Archive for Blogroll

€404,551 Raised For Temple Street.

Thank you for helping us raise over €400,000 for Temple Street Children’s Hospital. The funds will be used to purchase life saving equipment such as incubators and ventilators – giving the gift of life to over 1,000 critically ill babies and children. Thank you for being the best listeners!

Also chuffed at the exponential nature of the donations we’ve been receiving and the station has been growing.

Another Great Year At Christmas FM

Another Great year at Christmas FM – We raised €265,000 cash for our 2105 Partner Make-A-Wish. Christmas FM continues to go from strength to strength and each year increase listeners and reach.

Christmas FM

Christmas FM Raises €116,749 in 2011

One of my true loves in life is Radio. Since my Teenage years I’ve been involved in radio presenting. Every Christmas for the last four years we put together a temporary licensed radio station called Christmas FM which we run to raise money for charity. We’ve finally counted up all the donations and I’m delighted to announce we generated €116,749 for our charity partner Focus Ireland, which help the homeless community in Ireland. This figure is way above our target for 2011 and brings the total raised in the last 4 years to €320,000 for our Irish Charity Partners.

A big thanks to EBS and the Irish Daily Mail, who are the stations co-sponsors and the Alexander Hotel in Dublin who donated a suite for us to base the studio in. Here’s a quick look at the set up:

Christmas FM will be back in 2012 bigger and better then ever. I look forward to talking to you on air then.

Peter Jones & Young Entrepreneurs

Below is a speech from Peter Jones, Dragons Den Investor and inventor of one of my favourite terms Ultrapreneur. This speech echo’s something i’ve been saying through out this recession, it’s the best possible time in our lifetime to start a business. It also got me thinking what Ireland is doing to match this type of innovation.

This type of entrepreneur lead method of teaching teenagers and aspiring entrepreneurs of any age that there is an option of there to have a go yourself is sorely missed in Ireland. And while I don’t want to take away the great work of programs like the Young Entrepreneur competition and Mini Company program, I do feel schools and CEBs could do a lot more. I mean is there anything more silly than a teacher who has never worked in the real business world being responsible for the slight exposure a teenage encounters to the business start up lifestyle.

Wouldn’t it be great if every school had talks and speeches from people out there today making a change in the economy and doing it for themselves? I’m sure other business owners feel the same. Anyone know of how we can make this happen here in Ireland?

Perception and Transformational Wording

This Video is a perfect demonstration of how perception and wording can create two completely different experiences.

Social Dynamics is a key important area which i believe everyone should get a handle on. David DeAngelo’s field is PUA (pick up artist or dating coach) but his information can be carried and used in many business and personal circumstances.

Visualise the two perceptions of the two same exact images in this video to see what i mean.

Gourmet Burger or Abrakabera in Disguise???

Photo Taken at Oxygen 08

Gourmet Burger or Abrakabera in Disguise???

(For those not from Dublin – Gourmet Burger is a well known Dublin restaurant that serves fancy high quality burgers and Abrakababra is a fast food chain.)

Blog Update

Sorry folks blogging has been slow as of late. Thought i’d make a mini post just to keep everyone upto date.

Next Dublin Media Centre DJ course Starts this Sat, ment to post on this but it was literally sold out the day after we announced it – so didnt see the point. [email protected] for info on my next course and to get on the waiting list for it. Might Consider doing one in the Portloaise area if there’s demand, will still be through DMC but looking at how far some people travel for this months course it might be be worth looking into.

Twittering has been slow, i’ve become more of a twitter spectator as of late. Will get more active as i’ve implementing some time saving ideas next week. www.twitter.com/ronanob – If your on twitter add me.

Jobs in Laois? If you know anyone looking jobs in Laois for Sales / Admin i’m looking for people at the moment so send CV’s here if you know anyone looking – Would be much appreciated.

St. Patricks day has been moved to 15th March 2008

It’s official, St. Patricks day – generally assumed to be the 17th of March has been moved to the 15th due catholic church authorities not wanting it to fall in their holy week.

E-tailers – To charge for postage and packaging or not

Had an interesting discussion today. Was querying the validity of offering free delivery over charging for it. Its something i probably should have give much more thought into when launching IrelandCostumes.com but since personally i hate tricky charges that end up winding up the end total when shopping online – i made a hasty choice to offer free shipping. Ok so by “free” it is factored into the price – but at least unlike some of our competitors (who charge 27 Euro to deliver – even if the item doesnt cost as much as the shipping!!!) i felt customers would get a upfront view of the costs.

Then this morning Alan Keane Co-founder of Cubic threw me an analogy that made my head spin and had me in an instant (in a kinda of Satori moment) completely change my mind.

“Have you ever heard of someone tell you their flight only cost 1 Cent with Ryanair? Well they actually paid 50quid ish in taxes, but all they think the flight cost was 1 Cent. Yeah there were other costs – but in their mind they were for other things” said Alan. And it makes sense.

So i chewed it over for a while, i’d rarely pay postage for a low ticket item like a DVD, but then again postage for these items is cheap and rarely via registered postage etc; but then somewhere like E-bay i’d expect to pay the postage and packaging. It all comes down to meeting unconcious customer expectations. Keep low ticket items, with low shipping costs free. Keep high ticket items (350+ Euro) free. And make medium ticket items (20 – 349Euro) at a reasonable, easy to understand fee, that encourages buying more items to divide the per unit cost of shipping and encourages WOM (Word Of Mouth) marketing.

So it’s been decided IrelandCostumes will change over to item price plus a fixed shipping cost in Jan. That way for price comparing customers out there its first glance cheaper and then better postage rates too should pulling in more multiple item orders.

The Mahon Tribunal Really Annoys Me

I never thought i’d be writing about politics here, but i’m been fed up of hearing about the Mahon Tribunal.

Bertie is the Elected leader of Ireland and what people don’t seem to understand that he’s like the CEO and Entrepreneur of our country. For me running a buiness is 24/7, even when your not working your brain is chewing over things and often i’d wake up in the middle of the night with an idea or solution to a problem related to the business.

So surely the countries leader, when he should be chewing over idea’s to improve the country, which is heading towards a down turn in the economy; rather than thinking about his job he is preparing for and worrying about himself (or a stupid tribunal which ever side your inclined to). Yes technically he may have done something wrong. The figures arent huge and at the time it wasn’t that abnormal. Lawyers are creaming it in and the country is suffering because of it. Has anyone thought to do a tax payers opportunity costings?