A day in the life of Samantha Cameron, founder of fashion brand Cefinn
My alarm goes off at 5.45am
I listen to Farming Today as I wake up. Depending on what I’m doing, I’ll get up somewhere between then and 6.30am.
On a Monday morning we have a personal trainer
Who comes at 6.15am, which is quite brutal. It’s all kind of core, weights in a confined space.
On a Friday morning
I’ll try to do an hour’s yoga, and sometimes I have a teacher who comes. [David and I] do run together sometimes; we’re quite good exercising together. He plays a lot of tennis, which I don’t. My co-ordination is not good.
I have a bath every morning
With Jo Malone bath essence and Radio 4. It’s my peace and quiet moment of the day before anyone else is up. Dave is the short order chef on the breakfast front. I normally have porridge. With the children, he’ll shout up the stairs: ‘Do you want pancakes? Do you want omelettes? Do you want scrambled eggs?’ and hopefully we have some kind of consensus. He’s a very good cook.
I need to be ready to leave the house at 8.15am
I take my little one to primary school and the older two leave at 7.30am on public transport. I’m in the Cefinn office by 9.15am at the latest. I’m in meetings most of the time at work, so often I’ll go through a whole day and not have replied to any emails at all. And by the time I’ve put Flo to bed in the evenings I’m too tired.
As the team gets bigger I’m trying to build more structure into the week. Mondays are always with the fit model all day, Tuesdays it’s usually sales and marketing meetings, and then the last three days it’s slightly juggling, I’ll either be on some kind of photo shoot or trying to do product development. We have monthly senior management meetings on a Friday.
I try to leave at 6pm
But the reality is that I often don’t leave until 6.30pm. My nanny finishes at 7pm, so I’m always home by 6.45pm. I’ve never really done [the school pick-up]. I’ve worked the whole way through having children so I’ve always tried to do the morning but I’ve never really done the afternoon.
I’ll practice spelling, times tables, and reading with Flora, and homework if she’s doing stuff that she or my nanny don’t understand. At that point normally I probably won’t understand it either, and have to go on YouTube. I put Flo to bed before 8pm.
If my husband’s around, he’ll cook (he’s really good)
And we’ll eat with the teenagers. We tend to be all together for all meals at the weekend. I try to be in two nights a week from Monday to Thursday but I have work things or see my girlfriends or my sisters.
We watch quite a lot of telly
I'm really enjoying The Capture recently andDublin Murdersat the moment. I’m very excited about a new series of Sex Education. That was brilliant. I’m not someone who spends ages on Twitter and Instagram so I tend not to look at my phone in the evenings.
We watch the first ten minutes of the 10 o’clock news then I’m normally in bed by 8.30pm. I read every night. I get through quite a lot of novels and fiction. I sleep very well. I like my bed.
As told to Charlie Gowans-Eglinton
Women Mean Business Live, November 5 2019, will bring together over 500 business leaders and entrepreneurs for a day of action, debate and networking to overcome the barriers that all too often prevent female-led businesses and professionals within the workplace from reaching their full potential. Speakers will include media entrepreneur Tina Brown, Samantha Cameron, founder of Cefinn and Marta Krupinska, head of Google for Startups UK, among many more. For more details click here.
