Tom Higgins is CEO of Irish Psychics Live which is part of the Realm Communications Group of Companies. Realm is a very well known and rapidly expanding telephone entertainments company in Ireland.

Tom is also poised to become Ireland’s first astronaut space tourist in late 2007/early 2008.

Born 5 November 1958, in Naas, in County Kildare, Tom is married with two children and resides in County Wicklow.

For more on Realm Communications visit http://www.realm.ie

1. When you started up Irish Psychics Live did you always believe it would become as big as it has, or has the success taken you a little by surprise?

Irish Psychics Live was an idea I had been toying with for almost a year when I finally launched it in February 1998. Working as a journalist for 15 years I’d created a niche in the mass media for paranormal and unusual stories. My predilection for the offbeat arose from an innate interest in such matters. I also possessed (and still do) a great interest in mainstream science. My private and journalistic experience of apparently paranormal events led me to the conclusion that psychic phenomena and mainstream science might not be as mutually exclusive as they first appeared. More recent discoveries in the area of quantum physics seem to support this view.

First hand experience with psychics had convinced me that some people were genuinely capable of perceiving things the rest of us cannot. I thought that, although such perceptual abilities were not yet understood by mainstream science, perhaps if live Tarot were made available to the public others might experience the same personal proof that had convinced me. This was the main reason I figured the service would be commercially viable. But I have to admit the sheer scale of its success took me by surprise. There are a lot more “believers” out there now than before Irish Psychics Live came along and consequently for me the success value of the service is more than just monetary.

2. Being first to market with a new product/service is often touted as a great benefit - how big a benefit do you think it is?

If you want to maximise the commercial success of your product or service then being first to market isn’t just beneficial, it’s absolutely crucial. The vacuum cleaner is a cliché but definitive example: When you ask your wife where she left the vacuum cleaner, do you say “vacuum” or “Hoover”? Most people ask for the Hoover, named after William Hoover, the guy who brought the first electric vacuum cleaner to market in 1908. Ever asked your wife for the HEPA?

3. What’s next for Realm Communications - do you see any potential threats to the business on the horizon?

It depends on how you define “threats”. Every “threat” is an opportunity in disguise. Sometimes it’s a very good disguise, but if you’re optimistic, look hard enough, and up for the challenge, you can always strip away the disguise to reveal the exciting treasure hiding underneath. Overcoming challenges is exhilarating. It’s what gets me up in the morning. The greater the challenge the greater the risk, the greater the risk, the greater the thrill in overcoming it: That’s where the fun is in business; turning threat into challenge and turning challenge into success. Business has to be like that, it has to be fun; otherwise you might as well go home and take up needlework!

As to the future of the Realm Group… well, we’ve established a fairly substantial presence in the Australian premium rate market and we’re working to develop a presence in Portugal, and Spain. There are big plans for the UK market too, which you will be hearing more of soon. I’m also working to make Realm’s suite of services available online: That’s my pet project really, to get our web service off the ground. Then there’s Realm Pictures, our fledgling film company. We’ve just finished production on our first movie, Ghostwood, in association with Maxim films. It’s in the horror genre, as the name suggests, written and directed by the amazing Justin O’Brien. The film stars Patrick Bergin (Sleeping With The Enemy - 1991) and Alan Devine (Veronica Guerin - 2003). Justin did an incredible job with a very small budget. Our next movie, already in the planning stages, will be more ambitious with a far greater budget. But that’s still hush-hush right now! There are plans to invest in television … there’s the space trip coming up in another year or two, (which of course is sponsored by Realm) and I’m currently working on a couple of non-fiction books: One to do with Irish Psychics Live (and Pat Kenny!), the other to do with my space journey and the future of commercial space travel in general. In the longer term… well, the sky’s no longer the limit!

4. You are involved in the film Ghostwood. What was it like to be Executive Producer and what does an Executive Producer do?

The short answer is that an Executive Producer does as much or as little as he or she wants to! What I know about movie-making you could write on the back of a postage stamp, so I leave it all up to the director, who’s a real pro! The trick in business (and movie-making is a business) is to get involved with the right people. To surround yourself with people who know what they’re doing, people who know more about the particular project or business you’re working on than you do (which in my case is just about everyone!). Executive Producer is really just a fancy synonym for investor or financier. You get the chance to meet the stars, and pitch some ideas, and comment on how you think this or that should be done, but the real work, the genius that takes the movie from concept to silver screen, is carried out by creative gurus like Justin. Having said that, I intend to be more hands on with the next film, but more anon as they say…

5. October 2007 will see you 100 miles into space. What preparation will you undertake for this and has this always been a dream of yours?

Well, I’ll need to sign my Will for a start! There is some physical training involved, but not a lot. We’ll experience up to 4gs in the ascent and up to 6gs in the descent. One “g” is equal to one gravity; your weight standing on the surface of the earth. Six times the force of gravity sounds like a lot, but actually it’s not. For instance, the Apollo astronauts who went to the Moon had to endure up to 15gs in training!! I’ve had a little taste of it in the last few months, pulling up to 3gs in one of Burt Rutan’s aerobatic type designs, whilst skimming 50 feet above California’s Mojave Desert. Burt, as you know, designed SpaceShipOne, which won the ten million dollar Ansari X Prize in 2004, and he’s the guy who’s currently building SpaceShipTwo, the craft that’ll whisk us paying passengers into outer space. That’s being unveiled in New York in September! The whole point of commercial space flight, though, is that almost anyone should be able to go. In fact, Sir Richard Branson (owner and founder of Virgin Galactic, the company that bought the rights to SpaceShipOne technology), his two children, Sam and Holly, and both his parents (who are in their 80s) will be on board the first commercial flight of SpaceShipTwo, which will travel 100 miles into space. So you see it’s not such a big deal really! But yes, it has always been a dream of mine to travel outside the atmosphere, to leave the planet behind (and yes, I can think of several people who might wish that journey was one way!). There are so many reasons why I want to do it, ranging from the purely selfish to the absurdly altruistic. You’ll have to wait for the book, as they say!

6. You have 1st hand experience of being interviewed by Pat Kenny and had a favourable ruling from the BCC recently. From a purely business point of view, are RTE right to pay this type of salary for the viewers/listeners he pulls in or could anyone in a similar slot do the same thing?

Actually I’ve been interviewed by Pat Kenny on several occasions, all on different topics! I suppose the interview everyone will remember, though, is last November’s, when Wicklow’s very own Valerie Cox set me up for an on-air ambush! Valerie claims she didn’t know Pat was planning the ambush, but I’m afraid I don’t believe her. Pat and Valerie set out to “nail” Irish Psychics Live, but things didn’t quite work out as planned. Pat, who I suspect was anticipating an early and easy knockout, became visibly angry when I had the temerity to disappoint him. When he couldn’t win the argument he got so hot under the collar that he went red in the face and started shouting at me! To be honest that fazed me more effectively than anything he managed to muster in the way of interview technique. It was great radio and great fun, but it was also a little sad to see Ireland’s top broadcaster stoop so low to win listener approval. On the other hand it did wonders for Irish Psychics Live, which really thrives on such controversy. No amount of money can buy that kind of exposure. Afterwards, I challenged Pat to a debate on the Late Late Show but he passed… Wonder why?

Is Pat worth the €899,000 he was paid in 2004? Difficult to say, but I suspect he is. He’s earned it by virtue of having been there so long that he has become something of an institution himself, and I mean that kindly, so stop sniggering!! If he was replaced by an unknown broadcaster tomorrow I have no doubt listener-ship figures would take a dive and RTE would lose several million euro a year in advertising revenue. He’s not Gay Byrne but he’s the best they’ve got!

7. Who do you most admire in the world of Irish business?
Michael O’Leary of Ryanair: The guy’s dynamite, the embodiment of confidence and determination! I’d love to spend a week with him just to watch him operate. He takes no shit from anyone, he’s not intimidated by anyone or anything, no problem or organisation is too big to wrestle into submission, and he knows the shortest path between revenue and profit! Michael’s my kind of guy!!

8. A lot of businesses focus their advertising budget on attracting new customers. Few actually concentrate on doing more business with existing customers. Which do you concentrate most on?

Premium rate telecommunications is so different from most other types of businesses operating in the services sector that any answer I give will be meaningless in terms of marketing strategies in the wider business world. Promoting a psychic line, for instance, is not like promoting any other type of service or product. Every new customer is a valuable asset and you have to work hard to keep that customer happy and using your service on a regular basis. In respect of other, text-based, services, the telecommunications landscape is changing so fast that our marketing strategy is dictated by necessity rather than choice. We have a large database of customers whom we would start losing quickly if we didn’t keep interested with new fresh offers. So we tend to concentrate most of our efforts on keeping existing customers satisfied while at the same time trying to attract a steady flow of new customers: The theory being that we should slowly but surely pick up more customers than we lose. So far the theory seems sound, fingers crossed!!

9. Have you ever had your fortune told and did it come true?

I’ve had my fortune told on several occasions, usually whether I wanted to or not! When given the choice, though, I rarely seek to know my future, mainly because, perhaps ironically, I prefer to be surprised by what’s happening on the next page of life. When you believe in psychic ability, as I do, and if you trust the people who are doing the predicting, then your thinking is going to be coloured by whatever you might be told. I prefer not to let that happen. I like to make decisions based on my own plan of where I think I’m going. This strategy works for me, though obviously there are a lot of people out there for whom the opposite holds through. Thankfully! What a dull place the world would be if we all thought the same way. Diversity truly is the spice of life!!

As for the second part of the question… on the two most memorable occasions when I’ve had my fortune told, by people I knew were genuinely gifted, almost everything they said came true. Not only that, but the predicted events were so bizarre and unlikely, so detailed in their variation from the norm that I just thought to myself, “there’s no way these things could possibly happen.” But they did happen, they unfolded precisely as predicted, in precisely the order and manner predicted, right down to the smallest, craziest detail… But I can never prove that to a single other living soul. Until science comes up with a way to demonstrate psychic ability in the laboratory the only way to know for sure is to have the experience yourself, because trust me, there’s no experience like first hand experience!!

10. Fill in the blank in this sentence… A lot of people think I am <BLANK>, when really I’m not like that at all.

Actually, I don’t really know what people think of me. And to be brutally frank, outside of my immediate family, I couldn’t care less what they think. Never have! I try to be honest and moral, law-abiding and respectful, ethical and direct. I follow my principles, act on my convictions, and mind my own business. As far as I am concerned people can think what they like about me. It’s always been my philosophy (and it has served me well) that what other people think of you isn’t important; it’s what you think of yourself that really counts. As long as you’re true to yourself and your beliefs, and take care not to harm anyone else, the rest of the world can just like it or lump it!