6am I like to start the day with a run, it's one of my passions, so I get up around 6am to fit one in before work.

7am By the time I get back to the house it's about 7am and time to take the dog out for a walk. After that I manage to fit in a quick shower before I have to be out of the door to get to work for 8am. Most of the time I drive in, but occasionally if I haven't been for a run that morning I walk to the showroom instead as it's just four miles up the road. I don't get time for breakfast before work so I just tend to grab some cereal at 10am if I'm lucky.

8am I'm in the showroom at around 8am but we don't actually open until 9am in the week and 9.30am on a Saturday. While the showroom is quiet I get the chance to go through my e-mails and the post that I most probably didn't get round to looking at the day before. It's basically the only time I get to catch up with work and clear the decks before the day starts at 9am.

9am The showroom opens at 9am and it's anybody's guess what the day will bring. Peter is the main designer and he also runs the entire furniture manufacturing side, the logistics and also organises the entire showroom. If you think I get up early, Peter is up at 5.15am every day! He opens up the building and gets the shop floor ready for the staff to come in at 7.45. He'll be at his drawing board by about 6am. My role is dealing with the general administration and smooth running of the business including the accounting and marketing sides. I used to work in London as an investment banker for Merril Lynch so I've got a very strong financial background.
My days are varied. Take this morning for instance, I've been involved in the design for our new brochure but tomorrow I could be updating our website. I'm also involved in the credit control side of the business, so I often find myself raising invoices or chasing debts.
We've got 20 odd staff and, as well as being the HR representative, I'm in charge of producing, collating and inputting the data that produces our monthly management accounts. As you can tell I do a bit, or a lot, of everything really; I'm a jack of all trades but you have to be when you're running your own company.
Then there are the phones that ring constantly all day long, most are business related which is great but a lot of them are cold callers. I calculated they can end up taking 90 minutes out of my day. 

12.30pm We are so busy 90% of the time that food very much takes second place in our lives. Peter and I try to take a brief lunch together between around 12.30pm and 1pm and we catch up on how our days are going. You see, even when we're on a break we're still talking about work!
Peter and I run two busy companies. The first is Langley Interiors which is our retail business where we manufacture our own bathroom and bedroom furniture and then design and install it for our clients. We don't get a great deal of passing trade, most of our business comes from recommendations as the business is 40 years old so we're well established in the area. Versital is the other business - we manufacture a solid surface material that Peter uses in his designs.

1pm The manufacturing staff take their lunch at 1pm for half an hour so I have to cover their phones. Then I'll probably spend part of the afternoon reviewing quotations that have been sent out on the manufacturing side, checking whether there are any issues on the production side or on the installation side and if so, working out ways to rectify them. I also have an accounts meeting with our external accountants once a week.
The showroom has about 15 displays, a mixture of bedrooms and bathrooms all in lifestyle settings. We like to change the showroom quite often, and there is generally some kind of alteration going on all the time.
A lot of the bathroom displays are actually working so if we decide to change a bathroom display we have to bear in mind that it could take a few weeks because we have to fit that work around the paid work the installers are doing for our clients.

5pm The showroom closes at around 5pm, but I don't get out of there until gone 6.30pm. We have a Versital sales manager who's out on the road three days a week liaising with these centres, so I usually have a conversation with him at the end of the day. 

7pm I leave the showroom by 6.30pm and get home at just before 7pm. We just tend to chill in the evening after work. First of all there's the dog to walk, then we throw some food together. Pete's usually on his guitar and I'm probably on the phone to my kids or my sister. If I'm really lucky though, I might get the chance to beat Peter at bowling on the Wii.