It’s 8 years to the day since I started Mason Alexander. I can still remember how nervous I felt going into my new (very small) office for the first time that Monday morning on the 14th January 2013. Even though I had prepared well and really believed in myself, I still had never felt so vulnerable. The great thing about starting something new is the excitement of what could lay ahead. I suppose I never really had a grand strategy, just a guiding principle that whatever I did, I would always do my best to deliver a great experience to whomever I dealt with.

Funnily enough, that took a couple of months; the doubts really started to set in! But then I met an incredibly talented person called Deirdre Lyons who I approached about a new opportunity. We met, spoke through it and then spent many weeks going through a process. She was my first ever placement and it gave me all the confidence in the world. I do take particular delight in seeing her career flourish so much that she started her own business a few years later and is part of Enterprise Ireland’s ‘High Potential Start Up’ programme.

As a side note, at the beginning, being an entrepreneur means you have to own every task, including creating my own very first invoice. I thought it was clever to make it ‘invoice no. 156’ so it didn’t look like my first, only for the client to question how I had managed to make so many placements in a 2 month window!!

So much has happened in the last 8 years. To summarise it briefly, it has just been a journey of making lots of decisions. Lots of good ones and lots of bad ones. Mistakes happen, you have to learn from them. In the end, it’s all about how you execute on the decisions you have made. You have to be prepared to make a lot of sacrifices as well, you cannot replace the time you have to invest in setting up a business. For me though, it was about finding success; and success to me is being happy. I have always had a vision to change how people view recruitment and ultimately make MA a talent solutions provider. Always emphasising the need to solve problems for customers.

I couldn’t justify in a short post all the things that have happened over the last 8 years but I am so thankful to have been able to do something that I have enjoyed so much; that’s excited me, allowed me to work with so many talented people; and connected me to amazing companies. I want to thank everyone, colleagues, candidates and clients; for your support over the years. I hope you have always had a great experience working with me, that’s all I have ever strived for.

For now, it’s not about looking back. Business, like in life, is about moving forward. I will always try to inspire, empower and enable change. Here’s to the next chapter; and many more happy times ahead.



Thanks, Andrew