Posts Tagged ‘Fuzion PR’

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Discrimination against men!

August 29, 2013

Discrimination against men

I’m up to here with quotas for women and schemes and incentives .. enough!

The latest that has come onto my radar is a scheme and fund by Enterprise Ireland for “Ambitious Women”.

www.enterprise-ireland.com/ambitiouswomen – get your entry in because applications close on the 10th September!

Deirdre Clune - Fine GaelI spotted the very talented and intelligent Fine Gael Senator Deirdre Clune, blogging about it on her website  with the headline “New Fund means more Women will be at the Forefront of Irish Business“.

Now … before I go any further you are probably thinking that I have something against women.

I don’t!

I work with a team of women who are absolutely brilliant and during the course of my work I deal with incredible, intelligent, talented, professional and quite impressive women on an ongoing basis.

If you asked me to make a list of people who have impressed me lately, then truthfully more women would be on that list than men!

If you look around you and observe you can see some of these women rising to the top and starting to take the top positions in organisations. In political circles we are seeing exactly the same – Deirdre could very well be one of these in time.

The new Enterprise Ireland scheme (don’t get me wrong, any new scheme promoting entrepreneurship is great) is according to the blurb designed to “accelerate the number of high potential female-led businesses being set up in Ireland“

The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mr Richard Bruton stated “I’m delighted to add that this recent announcement follows on from two other successful female entrepreneurship funds which were launched last year.“

If you read on you get even more of it: “The funding call is open to female-led start-ups in Manufacturing and Internationally Traded Services including Internet, Games, Apps, Cloud Computing, Enterprise Software, Lifesciences, Food, Consumer Products, Medical Devices and e-Health – This means that women can pursue viable business ideas in a multitude of areas, which in turn could generate jobs and get the economy moving“

“I do hope in addition to helping women jump start their business ideas the fund will also advance Ireland’s reputation on the world stage as these business areas are all globally exciting and sustainable.”

So, a female start up will get assistance but a guy with the same proposition won’t? Hmmm..

Ambitious and talented women in Ireland ….do you really want to be singled out for such special attention?

Such schemes specifically promoting women in business are wrong and if you think about it discriminatory to men and totally missing the point.

We need to be encouraging everyone to start a business – come on!

If there was a similar scheme for men, women would be up in arms and rightfully so.

Condoleezza RiceAmbitious women, wherever you are stand up and go for it

…not because there is a scheme or a quota but because you want it, you deserve it and you are more than able!

No Fund will mean more women are at the forefront of Irish business – you can do it for yourselves the same as the rest of us! 

P.S. I’m waiting for the torrent of abuse when I publish this post – It won’t be pretty!!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion 

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design firm in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Brand Loyalty, HR, Ireland, Positivity | 31 Comments »

A New Generation needs Old Values

August 22, 2013

Eminem - Slane Convert

Once again a social media fuelled incident has hit the headlines as a result of the #Slanegirl photos that bounced around Ireland and beyond from the Slane concert recently where the famous Detroit rapper, “the poet for a New Generation” Eminem was the headline act.

If you missed all the drama a young woman (newspaper reports claim she is 17) and an older guy were caught performing an inappropriate act in quite a public place at the gig. The incident was photographed by a bystander, pushed out on social media and before you could blink (or a hash tag was created) the photo went viral by people retweeting and sharing.

This 17 year old girl and the guy involved must now deal with the pressure of a huge media/public spotlight – too much for any young person to cope with.

At a media conference in the US in 2011 celebrity Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post, said that the popularity of Facebook, Twitter and websites like her online news site indicate that “self-expression has become the new entertainment.”

We can see in this scenario how Arianna was right at so many levels.

Once any incident occurs good or bad that has an “Oh My God, guess what I’ve just seen” element to it, you are guaranteed that it will travel like wildfire in our New Generation.

Pretty much all of us are now self publishers and with our own platforms and audiences we are armed with powerful devices that can bring something to life within seconds.

As usual after this incident social media got a huge amount of flack and all sorts of issues have been raised- the experts from the legal professions, the various authorities, organisations and social media were wheeled onto TV and radio shows to give their many and varied opinions.

Both Twitter and Facebook did react and pulled the posts down as soon as it became clear how distasteful the content and the act of sharing and commenting was. Unfortunately the damage was pretty much done at this stage – these pictures are still widely available online.

New GenerationWhat can we do to stop this happening? Can we do anything?

The police are conducting an investigation – is the young man in trouble, what about the person who took the photo and what about those who passed it quickly along the chain on the various social media channels?

Who was to blame and how can they be punished?

We will huff and puff but ultimately very little will happen – it’s virtually impossible to shut down the self publishing machine.

Besides demonstrating once again how hurtful and irresponsible people can be, the Slane incident is very frustrating for a number of reasons:

The Social Media is to blame argument

Social media is powerful and hugely beneficial but it is mostly in the media spotlight when something “bad” has happened.

You never really hear in the media about long lost relatives connecting through twitter, businesses thriving by using the platforms cleverly, people publicising causes and injustices or tricky problems being solved online – it is mostly the negative, controversial stuff that we hear about.

We find ourselves blaming the social media platforms and not the users – twitter, facebook and all the other platforms are only as good or as bad as the people using them.

The platforms do have a big responsibility to respond quickly to sensitive issues and have methods of detecting and dealing with inappropriate content. At least accounts were pulled down on this occasion, which will send a strong message to all users who use social media as a core part of their lives.

The Incident

This sort of misfortunate incident is not unique and has been happening as far back as I can remember but the difference is that now we can share it easily so the impact and consequences are much larger, which brings me to the point of New World Rules.

1. We need to be extra vigilant in our new world and be extra careful with any incident in public

2. Accept that the incident will be recorded as nearly everyone watching anything has a phone capable of taking a good photo or even filming the activity

3. Assume automatically that the photo or footage will be shared on one or more social media platforms complete with descriptions and hash tags instantly and with the capability of identifying the individuals in the picture.

4. Assume if the incident is an “Oh My God, guess what I’ve just seen” then it will be shared online and will quickly spread virally

5. Posting or sharing anything online leaves a digital footprint back to you and more importantly gives an instant impression to others about you as a person, good or bad. This impression tends to stay with you.

We can look to the authorities to legislate for such instances and we can work with the social media platforms to introduce better controls and quicker ways to respond but the real job lies with us, the users.

We, the New Generation need to understand the powerful technology that is at our fingertips and we need to use it responsibly. That simple photo, status update, share or retweet can cause untold damage to someone’s life.

We need to think about our own values and the values we pass onto our children – this applies equally offline and online. There is no difference.

We must take our own personal responsibility – if we see something not right when we are out or online we should react and play our part and instead of saying “Oh My God, guess what I’ve just seen” we should be saying “It’s not right ….stop” and report it immediately.

The sooner we realise that old values need to be applied to our New Generation the better.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and training in Ireland from offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Entertainment, Facebook, Parenting, Personal development, Publishing, Social Media, Twitter | 10 Comments »

Driving too hard a bargain

August 20, 2013

Super pub

We were thrilled when the biggest super pub in the City called us and invited us to pitch for their business – we must be doing something right I thought.

At the time I was the General Manager of  Deasy’s, a Guinness subsidiary with depots in Cork and West Cork. We were drinks wholesalers and we delivered beer and soft drinks to the pub and off licence trade in these areas.

We had been doing quite well and this pub was one of those “prize” accounts that all our competitors were chasing. The business they were doing would probably be about 20 times the size of a normal pub.

This was an account we wanted so we put a really competitive price list together. There was enough in the price to win the business but still leave enough for us to make it worth our while.

Not good enough – we had to do better.

I guess this was no surprise as the incumbent wasn’t going to lose this business easily and the buyer  (in those days no one had a buyer but this crew had!) was going to quite naturally play us off against each other.

We sharpened the pencils and ate into our margins leaving a little left for us.

Not good enough – we had to do better.

At this stage we cut our margin on products across the board effectively giving them the cheapest prices we were giving anyone – this was crazy but if we wanted this prize account its what we had to do.

The buyer rang our Sales Manager – congratulations, we had won the account and they looked forward to doing business with us. Over time with the introduction of some new products and a few substitute brands we might be able to bring it back to some level profitability.

After our first delivery the buyer rang and told us that he had some breakages left over from his previous supplier that he wanted us to uplift. We would have a look at them and decide what we could do – even with out of date alcoholic products we would be able to reclaim the duty and pass the rebate back to them.

We inspected the breakages and there was a huge quantity of all sorts that he wanted to return – clearly they had done a clear out of their stock room and expected us to take back this rubbish that had been accumulated for years. Many of the products were non-alcoholic and some were brands that we never stocked and would not be able to get credit from anyone.

We carefully assessed the breakages and informed the buyer how much credit we would be able to manage. He informed us in no uncertain terms that he would pull the whole contract if we did not give him a 100% credit at our list prices – he was being totally unreasonable but he was serious.

We reluctantly collected the “rubbish” and processed the credit.

The account continued in this vein – he wanted emergency deliveries at a moments notice whenever he ran short, often at quite unreasonable times.

He pushed us so hard and continued to do so – so much so that there was no win left for us and we were starting to feel quite abused.

All of a sudden it wasn’t our prize account, it was a thorn in our sides. We started to get strict with them – they had to order properly, we cut out emergency deliveries. We maintained a good level of service  but now it was on our terms.

From time to time our suppliers would give us beer fridges and promotional events that we could allocate where we chose – needless to say we never passed these onto our “prize” account.

After six months we got a call from their purchasing manager who wanted to do another round of “squeezing” and was inviting us to submit our best prices.

This time we did a full review of our price list, increased the prices across the board and politely let someone else be a busy fool – that was the last time we set foot in the place.

James Caan - The Real DealIn James Caan’s book “The Real Deal” he spoke about a valuable lesson his dad had taught him from his leather trading days – it was always vital that you made sure there was a “Win-Win” left for both parties in a deal.

In our case there was certainly no win for us and in truth the supplier also lost out – they pushed us to the point where we didn’t actually care about their business any more.

Be careful not to drive “too hard” a bargain and make sure you walk away before the point where the business just isn’t worth it anymore

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design firm in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Accounting, Customer Care | 13 Comments »

Petty Cash and the Red Head

August 18, 2013

Redhead

We were working to a strict budget but we knew we needed another person in the company to cover a few key areas of weakness.

The person would have to be a really organised all rounder who could help with stock control, provide some admin support and take over the credit control function.

It was a big ask finding the right person to do all of this in particular for the budget we were offering.

I was the financial controller of both Deasy & Co in Cork and Connacht Mineral Water Co in Galway, both Guinness subsidiaries.

I was in Galway early in the morning to conduct interviews with John, the General Manager. Both of us were in our early twenties, bursting a gut to drive on our careers but in reality quite inexperienced.

Applicant after applicant came through and we weren’t finding anyone that fitted the bill.

Eventually a really well dressed attractive young woman came through the door for interview. This gorgeous redhead wearing a sharp suit sat down confidently and answered all of our questions with authority.

To be honest she had taken both our breaths away –  in some way I think both of us were willing her to give us the right answers!

As the interview progressed and we were falling further under the spell of this confident, bright young woman I could hear the different voices in my head “just give her the job“, “give her the job now and forget about the other interviews” “be responsible Greg, start probing …”

“You know the job on offer would involve some credit control?” I asked

“I know, that’s no problem” she replied confidently

“A lot of people find credit control a difficult thing to do, would you be ok with it?” I probed further

“Yes, I would be totally fine with that” she responded but not as assured as earlier.

“How would you describe credit control?” my final question

She batted her eyelids, flicked her red hair and smiled at both of us “Would that have something to do with petty cash?”

We knew we would both be fired within a month if we gave our attractive redhead the job and eventually we settled for a good solid young lad, who we would have to give some training to, so he could manage all aspects of the job.

The fancy package isn’t always the one that will get the job done!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Design firm in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Accounting, Recruitment, Staff training | 2 Comments »

€20 and the “too good to be true” Dream Client!

July 21, 2013

Too Good to be True

Is it ok if I show this man around your office?” Frank our landlord asked (by the way he hates if we call him that – he prefers to say we are his customer and to be fair that is always how he treats with us).

“No bother at all Frank” – he wanted to see how we had laid out the office space, which had the same footprint as the vacant unit two floors down.

Frank introduced me to this English gentleman, Mr Cooper who was starting an airline, which was to operate from Cork ..interesting!

He would be needing Marketing and PR support and he also would need the services from our graphic design team. We had a quick chat but I had another appointment to get to – he wanted to tie things down quickly so he asked us to meet with him the next day for a full briefing.

This could be a very exciting project to work on.

Just before I ran out the door I did a Google search on this guy to see if there was some evidence of his existence online ..nothing!

On the way to my meeting I rang Frank to make sure I caught the man’s name correctly – I had.

“What do you make of our English gentleman?” Frank asked. He explained to me that he also popped into the accountants on the floor below us who were also going to do work for him. The following day they were to introduce him to one of the banks.

“Frank, is he too good to be be true?”

saab airline

We both agreed that maybe it was wrong to be cynical and there was a chance that this well dressed, well spoken Englishman was the real deal after all.

He arrived the following day, a little later than organised but even more well dressed than the previous day. He apologised for being late – there were some technical financial details he was ironing out with the accountant about licences.

He took me through his project in detail – he was really looking for a marketing partner for this venture. He told us that he really liked and trusted us. He spoke to our really talented head designer, Jonathan about his brand and what he had in mind – we all agreed that while he was on a deadline, the work should be done properly.

Maybe this guy was a dream client after all?

After many years in business and knowing how hard you must work to win a new account, this guy had me suspicious. I was “on guard” for a sign, any sign that this was not going to work out.

He started telling me about the lonely childhood he had and now he was alone and did not have any attachments.. for reasons that we would understand. Hmm..where was this conversation going?

He had a request – he wanted to give us a shareholding in the business!

He wanted to embrace the true spirit of partnership – if this happened everyone would work together. He explained he would make the same offer to everyone that was involved in his project. He was doing this as he had no family and he wanted the business to have a “safe” home if anything happened to him.

While this was an outlandish tale maybe it was true? The alarm bell was ringing in my head at this stage but I was feeling a little sorry for this lonely businessman.

I politely told him that people might think he was “nuts” if he were to have that shareholding conversation with them – I advised him to keep that idea to himself and if he wanted to do something like this down the line, then maybe.

He had another request – until he had office space sorted out could he work from our offices?

He had noticed on the day that there were desks with no one working at them. A louder alarm bell started to ring!

That wouldn’t be practical I explained but maybe he should have a word with Frank who might let him use some of the available space in the building until he had a formal arrangement made.

He told me he understood ..

We had arranged to meet the next day when he wanted to introduce us to some of his team who he had already recruited..that sounds ok I reckoned.

Just as he left the office he patted his pockets ..”Damn, I’m a bit short and the bank is closed. Could I borrow €20?” Even though the alarm bell was shaking the whole building at this stage I found myself handing this guy who we hardly knew €20.

On the way home I bumped into Frank as we left the building.

“Well, what do you make of our friend?” I asked. He had told Frank that he was very impressed with Fuzion and the accountant and he just needed to finalise everything and get cracking. I told him the story (with a red face) about the €20 knowing already how the whole story was going to unfold.

What’s worse I told Dee the story about the €20 – “You big fool” ..she told me.

If this was going to end up going nowhere I’d prefer to kill it quickly. Before he was to arrive I would prepare a budget and insist on a % payment upfront before we committed any resources to the job – if he was not the real deal then this would flush him out.

20 minutes after he was scheduled to arrive I called him ..nothing.

Another 10 minutes ..nothing.

A few minutes later I received a text from him saying that Fuzion and the people in Cork were the most unprofessional and backward that he had ever come across and he was going to set up in Belfast instead.

Needless to say I haven’t heard anything about the airline but I do wonder about the “dream client, Mr Cooper” who got away.

When it seems too good to be true it probably is ..the tale alone was worth the €20.

Mr Cooper …good luck with your venture!

Greg Canty is a partner Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design firm in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Business Start Ups, Entertainment | 8 Comments »

Who does the world think you are?

June 19, 2013

Facebook advertisingApparently I’m someone who is interested in Adult Fantasy Games, the odd bet and I wouldn’t mind driving the new Volvo V40.

I’d like to go on holidays to Tuscany after needing the help of a Retail Consultant and playing some more adult fantasy games!

LinkedIn AdvertisingWhen I get serious I’m interested in ERP (excuse my ignorance but I have no idea what that is) for small business, a white board device for waking up ideas and I might even like to earn some extra money.

When I’m done with all of that I might like to find a new  file sharing platform while I take on my one year diploma course in Corporate Governance with DCU.

Finally I might be interested in switching to UPC.

Interesting person!!

Social Media Advertising

This is a sample of the advertising that is being targeted at me across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

With all of the different social media platforms it is possible to do some very specific targeting with your advertising campaigns.

Facebook – this probably has the biggest targeting capability as it can focus on your location (as precise as towns), age, personal status and declared personal interests.

For the advertiser  it works on either a pay per click basis (you only pay when someone clicks your advert) or on impressions (the number of times your advert has been shown).

You set a daily budget and you also have the capability of setting a maximum amount per click. The big limitation with Facebook advertising is that most people are in a very social frame of mind when they are using the platform so it probably isn’t great for “heavy” topics.

With Facebook you can also enjoy an element of what I call “endorsed” or “trust” advertising – where you see an advert and it declares that one of your friends likes that brand/product. If you want extra oomph from your page posts you can invest a few bob to push them out to the people who have liked your pages and their friends.

We have found it to be quite effective for many of our clients.

LinkedIn – the targeting capability for advertisers is really good here with options around location (just country so far), age, seniority, the size of the company the person works for, job role, sector and you can even target Groups that have been set up. This also operates on a pay per click basis (these are quite expensive) – you set the maximum per click and a daily budget.

I haven’t used it yet for clients but I have experimented with it for Fuzion – we have won some business as a result.

Twitter ADvertisingTwitter – advertising on twitter is still in it’s infancy and my feeling is that targeting will be more difficult because a user provides limited information when they set up their account. However if you read the blurb twitter reckon you can target by gender, geography and special interests (it must track the content of your tweets  or maybe who you are following to assess this – it might be tricky to target the huge number of users on twitter who lurk and never tweet). You have a choice between promoting your account or pushing your tweets into peoples twitter feed).

We haven’t used twitter advertising for any clients yet.

Collectively across all platforms there is a lot of information and capability that can help you target customers – the skill is knowing who your customer might be and using the targeting tools to attract their attention.

For the record when it comes to me other than a trip to Tuscany (off there next week!), Facebook marketing and pulling my hair out with Sky last Christmas the world just doesn’t know me at all.

I definitely have no interest in adult fantasy games… (al least that what I keep telling everyone!)

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion 

Fuzion with offices in Cork and Dublin in Ireland provide Social Media Consultancy and Training services.

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Posted in Advertising, Facebook, LinkedIn, Motivation, Online Advertising, Social Media, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »

Worrier or Warrior?

April 28, 2013

Warrior or worrier

Being in business can be great fun, it can be really satisfying and that overall feeling of being a master of your own destiny just can’t be beaten.

However at times it can be a very lonely place with huge stresses and one where things can be constantly challenging.

One feeling that never leaves me is that feeling of worry ….there is always something to worry about, where will new business come from, how will we pay those bills, how will we sort that problem, how will we improve on the great year that we just had?

That worry niggle is always there to one degree or another. At times you hardly notice, it’s just a tiny little niggle at the back of your mind but at other times the worry monster is bigger and you find yourself waking up and your first thought of the day is..that worry!

That’s when I find the warrior appears, when you have to dig deep, you delve into your reserves, you have to find extra gears inside you and you have to work harder, be more creative and make bolder moves and do new things.

During a typical year I find myself moving from worrier to warrior at regular intervals, ironically with the very most being achieved when the warrior appears!

Are you a warrior or a worrier?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing,PR and Graphic Design agency with offices in Dublin and Cork in Ireland

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Posted in Motivation, Personal development, Positivity | 8 Comments »

Can nice guys win?

April 16, 2013

Albert Einstein - Man of Value, succession planning

I was chatting to a good friend of mine recently who runs a really successful business – we hadn’t seen each other for quite a while so it was great to catch up.

We spoke about life, work, music, kids, getting old, favourite movies ..in truth we could still be there chatting!

We were having the usual conversation about how hard you have to work these days to be successful and he told me a story about one of his competitors who received the worst possible news a while back ….he had cancer and he needed time off for treatment.

That type of news puts everything into perspective .. 

My buddies automatic reaction was to ring his competitor and offer him any help that he needed (in the background) to keep his show on the road.

While they were fierce competitors there was always mutual respect and unlike some of the other competitors (news leaked out about his poor health and customers were romanced) this was clearly not a circumstance to take advantage of.

Over a year later as this mans diagnosis was not good he decided it was best for the survival of the business and the protection of his team to sell on the business to a competitor.

There was only one bidder he seriously considered ….nice guys can win after all!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

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Posted in Friendship, Motivation, Personal development, Positivity | 16 Comments »

Learning to Crash Land

March 27, 2013

Plane on the Hudson

We were passing some time in New York (we were there for the christening of my brother’s daughter) on a bitterly cold January 15th, 2009 so we found ourselves in the cinema.

We came down the escalators after the movie finished to hear loud sirens and watched as police cars, ambulances and fire brigades sped by in quick succession.

We grabbed a cab to Penn Station and the female taxi driver agreed to take us once we weren’t going in the direction of the Hudson – a plane had just crashed in the river. Her mum called on her mobile and warned her to quickly get out of Manhattan.

By the end of the short cab ride the incident was clarified on the radio – it wasn’t a terrorist attack. It was a freak accident caused by a flock of Canadian Geese and the Captain, Chesley Sullerberger, a former Air Force pilot managed to land the plane safely on the water with all 155 passengers very shook but all in one piece.

Thank god ..

Two days later we touched down at Shannon Airport and grabbed a newspaper to catch up on news since we had been away. Right on the front page we read about one of our clients, a hotel in Kerry that had gone into liquidation – not only did they owe us quite an amount of money but it was obviously the loss of a client.

What were we facing this year?

Over a period of the next few weeks we lost a few really good clients as the wheels came off the economy and budgets were being slashed by everyone – we had just moved into offices only a few months previous and it felt like our plane was plummeting!

Of course we panicked, of course we were worried but we dug in just like we always do. We had a great team and we needed to have faith in ourselves and in our ability.

I remembered clearly one of the lessons of Napoleon Hill in his book published in 1937 “Think and Grow Rich” – Have faith and believe that you will succeed ..he spoke about something that he called “The Secret“.

We have always adopted a positive philosophy, which has served us well – Two months later we won our biggest account, we picked up a few other accounts and later that year we started running training courses – it was an incredibly tough year including some other large bad debts but somehow we managed to bring our plane in without losing any of our passengers!

Since then business has continued to be challenging with plenty of turbulence but thankfully we continue to have faith and we always seem to survive, grow and thrive.

One of these days it will get easier ..won’t it?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design firm with offices in Dublin and Cork.

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Posted in Irish Economy, Motivation, Personal development, Positivity, Recession | 5 Comments »

No breakfast before 9 on Achill Island !

March 14, 2013

Achill IslandTen past eight and I’m still lying in the hotel bed in Achill Island contemplating the day ahead.

My alarm went off over two hours ago – Yep, 6am is the first alarm setting and I have a second one set for 6:15, which is when I normally get up. The very odd time I might allow myself the luxury of another 15 minutes and then get up ..busy, busy!

That’s just the way it is these days – Monday to Friday I work my socks off , including most evenings and there is always some work to be done at the weekend. The joys of self employment!

Ten past eight ..I’m not here on holidays, I’m on Achill Island to deliver three days of social media training to the local business people, most of whom are involved in the tourism sector.

I have loads to do but the wifi only works in the reception area and my modem doesn’t have sufficient coverage to get any work done.

Breakfast isn’t served in the hotel until 9am – I’m not kidding!

There is plenty of time to do everything including taking in the most spectacular scenery you have ever seen in your whole life.

The sign at reception used say breakfast is served between 8:30 and 10 am but this was changed with a temporary sign changing the 8:30 till 9am. Yesterday morning I thought I would pop down and just grab some cereal but the dining area was all locked up – nothing for it but back to bed.

I give the course at the local IT centre from 10am – things don’t start too early around here.

Today is my last day and I’m starting to get to know some of the group quite well. The group is made up of born and bred locals, Julien the kite surfer (Pure Magic)from France, Ute from Germany, Padraig who jumped out of the rat race in Dublin and a bunch of other immigrants from all over Ireland.

During one of our numerous tea breaks (with gorgeous homemade scones) one of the immigrants explains to me how the place “gets a hold of you” and you just don’t want to leave.

Besides being very relaxed and friendly it helps when the suggestion of a visit to Lynotts pub (the greatest little pub ever) is accepted warmly.

I was expecting one or two to turn up for a pint but a good few came with their friends – the guitar was produced and we had songs in English and French ..well done Julien and Liam.

Dee is just after coming over to me as I am typing this “You’d get used to the pace of life here”.

I tend to agree ..

What can I say …come to Achill Island!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing and PR firm with offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Motivation, Personal development, Tourism | 12 Comments »

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