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Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  0:02  

You can actually sell your business and get far greater potential income from it. If the business is less dependent on you, if it’s heavily dependent on you, you’re going to be locked in for a year, two years, three years into running that business and a handover,

DustPod   0:18  

you have questions about selling a business, we have the people who’ve been there. This is Business Answers with Tommy Boyle.

Tommy Boyle  0:27  

Welcome to the Business Answers podcast where we look at the personal impact, both positive and negative, of growing a business, and in particular, the experience of exiting a business. I’m Tommy Boyle. This episode, I’m delighted to be joined by Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh, the 2002 EY, Irish Entrepreneur of the Year and the visionary behind air Aer Arann who survived a perfect storm of business liquidation and life threatening health scares. Padraig is a former independent Senator, current adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship and Business at the University of Galway, and author of the best selling book The Purposeful Decision Maker to share what it truly costs to build, lose and rediscover yourself in the world of high stakes business. Here is author and entrepreneur. Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh, you’re very welcome to Business Answers.

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  1:08  

Thank you, Tommy, and it’s a privilege to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

DustPod   1:12  

Welcome to the Business Answers podcast.

Tommy Boyle  1:15  

What did your wife Kathleen say when you told her you’re remortgaged the family home to buy an airline? Was there ever a moment she said, Jesus Padraig, this is madness!

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  1:24  

Yeah, actually, that’s happening more and more now than it was back in the day.

Tommy Boyle  1:30  

Yeah.

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  1:30  

When she’d say, I like business. I really enjoy it, and I’m looking at investing in different businesses I’ve invested in five or six already the past couple of years, and she’d say, Why are you looking at that business? Because we are. We’re fine financially, Tommy, you know, but having said that, we’re a very low maintenance family. The house I’m in at the moment, the house we’re doing this podcast from, was built by my father, whose own hands about 70 years ago, and my brother inherited and he sold it to my wife and I, so it’s a very simple, small, three bedroom tiles that we’re just happy in.

Tommy Boyle  2:08  

Again, as part of that part, like after 911 you said that you didn’t pay yourself a salary for two years. What was it like at home, you’re running a business of turning over 100 million, and you can’t take a wage. What was that like?

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  2:21  

That was tough. I’ll be honest with you, I was slow on buying new pairs of shoes because I had young kids, my wife when working in a local hotel. It wasn’t easy. Having said that we were fine, probably looking back on it, when we’re going through it, it didn’t seem that bad, because we felt we’re going to get over it. We’re going to get through it. 911 happened, and I put a bit of a plan together, and I was more hopeful than confident it would work out. And then things did settle down. Looking back at it now, I’d say, Jesus pork, you were flipping crazy doing what you did, remortgage your your house, and with 911 happening, and, quite frankly, Tommy, a couple of other things around the same time

Tommy Boyle  3:05  

you went on then, and it was extraordinary the success you had in terms of becoming the EY Entrepreneur of the Year in 2002 At what point did that business kind of, or did It start owning you, rather than you owning it?

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  3:21  

Yeah. Back to the EY entrepreneur the year. I remember back in the day, two guys from EY wanted to meet with me, and I met them in the Great Southern hotel in Dublin airport because we were in porta cabins and I didn’t have an office with maybe five, 600 staff between everything, but I didn’t have an office, because there are people more important than me who needed an office. So I met them over a coffee in the Great Southern hotel, and they asked me, I thought they wanted to do the orders for the company. I thought they were looking for business. They said, We want to go to your office. And I said, Well, I don’t have an officers. Where do you’re sad? I said, there’s a car park across the road there. They’re all working in the car park. So I brought them across there at the car park. And then I said, Why do you want to meet me? Well, they said, your name has come up and, well, this is an actual fact, an interview to interview you to see if you could be a finalist for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year. I wasn’t aware of EY entrepreneur the year I ended up winning it, which is a huge privilege. I never expected to win it, to be honest with you. And when I went up and was given the trophy, I spoke all in Irish, which meant a lot to me, you know. And then represent Ireland of the world Entrepreneur of the Year. Did well there and was invited back to be a judge for the world Entrepreneur of the Year for the following two years, which was amazing. But in relation to the company that actually did a lot for the company, it gave the company a huge profile. It started giving me a big profile. As well. But quite frankly, from my point of view, it was an effective way to promote the company. When we were going over to Monte Carlo, Tommy and I just finished this part on this we got delivery of an ATR 72 was 76 or aeroplane, and a great guy, guy called John help, and he’s working out things Saudi Arabia Now, John phoned me up. I was in Monte Carlo with my wife and my kids. They were maybe 234, years old that time. And John says, porrick, we got this shiny new aeroplane in in Dublin airport. And I says, John, you know what to do, go around the staff there and fill the aeroplane up with staff and come over to Monte Carlo. And they flew the aeroplane over to Monte Carlo. Now tell me there were two Irish pubs in Monte Carlo. So everybody, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Americans, they all wanted. Where are the Irish guys tonight? And my actually Financial Controller, asked his girlfriend in the pub, would she marry him?

Tommy Boyle  5:58  

Wow,

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  5:58  

and I was a bit worried, but they’re still married. Thank God, two lovely, lovely

Tommy Boyle  6:03  

people.

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  6:03  

Anyway. The following year, Tommy, when I was a judge for the world entrepreneur, the year, a guy called Greg Erickson was the American partner in charge. He says, Parikh, I’ve never seen this happen before with winners of the prospective countries. I says, what? Well, he says, a lot of them come with their partner, their spouse. You do that. You brought all your kids. That doesn’t happen much. Well,

Tommy Boyle  6:26  

you had an advantage over the rest of it. You had an aeroplane to bring them. You brought your staff with you. You’re right, Tommy, would you know what I said to him,

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  6:33  

Greg,

I said, Greg, if you give me that trophy that your world entrepreneur the year and I couldn’t bring my wife, my kids or my staff with me, I’d say it won’t be much to me,

Tommy Boyle  6:42  

yeah,

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  6:43  

because I didn’t build that airline. The staff built that airline. I’d only one role in it. Quite amazing, people.

Tommy Boyle  6:49  

That was the high. Then came 2010 the examiner ship, Ryanair, attacking your roots, oil prices, the recession, volcanic ash, you name it. As you said yourself, was the perfect storm. You had five investors that wanted to come in, and you chose Stobart. And looking back on that, was that the right call part, like, if you’d chosen differently, do you think you’d still have an airline today?

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  7:13  

Hindsight is 2020. Tommy, there were a couple of things that I probably would have done differently. One of them was going back to about 2006 seven. I hadn’t told people this, but I used to get dizzy spells, and I got a couple of blackouts. And I decided then that hold on here. Parikh, maybe you’re not the best person to run the company. And I asked myself, Why would I stay running the company? There’s three reasons why people run a company. One is if they’re definitely the best person to run the company. The other two reasons is the reason I won’t get somebody else, sometimes ego or power and control. And I made it very clear that ego and power and control were not my driving forces. I am separate to the company. So we recruited a CEO, a really good guy, for a couple of years, and I stepped back. Probably the biggest mistake I made, Tommy, is I stepped too far back, to be honest with you, because it needed entrepreneurship, is a lot about gut instinct, and that gut instinct was not active during some of that time. Yeah, in relation to stalberts, quite frankly, there were pluses and minuses. So there were with stobarts. I took on some people that maybe in hindsight, I should have had a different relationship with, quite frankly, but stobarts wasn’t the problem, to be honest with you. So it wasn’t the problem. Was a kind of a perfect storm. It was recession. It was Ryanair, and it was a volcanic ash in Iceland.

Tommy Boyle  9:05  

Are you suggesting there that maybe you could have had got better advice, or are you suggesting that it was in your nature not to take that advice?

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  9:14  

Yeah.

Tommy Boyle  9:15  

Was it more you kind of saying I know best? Or was it that you were unfortunate that maybe the people that you surrounded yourself, just for whatever reasons, weren’t up to that particular job.

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  9:26  

The single biggest wish

that I wish I had then that I didn’t, was to have a couple of really good mentors I didn’t have close, good mentors I wish I had, because I did not have the experience. In some cases, like when I said I stepped too far back, I didn’t really want to have, or need to have co. Troll over the company, so I didn’t, but I had actually experience and knowledge and entrepreneurial instinct that was really important to the company. And I’m not blaming anybody by a long shot. I’m saying to myself, in hindsight, Parikh, you should have stayed a bit more centre stage, and you didn’t. And that was my call.

Tommy Boyle  10:25  

So part you went then from a majority owner to a very small minority in it. Tell me, what does it feel like to watch someone else put their name on what you created. It

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  10:36  

was fine, wasn’t the problem for me. But that is Daniel, put your finger on a really important point, Tommy, I had to make a decision. Is the company, the airline, is separate entity to me, or part of my identity and who I am, that’s so, so important. And I decided it wasn’t easy to come up with a decision. I’m not going to say it was I decided, Tommy, that there’s more to me than this business. This business has a purpose. If a business survives and you give it your best shot, fine. If it fails, it fails. Lots of businesses fail. Over 90% of startup businesses don’t last five years. So give it your best shot. Porrik, that’s all you can do

Tommy Boyle  11:24  

in terms of the failure and that kind of fear of failure. Okay, so kind of that’s what drives a lot of us, is the actual fear of failure. And allied to that is, I suppose, that Ireland, then and even still now, were fairly unforgiving of people who do fail in business. I know that’s certainly in the past, maybe, as I say, a little bit less so now, but the banking community in particular could be fairly brutal. And after the examinership and kind of losing control, like, did you find yourself a little bit friendless, like, did anyone cross the street when they’d see you coming, and kind of who stood by? And were you surprised by anybody who didn’t?

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  12:05  

First of all, the last question, no, I wasn’t surprised by anyone who didn’t. But having said that, I always had a small number of close friends and a very tight family situation, so that was the most that happened to me, and I was quite a public figure before that. So I had a very, very good idea of how the media operates and how sometimes public not public opinion, but some individuals can go and act. And quite frankly, that doesn’t bother me, and it didn’t bother me. What bothered me more Tommy is, quite frankly, and I felt like this as time was going on, I felt that I was in a prison, and I was held in a prison by my attachment to this business, and I needed to get out of that prison. I’m just saying in psychological terms. And there comes a time where you can keep and say, No, I’m going to keep going. I’m going to keep going. I’m worried about what people say or think what the media say, but what you do then is you’re holding yourself in that prison. You’re not living a life. So you’re not you’re not being true to yourself or true to your family. So I decided, no, I’m not going to do that. So there was never an issue from my family. There was more of an issue from my point of view and saying, feeling I’m letting down my family. I’m not around when they’re playing football or sport or whatever, as often as I’d like to be I’m not around to pick them up from school. And I tell you, Tommy, we launched a route between cork and Southampton a long time ago, and absolutely one of the best employees I ever had in my life. It’s a lady called Jennifer Mooney from Wexford. Jennifer was in charge of marketing, and she said, pory, you have to go on this route. I went on the launch. I went on the original flight, we’re over in Southampton, and into this restaurant bar, and they had Irish music playing and so on to celebrate the launch of the rules. And this guy came up to me, and he said to me, I’m out here for my wife. Will you come down and say hello to my wife, I did, and I went down and sat down beside them for a few minutes. And he was the CEO of Bank of Ireland for southern UK, which included London, and he said he’s retiring in a couple of months time. And it was their wedding anniversary, and they knew that this gig was on. So he came along. So he says, Can I give you a better advice? And I said, Yeah, geez. Really appreciate it, because he says I worked with some of the most successful Irish business people in the UK. He says practically all of them have lost at least one of three things. They’ve lost their health, which I almost did. They lost their wealth, which I wouldn’t close to, and they lost their family. I didn’t lose my family. That’s not because of me. It’s because of my family.

Tommy Boyle  15:10  

Yeah, no, that’s a credit to them and to you, it is a credit. Well,

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  15:13  

it’s more to them than to me. Quite frankly,

Tommy Boyle  15:17  

if someone is listening to this podcast, park right now, and they have a business that’s keeping them awake at night. You know, cash flow isn’t great. Pressure is relentless, and they’re wondering if the business will survive. What would you genuinely say to them, like, at what point should someone walk away? Is there a kind of a line where persistence becomes self destructive?

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  15:39  

John Wayne, were with statements on, I think, the film Rio Grande, or one of the films he was in, he said, when you’re on a dead horse, the only thing to do is to get off. What I mean by that, in this situation is step back. Actually. Let’s do this exercise. Anybody who’s watching and listening, I’m asking you to and I think in pictures on an Air Force sheet of paper, throw a circle. Call that circle your secure base. Inside that circle, put the initials of the names of the people who are most important to you in life and who are around there with you in life, and ask yourself, some of them would be out of the edge. Some of them will be closed for the centre. Go through each one of them and say, why are they there? Do they give you energy or take energy from you? Are they’re really with you in the good days and the bad days, or just the good days. And then call that circle your secure base. And then in that secure bed, that’s about 75 80% of it the other 20. 25% is I would call your purpose in life. And your purpose in life is to keep that secure base as strong as possible. If there are people in that secure base that are destabilising it, move your secure base, or move them out. If there are people who are not in it who should be in it, try and get them to be in it. And then your purpose is to strengthen that secure base. And if the business is getting at you, if the business is stressing, you don’t make the mistake I made that it took a heart attack for me to cop on. Don’t go that far. Say to yourself, I’m not moving any place. It’s not getting me any place. The best thing to do is move on the power of detachment, which actually comes from Buddhism. It’s so important.

Tommy Boyle  17:36  

That’s good advice part. That is good advice for anybody on this podcast. We’re particularly interested in people who want to sell their business or who maybe force to sell their business. But you know, if you’re advising somebody who was thinking of selling their business, what are the two things that you believe they most definitely should do and the two things that you think maybe they shouldn’t do?

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  17:59  

Two things they should do is be clear in their mind that they do want to sell, not just if or buts or maybe or maybe not say, Okay, I’m determined to make that decision. Now, obviously it’s subject to price and stuff like that. So it is, I accept all of those. So you set parameters around the second thing you do is you gotta put it on. Let me call it the shop window. You’re not going to sell a wedding dress if it’s in the warehouse. You’re going to sell it if it looks well in the shop window and people can see it, and you more than likely will need really good, professional advice to help you put it into the shop window and fair to place it in that shop window, and also where on the high street you’re going to be. What kind of people do you want to attract to looking at this wedding dress or looking at your business in the shop window? Because there’s a particular market for it, and decide what you think the market is. What you shouldn’t do is go it alone. What you shouldn’t do is to have a half cut business plan and idea, if you’ve got financials, make sure you’ve audited accounts, not unaudited accounts that say these are the figures. I stand by them. They’re independently verified. You got to make sure that you’re totally professional and all the boxes are ticked. Put yourself in the shoes of somebody who’d be buying your company. What would they want? What would they want to see? And give them

that?

Tommy Boyle  19:31  

Yeah, very good advice. And again, I think you double down on it, which, being an advisor and a broker, getting that good advice from somebody is so, so, so important, as you say, you cannot do it on your own, and getting the advice is a sign of strength, certainly not a sign of weakness. Is entrepreneurship glamorised in Ireland? You know, we hear about the EY Awards and the success stories, but you know, do we talk enough about the devastation of failure, the marriages that then the health that breaks the. Friendships that evaporate, you know. And should we be a little bit more honest about the cost of that, or do you think that would stop people from trying

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  20:08  

entrepreneurship is a really tough lifestyle or career to take on place, and I think any entrepreneur, Tommy, which I’m sure you have that you meet an interview, will tell you the same thing. They all have tough times, really tough times. It’s not a simple road to follow. But quite frankly, if you’ve got a passion, I did a postcard years ago in Harvard, there was a professor of strategy called Cynthia Montgomery, and this is what it’s related to. Cynthia, asked us, I was the only Irish person there. There was about 150 in the class or in the lecture hall. And she said, How do you know if you’ve got a good strategy? Simple question, Jesus, we all put up our hand because we thought we knew business and entrepreneurship. And she said, You’re all wrong. One sentence, what is the world with your business versus the world without it? I Tommy, have taken that to heart personally, and I have it written down. What is the world with me versus the world without me? And that’s the key element to me, in entrepreneurship, What difference do you make? What passion? What fires your passion and real entrepreneurs, what really fires their passion is the world with them versus the world without them. That difference they believe that they can make along the way. Obviously they hope to make money on it, but they do want to make a real, meaningful difference to their community, their society, to their country.

Tommy Boyle  21:49  

In terms of the book, I think it’s a tremendous read, because it challenges one to think about things in a deep way. I have to say, I struggled with the concept of purpose in the book, okay, like I’m a big strategy, man, I believe business needs a North Star. It needs a broad plan then to execute to reach that star. And I’ve worked with hundreds of SMEs over the last 30 years. Most of them can’t articulate a purpose. They’re too busy making payroll, managing staff, chasing invoices. So how can you convince me that purpose isn’t just a nice idea that kind of sounds well in a book.

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  22:25  

First of all, it’s not going to be you cannot convince them by sending them an email or a five minute conversation or, quite frankly, two or three sessions. It comes over time, and it’s back to the days I was teaching in the jazz secondary school and facilitating learning rather than teaching. So what you’re actually doing is you’re creating the environment that they start discovering what’s all this about. Why am I doing this? What real benefit does my business have to its customers. What changes or improvements can I make and actually make it more effective again? And that’s where you start. Over time, start developing your purpose. The other thing that’s really important Tommy, in my view, about purpose, is that purpose changes over time, like Tommy, take maybe you and I, when we were teenagers, our purpose was to have a bit of crack. Might go to a disc or a nightclub or what that was a we weren’t thinking about buying a house, building a house, a career, or something like that. In our 20s or late teens, it was going to college and have a bit of crack and going to nine clubs and hopefully getting my exams type fitting fit to fit in there someplace, then your mid 20s and so on. Well, I won’t start developing a career here. Where can I get a job that matches me? So your purpose changes over time. So and the purpose of a business, quite frankly, if it’s alive and living, has to actually develop over time. And the purpose you had when the business was just a starter was to survive the first year or two or three. The purpose then actually over time, the purpose actually becomes a big part of it that the business is not dependent on you. You create a business that can actually run when you’re itinerary on holidays or you’re away, or you’re out of the country, or you’re not you have to build a company that can do and that becomes a core part of your purpose. And back to your question earlier, just a few minutes ago, about selling your business, you can actually sell your business get far greater potential income from it if the business is less dependent on you, if it’s heavily dependent on you, you’re going to be locked in for a year, two years. Three years into running that business and a handover, you’ll have an error now what they call over a couple of years. So you’ll be getting the money over a few years, not the day you sell the business.

Tommy Boyle  25:10  

No, you’re absolutely right. Everybody who’s running a business should be endeavouring to get it as soon as possible that they can run without them. That’s a key factor in success of a business and in terms of the value creation in a business. But again, just going back to that purpose, which, as I say, I struggle with strategy, plans, all of that purpose I struggle with, when you were building air iron from three old planes to 150 million in revenue, you know, was a purpose that drove that, or was it just a strategy to win routes, cut costs and survive.

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  25:44  

Yeah, the purpose initially was to ensure that the three small aeroplanes flying to the Iron Islands with a total population of about 900 or 1000 people would make a profit because it had not been making money. That was the purpose. So what I did then is because purpose and strategy, quite frankly, are, in my view, slightly different. So there. So that’s your purpose. How do you achieve your purpose? You achieve your purpose by creating a strategy. How do you know if your strategy is working? You actually tweak it and review it as you’re going along and say, do we need to change this, that or the other? So a strategy to me is saying, Where am I at now? Where do I want to get to? And the strategy is the bridge you build to get from where you’re at to where you want to get to. That’s your strategy. But your purpose is, why am I doing this? What’s the purpose of this? Like, in simple terms, I’ll be going up to Dublin tomorrow. What’s the purpose of going to Dublin tomorrow? Well, I’ve got four or five meetings in Dublin tomorrow, people I need to meet and want to meet. That’s the purpose of it. The purpose of it is not to go out for dinner or go to a show or Anton at all like that. You know, the strategy is, how am I going to get there? I got to drive, go by train, go by bus, whatever. You know. So that, to me, is the difference between strategy and purpose. And then the purpose changed, like what I mentioned before, when we were kids and teenagers in our 20s and 30s, the purpose then, from an air iron point of view, became, okay, can we become Ireland’s regional airline? We’d achieved the first purpose, but I hadn’t even envisaged the second purpose when I was in the middle of trying to achieve the first one. It’s like Tommy. I don’t know if he ever climbed someplace like crow Patrick, and the top of it, it’s all missed, and

Tommy Boyle  27:45  

you can achieve I did the Sugar Loaf once. That’s

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  27:48  

okay. And Wicklow Mountains. So if you look at that, Tommy, let’s look at that then. So you started climbing it okay? And there’s a steep climb and there’s a pretty shallow climb. So I don’t know which one you did, but anyway, you’re climbing the Sugar Loaf and but you cannot see the top of it. So the purpose is, I want to reach the

Tommy Boyle  28:10  

I have to be honest. I have to be honest, right? There was six of us and one of the party I fancied. Okay, so that was my purpose.

That’s me. Anyway, that’s being honest. That’s why we disagree. On purpose I think, Oh,

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  28:30  

my God,

Tommy Boyle  28:32  

if you were to do it all again, would you do anything differently?

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  28:37  

Be honest with Chuck, I would have probably sold the company in about 2006 or seven, I had an opportunity to sell it then, and I didn’t. I actually got advice, in effect, not to sell it, which was poor advice. Is

Tommy Boyle  28:51  

that your biggest regret, that

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  28:52  

probably is the single biggest regret, yes,

Tommy Boyle  28:55  

Padraig, it’s been a real privilege speaking with you today. Your story is not just one of business success. It’s a story of what it costs to build a business and maybe to lose it and then to find yourself again on the other side. And I think anyone who is listening, you know, who’s in the thick of building and growing or exiting the business, will take enormous strength and honesty from what you’ve shared today. Many thanks. You have a great story. You’ve told it with great candour. Thank you very much.

Dr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh  29:22  

Thank you. I really appreciate it, Tommy, and thanks for inviting me to be your guest.

Tommy Boyle  29:26  

Thank you, Padraig, that’s it for this episode of the Business Answers podcast, until the next time, take care.

DustPod   29:32  

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