Those Who Change Quickest, Will Win

Posted: Mon, 04 May 2009 18:57:13 +0100

By Liam Horan

You have, haven't you, more than once recently started a sentence with the words: "You know, the great thing about this recession is..." before adding, cautiously, "now don't get me wrong..."

But, yes, there are some great things about this recession. There is a revival of what a colleague calls 'the Meitheal concept.' Businesspeople, in efforts to keep afloat, are communicating openly with each other about ways of doing things, strategies to open up new markets, and tweaks or twists that could transform an existing idea into something viable.

"There are no secrets anymore," says my colleague, "because it's all out in the open now. Businesspeople can't bluff it anymore. A lot of people are relieved to be freed from the trappings of talking it up."

Ergo, the rise in all manner of business networks and the like. People are going back to basics to generate business - they are actually taking the time to talk to each other again. I have seen it time and time again in recent months: businesspeople willing to help light your spark in the hope that you might light theirs in return.

In the dramatic re-ordering of business life during the recession, new people will emerge. There is an opportunity for a whole new wave of businesspeople to come to the fore. The classic example is the person who worked in a job, well-paid and apparently secure, for the past number of years, only to find the rug pulled from under their feet.

Some of the biggest success stories of the next ten years will be those who change the quickest: those who realise the old ways no longer pertain, but that there is still potential in the new economy. It is a time for people with vision.

I met one such man last week in the course of my business. Like the rest of us, Niall Marren has listened to all the news items these past few months about how gold was fetching record prices. Unlike the rest of us, Niall saw an opportunity therein.

He put his thinking cap on and came up with www.forgottengold.com. If you have gold in the house, perhaps in a knotted chain you have spent hours trying to disentangle, Niall will buy it from you. He will send you an envelope. Once you post it to him, the item is insured to the tune of €300. He will value the gold and make you an offer.

If you accept it, he sends you a cheque. If you don't, he sends your gold item back to you. It's a sweet, simple business - conceived and born in the midst of recession - and it's going well for Niall. Jewellery wasn't even his business six months ago: but he saw the gap and 'went for it.'

I am involved with the Mayo Open Coffee Club (http://mayo-open-coffee-club.org/), a voluntary group set up to allow entrepreneurs and investors meet each other. We have invited Niall to be our next guest speaker on April 8th, in Castlebar, and you will find more details on the site.

Hopefully the recession won't discourage people from 'going for it.' The Dragons Den each week is full of people 'going for it.' Sometimes the products aren't hectic, for the world of the inventor and the entrepreneur is one of many false dawns, but they don't deserve the ridicule so gratuitously thrown their way by the dragons.

In Castlebar, there is a place for people who want to 'go for it.' The Innovation in Business Centre (IiBC) at the GMIT runs a programme for people interested in starting their own business. If your idea looks like a runner, they take you in for a year.

You network with other businesspeople. You listen to experts. You get a mentor. You use the facilities of the Centre (a desk that's yours, phone, fax, broadband, and the like.) You may even get some cash, through another funding programme, to help you live while you chase your dream. It's the kind of hand-holding businesses need at the outset.

They have almost finalised their list of entrepreneurs for the coming year, but if you are nursing something that could work, create a job for you and maybe for others, I suspect the co-ordinator Maria Staunton - the former All-Ireland captain with Mayo ladies footballer - would still entertain you.

She's available on (094) 9043198. Maria's no dragon in the den. She won't laugh and call you mad. She knows that it's people like you - with the germ of a business idea - who will play a central role in playing Ireland out of this recession.

Liam Horan is a small businessman, in a manner of speaking. He hasn't made the first million. Yet. "Success lives just beyond failure," he re-assures himself. He runs www.slinuatraining.com, a business to help people in pursuit of the first million. They have a Drill Down Day (ask him about it) for local small-medium businesses in Day's Hotel, Castlebar, on Thursday, April 16th.