Claire Nicholson talks us through her day as owner and MD of her business

Claire Nicholson, with over 14 years’ experience working across multi-channel and technology sectors, started up Adrenalin Marketing in September 2009. Here she talks us through a typically exhausting day.

My Day

6.00am: Get up and put Radio 4 on to catch up on the day's news while I get ready for work. If anything topical comes up, I send a quick email from my Blackberry to the relevant person in the team so we can catch up when I'm in the office.

6.45am: Wake up my two children and get them ready for school before I leave for the train station.

7.15am: On the train working through my action plan for the day. I am definitely a morning person, so I use this time to jot down new ideas that have popped into my head overnight and to review client plans and creative ideas from the team. Once I’ve reviewed these, I set up meetings in the diary with staff or email relevant contacts to talk through face-to-face.

9.00am: We work with lots of entrepreneurial brands, so we are always on the lookout for opportunities to feature our clients as experts in their field. Monitoring the newspapers, it's incredible how jumping on the back of certain stories can actually lead to a great feature for our clients.

10.00am: I catch up with Ashley and Dennora to run through the plans for the week. We review the team's performance from the previous week, talk through any potential issues for our clients and agree key actions for the week ahead. For many of our clients we act as their outsourced marketing team, so we are continuously monitoring and measuring performance of campaigns. Jessops is celebrating 75 years this year, so there is plenty of activity ensuring the PR strategy is really effective.

12.30pm: An email comes in from my first boss telling me he has recommended us to a large ISP account who needs a PR agency. They want to meet us tomorrow, so we don’t have much time to pull together an initial plan. We set up a brainstorm and get some creative ideas ready to present the next day.

1.00pm: Aim to have lunch meeting with some of our preferred suppliers from TV companies, creative designers to PPC agencies.

2.30pm: Some of the team members come back from a great all-agency meeting with Sony. We're working on a social media campaign for its music division at the moment.

3.00pm: A potential client comes in for an initial meeting to see if we can help them. Within half and hour we are all feeling excited about the launch of its new fashion collection and can't wait to put a marketing plan in place.

4.30pm: Head over to The Toy Fair to meet up with BrightMinds founder Alison. She has been rushed off her feet all week so it's great to catch up over a coffee. She has an eye for sourcing new products, so it's interesting to talk to her about her merchandising strategy and see the new toy trends for Christmas 2010. We talk through the 2009 campaigns and agree which ones we want to expand this year.

6.00pm: Get a call from a client who needs some videos for a new project and wants us to present some ideas to the board tomorrow afternoon following a change in strategy. Send out an email to the team asking them to think about it overnight and book in a meeting for the following morning.

7.10pm: My two girls are in bed, so I pop upstairs and read them both a story and hear about their day at school. Once they're asleep, I jump on my running machine and think through the day while trying to forget the pain.

8.30pm: See an advert on TV which gives me an idea for one of our new clients, so send myself an email to talk to the team about it tomorrow.

9.00pm: Catch up on the phone with my friends, discuss the highs and lows of the day and put the world to rights. Make plans for meeting up and doing something fun, my best friend constantly reminds me I need to learn to do nothing sometimes.

10.00pm: If I'm not out with a client, I do a last check of emails (we have some clients in US and Taiwan so I make sure nothing urgent has come in). Watch a little bit of TV to unwind then lights out. Always think of something just before I fall asleep, so jot it down in the notebook next to my bed to remind me.