Now a well-established premium make-up brand, Gillian Moore opened the first Fuschia store in Drogheda in 2005. Fuschia is now a multi-award winning company, with stockists in every county in Ireland and a growing presence in the UK and Lithuania.
The Fuschia beauty concept focuses on building confidence. Life is challenging. The world can be tough. Everyone needs a secret helper sometimes, to feel strong enough and confident enough to go out and perform at their absolute best. The sense of empowerment, which comes from looking and feeling ready to face the world is intense and undeniable. Fuschia make it their business to provide the tools for women everywhere to feel like this every single day. Fuschia products are all vetted by their own ultra-talented tribe of make-up artists, who refuse to accept anything less than amazing. Each and every product is tested rigorously and must perform spectacularly to even come close to meeting the highest Fuschia quality standards.
Can leadership be taught? If so, how?
I believe that leadership skills can be learned and developed through experience and training, to a certain extent. However, in my experience, the very best leaders are those who have genuine, innate instincts and a natural ability to lead. They embrace and embody it. They just get it. They can effortlessly inspire, motivate and drive others to deliver and achieve at a level beyond anything they might have imagined themselves.
When you are filling a leadership role in your organisation what qualities do you look for from candidates?
Leaders need to have both relatable and aspirational qualities and they need to consistently demonstrate a ferocious work ethic in order to inspire greatness in those around them and drive a team to achieve their goals. For me, when hiring, I look for someone who is genuinely motivated, visibly hungry to succeed and who can easily demonstrate their drive and commitment to achieving their goals.
If you had to leave your organisation for 1 year what would you ask of your team and what advice would you give them?
I look forward to the day when I can step away from the business for a year and know that it will still perform, grow and expand. If I were to take a leave of absence I would insist that the company culture remain as strong and goal oriented as it is currently. That our ethos of customer obsession remains at the core of the business and at the forefront of every team members’ mind at all times. That our weekly strategy sessions continue and my team continue to focus on the seven key areas of our business, to consistently review our position and iterate our approach, as and when needed.
What are you doing today to make sure your organisation will be relevant in 10 years time?
As per the above we have regular meetings at all levels to consistently review every aspect of the business. We aim to continuously interrogate our strategy, to ensure we are constantly iterating and improving, whilst keeping a shared laser focus on our organisational goals, in order to keep progressing and moving forward. The industry, and indeed all industries are changing now at a more dynamic pace than ever before so if you stop reviewing your business and examining your performance and position both on a domestic level and in the wider industry as a whole, you will be left behind in seconds.
What leaders outside your own organisation do you admire and why?
Richard Branson is an incredible force to be reckoned with. I love the way he inspires and drives his team, how he never takes no for an answer and how he consistently turns obstacles into opportunities. I love the brand he has built and how creatively he markets both himself and his brand. Tony Robbins is also someone I admire immensely, in particular how he has developed several businesses to grow into billion dollar companies. His constant and never ending hunger to succeed is refreshing and inspiring. And of course Oprah Winfrey is a wonderful example of a tenacious, hard-working and intensely charismatic individual flourishing in business despite numerous obstacles, by creating her own incredibly unique, authentic and individual brand, utilising her own key personal strengths to the maximum to reap the rewards.
What are a few resources (books, blogs, podcasts, courses etc) you would recommend to someone looking to gain insight into becoming a better leader?
Anything by Tony Robbins (books, audio, podcasts), the book “The Magic of Thinking Big” by David Schwartz and all of Richard Branson’s books.
