in this video I want to share with you my origin story not from an egotistical
point of view or to boast about anything I've ever done but more to assist or
help you in discovering them in life in business and in life particularly when
you're doing a business or trying to run a business there's going to be ups and
downs and you take the roof of the smooth and sometimes the very best thing
you can do is pick yourself up and have the right attitude and keep plowing
ahead my origin story will probably be of interest to you because it's quite an
unusual one it's not a typical story that you might hear or career paths or
career progression from a solicitor in fact it's quite the opposite so my
background is I did a Commerce degree in UCD way back in the day after graduating
I couldn't get a job things were very very bad in the early eighties and
couldn't get a job eventually ends up getting a job as a company accountant or
a trainee accountant or whatever but I couldn't stand this I hated I hated
accountancy I always wanted to do business or law so when I was 23 I set
up my first business along with my brother in Harts corner in Glasnevin in
Dublin that's a photograph here of the shop so this is 6 to December 1986 when
I started in business with my brother we walked like absolute dogs like mules
from 7:00 in the morning on to 12 o'clock at night 7 days a week we pushed
a hand character hand trolley up and down Lindsey Road Botanic Road Botanic
Avenue or Road last nerve enough is for delivering briquettes and coal and gas
and so on who girls are from the country living in
flats they're working in an IRA hospital are working in the prison service or
working us in the public service in Dublin but that was from the 6th of
December 1986 we actually did really well we drove the business way up and we
sold it off and we then in 1989 about two to three years later I ended up
moving to Navin and I developed to build up this business this is a newsagent
convenience store last Neven that was 1989 traded there for a few years then
and I ended up moving to back home my father wanted to retire in a small
petrol station and business in Enfield account he made shell filling station
and moved back in and just looking at the dates in 1996 I moved back to
Enfield bought the business of him developed it and this is just the
beginning of the development stage of that particular business so I was there
from 1996 running that business developing it
I had get a deal with the oil company built it up and did quite well I sold
that business then in 1996 because the time demands on me of four kids I found
very very difficult and had enough of retailing retailing is a tough tough
game it's a great game in one way insofar as you have should have positive
cash flow all the time and cash is king but in another way the time demands on
you are very very serious and he has a young family then you can look at or see
better ways to do spending your time selling your life so in 1996 I moved to
Enfield and down in 2006 I sold that place in Anfield and I bought a site in
a Jewish town in county Longford to build apartments
I had always been tricking around with property buying properties doing them up
divide you know flipping them all sorts of sort
of property development and general speculation but I was fairly soundly
based speculation in that those I was a sound asset at the back of whatever
investment I might make I bought the site Lynette was town in 2006 and the
idea was that I didn't know it fairly quickly right the property boom and make
if you're Bob and see what I wanted to do with that with the rest of my life
however the property market and a port 'less the photo on the screen there
actually of the development in a Jewish towns a block of eight apartments I
still actually have them but the idea was to get in and out that didn't work
the market crashed and with them crashing Americus I literally lost
everything so from 1986 to 19 2009 or thereabouts
over 20 years work went down the tubes nothing and I had no prospects either
I'd lost everything and I was absolutely up to my eyeballs in debt with the bank
so I ended up deciding in my early to mid forties that I was gonna go back to
college until law but I had to get into the Law Society in order to become
apprenticed as a solicitor and then qualify hopefully as a solicitor but I
haven't done an exam in 20 or 25 years in fact hadn't got an exam since I
graduated from UCD and I think 1983 so it was a quarter of a century probably
since I did an exam so I took to my garage at home and nothing else my back
was to the wall I went into the garage I bought a book load of books about law I
enrolled in Griffith college I did a very very quick fast track sort of
intensive study course there for about three months in preparation for the
entrance exams to the Law Society when your back is to the wall and when you
have the right attitude things can work out for you and thankfully they worked
out for me because even though I was doing my first exam or exam
in about 25 years I actually saw the if everyone examines and passed and got
into the Law Society and became apprenticed as a solicitor then and
couple years later I qualified as a solicitor so as you can see I've had ups
and downs mainly ups but then one catastrophic down one catastrophic crash
in 2009 or 10 or thereabouts when the property market in Ireland absolutely
tanked and when the tide goes out and you're stuck in a particular market
there's not a whole lot you can do about her so if you don't believe me you can
ask Tony O'Reilly or Sean Quinn two of the wealthiest men in Ireland who later
became bankrupted as a direct or indirect consequence of the crash in the
property market but the bottom line is nowadays I have my own solicitors
practice after qualifying obviously as a solicitor my own little solicitors
practice in Enfield and it's going quite well but this video I hope will show you
that you can have ups and downs but if you do have the right attitude then you
can get on and you can recover and the things are never entirely fatal provided
you have your health and so on that's absolutely critical the right
habitude I believe very very strongly is critical as well and I've ranted on and
after on in some of these videos before about having the right attitude and
about having the right response to crisis and the book by Viktor Frankl
man's search for meaning he was a concentration camp survivor but his
findings he was a psyche psychiatrist I think from Vienna his findings about how
people who were concentration house responders to their circumstances is is
one of the guiding principles in my life I'm not saying that I'm a concentration
camp survivor not for a minute but I'm just making the point just how you
choose to react to your circumstances you can't dictate your circumstances you
can't dictate your surroundings but you can choose how you respond to
downturns and wipeouts and adverse situations occurring hope you find this
video useful if you do give it a thumbs up down below and you may be interested
in subscribing to my youtube channel I make videos fairly regularly twice a
week in fact Wednesday and Saturday and whether people find them useful enough
but whether they are or not isn't another thing I keep showing up though I
keep making the videos I have something to say you might find it useful if you
do wear a goal give a thumbs up down below if you don't well how to hell