Women Who Inspire Series – Interview with Lara Morgan

A series of interviews with women who inspire talking to Dorothy Dalton

Lara Morgan  has been a finalist in Ernst and Young Entrepreneur 3 times and was a finalist in the Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year Award. She is the author of the recently published Amazon best-selling business book, ‘More Balls Than Most’ and is a co-founder of Start Up Britain. Taking it all in her stride, Lara also manages to train for British Triathlon, coming 10th in the world in 2011 World Championships.

Lara Morgan is most widely known for building her own international business, Pacific Direct, over the course of seventeen years before selling a majority share 99% holding of the company for £20 million. She is proud mother of three, and determined to be a voice for growth enterprise support as well as driving sales pride in Britain.

Lara is a world-class and high impact, memorable and much liked speaker with a practical open approach. She does not buy companies but prefers to drive start-up investments and great innovations like Company Shortcuts, KitBrix, ACTIVEBOD, GATE8-luggage.com and Global Amenities Direct.

Company Shortcuts offers unique training in sales momentum, a source of practical advice and frameworks to enable mid-size ambitious business leaders to achieve accelerated growth. Lara is particularly interested in the accelerated growth market and motivating fast-growth business-owners. She is an ambassador for UKTI, active mentor in a number of social enterprises including READ International and the leading ethical cotton underwear company Pants to Poverty. She is a regular commentator on current affairs and business issues with Sky and BBC News, and appeared on BBC2’s ‘The Apprentice: You’re Fired’.

“Did we leave something out? 3Plus caught up with Lara back in 2014.”

How did you choose your career path?

I did not, my father went bankrupt and I needed to start paying rent 2 weeks after I finished school.  I took a job selling premium and business give-aways as I actually wanted to be a pro-golfer and that was what I planned I would do with the majority of my time.

What are your greatest personal challenges?

Striving to make the most out of life, knowing that I will not be remembered for the great business person I am, I have significant and serious life goals and try to manage these with the role I have as a mother of three – I do not call it balance as I have concluded there is no such thing and the guilt of getting some stuff wrong some of the time is something I live with but do not allow to hold me back for some of my ambitions.

Tell us about one special success story

I think having three children whilst building a global company is pretty high in my success ratings. Particularly now that I know there are far too women for whom building a big business became over whelming alongside all the other challenges life throws at us, I am keen to encourage others to have a go, pick their partners wisely and to hang in there but aim to have it all.

Has any one person influenced you and how?

My Mum was a great leader and a world-class people person. Skills she demonstrated in her approach to life during very trying and miserable times were outstanding and I admire her enormously for the strength she showed. She continued to work hard, stayed fit, looking after her health but often put others first, managed her own company, brought my brother and I up with I hope great values and even managed to stay married whilst juggling all this and more.

If you could give one piece of advice to any woman about their professional choices what would it be?

Do what is right for you. You need not have to strive for the career or the role of the CEO. Some people do not want this role. I admire enormously those that do choose and do a great job of being stay-at-home mums. I could never have done a decent job of this and would have been utterly miserable if expected to be so.

“Do what is right for you and your family.”

Which profession would you have hated to go into?

No idea, I suspect a desk-based job could have been hard work. I encourage anyone considering a career to write down the things they most like doing and to follow their passions. We tend to be better at the things we like doing most.

“Find a career that allows you to do what you love each day.”

I can mostly definitely recommend it. I am proud to be a sales professional whom has cobbled together some management experience.

Which song would you choose as your anthem?

Jump, Van Halen? Having a go is vitally important and then quickly moving on following picking yourself up because sometimes things go wrong, as long as we learn, make errors fast.

If you are inspired then contact 3Plus today to find out more about our Career Booster Coaching Services.