Quick Questions with Paul: Chief Marketing Officer

| Life at SwipedOn

When he's not hiding his hobbit toes, dreaming about packing up the family for a full immersion experience working abroad or trying his hand at coding, Paul is our Chief Marketing Officer here at SwipedOn. We caught up with Paul for a quick-fire round of questions to learn more about him and what a day in the life is like at SwipedOn HQ.

In a nutshell, what do you do at SwipedOn?

I help steer the revenue-generation machine in the right direction. Our business is 100% inbound so without getting the right leads in the door, the sales team would have nobody to sell to, and we would miss all our targets.

What does a day in the life of you at SwipedOn look like?

My day typically starts with a check of the overnight action, since most of our lead activity is from the northern hemisphere and comes in while we're asleep here in NZ. The inbound lead funnel is crucial to our business growth so I always make sure there's nothing at the top that's interrupting that flow. There's a fine balance to find between volume and quality of inbound leads, and the sales team lets us know if we're not getting it right! Always check in with my team to see how they're going and make sure there's nothing getting in the way of progress, and see if there's anything I can do to help. I also work closely with Nicole and get the hot takes from the sales team to complete that feedback loop from advertising dollars going in the top of the funnel through to customer revenue coming out the bottom.

What are some of your favorite parts about being part of the team here?

The people, first and foremost - just a good bunch of peeps with a good mix of personalities. Everyone has got great individual talent and we all combine (kind of like Captain Planet) to do awesome stuff. Always a pleasure to be in the office. Also enjoy being part of a local success story and being one of the first full-time employees. From a marketing point of view, it was a completely blank canvas when I joined and that was pretty exciting. Being 100% digital marketing allows me to use data and analytics to prove ROI on marketing spend, which was near impossible in my previous roles in a much more traditional marketing world.

What do you particularly like about what we’re doing with SwipedOn?

I love how we just make life at work easy ✨

What three words would you use to describe your role?

1. Marketing.

2. Qualified.

3. Leads.

Do you have a favourite motto or mantra that you live by?

F@¢k it, why not?

What did you do in your previous working life?

After studying mechanical engineering at uni, I joined Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, which was a great company to work for, especially as a new grad - a real NZ success story. I did engineering for the first year or two and then put my hand up to be a Product Manager, where I learnt that I actually liked the people side of business more than sitting behind a computer designing widgets. I then spent the next 15 years in marketing and sales at F&P, both in NZ and in overseas offices. We made the family decision to move to the Bay of Plenty in 2015, where I took a year off full-time work, and became an avocado farmer while also looking after our young kids. I stumbled across SwipedOn when we moved to Tauranga and made a connection with Hadleigh and Ben. Been a fun journey so far!

What do you do in your free time?

I spend as much time as I can with my kids because before too long, they won't want to hang out with me. I get pretty involved with all their sports teams, swimming comps, triathlon races, etc. I also serve on our school Board of Trustees to try and give back to the local community a little. The avocado orchard takes up a decent amount of the weekends too, as does the "life-sentence block" (lifestyle blocks are a myth). Outside of that, I love sports - I play tennis, golf, squash, cricket and football, and would happily give any sport a go at least once.

What are three things still left on your bucket list?

1. We want to do a full international immersion at some stage in the future - pack up the family and go live on the other side of the world for a decent chunk of time.

2. I would also like to pick up flying again - I did enough hours to go solo and would like to carry that through to getting my PPL.

3. Lastly, turn at least one of my kids into a sporting superstar, to pay for my retirement.

What’s on your SwipedOn playlist?

I'm a bit of a 90's bogan...

If you were stuck on a desert island and you could choose one person from the SwipedOn team to come with you, who would you take and why?

I'd go with Micah - he's a great cook!

Let’s end this with a weird fact about you… or a random fact you love!

My family name is one of the oldest in New Zealand. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Captain Thomas Hansen, was the captain of the ship that brought the first Europeans to New Zealand, and the first European baby to be born in NZ was a Hansen.