"Something that surprised me was that you don’t have to spend almost all day, every day working in order to be a good team leader or CEO."
Gareth Mahon began his career lecturing university mathematics whilst conducting research towards a PhD in Mathematical Physics at UNSW. Leaving academia, he became a management consultant with an actuarial specialty for PwC, developing financial models and software within the general insurance, reinsurance, investment banking, fund management and wealth management industries. In both international consulting and commercial industry, he has held senior leadership roles in business transformation, strategic program planning, enterprise program delivery, commercial software product development, and enterprise architecture for the finance, insurance, utilities, health and resource industries.
Most recently he now owns The CareSide in partnership with the Gillett family. The CareSide provides in-home personal care and nursing services to our seniors. He holds an Executive MBA from the AGSM and a BSc (Hons).
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Table of Contents
Let’s start with a brief introduction first. Introduce yourself to our readers.
Gareth Mahon: Hi there! My name is Gareth Mahon, and I’m the co-founder and CEO of The CareSide. We are a home care service specialising in senior care and disability support in Australia. Before The CareSide I worked at financial institutions, and have used this experience to handle logistical matters Our headquarters are in Perth and our other locations are in Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide.
Our audience is interested to know about how you got started in the first place. Did you always want to become a CEO or was it something you were led to? Our readers would love to know your story!
Gareth Mahon: It was more of something I was led to – I was on the path to earning my Ph.D. in mathematical physics when I decided to work in the private sector. I was a consultant director at companies such as ANZ Bank and KPMG and while I enjoyed that the roles entailed plenty of responsibility and were well compensated, they required long hours and frequent traveling. I then ventured into entrepreneurship in 2016 with my partner Emily. I wanted more time for my personal life and discovered the flexibility of having my own business could eventually provide me with that. Also, after reading The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, I was inspired to create a business that could be run from anywhere and utilise the best of international resources, all through a cloud.
Emily’s a registered nurse and her family has decades of medical experience; she focuses on Australian healthcare regulations and how they play into our team taking the best care of customers, while I oversee other logistical aspects of our business.
“Selfmade” is a myth. We all received help, no doubt you love to show appreciation to those who supported you when the going got tough, who has been your most important professional inspiration?
Gareth Mahon: My most important professional inspiration is my partner, Emily. I admire how she’s adapted her nursing background to being our Director of Care and she’s shown me that the skills we learn throughout our academic and career paths are transferable to any future endeavors. She helped me internalise this while we started The CareSide, and she’s always been one of the first people I seek out for insight on general, business, or personal matters. I value having her as both my partner and colleague because how well she knows me nurtures a level of honesty and understanding that wouldn’t be as evident between your average co-founders.
How did your journey lead you to become a CEO? What difficulties did you face along the way and what did you learn from them?
Gareth Mahon: I started off in academia and was initially planning to get my PhD in mathematical physics, but then I was drawn to working in the private sector, and worked for organsations such as ANZ Bank and KPMG. The challenges with these roles were that I had to travel often to meet with clients and work long hours, which kept me away from my loved ones more than I’d envisioned.
I wanted to have full control over my schedule to have more time for my family and myself, and discovered that one of the best ways to achieve this would be by starting my own business. At the time that we got started with The CareSide, we were driven by negative experiences our loved ones had with aged care providers. We saw a real need for quality home care at more affordable prices, so we strived to be that for potential clients.
Tell us about your company. What does your business do and what are your responsibilities as a CEO?
Gareth Mahon: The CareSide is a home care and disability support provider located in Australia. We offer elderly and disabled people services in, for example, live-in care, nursing care, companion care, personal care, and palliative care. We are headquartered in Perth, but also have offices in Adelaide, Melbourne, and Brisbane. We have a responsibility to ensure that seniors can live out their golden years in the comfort of their own homes, and that disabled people can receive the support they need with safe, reliable assistance from our caregivers. We manage home care packages, NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) home support services, and CHSP (Commonwealth Home Support Programme) services.
As CEO and co-founder, I coordinate with our managers to ensure that our daily operations run smoothly, delegate administrative tasks, and oversee our internal software development to help manage our services.
What does CEO stand for? Beyond the dictionary definition, how would you define it?
Gareth Mahon: CEO means being a team leader that upholds transparency, compassion, and perseverance, with both their colleagues and clients.
When you first became a CEO, how was it different from what you expected? What surprised you?
Gareth Mahon: Something that surprised me was that you don’t have to spend almost all day, every day working in order to be a good team leader or CEO. Working 16-hour (or longer) shifts and assuming responsibilities that can be shared are hindrances to yourself and your team!
There are many schools of thought as to what a CEO’s core roles and responsibilities are. Based on your experience, what are the main things a CEO should focus on? Explain and please share examples or stories to illustrate your vision.
Gareth Mahon: From my experience, a CEO needs to focus on employee and client satisfaction, how they can consistently learn to be a better leader, and how grow their business. With employees, a CEO must consider what they want their company culture to look like, be intentional about demonstrating traits such as empathy and mindfulness, uphold transparency, and be open to honest feedback. For clients, the same can be said with the latter three traits.
When first starting out, it’s important to be closely involved with, for example, accounting, legal, and technology so you can properly understand how these details of your business work. I managed each of these areas at first and as our business grew, I began to delegate the bulk of these tasks. Now, I can cover the basics of each, and entrust experts to push us forward.
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
Gareth Mahon: After much deliberation, we had decided to start the company without any investors. Being entirely self-funded was a huge risk for our team’s livelihoods in the beginning, and having to manage financial logistics without investor backing was taxing. However, we saw the personal and professional value in being completely on our own, and not having to worry about pressure from investors to make decisions that could be deemed as profitable as opposed to positive. This risk has proven worth it! We have more autonomy and flexibility in terms of creating roles and salaries within the company, giving folks promotions, and creating routes for long-term careers. And, our profit margins have been consistently over 20%.
How would you define success? Does it mean generating a certain amount of wealth, gaining a certain level of popularity, or helping a certain number of people?
Gareth Mahon: Success is very much unique to every person and for me, it has nothing to do with wealth or popularity. Helping people is a key to success for me, and I believe that helping even one person to make a difference in their life makes you successful. When I think of success in terms of my business, I envision helping as many people as possible. The factors that make this possible are listening to my team (I have a lot to learn especially from caregivers and those with medical experience), working cohesively, acknowledging client feedback and maintaining our lower than average prices.
Some leadership skills are innate while others can be learned. What leadership skills do you possess innately and what skills have you cultivated over the years as a CEO?
Gareth Mahon: My innate skills would be focus, tenacity, accountability, empathy and adaptability. Skills I’ve cultivated as a CEO over the years include delegation, making important decisions quickly and under pressure, building stronger relationships with employees, and improving on how I cater to different employees’ needs.
How did your role as a CEO help your business overcome challenges caused by the pandemic? Explain with practical examples.
Gareth Mahon: Being headquartered in Perth, we were fortunate to have had low covid cases and were mostly operating at pre-pandemic levels during its height. Any new operations became stalled, however, as we had started opening up locations in other cities but could not fly over to monitor the situation, oversee offices’ commencement, and meet new teammates. That was daunting to deal with, and I had to delegate more than ever to ensure that our operations in other cities would run as smoothly as they did in Perth. Like many others, I was constantly on my phone and on Zoom, but I have a team pushing our other locations to their full potential, and I’ve never had to doubt their reliability.
Do you have any advice for aspiring CEOs and future leaders? What advice would you give a CEO that is just starting out on their journey?
Gareth Mahon: Always keep in mind that you get what you focus on; the area of your business that you focus most closely on is where you will do well. If you put more time and energy into marketing, for example, you’ll get more leads. If you place emphasis upon process improvement, operations at your business will become more efficient, and so on.
Thank you for sharing some of your knowledge with our readers! They would also like to know, what is one skill that you’ve always wanted to acquire but never really could?
Gareth Mahon: I would have loved to learn more about video editing, as I think video is a great channel for connecting one’s business to an audience, and I enjoy using video as part of our marketing strategy.
Before we finish things off, we have one final question for you. If you wrote a book about your life today, what would the title be?
Gareth Mahon: Living with Care: Getting the Most of My Personal and Professional Lives as a CEO
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Gareth Mahon for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Gareth Mahon or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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