To service these clients, itGenius has an office with six employees in Sydney, eight in India and a few in the Philippines.
The outsourced workers overseas do all of the “non-client-facing work”.
“Most of our clients are based in Australia, but some of them have international offices. We have clients with offices in LA, London and Shanghai and we need 24-hour support for them. So if something goes down in the LA office of one of our clients, we then need someone who can respond to that,” he says.
At the start of this year, Moriarty was approached by Google, with the search engine giant offering to help mentor and grow the business.
“A couple of months ago they reached out to us and said we’re one of the most active Google apps partners in Australian, and so they selected us as one of about 15 companies in the Asia-Pacific region to personally mentor.
“I’m now working one-on-one with Google and they’re training our whole team on all their best practices,” he says.
In his daily life, Moriarty is very structured in order to manage his time effectively.
“I have a perfect calendar week laid out. I actually schedule in my whole week down to sleep and getting ready. So basically then my time is just broken up into units and if I have anything on in the evenings you can see that is scheduled as well.
“I’ve got certain days where I’ll do certain tasks, so I’ve got sales calls on a Monday as well as the Monday meeting. On Tuesdays I have client meetings, on Wednesdays we’ll have a sales meeting with the team. Friday we’ll do things like finance and payroll. That structure gives me a repeatable week,” he says.
Moriarty says entrepreneurs can become “a little bit ADD”, but having a clear structure means the day doesn’t “turn into a mess”.
On a perfect day, Moriarty is home by 6pm and can sit on his balcony and “do a little bit of research, write a blog post or record videos”.
“My passions are entrepreneurship, business and technology, so I don’t feel like what I’m doing is work. I just feel like I’m having fun all the time and some of the clients become personal friends. It’s not really a job at all.
“From time to time there will be speaking or networking events in the evenings, so sometimes I’ll get held up and things will get a bit crazy,” he says.
Money is a result of the business, but Moriarty says there is “no point chasing entrepreneurship for money”.
“Money doesn’t bring any fulfilment. Finding something that you love and that you’re passionate about is the only way you’ll get through the day.
“You have very high highs and very low lows and the only way to actually get through those lows is to have something that you’re passionate about, an industry that you want to change or a product that you think is going to change the world or a subset of people that you want to help,” he says.
Moriarty insists even though he loves his job, he’s not a workaholic.
“To unwind I love meditating or getting out for a ride through the mountains on a motorbike, and in my ‘off time’ I most enjoy connecting with nature either at the beach or going for a walk – or composing music.
“Of an evening, I might be playing with a new app or streaming a movie from the computer to the TV.”
Moriarty sets goals for the business for a timeline of 12 months and these financial aims he assesses once a quarter, although he also sets weekly goals and quarterly projects.
“Financial goal-setting is done with the support of our mentors – we’re learning as we go along. Our business is a subscription model, so we always know what revenue is coming in and can predict what revenue is going to be in front of us. It’s not too difficult to gauge where the business is going to be in six or 12 months.
As well as the yearly goals, Moriarty says he has an overarching intention for international expansion in 2016.
“That will hopefully be me going over to London and having a general manager run the business here. That’s where we’d like to be, but for now the immediate goal is to build a solid foundation in Sydney and then expand to offices in Melbourne, Brisbane and probably Auckland as well.
“I’d like to build up to about 15-20 people in Sydney. I don’t like the idea of expanding too rapidly and over-leveraging and having it all fall down like a house of cards. I guess we’re trying to make sure we expand intelligently,” he says.
His most important piece of advice for young entrepreneurs is to not be consumed by a desire for money and to “reach for the stars”.
“I think the other main lesson is to know that whatever you set your mind to you can achieve. This was ground into me when I was really young by my parents.”
