By Business & Finance 
Tommy Kearns and Dr. Kevin Collins, co-founders, Xtremepush
Tommy Kearns, CEO and co-founder, Xtremepush, takes the Business & Finance 60-second interview.
What was your first job? Working early morning in the summers, watering mushroom tunnels at Longford Mushrooms, my late father’s business. I learned a lot about how some jobs are an integral part of a successful process, even though they can be extremely monotonous and time consuming! What would you regard as your greatest achievement to date? Meeting my wife and having my two children, personally, and professionally, being able to re-invent and build a scaleable technology business out of the recession. Since 2014, we’ve had 100% YOY new business growth and Xtremepush is currently live in 21 regions, providing digital marketing solutions across Europe, Ukraine, the US, Canada, China, South Africa and Australia. In three words or fewer, how do you define success? Loyal customers. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? My late father, who was the biggest influence on me professionally, would have had operated on the basis of “ask lots of questions and get into the detail”. The business philosophy was to always move forward and progress, and to hire like-minded people with a serious bias for action. For him, failing was fine, but you couldn’t stand around feeling sorry for yourself. It was very much a house where you had to get up the next day and go at it again…both in sport and business! What’s your motto? #kdh…keep driving hard. How do you motivate yourself and your team? We are lucky to have an ambitious team in Xtremepush. I think setting highly ambitious goals is really important, but equally important is showing the team the path to achieve them; the route we’re on as a team. We also have mariachi moments within the business, where we don’t just celebrate the sales but we celebrate the support ticket wins, the new product wins, the bug fixes etc. The team knowing they are part of the puzzle is as important as the other parts that make up the entire puzzle. I have a real passion for business and I love understanding a new concept or product and working out how to get it from concept, to product, to first paying and satisfied customer. Watching the business plan being executed by all the team, and seeing new milestones being conquered, is massively energising for me. How do you relax? I keep relatively fit with HIIT training and I love spending time with my family; my wife and kids keep me busy and grounded. Sport plays a big part in my life and my kids’ so I attend different sporting events and watch games where I can. Rugby is my passion; looking forward to seeing how far Ireland can go in this year’s World Cup. What are your aspirations for the future of your business? We are scaling massively at the moment. In the last 18 months we successfully completed our first acquisition and opened new offices in Eastern Europe. We will continue to scale and will double our staff in the next 12 months, globally. My aspiration for this business is to be one of the top 3 multichannel engagement providers, globally.
