Ollwyn Moran
CEO, CogniKids
Leaving behind the world of teaching to become an entrepreneur wasn’t an easy decision for Ollwyn Moran. “I didn’t realise what a different space business is. I think I’ve probably hit every pothole along the way and made all the wrong moves while becoming a businessperson.” Setting up CogniKids, designing and manufacturing products that help babies’ developmental growth, Moran has created patented products that are helping children all over the world.
Drawing on her teaching experience, she uses her mistakes as learning opportunities. “In my class, if somebody got the wrong answer or couldn’t work it out, I’d say, ‘Okay, this is learning, so how do we learn if we always get everything right?’ The only way you learn is by doing something that doesn’t work. And then you’ve got to figure out why that didn’t work, and then make a better decision the next time.”
Occasionally, Ollwyn’s dad would look at the hours she was putting into the business and say, “I think you should go back to the teaching!” “He saw me working all the time, and I had to explain to him that it’s not work when you’re so passionate about something and you’re obsessed and you know that you’re doing something that’s making a difference.”
Taking her product internationally proved harder than Ollwyn had expected. “If you really want to grow, and become a sustainable brand, you have to look to export. At first, I made lots of simplistic assumptions about this transition and made all the mistakes. Really, only in the last 12 months have I fully figured out who I need to be partnering with.”
As an entrepreneur, she believes it’s important to listen to your gut instinct. “I had listened to some people that were more experienced in the business world, and I was overriding my gut instinct. And that’s one thing I learned, after five years, was to listen to my own gut and not others. In the last 12 months, we’ve just quadrupled our revenue, so I’ll be listening to my own gut from now on, as it has guided me well.”
“It’s not work when you’re so passionate about something and you’re obsessed and you know that you’re doing something that’s making a difference.”
Lorraine Butler of CPM Ireland was the first female MD in the Irish business. “My first meeting was in overalls. I had to dress down because I was meeting 110 men – they were my first team to meet, and they were all engineers. I had to be one of the boys to be taken seriously,” she laughs, noting that the company now has up to 1,000 staff, 650 of whom are permanent. With year-on-year financial success under Lorraine’s leadership, 82 per cent of managers are promoted from within, and the CPM board is now at 50/50 gender split. “Big challenges are creating an environment that talent will want to stay working in. You invest a lot of time and money into developing that individual because you want them to stay as opposed to taking that knowledge and moving on.”
With a 12-year average tenure of managers, she’s proud that the company looks after its staff so well, with no gender pay gap anywhere in the company. “I was the first female MD, and it was certainly a challenge to change the mindset of customers. A lot of our business is retail, so quite maledominated. In the end, I set up a women’s networking group to get a bit of support. On the back of that, CPM ended up getting access to some of the more senior women in retail.”
One of seven girls, Lorraine is tenacious and hardworking. “Every job
I’ve ever done I’ve always been the only woman, and I don’t know why. You are as good as any man walking in that door, but you do have to work hard. But I would also say to every woman, you need to give the girl a hand up and a leg up. I’ve worked for women who were not good to me and I’ve worked for women who made me who I am today. I always try to be the woman who made me who I am today and help my team the way those women helped me.”