Talk us through an average day in your role
I fulfil 2.5 roles. I am the CEO of Levira Media Services Ltd, I am also the management team member at Levira AS in Estonia – this allows me to be part of the group level decision making and guide the strategy and I also wear the hat of head of innovation and development where our team in Estonia takes care of launching new offerings and taking care of customer implementation projects.
These positions give me the best base for the UK set up with Levira Media Services Ltd as I am in the technical talks and in the know of what works and what can be done, and what does not. Also, in conversations with the customers in the project scope, I can better understand the customers’ need and the direction of the market. I am quite fortunate in this regard to be able to cover the customer’s needs whole life cycle.
I need to be good with time management and keep my physical and mental strength up to par. As an ex-athlete and former member of the Estonian national sailing team, physical well-being is very important to me, to keep the energy high and be able to cope with the expectations and roles placed on me.
Whenever I am in the UK or in Estonia, I always work in two time zones. The difference is two hours, but it has an effect and needs to be accounted for.
The day usually starts with taking care of my physical health. I start at around 6am in the gym, drop the kids off at the bus stop at around 8 and I’m in the office at 8:35.
During the first 30 minutes in the office, I like to take care of the team, find out what is causing trouble, if anything, and go to the ops rooms to get a situation report. During a usual day, this is more routine than anything else.
The next 30 minutes I will go over my e-mails and get the more urgent responses done.
Each day has a theme and an agenda to be reached – the rest of the day is usually about that. Thursdays are the most important to me, as this is team day – we have the one on one sessions and quite a few project meetings, Friday is mostly planning of next week and getting done with the current, Wednesday is about sales and reaching out, Tuesday is strategy and sales, and Monday is about ops.
The days need a plan and a focus – otherwise trying to do everything at the same time, will just result in frustration and unfinished tasks.
How did you get started in the media industry?
My training is in business, and prior to immersing myself in the media world, I was working for a Swedish telecom as the data services manager (grew 3G, launched 4G, etc) and then moved on to manage the value-added services (VAS) as the product manager. During that time, we started an initiative to build an OTT platform to boost data, include an additional offering for the VAS portfolio and better compete with the larger telcos, who had a TV offering.
We engaged with local professionals, and I started learning what makes the media world tick: the content licenses, technical platforms and all the systems around that, and I found it fascinating. In all honesty, it looked very much old-school compared to the telco world.
The initiative sadly never took flight, and I was somewhat discouraged but very interested in this new world I had discovered. Sometime later, Levira approached me as I had been in contact for the project and offered me a position, and I have never looked back since.
What training did you have before entering the industry?
There is no uni programme or any similar programme for media technology around where I live. So I have no direct training in media technology as such.
I am, however, the kind of person who is more fascinated by taking the watch apart to learn what makes it tick, rather than watching how pretty it is.
We have wonderful people in Levira with ~85 per cent are engineers – being involved with these wizards, you learn a lot and being a person who likes to be hands-on, a lot of it will stick with you. This has helped immensely to understand the customer and the market better.
Why do you enjoy working in the industry?
The thing that brought me to the industry was the interest in putting moving pictures on the screen and bringing that to the masses. Movies entertain and generate emotions – the range of impact is great.
Though this has not been the main thing I enjoy about our industry, it is something I had no idea of when I started. The media industry is very cohesive, far more than any other industry I have worked in.. All the people, no matter what position, seem to know one another and if not personally, they will know someone who can link them. I have not met any other industry that is so interlinked and that is fascinating. It makes for an interesting working environment as I think it will help us in the future as the industry will face harsher times.
What piece of advice would you offer someone looking to explore a role similar to yours?
To me, the main thing is the understanding, in the general sense, and the vision.
It is important for me to understand the whole cycle that the content needs to follow through in order to generate value for the creators and distributors. This understanding generates a vision and pinpoints the opportunities.
My advice, for anyone entering the industry on advancing – keep your eyes and ears open, learn as much as you possibly can about all of the different aspects of our industry – everything from ideation, to production and distribution, and be ready to ask a lot of questions. The vision derived from this will fuel the next steps.
