By Business & Finance 
Newspread CEO Ian Keogh takes the Business & Finance 60-second challenge.
Q. What was your first job?
I worked in a busy newsagents in Cornelscourt while at school. My abiding memory of the job was that I started around the time the Pope visited Ireland in 1979.
While the whole of Ireland made plans to go see the Pope in the Phoenix Park, we were making sandwiches and selling them to those travelling by bus, with a stop located at the front of the shop. Business was very brisk. It was a great lesson in entrepreneurship.
Q. What would you regard as your greatest achievement to date?
Taking Newspread from a dedicated newspaper and magazine business to a much more diversified and sophisticated operation supplying packaging and consumables products, stationery, books, confectionery, toys and many other novelty products to retail.
Q. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Bet on Trump and Brexit. I didn’t heed it.
Q. If you could step into the shoes of one businessperson for the day, who would it be and why?
Theresa May. I would like to believe that the UK has a plan for a ‘soft’ Brexit and would love to get the inside track.
Q. How do you motivate yourself and your staff?
We work very closely together, agreeing and setting goals and targets.
We work hard to instil a feeling of ownership and autonomy across the business.
Q. In three words or less, how do you define success?
Achieving sustained growth.
Q. How do you relax?
I go hillwalking, play golf and enjoy cooking for family and friends.
Q. What’s your motto?
Take time to smell the flowers along the way.
Q. What are your aspirations for the future of your business?
Newspread has a unique and very valuable distribution network, delivering to every town and village across the Island of Ireland every day.
Through partnerships and/or acquisitions, I believe that the business will continue to deliver sustained growth and become Ireland’s leading distribution and logistics solutions provider.
I would like to believe that the UK has a plan for a ‘soft’ Brexit and would love to get the inside track
SPREADING HIS WINGS
Ian Keogh is a CEO and qualified accountant with strong logistics, commercial, management and operational experience.
As CEO at Newspread, a subsidiary of the INM Group, he has gained experience in logistics, business restructuring, cost transformation, outsourcing, SAP implementation, business diversification and reengineering.
For a two-year period he was chairman of the Joint Industry Committee comprising representatives from retail, publishers and wholesalers with a mandate to address and find solutions for a range of industry issues via self-regulation, rather than statutory intervention.
