Bizstartup.ie - ENTREPRENEURS

Jerry Kennelly

Young Entrepreneur Programme

Since selling Stockbyte and Stockdisk to Getty Images for €135m back in in 2006, Jerry Kennelly has been devoting a lot of his energy to sharing the lessons he’s learned with the young. He spoke to Sorcha Corcoran

As he told his story to a variety of audiences in recent years, one thing that struck Jerry Kennelly was the huge disconnect that existed between education and the real world he lived in when he started out.

"There aren't too many ordinary guys with no Leaving Cert with so much success. I left school at the end of fifth year, which worked for me, but it's probably not as easy to operate with that abandon today. People need fall-back positions," he says.

"A third-level education gives you a broader view of life, but it's not the 'be-all-and-end-all'. One of its downsides is when people are older coming into the workplace they've less energy. An advantage I had was that a made a lot of the mistakes people generally make when they're older when I was young. I got them out of the way."

Describing himself as "unemployable anyway", Kennelly says he always knew it was likely he'd work for himself. Having been involved in the family business, a press agency, from when he was "tall enough to stand" he started a newspaper at the age of 14 with his brothers.

Kennelly still feels there is a lost connection in education with entrepreneurship in Ireland. "Young people tend to be focused on professional careers and getting salaried jobs. I felt there was a need to show young people that it's possible to exercise control over their own lives through the power of creation."

Sharing the experience

After winning the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year title in 2005, Kennelly got to know a number of the other entrepreneurs involved in the programme.

"The Ernst & Young entrepreneur circle at the time was made up of interesting and exciting people who had created their own path. Yet the people who really needed to see that weren't getting the chance. The likes of Padraig O'Ceidigh and Denis O'Brien had great energy and I thought we could achieve something by sharing our experience," he says.

This conviction led to Kennelly spearheading the Young Entrepreneur Programme, a not-for-profit organisation started in 2007 dedicated to illustrating the validity of entrepreneurship as a career choice. The six-month programme complements traditional learning by layering workshops, case studies and interaction with key business leaders on top of participants own ideas.

The list of mentors on the programme reads like a 'who's who' of Irish entrepreneurs - Aidan Heavey of Tullow Oil; Bobby Kerr of Insomnia; founders of Daft.ie Brian and Eamonn Fallon; and John and Francis Brennan, owners of the five-star Park Hotel Kenmare and presenters of the RTÉ series At Your Service. The list goes on.

"Over the past three years, 1,600 students have graduated from the Young Entrepreneur Programme and this number is set to increase to over 1,900 by 2013. The 'YEP' generation will be better prepared for the freedom and joy of entrepreneurship than any of those who have come before them," says Kennelly.

"They are very much changed people at the end of it; those lessons will never leave them. It's not just about building confidence in their potential to be entrepreneurs; they also learn how to create and execute a business plan, which they have to do to the highest standards, and also take criticism on board. Some of the business plans are stunning."

For example, the winner of the secondary-school Young Entrepreneur 2010 title was Michael Dillane, from CBS in Tralee, whose business plan was for a school gifts website. Schoolgiftsforgrads.com offers Leaving Cert students a wide range of gifts in varying price, quality and style. Dillane is already running the business from his home.

Third-level winner Lisa O'Donoghue's idea was to recycle LCDs. Currently no device exists in the market to address the millions of LCD screens that are scrapped. The University of Limerick research fellow's design allows LCD monitors to be safely disposed of into valuable computer waste.

Eighteen finalists with business plans ranging from reptile breeding, designer rowing gloves and solar-powered bag lights to an electronic medical receipts card, easily detachable horse riding spurs and a DVD study aid for scientific experiments put their ideas to the final test in front of a judging panel at the Malton Hotel last April.

Looking at business models

Another important aspect of the programme is how to look at business models. "We look at how to run a sanity test, where the fixed costs are, how many units the students need to sell in a day or month. You need to look at your costs on one page and decide if it's something that's going to work," Kennelly explains.

His own early experience running his freelance photography business, which he set up in 1981, influenced the decision to incorporate such lessons into the curriculum.

"I didn't know what I didn't know back then. I was instinctively focused on doing a good job and serving customers, but I didn't have much financial knowledge. This would have been a threat to my business if things hadn't been so lax," he says.

"I didn't have huge concerns about money or the ability to understand cash flow and there was no element of financial planning. I was left at the mercy of the banks, paying 22pc interest on an overdraft, which wasn't the cleverest of things. I managed to survive that and learned a lot of the core things I needed to about cash flow."

When advising young people on entrepreneurship, Kennelly urges them to look at what they're passionate about or interested in.

"People think running a business has to be something complicated and sometimes don't realise that a passion or hobby such as music or photography can become their business. If you look at areas you're really interested in you'll never feel like you're working. I've only ever spent time on projects I'm really interested in. It makes it very easy.

"I have always been crazy about the whole area of media. When I was running the freelance photography business I started doing reports for radio stations because I tended to be there first when there was a hot story. It was a juggling act from the scene -- I was never sure whether to pick up a phone or a camera first. I then started writing stories as well. I realised early on that the only way to ensure I got covered as a photographer was to supply copy to newspapers as well, and that really worked."

Now a judge on the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year panel, Kennelly is working on a new online content business currently in stealth mode going under the name Gustavo.

"It will probably go live in August and capitalises on a lot of lessons we've learned over the past 15 years or so. We already have a team of 25 based in Kilorglin, Co Kerry and are assembling a team in New York. We want to find the best people across multiple disciplines to build a sustainable global business."

To date The Young Entrepreneur programme has focused on second- and third-level students and Kennelly plans to run a pilot soon in primary schools.

"We've come through a decade focused on consumption, and in order to get out of the mess we're in we must focus on creativity and the execution of ideas. People tend to think setting up a business is all about having good ideas, but the execution of those ideas is the key to success. As an economy we have to operate to a higher standard - very few global businesses of scale have come out of Ireland in the past few years. This long-term pipeline of talent is critical," he concludes.

This article first appeared in Owner Manager magazine