It's all about Holly Raven

Where to start….. Hi, I’m Holly, I’m officially the Finance & Customer Services Manager at Specialised Covers.

I’ve been convinced to do my bit second, this is because this month marks my 3 year anniversary with the business, when my fellow managers missed my 1 year anniversary & then my 2 year anniversary there were repercussions that lasted to this day (I complain & remind them of it at any given opportunity), so when they suggested I do this as a kind of commemoration I of course leapt at the chance.

3ish years ago I was working as a Self Employed Financial Consultant, I’d been doing this for a few years and was starting to get a bit frustrated.

Previously I’d been working in Small to Mid sized businesses, usually going through periods of change or expansion, my roles had been really hands on, really involved in the day to day management of those businesses, decision making, planning etc. all areas I really enjoy & really excel at (I love to shower myself with praise, you’ll see as we go along). But in consulting I was obviously advising the decisions makers but rarely if ever was around long enough to see how brilliantly my ideas had panned out.

Que Specialised Covers, I’d heard of the business, I knew the MD was a woman which I love and so when I saw they were looking for a Finance Manager I contacted the agency dealing with the role & demanded to be seen by the team, the agency were reluctant to do this having never met me, but I’m very persuasive (pushy) & eventually they relented. I came in later that day, met with Katie and Veronica, an hour interview ended up being about 3.5 hours of us chatting & bonding (I probably made them laugh because I’m hilarious) and I left with a pretty firm idea that I’d be working here…. An hour or so later we cemented that and now here we are!

Katie has asked me to point out that she really liked my handbag, she claims it’s the reason she hired me but I know it was for my sparkling wit really.

So, I was looking for something I could get my teeth into, be really hands on and wow, did I get that, in hindsight I don’t know what I was thinking! As a management team our roles at Specialised are not what you would consider traditional, we are a family business & that ethos is important to each of us, we all are extremely involved in all aspects of the business, some days I’m doing some finance stuff, some days I’m dealing with customers or suppliers, some days you’ll find me crawling around on the floor trying to figure out better ways to pack a product, we’re really collaborative and each of us brings a different quality to the business.

What seems like a million years ago I went to Leeds uni to do an Economics & Finance BSC, I had no clear vision of what I wanted to do with this, but I like theory, I like data, I like figuring out the relationships between things, I realise this makes me sound like I’m a thrill at a party, honestly, put a good Malbec in my hands and all thoughts of data vanish.

From there I decided that I’d probably like to do CIMA and be a Management Accountant, I think basically I was trying to keep hold of my NUS card for as long as was possible, I have finally now stopped studying!

Back to the job at hand, for someone who is driven by data & numbers I consider myself very much an ideas guy, I’m often suggesting new products we should be offering or new ways to do things without any real idea of how we’ll get to the finish line and Im able to do this because I know for sure that one of the other excellent members of the team will pick up those details & as a team we will get there eventually. Whilst I don’t want to make a big thing of it (I do) I’m really proud to work with 4 other strong women who I really do consider family, we prop each other up, we laugh, cry, argue but we always have each others back & we all love and care about what we do.

Anyway, when I’m not sucking up to my MD by writing paragraphs like the above I’m usually to be found at home in Harrogate in the middle of renovations or more accurately ignoring the renovations & hanging out with my dog. I love movies and go to the cinema a lot, I also write a movie review/blog (contact me for the insta address), bet you could tell from this bio that I write things right? I paddleboard, when the weather is good, very much fair weather paddle boarding for me. I do a lot of Yoga, but don’t worry, I barely ever talk about all the yoga. I enjoy a good scented candle.

As I start to wrap this up I realise I haven’t told you guys about my favourite element of my role, being in charge of entertainments, responsible for dragging the team to terrible adventures under the guise of teambuilding, then ignoring them all when they tell me they don’t want to do the activities I choose, they always have fun in the end and really that’s all I want!

This seems to be a good place to finish, but Katie wrote 927 words & as with any family a little competition is to be expected with us!

Wonderful to meet you all!