 Hi everyone! Well, I am in the most beautiful environments here of the Mount Congrave Gardens and the view that I'm showing you does not at all give justice to where we are. We had a conversation here today all around preparing for the future for business. It was in association with Watford Chamber Skillnet, County Tipperary Chamber Skillnet and Carlo Kilkenny Chamber Skillnet. And we had arranged different speakers and I'm going to tell you all about what happened, particularly with a summary of insights right here. Okay, first of all we started off with Paul Healy as Chief Executive of Skillnet Ireland and he pointed out that two-thirds of people who work in the state work in an SME. Secondly, he said that 12% of people in Ireland engage in lifelong learning and that is in some cases less than half of what goes on in other countries, particularly in Scandinavia. He said according to research very recently published 9 out of 10 people want to learn a new skill and he also said that we as businesses need to make sure that we're engaging with AI and looking at how that changes the game in the way in which we deliver what we deliver and how we engage with it from a business process point of view and also how sustainability is a competitive challenge and he really did the call to action was very clear which is think about how these things can impact you, your business, your customers and of course your staff and make changes and take time to think about your business from the point of view of working on it and not in it. Then we moved on to me. I was the speaker today who was focusing on giving people a business finance toolkit. So a couple of things that I pointed out here in number one is how important it is to know your numbers. I said that it's really important to know for example where your last 10 sales came from because that helps you number one understand where your sales are coming from and therefore it can underpin where you put your marketing resources thereafter. I also said it's really important to know your profit margin and per product. Sometimes people can get cut out by implicit marketing costs where they're not spending money on marketing but it does take time and if you have to pay somebody else to do that when you don't have time to do it yourself that can really affect your profit margin in a way that you didn't anticipate in the first place but also when you know the profit margin per product you can then determine where the resources need to go in terms of promoting the products that you have or services of course and also how you can improve that profit margin perhaps by decreasing cost but also perhaps by engaging with a complementary business or licensing a technology or a product that can align in with that as well. As you can see it's actually starting to rain here it's actually raining and the sun is shining at the same time but I'm going to persevere here now because at the same time we're out in nature so why not why not be part of it all the way. Also I pointed out a range of state supports that are available and I mentioned a couple of them and Paul Healy certainly encouraged people to engage with them too but particularly I do want to mention the SME support tool because that is the one that can help you navigate the environment so rather than me list out a range of what's available take a look at that instead and that may well be able to help you. I know people who've listened to me before on videos on LinkedIn you'll know that I am the number one fan of Enterprise Europe Network because it is so helpful in terms of helping companies to export but also in engaging with companies around the EU and beyond to license products and bring new complimentary products into your portfolio so that then you can build your offering for our customers in a really fast way so check out Enterprise Europe Network as well. Also I pointed out three other things number one is that it is important to financial goals so whether that might be increasing revenue by x percent, increasing profit by x percent, increasing the salaries of your staff by x percent and the second thing I pointed out as well is that it is important if you are a business owner to make sure that you're taking care of yourself financially too and particularly to the lens of a pension the most underfunded if absent people who have in the situation where pensions can either be underfunded or absent typically are the self-employed or people who set up small businesses so it's important to do that too particularly in the context of auto-enrollment coming soon and then the third thing as well that I mentioned is the role of automation. Automation in my opinion needs to be something that is people-centric and that it is designed to implement changes in efficiency and effectiveness for your customers as opposed to tools that are cool and if you can take that approach and I gave a range of different ways to do that today then you can really make a difference to the bottom line yes but also to avoid errors and to making jobs that you offer to people more exciting by virtue of the fact that you've eliminated repetitive tasks. Okay now moving on from there we had a sustainability fireside chat with Amanda with Ann and with Michael and they particularly said that the reason that we need sustainability to happen and happen quickly is for intergenerational justice we need to make sure that tomorrow can be here as a result of our actions of today. Amanda particularly talked about the triple bottom line and that a very quick way to implement sustainable solutions is to change your providers to renewable energy right away. She also said that the best way to work with people around sustainability is to workshop it as opposed to simply sit and listen and also to break down silos is bringing people together in your organization and asking them about things like maybe how they do things or lean manufacturing how that can actually happen or what would be the impact of implementing one change on a different part of the business can be helpful of course to implement sustainability changes but also simply in understanding how people work together. Now Ann Crowley who's the HR manager of Red Mills she told us that it's important to look at how you can keep your environment clean and then add to it she said that sustainability efforts can make a business more efficient and also she said that it's important for anybody who is involved in senior management to be transparent and visible about any changes that they're going to make and if they're going to make a sustainability initiative happen they need to practice what they preach and she particularly was very complimentary of the senior management team of Connelly's Red Mills about that she also said as well talk to people on the ground about how changes can actually happen there's no point in people dictating from on high about what should happen when they don't have experience of what it's like on the ground in a very practical or a tangible manner and maybe how that affects either how people are interacting with customers or how people are interacting with each other in the workplace etc and also then Michael the chief technical officer at Connelly's Red Mills he said that it's very hard to go green when you're in the red and I think it was really important to draw out the perhaps challenges around sustainability and I did ask about that but also the challenges that can come maybe it's point of view of cynicism and maybe it is our sustainability and profitability incongruent and I wanted to put that to him and so he made that point is that it is hard to go green when you're in the red but that's not to say that you can't do it and certainly it sounds like the company isn't in the red at all but the point is is that they need to be aligned going back to Amanda's point of the triple bottom line and he said it's also important that you bear in mind what is happening in sustainability in line with the pace of change of any other business development he also said as well when it comes to markets customers owners and employees sustainability offers a competitive advantage and he said it is important to tell your story so that you can bring people with you both in your own company as well as in the industry and wider society so then we moved on to Ray Goggins and he talked about a resilience toolkit so he started off by talking about it's really important that you've got communication in a team and communication means more clarity and that people apply different levels of listening he said trust, respect, integrity are all needed and a leader when he asks the audience what does the leader do and then he answered it by saying everything and don't expect any reward for it he said people will always remember the time that somebody spent time with you it is the greatest gift to give to anybody he said as a leader you need to be open honest and get stuck in and that you stand and fall as a team and resilience is not just about bouncing back from adversity or otherwise but also your ability to deal with change he posed the question what kind of people are resilient and asked us to think about that and then he said people with purpose don't do drama create your why remember who you are and why you're here he said control the controllables don't get caught up in trying to fix things that you can control he asked us to think about our mistake culture he said what happens when people mistake make mistakes do you fix them or do you appoint blame and then he said and let's say then people said well you know of course they give leeway to people who make mistakes and it's all about learning one of my own favorite quotes is if you win if we win we'll be successful if we lose we will be wise but then he said do you give yourself your own leeway and it's important a very important point there to make he said the three piece of positive thinking are permanence pervasiveness personalization permanence means nothing is permanent anything can be fixed in a period of time he said about pervasiveness keep going and persevere and personalization the universe is not is not out conspiring to pull you down and to instead see things for what they are and then build upon them thereafter he said his mindset principles are awareness of you of us personally acceptance willingness present moment and self-belief and then finally before we had the most beautiful lunch I will say but finally the rain stopped now by the way and then we had Neil breathe with Neil now I cannot describe to you the experience that he brought us through we were outside in the garden and then we had an experience inside in the room all about where he taught us to breathe but he did very kindly we everybody had a book to take away here so as you can see the blissful breath I haven't read it yet but now that I've seen him in action and Neil will really and truly give you practical ways to think differently about breathing and also put you outside your comfort zone and on that note I'm going to leave the suspense there about the activity that he engaged us in but I do want to thank Ashling I want to thank Louise and certainly also wanted to thank Tommy for inviting me to MC today