EML Wildfire’s Debby Penton starts her day with a swim

My day

6.00am: Alarm wakes me up, and I quickly check my email before heading off for a swim. Delighted that my blog post has been received positively by one of our internal blogging team. Heading up marketing for the company means I need to lead by example when it comes to blogging, but like many of us who aren’t exactly digital natives, blogging isn’t something that comes naturally.

6.30am: In the pool, planning my day in my head. The sensory deprivation in the water helps me have some Eureka! moments when trying to think through problems. And I leave feeling better about the excesses I’ll indulge in later at the PRCA awards.

7.15am: Back home to get myself ready, get the kids ready, drop them off at breakfast club and head into work. I’m lucky to live about five minutes from the office, but that means I’m first on the call list if the alarm goes off.

8.00am: First in the office, performing the unlocking routine, and greeting some of the other early risers at the company as they arrive.

9.00am: Attend second interview presentation from one of our candidates applying for an account exec role. Every day seems to be punctuated by interviews at the moment, as we recruit like mad to prepare for the New Year. (I look after HR at EML Wildfire too).

10.00am: Do final quality check on five press releases as the account director for those clients is on holiday.

10.30am: Brainstorm for an exciting pitch next week. The lead came via our recent social media report push, so it would be amazing to win this and demonstrate the power of our own PR.

1.00pm: Join the crew that are lunching in the lounge and catch up with what’s going on in the rest of the company.

2.00pm: Hold a series of quick meetings with the team to inform them about their annual pay rises. It’s good to be the bearer of good news. I even got a hug.

3.00pm: Another interview.

4.00pm: Leaving early to get ready for the PRCA Awards tonight. The lovely guys at Realwire have invited me as their guest. I was on the judging committee so it will be interesting to see who the winners are.

5.30pm: Call my husband and the kids en route to the awards to find out how their days were and to say goodnight.

7.00pm to 1.00am: PRCA Awards are packed. Rufus Hound rips it out of the PR industry, brilliant! Great to catch up with everyone. And fab to see all those people I voted for as a judge excitedly pick up their awards.

1.45am: Finally make it to bed. Took it easy tonight as I have an interview to do at 9am, a pitch to work on and I’ll be doing it all over again at the TechCrunch Europa awards on Thursday, where we are nominated as best service provider of the year. Fingers crossed.