The CEO With A Mandatory Date Night
In 7 Hours With, we explore the routines of leading professionals in their space to learn the when, why, where and how they work. In each diary, we will look at what they’re doing at seven different check-ins throughout their day.
Lesley Eccles co-founded FanDuel with her husband, and now runs Relish, the #1 relationship training app that helps couples build a happy, healthy relationship with text-based coaching.
6:30 AM
I woke up at 6:30 AM. I’m pretty good in the mornings, and really don’t need a lot of sleep (luckily!). I grab a shower, throw on some clothes, check email and Slack, respond to anything urgent, and then waken our kids. Two out of three of them are definitely not morning people so that’s usually not an easy or fun task. I get breakfast for our youngest and grab a coffee and toast for myself — I absolutely cannot function without breakfast. I sit with Nigel, my husband, and we chat about the news and what we have on our calendars for today.
7:45 AM
I finish making packed lunches, vaguely tidy up the kitchen, make sure everyone has brushed their teeth and look decent and the whole family piles out of the door into the car by 7:45 AM. Each of our children is in a different school, but thankfully we are all at work or school within a mile of each other.
8:30 AM
I get to the office between 8:30 and 8:45 AM. My product and engineering team is based in the UK, so I spend the first 30 minutes catching up with what’s happened overnight, checking our numbers, planning out my to-do list for the day and preparing for our company call at 9:30. My to-do list is one of the biggest ways I stay productive — every morning I write down 3 things that I really need to achieve today. Then I pick the hardest one and do that first.
For more background on me, I am the CEO and founder of Relish, the first-ever relationship training app making it easier to build happy, healthy, more connected relationships. As the CEO and founder, my weekly schedule really changes day to day. About one day a week I’ll have to be in the city (NYC) for meetings, I try to book them all on one day to avoid too much unnecessary travel. I usually spend an hour or so each morning with different team members in the UK on a video call, trying to squeeze everything in before it’s the end of their day. I also do customer support each morning — making sure that our customers are getting what they need is really important to us as a company.
12 PM
I’m always starving by noon, and lunch is usually spent with my team. Nigel and I share a suite of offices (he has a startup too) so we all go out for lunch together at least once a week for Mexican — usually it’s a Monday — it’s a great start to the week! We will often chat about work issues, brainstorm ideas, or just hang out and spend some quality time together. While we’re in the office, it’s pretty full on, so it’s important for the team to take the time to get to know each other outside that intense environment.
2 PM
Afternoons are typically meetings with the US-based team and working time. I try to block off time every Friday afternoon to make sure that I can catch up on what needs done before the end of the week. I never seem to get to inbox zero but I always aspire to that. If it’s Friday, I usually try to pick my youngest up from school on a Friday — that’s an important ritual that we have.
7 PM
On any other non-Friday day our sitter leaves at 7 PM, so I’m usually running out of the office at 6:50. I then spend the next two hours with our children talking about their day, helping with homework, and eating dinner. At 8:30 I take our youngest to bed and read bedtime stories. I try to spend time alone with each child in the evening, and find that our teenage boys want to open up right when I’m ready to go to bed!
If it’s a Wednesday night, it is date night every week. We moved from the UK to New York 4 years ago and don’t have any family in the country. No grandparents or aunts or uncles to help lighten the load. So, we decided that scheduling a weekly date night was a really healthy thing to do to keep our relationship strong. Our youngest in particular complains about it, she groans whenever it’s a Wednesday, and I have really strong mommy guilt, but she’s learnt that it’s a non-negotiable!
10 PM
I try not to answer emails when I head to bed around 10 or 11, but sometimes I will (the ones I answer are usually customer emails). I also make sure that I know what’s happening tomorrow, and ensure that the kids have what they need for the next day too. My husband and I have a no screens rule in the bedroom, so when we finally get to bed, we spend some quality time together catching up on everything. I also have an amazing ability to fall asleep within around 5 seconds of my head touching the pillow. Which is handy.
