 We're listening to Around the Northwest. Now the Enterprise Week, Local Enterprise Week continues this afternoon. Well earlier on there was Trail Gazers in Burt and this afternoon there is Utopia Young People as future leaders and innovators. That's a webinar focusing on young people as innovators and also opportunities in the Northwest region and in the EU and there's speakers from Alpha Innovation Centre, the Assembly of European Regions and Donegal ETP. Also this afternoon, DICE 2023, DICE for Driving Innovation in Business, an event that's going to showcase national and international best practices in design, thinking and innovation and events continuing through to the end of the week. On Friday in fact, the final day of Local Enterprise Week there is Business and Sport, International Leadership Lessons and this is out at the Clenery Hotel here in Lerner County from 10 to half past 12 and some leading lights and Irish sport coming together for a special event that they'll be sharing their experiences and outlining the sacrifices I suppose that made them champions and it includes Enda McNulty who won seven Ulster titles in the National League and with Armagh there's Michael Murphy who of course needs no introduction, there's Nina Carberry top former top national hunt jockey and also Brent Pope who we know from rugby analysis and playing rugby New Zealand born and he's a rugby journalist as well and there's a lot of work for Charity and very busy on the after dinner circuit and in business owner of Pope shirts and shoes. Not that a lot of people might know that but Brent now joins us. Brent tell us a bit about Pope shirts and shoes. Yeah well I always had a great company there for Friday to talk about I suppose you know the lessons I've learned in a sense from doing a lot of things pretty well in my life not egotistically but you know I was pretty successful from a sporting point of view were coached by some of the best coaches in the world so I picked up valuable lessons then then into work in media I had a property business for a while in New Zealand that was successful I then a few years ago I decided I was sick of wearing other brands on the TV and everybody saying oh how smart you looked and I thought why can't I do this myself my mother worked in the industry in New Zealand she was head of fashion and a brown Thomas equivalent shop in Christchurch called Ballantyne's so I got my kind of love of fashion back then and I thought why can't I design and bring a brand of shirts to the market in Ireland which has been very successful I'm now in the likes of Arnott's I'm now just entering into brown Thomas there next year so that then moved on to shoes they're run by a company out of Monaghan not far away and yeah so I just I've always been about stepping out of my comfort zone and being named project pope years ago and it's just I suppose on Friday just imparting some of the lessons I've learned not only in dealing with my own mental health which we can talk about in a bit of a munch but also you know what it takes to be successful in business because the the I suppose that the ties are very close as I said but so all the lessons I've learned out of sport I've applied to to my business career and people can do that at whatever level they think deems to be success and that's worth talking about as well because some people equate success to financial and that's okay other people equate it to be successful in the community and that's okay as well so it's just you know the thing that the main lessons I give us about what is your purpose what is your purpose in business what is your purpose in sport what is your purpose in life I think that's where we start discussing that sort of side of things yeah and funny just outline how what is your purpose in life because Enterprise week the focus obviously on business but you know it's it's all it's all about life because you can't be successful in business unless unless you're on top of things and life in general and you'd have learned a lot of lessons as you said they're from coaching and from playing rugby and over the years and and how they translate into day-to-day life as well as business yeah and I think I come from a good position because I've kind of I'm kind of you know I've learned a lot from different areas of my life that I that I take forward and I said I think you know you go back to the basic and also the fact is I've been lucky enough to kind of hear the foremost speakers around the world over the last 10 or 15 years I've traveled to places I've traveled to the States I've traveled to Australia in these places to listen to business speakers I regularly attending the the pendulum summit they have every year that my friend Frankie Sheehan set up and so I've taken bits out of everybody I've heard speak and apply them and to be honest what I'll be saying on Friday this is not rocket science and yet and yet we still I still talk to a lot of business leaders out there and I say well you know how did you make this business a success and sometimes you still get tripped I I was doing something similar a few years ago just to give you an idea on what that sounds like and I was on a panel with um some other business leaders and one of the questions asked by one of the members of the public was to this very successful business owner who had made a lot of money and uh was on the outside dean to be running a very successful business and and the question was how do you motivate your workers and his answer was I pay them more and I just thought you don't get it you know because that's not sustainable you know unfortunately the business collapsed a few years later and I know why it collapsed because motivating people just for money is never going to work long time no you have to tie you have to tie your purpose to intrinsic values and what are those values like and I talk a bit about the coaching that you know that Joe Schmidt and that employed and to get Ireland back on track and it was all to it was all about placing intrinsic values on what winning a Grand Slam would really mean to that person or to the team so it's it's about team building it's about building purpose it's about saying what is your purpose where do you want the business to go to how you drive it there you know and all these things are put in place and it's very much like a sports team you know it's very much that you know that the leader has to be somebody that's flexible it has to be someone that sticks to his goals and no matter what that gets everybody on site and that's not rocket science anybody can do it from whether you're setting up a hairdressing business or whether you're a multinational no one manager I've ever met in my life has got it completely right all of the time and it's okay to make mistakes and it's okay to move forward but I just give those sorts of stories that applied to me in my own personal life and also my sporting life and I think it it is a lot to do with with with what is the purpose and what is why are you doing what you're doing because if you're just doing it for extrinsic reasons you know more money or whatever like that or or ego then it'll ultimately fail but so hopefully I can tie a cord between the business society and the sports society and the mental health issues I've had and give a well-rounded kind of presentation in a kind of a low-key manner that somebody can get takeaways from because there's no good hearing people talk myself like Ender I've heard talk before and he's very good and Gina and and Michael Nina sorry will all have their own input so people get some really valuable insights into leading a successful business or sporting life or how they deal with their mental health problem speaking of mental health problems I was listening to you chatting to Brent in the corner on Saturday and we're not going to do too many details through we had some tragedies here in Donegal last week related to that issue and you spoke very openly very honestly very movingly about your own issues with mental health and also you just you kept going back to please please reach out talk to somebody there's help there and you kept going back to that and that is and that is a very strong message but you also gave the background and that was your your own issues yeah um just very very briefly for those who wouldn't have heard that um it just you know kind of take us through what you've come through recently and then you know the underlying message that you were we were putting out on Saturday as well yeah um it's been very difficult for me it's even difficult for me now speaking out but the part of my part of me moving forward is to I suppose you know giving back has become very important in my life um because I think if one person hears me there I know it's an old cliche and and I don't want to you know keep drumming out but if one person hears me speak about my mental health and has the courage of the bravery to make a call to a friend to a GP to a professional to to anybody uh to get their life back on track I need to give hope for people because for so long in my life and in my earlier years when I had mental health issues I had to battle them alone and they were they came with judgment they came with guilt they came with shame where does the guilt come from the guilt comes from the fact that you may have a a good life from the outside looking into everybody else as people used to tell me don't you have a roof over your head aren't there starving children and I forget yes there are but that didn't help my state of mind in all those years when I had extreme anxiety look it's it's too long it's another program to go over the issues I've had but but I have battled my mental health issues for going on what am I now going on 40 years uh that I've had to had to deal with that and I've had to find a way around it um what happened in the last couple of years was that I just got into a position whereby that I know I needed extra help you know that um that I needed the journaling and the count the seeing the counselors and uh that wasn't working for me at this particular time um so I just had to be brave enough to reach out and make a couple of calls and just say look I need additional help here I need additional help and making that first part of the call is the start of your recovery process and that has to be the message it has to be like an alcoholic reaching out and saying look the first step is I go to AA meetings and I get my life back on track because the alternative doesn't worth thinking about for most people but it's out there and we need to start addressing the understanding the better understanding around mental health I don't talk about destigmatization anymore I don't like that word being referred to what I'm out there speaking because I think we've moved past that what we need is greater understanding that people are suffering uh with mental health illness at whatever level and that there is hope out there and that they just make that call and they get their lives back on track to give them hope because if one person comes up to me on the street and says Brent I heard you talk or whatever and I made that call like was said to me the other night then you know I know I know they're making a difference and that's why I was on to talk about initiative another time I'll come on with the call the elephant the room where I'm getting these four foot high elephants made and I'm hoping to have an elephant in every board room or every sporting organization or every classroom in the country over the years just as a commitment to companies or sports clubs or universities or schools making it a safe place for people to talk about whatever their elephant the room is whether that's sexuality problems whether that's problems with bullying whether that's body dysmorphia whether that's anything what is their elephant the room and feel free that that they can go and talk to the manager or they can go and talk to a teacher or they can go and talk to a friend or a GP or a priest or whoever but just get it out in the open because a problem in my world a problem shared is a problem solved and you know we should look at that you know not to go through the judgment that I've had to face of people look at men saying I'm glad I don't have Brent Pope's life because for the most part I'm pretty good and also the most part is I'm in a situation where now that I know that if I had a couple of bumps along the road I know what to do about it there's so many people out there you talk about own your own community is affected those people just sadly have got into a situation where they think there's no help out there that you know what does their life look like and they're in a desperate dark place and I'm just urging those people to make a call like I had to if I can do it then they can do it and that's the message and it's important that you share that message and it's important that someone with your experience and your profile is is willing to talk about it and very open about it and and and sort of and blends it into the the general conversation okay well without because as you say just to finish off it's not it's it's not an easy thing to do and and it's very difficult because I go through I've just talked to someone before and I said I go through this I go through this judgment fact that oh you know am I am I sharing my life's dirty little secrets in a way that everybody knows now but on the other side of that is that if I can save lives out there one life or if I can if I can touch somebody to to to get that to get the help of somebody's listening out there now and they're in a dark place and you know they're feeling low or whatever like that please please hear me and just make that call and there is hope and there is recovery and you can have wonderful lives in the future it's just getting them out of that dark place which I say to people sometimes I scare and I you know you know yourself it's coming to us at all stages in our life we don't know what's going to happen in five minutes time let alone five days or five weeks we don't know when we're going to be forced to have to dip into our resources to look after our mental health what say you go home this afternoon and something has happened you know you might lose a business you might lose a relationship you might anything might happen where suddenly your tack your mental health is taxed and for people to know in that situation that is when you need to reach out and get help from other people if it was only that issue that you were chatting about on friday I think it'll be worth going to but obviously that's just going to be part of the narrative and there's going to be a lot more besides yourself end of mcnulty michael murphy and nina caribri all at that and it's in the clanry hotel just to let people know that you do have to register it's free but you do have to register local enterprise dot ie forward slash donnie gall 10 to half past 12 on friday brend as you say there's another show and i'd love to have a longer conversation maybe maybe we will sometime and we will maybe uh just saying the last time i was down and donnie gall i think i was down there celebrating the great dave gallo who gave so much to you down in remelton new zealand rugby and uh and i just said to somebody before imagine coming from a country where uh we were the greatest rugby country in the world moving to a country that is now the greatest rugby country in the world so it's looking good it's looking good things are looking good so look i'm looking forward to it and hopefully people who turn up in their numbers because they'll get something out of it whatever way they look at and that they want to come up to me and talk about mental health or business health or anything like that i'd love to meet them so i'm really looking forward to it i get a great welcome and donnie gall is a fabulous place in the country it's beautiful i enjoy the drive down uh so looking forward to it so thanks for that all right