'Out on your own' conference feedback

What a day! Congratulations to the Sunday Business Post for putting on a great event for a good price. I would welcome more from you.

The highlight of the day was definitely the Sean Gallagher speech. I was really surprised by it, I really did not expect such an insightful and motivating speech and on top of it a nice fella to talk to. Other great speakers were John Crawley, The Profit Mindset and Krishna De, BizGrowthNews.

Sean Gallagher's speech focused on staying positive, focus on fundamentals, take action to reduce fear, take a risk and above all be grateful for what you have.

Excerpts of his speech:

"Change requires leadership"

"Failure should be a badge of honour and not frowned upon"

"Success in the next 12 - 18months is about survival"

"A customer acknowledged is a customer half served" - I love this one

"need to offer value for money"

"taking action, kills fear"

John Crawley had a great stage presence, he discussed funding, cashflow, and budgeting.

Excerpts of his speech:

"zero based budgeting"

"Funding the GAP"

"Look for ratchet back deal when talking to investors"

"If you are not going to have a cash surplus in the next five years, then you shouldn't be in business"

Krishna De also had great stage presence and confidence, she discussed online and offline PR.

Excerpts of her speech:

"Research current customers and how life has changed for them in the past 9 months"
"model for good promotion: good headline, good image, and strong call to action"

"93% of people go online to research products"

"33% go online to purchase products"

Other comments that I picked up:

"More people are setting up businesses due to necessity" - Julie Sinnamon, Enterprise Ireland

"A lot of research is sitting in Universities, not being used" - Julie Sinnamon, Enterprise Ireland

"25+ new businesses grew out of the 320 job losses from Motorola in 2008" - Julie Sinnamon, Enterprise Ireland (not sure if I have the facts right on this one though, maybe Julie can correct me)

"Business Plan reduces options, helps to maintain focus" - Alan Gleeson, Palo Alto Software

"I haven't failed, I have found 10,000 ways that don't work" - Dylan Collins, Jolt Online Gaming

"Pick Shareholders carefully" - Dylan Collins, Jolt Online Gaming

"Celebrate small victories" - Dylan Collins, Jolt Online Gaming (he was discussing staff morale)

"You can't run a branch office remotely" - Deborah Lee Marlow, The business whisperer

"Stay out of debt" - Deborah Lee Marlow, The business whisperer

"20% of customers provide 80% of revenue" - Vincent Reynolds, Rapport Consulting

"20% of your products/services provide 80% of revenue" - Vincent Reynolds, Rapport Consulting