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That’ll Never Work

Written by Michael Gaffney and Colin O'Brien, this book contains success stories from private Irish business such as Celtic Bookmakers and Smarthomes, which may provide you with inspiration on where and how you should set up your own venture.

When Sean FitzPatrick was writing the foreword to the KPMG publication That’ll Never Work he probably never imagined that the title would be a self-fulfilling prophecy for his own company, Anglo-Irish Bank. However, if you can overlook the fact that this book is written pre-recession and therefore has a slight tragicomic ‘if only they knew what was around the corner’ element to it, it’s still worth a read. Nicely bound with suitably moody black-and-white shots by photographer Mark McCall, the book features success stories from Ireland’s entrepreneurial elite, including Pádraig O’Céidigh of Aer Arann, Norah Casey of Harmonia Publishing, Ivan Yates of Celtic Bookmakers and Sean Gallagher of Smarthomes and Dragons’ Den fame. When people become successful, sometimes we can only see them as a brand, and the nice thing about this book is that it shows us their human side: they talk about the rejection they have faced; relationships that have fallen apart; obstacles, both professional and personal, they have had to overcome. In other words, it feels honest. I zipped through most of it during an extended lunch break, and it left me with a warm, fuzzy glow and the feeling that I could do anything if I really set my mind to it. It may have been written before the economy went belly up, but ironically it’s just the kind of feel-good inspiration we need right now.