Blog
Interview with UCC Student & Entrepreneur Orla Coffey
“The best part of my role in UGC.ie is the flexibility.”
1. You’re in your 4th year of medicine while also running a company. How do you balance the demands of a degree that is intense with the day-to-day responsibilities of a business?
“The best part of my role in UGC.ie is the flexibility.”
I manage all the payments, invoicing and VAT returns, as well as workflow planning and custom package creation. I work full time in our office during the summer, and remotely once back to college. This has worked exceptionally well for the last couple of years, and my team (co-founder Emma, and Clodagh) know they can reach me with any queries by text.
I manage the majority of my UGC.ie workload in bitesize chunks throughout my week, so it never really feels like it's taking away too much from my obligation to study. In fact, I often find myself bored of flashcards and MCQs and swapping over to some UGC work while in the library to mix things up.
Every now and then, I schedule in a solid chunk of time solely dedicated to UGC work and power through the bigger tasks not conducive to bitesize work. I also tend to schedule a lot of emails over the weekends, and can work to my own schedule which helps.
2. You co-founded the company with your sister Emma. What’s it like being in business together as siblings, and how do you divide roles and responsibilities?
“Division of roles and responsibilities between Emma and I has been a natural process derived from our skill sets.”
Rather than sitting down one day and divvying up tasks, we each fell into our roles naturally. Emma manages client acquisition, and fulfils all our social media retainer package obligations. She works full time and I work part time.
Emma and I have grown closer since becoming business partners, and enjoy nothing more than a productive business meeting over a coffee.
3. Many people talk about “starting up,” but you’re already at the stage of running and growing a company. What’s been the biggest adjustment moving from an early idea to managing real clients and operations?
“Jumping right in at the deep end was possibly the best way we could have approached getting the company off the ground.”
So much of what we have achieved has come from learned experience and adapting our services and skillset as we grew. We knew there was a gap in the market for affordable marketing solutions to meet the growing demand of social media, and businesses struggling to produce worthwhile video content.
This drove us to get started quickly, to assert our position in the Irish market immediately and develop from there. As a result, I felt as though we navigated the ‘start up phase’ quite quickly and without hesitation, bootstrapping our growth month on month.
4. UGC.ie connects businesses with everyday creators for authentic content. What have you learned about what businesses actually want versus what creators think will resonate?
“Often we find businesses thinking they want highly curated ad content, but what they realise performs better is the free-flowing organic thoughts and responses of our creators.”
Our creators use their skill set and own life experiences to create unique video content that tells a story. We encourage businesses to give our creators flexibility and creative scope to put their own spin on a video idea, and find that the vast majority of the time, the client is delighted with the finished product.
Creators do an amazing job of understanding what the client needs almost better than they do themselves!
5. Running a company while still in university must feel like a crash course in leadership and problem-solving. What’s been the steepest learning curve for you so far?
“Onboarding with large clients usually comes with a number of hurdles and unforeseen steps, and each one differs from the last.”
Getting our package prices to a ‘sweet spot’ where they are good value for our larger clients while still being affordable for startups was another challenge which took us some tweaking to get right.
Figuring out a good system for keeping track of all our ongoing video packages, creators, invoices and payments was another challenge, with as many as 35 active packages on the move at once. These have been challenges I have adjusted to as they arose.
6. You and your sister have already been recognised with nominations like Emerging Company of the Year. Does that kind of recognition make a difference day to day, or is it more of a nice-to-have on the side?
I wouldn’t say it makes any difference to us day to day, but every so often when we take some time out of work to apply for awards or pitch the business at competitions, it forces us to reflect on the journey we have had and summarise the highs, lows and learnings.
“It is nice to take a moment to appreciate the journey and enjoy it.”
7. Looking ahead, what are your ambitions for the business once you graduate, and do you see yourself continuing to balance both medicine and entrepreneurship, or eventually choosing one path?
I see myself continuing both in the short to medium term. When I graduate and start working, I foresee actually having more time for work on the business than I do as a student, as I won't need to fill every spare minute with study. I will maintain my part time role in the company, while my co-founder Emma continues full time.
This has worked very well for us both and hopefully will continue to. Down the line, I aspire to merge both passions. I think there is huge space for entrepreneurship within the medical field.
“I would like to push UGC.ie into a direction of education around health literacy and public health promotion.”
So much of modern disease is lifestyle oriented and preventable. Our platform creates engaging videos and puts them in front of millions of eyes every week. The majority of these are promotional, but what if they were educational while still maintaining the same level of engagement and creativity?