24 Hours With… Stu Gregor, CEO Liquid Ideas
24 Hours With… is a new Mumbrella diary piece featuring our industry’s most interesting people and what an average day in their life is like, without the PR and more real life…
WHO: Stuart Gregor – founder, CEO, president, chief happiness officer and musical director at Liquid Ideas, a Sydney-based, 25-strong public relations firm. He is the reigning CommsCon PR Industry Leader of the Year but once you’ve read the following you might justifiably wonder why.
Stuart Gregor
MORNING: I guess you could call me a morning person – it’s been said I do much of my best work between midnight and 2:00am and that’s a critical time for people like me, especially since the lock-out came into place…
I’ve long said sleep is for the weak, so it’s blessed relief for me that I am weak both of body and mind. So I love to sleep. I probably don’t get enough but nor do I get enough exercise, nutrients, fish, kale or almond milk, so in essence everything’s in balance – an equal deficiency of all important elements for a healthy lifestyle.
I wake early and the first thing I do is grab my iPhone 6S Plus and go straight onto the NFL Mobile app to see what has happened overnight in the run up to the Super Bowl. I’m going to Super Bowl 50 in San Francisco next week.
Seriously, if you don’t know that you’ve not been anywhere near my orbit in recent months. A lot more people than normal hate me because I am going to the Super Bowl. Mainly small, jealous people. And my wife. She’s not small or jealous, she just hates me coz I snore.
After realising that Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning is still too old and that synthetic marijuana is a thing in Boston (Pat’s joke for the real fans), I go to Twitter and have conversations with my international fan base.
I have two options at 6:30am, swim 1km or watch ESPN. Seriously, sometimes I do the swim . . .
I have a family, and they’re nice, so I will try to keep myself on the perimeter of the before-school blitzkrieg. Preparing school lunches genuinely daunts me.
If I’m driving the kids to school we turn around halfway to return home for the clarinet, flute, sluggos, goggles, pyjamas or a random gift for a friend’s birthday.
Once in the office I like to start yelling at the staff quite early; they know not to approach me before coffee or before Laura on the front desk has made me my chia, açai, blueberry, coconut milk and biodynamic yoghurt breakfast bowl.
MID MORNING: Once it’s mid-morning I’m already quite restless so I will leave my glassed-in mega-office and take position at my allotted standing desk out among my “people”. I then tend to distract them with lessons on ’90s rock, random thoughts on current trends and very loud opinions on anyone who comes to mind – mainly disparaging. Encouragement is for the weak.
When boredom sets in I add a few new items to my notorious Hate List. Today, it’s plastic cups. And Cranbrook boys. And cyclists. And the term “foodie”.
LUNCH: Can’t come soon enough; I’m hangry from 11:00. I get hangrier when I realise that despite the fact everyone claims Alexandria is the new Surry Hills I still can’t walk to anywhere decent for lunch. I will invariably coerce an intern to walk to The Grounds and fetch me a vegetarian felafel salad with lamb and extra chilli. She returns around 2.45pm and I’m seriously hacked off by then.
The too-late late lunch is followed by some brief chats with staff – they tell me only things they want me to hear and only offer me up to clients – there’s not many left – who can tolerate my dribble about NFL. Soon as it seems reasonable, I’m off home. Sometimes I walk, sometimes I use my new hoverboard.
EVENING: Once home I will gleefully engage with my kids, prepare a paleo dinner, do some yoga while chanting my preferred Pete Evans chakra and once everyone’s in bed I will recline on the couch and watch ESPN till I fall asleep.
Same same but different tomorrow.
To nominate yourself or someone you know from the advertising, marketing, publishing, media & PR, to feature in this new profile section, email: suzan@mumbrella.com.au
Epic.
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Sounds pretty accurate.
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I want to be Stu when I grow up.
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#goals
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other than NFL, it sounds pretty normal….great piece Stu
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I was really looking forwards to reading this column – as Im truly interested in how leaders of our industry spend their time and what they do.
However, if they just use the space to try and be funny, and get people to like them then its a waste of time, mine and his.
I totally respect Stu and the work he’s done at Liquid Ideas, any chance you could convince him to do this properly?
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The absence of a reference to gin is the bit that makes this make-believe.
(And I’m with Matt Gain.)
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“Sorry to be boring” is an undertaker.
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Having heard from a friend who works with Stu, this man is a legend and I am in awe of how he treats his staff.. I’m trying to adopt some of his ideals in a London based agency… BTW, not NFL, MLB is where it’s at Stu.
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Stuart Gregor is my new personal hero. I think it says something about his hero status in my mind in that I am reading this article, smiling and now commenting at 245am and I have a huge day tomorrow. Bring it on.
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This is really what Stu is like: can you believe it? How does Sal cope???
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A great bloke, champion MC and maker of very fine gin.
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“Chief Happiness Officer”???
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I work with Stu. I’d love to tell you that this is total nonsense, but there’s more truth in there than you might imagine (including the special breakfast concoction).
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