By Business & Finance 
Niall McGarry, founder of Maximum Media, takes the Business & Finance 60 second challenge.
Q: What was your first job?
A: My first job was working for myself as a teenager selling everything from sweets at football matches to wholesaling pumpkins to shops at Halloween.
Q: What would you regard as your greatest achievement to date?
A: Having my son Max. He’s six this year and a great character. Business wise, creating a media group.
Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
A: Be humble about what you have and grateful for how you got it.
Q: If you could step into the shoes of one business person for the day, who would it be and why?
A: Michael O’Leary is just great. His energy and personality are not seen in enough top Irish business people. He does things well, and has a great quirkiness that marks him out as unique.
Q: In three words or less, how do you define success?
A: Leaving a legacy.
Q: How do you motivate yourself and your staff?
A: I motivate through autonomy. I never micro manage. Leave the senior managers and editors to do their thing and they’ll be motivated by that same empowerment. It’s the only way to manage in my view. People get inspired most by what they’ve directly created themselves.
Q: How do you relax?
A: I switch off every weekend with my son. You quickly forget about business when your main job to is to have an in-depth, well researched knowledge of the vast array of superhero characters.
Q: What’s your motto?
A: Never let ‘what has been’ influence what can be.
Q: What are your aspirations for the future of your business?
A: We’ve just launched into the UK and will do the same in Australia later this year, so taking the proven business model we have here and expanding it globally is the short to medium term goal.
A flair for business
Niall McGarry has always had a flair for business – as a child growing up in Castlebar he grew pumpkins in his garden that he could sell at Halloween and sold sweets outside different sporting events. After graduating in 2002 with a degree in Marketing Management, he worked for just over a year in advertising sales for a newspaper in Galway city.
McGarry spotted a gap for the west of Ireland’s first marketing and advertising agency and established Impact Media in 2003, aged just 24. The company grew and added many national clients to its portfolio including Supermacs, eircom and Radisson Hotels.
The company achieved huge success and having grown the company to a 20-strong workforce, McGarry sold this business to Cork company H+A Marketing and PR in 2011. The primary reason to sell his first business was to move to Dublin to fully concentrate his energies on JOE.ie, the first website dedicated solely to the interests and passions of the modern Irish man.
McGarry originally created JOE.ie in 2010 and has since seen huge success with HER.ie, SportsJOE.ie and recently HerFamily.ie. He is now venturing into the UK market.
