Why Supporting Irish-owned business will be a key to pandemic recovery

As Ireland continues to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, its entrepreneurs and family owned businesses will play a huge role in the jobs-led recovery of the economy. The resilience of Irish businesses over the past year and a half has been remarkable, dealing with the challenges of both Brexit and the pandemic while continuing to innovate and make new strides in sustainability and digital transformation. Currently, the Government is targeting a eight to ten percent unemployment rate for next year, down from the current 22 percent rate. It also wants to see 2.4 million in unemployment by 2024, which is significantly higher than pre pandemic levels. KPMG tax partner Olivia Lynch believes that Irelands entrepreneurs, family owned businesses, and small business will be crucial in helping the Irish economy to recover and meet these goals. Lynch also leads KPMG’s private enterprise sector and believes that the Government is aware of the need to support these types of businesses moving forward.

Small businesses and entrepreneurships are a critical part of the backbone of Ireland’s society and economy. Lynch says “There …

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7 Tips for Entrepreneurs in Ireland

Being an entrepreneur can be both exciting and challenging. Here are 7 tips to help you navigate the ups and downs of building a successful business.

1. Learn to Embrace Risk

Starting your own business is a risk in itself, but don’t be afraid to take on more risk along the way. If you are too cautious and risk-averse, you may end up missing out on great opportunities for growth. Jeff Bezos has said that learning to take risks has helped him to realize that he wouldn’t regret failure, but he would regret not trying.

2. Have self Confidence

A crucial element of being a successful entrepreneur is leadership. And the most important trait required to be an effective leader is self-confidence. Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motors, famously said, “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.”

3. Learn From Your Mistakes

Mistakes are a part of life, and nobody’s perfect, especially in business. However, many entrepreneurs tend to either ignore their mistakes, or dwell on them for too long. A more productive approach is to …

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Business lesson from a dead mans wristwatch.

My grandfather died in May 1982, he was born in the first decade of the 1900’s and for most of his life he was involved in racing. Initially he raced air planes around pylons, kind of like what red-bull do today with the exception that people died all the time doing it in the 1930’s, they raced around wooden pylons and would cut the wings of their planes short, in the frequent crashes there were not frequent survivors (although he did crash twice in his life and lived to tell the tale).

He also did stunt work which was called ‘barnstorming’ and was amongst the earliest of aviators to use a backpack parachute (up to that point parachutes were on a line and opened once you jumped out). That was a mixed bag for him, one time his chute didn’t open and he was trying to cut it loose on the way down, he hit the ground so hard that his leg broke at the hip, there wasn’t any doctor so …

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Greenspan & Rogers

Here are some interesting videos, the first is Alan Greenspan (former Federal Reserve Chairman) and he is talking about unemployment and credit spreads. The next one is Jim Rogers who talks about the commodity markets and the risk of inflation.

The two men are on opposite sides of the same valley, Greenspan was an academic who worked primarily in private practice (despite being more well known for his 19 year tenure at the Fed), and he believes in [at least in practice] fairly accommodating monetary policy. Rogers on the other hand (while he has university degrees and did have guest professorships at Columbia) is almost a pure practitioner who made a fortune in the 1970’s and retired at age 37. So on one hand you have an economic thinker with policy practice and on the other you have a guy who perhaps doesn’t care about policy so much as outcomes. Personally I have always been a fan of the bottom line and for that …

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