Five Minutes with Sarah Reay, Managing Director at CME

1.      What’s your greatest achievement?

Continuing to expand CME through a pandemic and increasing turnover by 41%.

2.      Who has had the strongest influence on your career?

My business mentor Sharon Lonstein and also Grant Cardone.

3.      What’s been your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?

Covid-19 – to date has been the biggest challenge I’ve had to overcome in business. My approach was to ‘create big’ which is what we did. We were promoting weekly, surveying weekly and presenting daily to new businesses during the first lockdown. In the 6 months from April-August, we brought on 4 new clients and retained 95% of our existing clients.

4.      Which business leader most inspires you and why?

I have a friend and colleague over in Los Angeles, Michael – he runs a successful construction business, employing over 1000 people and has managed to organise his business so he works on it 2 hours each week, whilst volunteering his time to help others. He travels all over the world educating and helping likeminded people. He is very inspirational.

5.      Which business book would you most recommend to others?  

10X by Grant Cardone. The concept of applying 10 times more effort to something means you are always working towards success and have more control on reaching your target, no matter what conditions we operate in.

6.      What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

If you want to do well, you must increase your necessity level. Don’t just accept what you have, push for more and keep raising your necessity level. That’s how you expand as a person and a group.

7.      How has the pandemic changed your working week?

I have more time to work on clients, whereas before I would be traveling a lot, which was necessary but dead time when you’re driving. Now companies are more open about a Teams meeting. I no longer have set times for looking at social media or the news, where I used to treat my commute as a way of keeping up to date, now I check in on social around lunch time and early evening. I also rely more on emails and newsletters to get my updates.

8.      Apart from a laptop and internet connection, what’s the one thing you can’t live without during the working day?

L’occitane hand cream and a decaf tea with soya milk. I also must include a workout in my day, whether that’s early morning or lunch time. Getting the body moving keeps my energy levels consistently high throughout the day.

9.      What advice would you give to your 18-year-old self?

Invest the next 10 years in developing your knowledge in life and in business. Don’t party as much. Knuckle down, develop your mindset for growth, and explore areas of life you have an interest in. Also help others more.

10.  If you could choose one super-power, what would it be?

To fly – it would make it much easier to get around!

11.  What does your perfect weekend look like?

Walks by the beach. Bike rides by the canal. Good quality food throughout and being around good people.