daily rituals at work?
As we all work in an open office environment, I sometimes have to put headphones on to limit distractions. I quite often find myself getting a bit too involved in the music and I start to tap loudly and dance around a bit…embarrassing.
What’s your last task of each day?
I plug in my Bluetooth headphones so that they are good to go the next day.
What’s your favourite piece of technology for making work easier? And in your personal life?
Being a global company, we have struggled in the past to implement good and reliable internal communication and collaboration tools. Now that we are on our way to having these in place, using Skype for Business and the Atlassian tool suite for example, things are so much easier.
In my personal life, I love my Sonos sound system at home. I’m a musician and love to listen to music 24/7, so having a system like Sonos that simply works is great.
What would you say to your 20-year old self?
Worry less, lighten up and enjoy life. This also applies to my 37 year old self.
If you could try out any job for a day, what would you choose?
US President
Is there anything you can tell us about TALKINGTECH that would really surprise us?
TALKINGTECH was started and run from a personal credit card with $1000. We’ve come a long way!
If you have any questions that you’d us to put to the next person we put these questions to, please post your comments on our LinkedIn page and we’ll answer them next time.