In 1993 at the age of 28, I was appointed General Manager of a Guinness owned drinks company called Deasy & Co. We were a wholesaler, supplying beer and soft drinks to pubs, off licences and shops in Cork and Kerry as well as manufacturing our own soft drinks.
We had a distribution depot in Cork city and a distribution depot and manufacturing operation in Clonakilty in West Cork.
At this point in time I had been the Financial Controller for nearly four years and I’ll admit that I was starting to get very bored as I was just repeating myself each year and I needed a new challenge. When asked would I take on the role of General Manager it was huge for me and it opened up a new exciting career path for me.
One of my first big tasks as GM was to appoint a Sales Manager and I recruited from our own team of sales reps.
I appointed a guy called Tommy Doyle who was working with us for about a year at this stage. Tommy had moved from Tralee to Cork to work with us and he had a big reputation as a Kerry GAA football star.
Being quite honest, I never had much interest in GAA, so I didn’t quite appreciate that Tommy had won seven senior All-Ireland medals with Kerry and the depth of character that it takes for such a monumental achievement.
I quickly saw this when Tommy took on the sales manager role and watched his hard work, total commitment, drive, determination, incredible focus, teamwork and motivation transform the performance of our team of nine sales reps, which led to huge company performance.
Since those days in Deasy’s I worked with Tommy again in other roles and witnessed further success. He has since moved onto general management positions, and has with no surprise been successful in various industries.
He is now the General Manager of the Kinsale Bay Food Company, a successful business in the very competitive food sector in Ireland. The company, based in Cork produce a wide range of award winning, quality gluten free products, which can be found in the multiples as well as artisan stores throughout Ireland.
Time and time again I have seen this very special, highly driven man achieve huge success in every role that he has taken on.
During the ‘Beast from the East‘ recently when we were all housebound I managed to grab Tommy (he lives close by!) for over an hour, with the help of a bottle of red wine (it had to be Michel Lynch for nostalgic reasons) to find out what you need to do to win your first All-Ireland medal, what it takes to win seven and how these winning attributes transfer so effectively to the business world.
I captured this, some fascinating insights into the legendary Kerry manager, Mick O’Dwyer and much more in a special episode of the Fuzion Win Happy podcast.
If you have the time click the link above and enjoy.
A big thank you to my great buddy Tommy Doyle for his friendship and for some valuable lessons he has taught me since 1993!
Tommy has turned out to be one of my best buddies
Tags: Cork, Dublin, Fuzion Communications, Fuzion Win Happy Podcast, Graphic Design, Kerry GAA, Marketing, Mick O'Dwyer, PR, Tommy Doyle
Greg Canty Fuzion Blog 
Leave a Reply