LEO Clare Hosts New Growth Programme For Women Entrepreneurs

0:00Claire local enterprise offices, new growth program, program rather for women entrepreneurs. Joining me to discuss this further is Theresa Mulvihl, Colleen, who's a senior enterprise development officer at Claire local enterprise office. And Theresa, not as divisive as the price of fuel at all at all, this is a fantastic initiative. It sure is. And the local enterprise office in in Claire have been instrumental, I suppose, for a long time now in terms of supporting female entrepreneurs. But this new program is for all ladies, all women in business. So whether that's retail, whether that's hospitality, sometimes I think business owners are put off by the term entrepreneur. And so whether you're a startup or whether you're looking, whether you're a business that has been that has been on the go for a while and looking to to upgrade or to grow your business, this, this program is something that you could take a look at. For sure. And I suppose what challenges particularly do, and I suppose it's like me, you know, a typical

1:04man here now who should know better, but doesn't know the answer to this, what challenges do women face in business, I suppose that we might not realize or might be unique? Sure. That's, that's a really interesting question and it's one that we are often asked. The good news is the challenges and the gap between female entrepreneurship and male entrepreneurship are closing. Would you believe one of the greatest barriers that female entrepreneurs actually experience is accessing loans, funds and securing investment to scale and grow their business? The other, I suppose, fairly obvious one, is that women tend to take responsibility of the caring roles and be it that younger children or indeed caring for their parents. Now, that's not to take away from the gentleman out there who are listening and also have a caring role, but the stats show that women are double as likely to not enthronch entrepreneurship or twice as likely not to enter entrepreneurship because of that caring role.

2:05Of course. And even if you take up a new hobby and you have to figure out who's going to mind the kids, how am I going to balance my time here and there, that can be difficult. Starting your own business is an extremely different kettle of fish altogether. Sure. Starting or scaling and I suppose there's two types of people, two types of entrepreneur I would see come on this program. One is somebody who has set up maybe in the last 12 or 18 months, they have a full hold. It's not a starter on business program. And the second is somebody who has been in business maybe four or five years and they're looking to come back to refocus, take time to take stock and reassess and evaluate where they're at. And the third type of candidate that we would see on this program is somebody who has run a business started at maybe that pre-children stage. The children are a little bit older now, they're gone into their teens or moved into their teens. And they're coming back to see how they can scale and grow their business. So there are the various profiles that we would see on this type of a program.

3:06This event isn't really kicking off for some time but it's clear that you want as many people as possible to get involved and that you probably expect good and strong interest as well because it's starting on April 15th at the well actually now the drawing hotel. But I suppose Theresa, is this your first time running this program? Is this something that you've seen or similar initiatives seen strong interest in the past? Yeah. Look, the local enterprise office has been running programs like this and networking events to support women of business. We'd want just last week with a full house in the Rhine. But this one is tweaked slightly and I guess that's what we do. So in response to the needs of the clients that come to the local enterprise office, we tailor and we tweak the content, we tailor how it's delivered. So this program will run over six weeks, I suppose the fundamentals of business remain the same. The first and the last module will take place in person and all businesses that attend are encouraged to give a presentation and a review of their strategic plan on the last module.

4:06The interim modules will take place online and again that's just to facilitate people's work in week and to give them a little bit more flexibility around the attendance of the program. What I would love to say is I suppose as somebody who is a trainer for a very long time, 50% of the program is really the delivery through the trainer. The other 50% is being in a room with other people like minded peer learning, the networking and the support that you get from that group. That's why these type of training programs, these management development programs are so important. And could you tell us maybe about any success stories over the years because I'm just looking at this and like, I mean all the time you might even be talking to your friends and one of them could come up with this eureka idea for a new product or service. Like here, you get down to the nitty gritty of it, you mentioned strengthening key skills, like strategic planning, financial management and pitching to investors and all of that is so important. There's that little area of vagueness as well around it because there's such broad

5:12aspects. What I suppose generally have you seen from businesses that have taken up with clearly or what can they expect to see, what's the dream success story here that has actually happened? Yeah, sure. Look, last year we had a female led Irish business, business based in Shannon. Claire Bannon is the female founder and she brought county Claire all the way through to the national final awards in the mansion house. And this year while we have not released yet who our winner is to represent Claire, but I'm delighted to say that 50% of the business applications that came in this year that were shortlisted are led by female founders. And I suppose you'll have to tune in later in the week to hear a little bit more about that. In terms of the actual content that's delivered, as I said to my daughter who's studying business in the Clashta and doing her junior cert, these marketing sales, SWAT analysis, market research, financial management, I suppose it depends on the entrepreneur that takes it and how they perceive it and how they actually apply it to their business.

6:15So in terms of the content that's being delivered, it's very much tailored towards a small business delivered in a very practical way. And the resources are fantastic that they can take, leave and implement in their business as soon as they go. And we hope we'll see some of these candidates in the future as representatives to the county, to the national enterprise awards also. Well, that is fantastic. And most certainly some amazing and I suppose opportunities on store. So most certainly if you are a budding entrepreneur out there out there listening, make sure to get down to the Ryan Hotel in New York, on August, on April the 15th, Theresa, is there any bit of registration are that required? Sure. I actually had a look this morning and there are only six places left on the program which is why we wanted to make sure and spread the word out there. Yes, log on to the local enterprise office website where you can click the link and register and also just to let you know our next women and business event is on May the 14th. We've qualified assignments from going for growth.

7:16And September the 4th, we'll also have Bridio Donna who is the chair and former founder of Penny. So we've lots of things happening and NWED will also happen again on October the 15th and all of these can be found on the local enterprise office forward slash clear website. Well, that's fantastic at Theresa, Mulvihl clean senior enterprise development officer at clear local enterprise office, Theresa, thank you very much for joining us.