From bouncer to businessman - Derry entrepreneur goes global

By Ursula Duddy

A Derry man who started out working as a bouncer supplementing his student income is now Chief Commercial Officer in an international company working major global events.

Eoghan Gill, 39, who grew up in Templegrove and attended St Columb’s College, now lives in Galway with his wife and family.

He is Chief Commercial Officer at FOAMHAND, a leading City Operations and Movement Management Consultancy with offices in Britain, Australia and New Zealand, which has already covered the London Olympics in 2012 and is set to cover the Winter Olympics in South Korea next year, the Pan American Games in Lima in 2019 and the Summer Olympics in Tokyo 2020.

Along the way he also did personal security for A list Hollywood stars such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Pierce Brosnan and Gwyneth Paltrow.

However, Mr Gill had higher ambitions, saying: “I always would have preferred to be the guy with the briefcase that needed the protection rather than being their security guy!”

Mr Gill said he started out as a bouncer when he was studying. He realised that he would be more successful organising groups of bouncers for venues and events. This is where he began with Sword Security as Business Development Director before becoming Chief Commercial Officer and finally Board Advisor working in London, Rio and Toronto.

He then moved onto his current position with FOAMHAND and is also the founder and CEO of the Business Ready Group, leading a team in London and Dublin to help clients win new business through public sector procurement and private-sector lead generation.

Not one to rest on his laurels, as he worked his way up through business he also studied at the same time becoming a qualified corporate solicitor with a Master’s in Business Administration. He is also certified as a business analyst and project management professional.

'One man Dragon's Den'

Mr Gill spoke to the Derry News to talk about his interesting journey from teenage bouncer to CEO.

“I started as a bouncer then went in as the director of a security company then owner and grew it to a multinational company then switched hats into consultancy," he explained.

“I applied what I had learned in growing a business to other consultancy firms and what I do now.

"I got involved in this business through running other businesses, I’m like a one-man Dragon’s Den!

“I set out strategic growth consultancies and if they like the idea but can’t afford to implement it, sometimes I get involved in those businesses and invest the time and resources with my team to help grow those businesses so we end up with a portfolio of businesses. We have a couple of technology companies, education companies and event companies that I’m involved in, in some capacity as a strategic director, and FOAMHAND is one of those companies."

Mr Gill said his main business was consultancy on major global events: "We do all the crowd-management planning, the demand analytics for how many people are going to arrive, what entrances they are going to arrive at, how are they going to arrive, how long will they be in the queue, how long will it take them to get through that queue – basically crowd management.

“We do that in all the major global events like the Olympics and the Winter Olympics, I was in PyeongChang in South Korea because the Winter Olympics are there in February.

“That’s the main part of the business, I own a number of businesses but his is the one I focus most of my time on, the crowd management business, FOAMHAND.

“The name is based on the big foam hand you seen stewards using through the London Olympics to direct people; the company was formed after London, bringing all the consultants forward in one organisation.

“When people came out of Stratford Station in London, people had to walk through Westfield Shopping Centre to get to the Olympic Park and they were trying to figure out how people would see the volunteers with so many people there so they came up with the idea of the big foam hand – simple but effective!”

'Growing and growing'

Mr Gill said that he had worked hard over the last two decades from security into consultancy, gaining global events as part of FOAMHAND’s portfolio.

“I started in security about 20 years ago; I eventually got out of security and decided to go into consultancy,” he said.

“We had grown the security business, Sword Security, so big that it was taking up all of my time with 100 hour weeks; it was 11 offices on three continents with 2,000 staff. We started in Galway with two doors and we just started growing and growing and growing. I stopped that in 2016 and started on the consultancy at FOAMHAND.

“We try to work as far ahead as we possibly can so we will be looking at who is going to be awarded the next Olympics for 2026, we know that Paris is 2024, LA is 2028 and we are already getting work in what we do in 2024. It’s the Olympic cycle, once they’re announced they start doing planning but they can work even further ahead again because you can work with host cities or bid cities.

“You can plan with them how they are going to host it and help them put together a bid from a crowd management perspective and a transport perspective. We could be working on bids where I’ll be retired before the games come along!

Analysis

“We can also come in very late if they want some last-minute analysis, if they want to build venues and look at capacities. What they do with the major global events now is that they sell non-event tickets so in the Olympic Park when all the tickets are sold out for the events, visitors might still want come in and have a look around and soak up the atmosphere. So we can work out how many tickets they can safely sell without overfilling the park – that’s what we were doing recently in Korea, in PyeongChang.

“It’s such a niche business that people would really think it exists but it can only exist on the major event or big venue that has a budget and the interest in safety to make sure things are done correctly. It’s all about the spectator experience and if people are going to the Winter Olympics, it’s going to be -20◦c to -30◦c in PyeongChang and they might have to queue up for half an hour and at the end of the queue they’re going to be told to take their jackets off to go through the x-rays, so it’s all about figuring how to reduce the queue length.

“Then once they’re inside, we look at how they would circulate inside and how they would leave because there would be all different sessions. We advise the local committees working on the games then go to the games and work with them and make sure the plans are properly implemented."

Packed schedule

Mr Gill's schedule for the next year is jam-packed: "We are going to PyeongChang in February for the Winter Olympics and we go from there to the Gold Coast in Australia in April to the Commonwealth Games 2018, then we go to Russia in June for the World Cup, so it’s a busy year ahead of us.”

Mr Gill was a bit coy, however, about his past work with the stars saying he always harboured bigger ambitions.

“That was back in the security days, we did close protection and every concert that came through the country, we would have been involved in some capacity whether it was front of stage security, backstage security or VIP stuff,” he said.

“It was all the big stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gwyneth Paltrow and we were in charge of Pierce Brosnan’s wedding; it was the first big contract of its kind, one of those ones where there was tight security and no one was allowed to see the dress...a long time ago.

“My work now is a different mind-set now. Close protection stuff wasn’t something I had really wanted to do but it just came as part of the job – I always would have preferred to be the guy with the briefcase that needed the protection rather than being their security guy...I made that decision very early!”

Non-stop travel

Mr Gill said that travel is all part of the business he is in now and said he has found himself hopping between continents within days.

“It’s non-stop, I travel a lot,” he said.

“I could go to London on a Monday and might have to fly long-haul on Tuesday and come back Thursday or Friday. For example, just recently I went to PyeongChang on a Sunday and it took me a day to get there and I had to leave again first thing on Thursday morning and when you get to Seoul it’s a four-hour drive.”

Still a Derry boy at heart, Mr Gill said he would like to work closer to his hometown if the opportunity ever arises.

“We are always looking for local government contracts with Derry City and Strabane District Council or Belfast City Council,” he said.

“It would give me another reason to visit home!”