Marcus Marchant is the CEO, Australia, New Zealand & Singapore at Vistaprint, a Cimpress company, helps small business owners across the world market their business.
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1) To kick things off, could you tell us a little about your career background and current role?
I started as a mergers and acquisitions lawyer, but I wanted a change and more of a commercial role, so joined Citibank and had a few different roles across product and strategy.
From there, I moved on to be the Director of Digital & Onboarding at Optus, then the Group Chief Digital & Innovation Officer at QBE. I was drawn to Vistaprint after meeting the executive team, including founder Robert Keane and seeing the enormous opportunity here.
Vistaprint is a $2B start-up who, after 25 years, continues to innovate and change the game by providing marketing solutions to small businesses.
My current role is CEO of Vistaprint ANZS. I’m responsible for Vistaprint’s business in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, leading an end-to-end eCommerce business from Product Management, Marketing & Sales, Supply Chain & Manufacturing.
2) What does a day in the life look like for you? Can you take us through a recent workday?
I start most workdays exercising or at the gym (when not in lockdown), then I come home, have a coffee and spend time with my kids. During lockdown, that has meant my wife and I dividing and conquering to get them setup for a day of homeschooling, .
I mostly work from home and log onto work by about 7.30am, have a couple of early morning meetings with US team members then work through to lunchtime. I often have mid-afternoon breaks to take the kids to the park for our lockdown exercise time!
Then it’s back to work, logging off at around 6pm to make dinner and spend time with my family. Sometimes I’ll log back on after dinner to have late meetings with European stakeholders.
3) Does your current role allow for flexible or remote working? If so, how does that fit into your life and routine?
Absolutely! Other than our production team in our facility in Melbourne, every other role can be done at home and we have really built the business foundations that encourage people to do so – I’ve found it works really well with my routine.
Vistaprint operates a permanent Remote-First model which champions asynchronous and collaborative ways of working – it’s been so successful that Vistaprint was officially named as one of the “Best Remote-First Companies to Work For” in Built In’s 2021 report.
To build on the Remote-First model and show our commitment to wellbeing and work-life harmony, Vistaprint recently introduced ‘Recharge Days’ to support the team with a half-day off every Friday.
As we mainly work remotely, we get the team together for social events whenever we can, as well as have bi-weekly team stand ups via Zoom to showcase both our work and engage socially.
4) What does work-life balance mean to you and how do you work to achieve that goal?
I’ve always been a big believer in focusing on outcomes rather than on hours, and I think working from home really drives all of my leaders to live and breathe this mantra; to focus on what people deliver and not within set constructs of your average 9 to 5.
My day is centred around my family; it’s really important for me to spend more time with them, especially at dinner and bedtime. I think knowing when you work well and using that to your advantage helps achieve a good work-life balance, or as we like to say at Vistaprint, ‘work-life harmony’.
I have great energy levels first thing in the morning and again late afternoon – but I’m terrible after lunch and am better off playing with the kids, recharging then coming back to my work.
5) In the past 12 months, have you started or stopped any routines or habits to change your life?
I have made a conscious decision to ramp up my exercise/fitness and also to get the kids more active, which I’ve really incorporated into my morning and afternoon routine. I’ve also put more of a focus on dinner time conversations with the family – discussing their days, what’s happening in the news and more.
6) Do you have any favourite books, podcasts or newsletters that you’d like to recommend?
I’m very much a news reader; I like to stay across the breaking news and all the key updates each day so I mainly follow the major papers. To also stay across industry news relevant to Vistaprint, I subscribe to all of our industry newsletters and read/watch their daily edits.
7) Are there any products, gadgets or apps that you can’t live without?
Yes, my Apple Watch! I use it to track my movement. Also appreciate the reminders to breathe!
8) If you could read an interview about work-life balance by anyone, who would that be?
If I could get a time machine, I’d interview my older self to see if I made the right choices. I really think that work-life balance is a personal journey – it’s all about what works for you and finding the right mix on your own terms.
I like hearing other people’s stories for inspiration, but it really requires you to think about what’s important to you and make it a reality. I also think that the older you get, the more you truly realise your priorities, and the greater perspective you have.
9) Do you have any last thoughts on work, life or balance that you’d like to share with our readers?
Work-life balance goes hand in hand with prioritisation and focus. It’s not about getting a huge list of stuff done over a day – it’s about working on what’s important (as you define that!) and making those things happen.
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