A Day in the Life as Managing Director at BearJam, according to Tristan

Alarm goes off at 6:40am. It gets knocked into sleep mode a couple of times until 7am. Having an alarm is pointless as we made 3 alarms approximately 9, 7 and 3 years ago - which all work very well and are excellent at ensuring we are up at 7am.

Then it is a case of breakfast, homework (sometimes) and a couple of squabbles and out the door by 08:20. As this is my day in the life I should confess I don’t have breakfast - never really have - I used to see it as something that got in the way of an extra 10 minutes or so in bed. Now I am up anyway due to the alarms - I still haven’t adopted it. A black coffee is fine for me.

The school is walking distance and starts at 08:30, the office is also a short cycle so generally I am able to be in the office by around 08:45. If it is Monday I would have listened to Fighting Talk on BBC Sounds on my way in.

What I do at work is generally a lot of sitting down. I don’t go to shoots very often any more as we have much better producers than me in the team.

I generally split myself into 3 whilst at work - me, myself and I.

Meet me

Me makes sure everyone in the BearJam team - and extended team (freelancers) - have what they need and knows what they are doing and can be their best selves at work - which is usually their happiest selves. We have a great team here so this isn’t too much hard work - but with requests coming at all times from all angles it helps to have a general overview of who is needed on what. In order to help everyone here we have a nice little rota to keep up to speed with who is where! It is made in excel and perhaps should be more modern.

Meet myself

If you are a new client you may have met myself - he turns up on the the first few meetings and is generally very pleased to see you. Often he doesn’t say much on those calls - especially when James is talking through the creative - but when it comes to the cost or timeline that is where he excels.

Meet I

I does two things. Firstly he keeps an eye on a handful of projects throughout the year - taking on producer duties. Often these are quick turn around jobs or post only jobs - but it is important to stay connected to the work and to get stuck in. The other thing I does is the more general running of the business. Weekly meetings with the FD and the producers, monthly SMTs and quarterly company meetings. Discussions around hiring, AI and the next few years occupy a fair amount of I’s time.

Lunch is generally a sad sandwich made in a rush in the morning. Towards the end of the week it’s usually marmite.

After work I go home and put my phone in a fishbowl and hug my wife and children and tell them I love them. Then we play parlour games together like a wholesome scene from the 1930s. After that I then read a story to them and tuck them into bed before enjoying a light supper with a glass of wine. Or we battle through bath and bedtime and then eat dinner in front of the TV usually watching something that involves murder.