Gavin Duffy Lessons From a Life in Business

Gavin Duffy Lessons From a Life in Business Gavin Duffy: Lessons From a Life in Business Image Source: MediaTraining.ieIRISH media guru, recruitment specialist andâ€"a term he regards with some bemusementâ€"“serial entrepreneur”, Gavin Duffy has become  a true household name in Ireland, thanks to his role as the ‘father figure’ in  the Irish version of global television franchise, Dragon’s Den.While the seven seasons of the show has given  a flavour of the sheer pleasure Gavin Duffy  takes in business and people,  playing the ‘master of the den’ in many ways downplays his formidable business reputation and track record, and certainly belies the restlessness of his  business spirit.In a recent telephone  interviewâ€"as he emerged from  one meeting,  en route to anotherâ€"Gavin Duffy, a master raconteur as well (we could have listened to him all day!), recalled his career at length for AGENT.Business permeates every corner of his life and, talking as openly about  the hard lessons dealt out by tough experiences as he does about achievements, it’s clear that Gavin Duffy’s success is largely attributable to his ever-vigilant openness  to business’s  â€˜lifelong learning’  opportunities.“It’s a strange thing,” he told AGENT, “but I have never, ever, once thought, ‘What happens if this goes wrong?’, even though it has gone wrongâ€"many times!” (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Beginnings of A Life in Business“When we sat down for dinner in the evening, it sort of became a boardroom table…”FOR those who have not seen the RTÉ  Dragon’s Den, Gavin Duffy’s genuine enthusiasm for business, particularly entrepreneurs  at early start-up stage, is abundant. So it proves off-camera too. He displays an  interest in people, and in business, that has not been learnt from books, but instilled at a more profound level.So it’s no surprise to learn that the Duffy  business smarts were forged during childhood in The Gemâ€"the pub and ‘short-order’ restaurant his parents ran in Naas, County Kildare. Du ffy looks back on a childhood with no  dividing lines between work and private life. The Gem was beloved of Irish business travellers and day-trippers in the 1960s and 1970s journeying  between the capital, Dublin, and regions to the south and west of the country. Business was brisk. “The more up-market people would go to Lawlor’s Hotel in the town, but happily for us, many of the people who travelled regularly in those days came to The Gem for their rest stops, and so we did really phenomenal business.”Family mealtimes, Duffy recalls, “sort of became a boardroom table. My parents would be talking about business, and I’d be listening to this stuff going back and forward across the table”.He vividly recalls his first major responsibility. “I was aged about eight, and one of my jobs was to follow my mother  as she took the wads of cash out of the tillsâ€"when I say ‘wads’, there wasnt that much actual cash, but this was in the late 1960s, so the notes were much large râ€"my job was to bring  the cash upstairs, and put it in a drawer in my mother’s bedroom,  and that’s where it stayed until the night lodgement was done later on.”As the business grewâ€"the family opened another Gem pub/restaurant to the north of Dublin in Droghedaâ€"Duffy was left with few illusions about the commitment necessary for success: “It was incredibly hard work. That’s the main memory I have… of my parents both working very, very hard. But I presume from seeing that, I was destined to go into business myself.”Becoming a ‘Serial Entrepreneur’“The only reason I was a serial entrepreneur was that I don’t think anybody would employ me!”AS A young man, a couple of things were obvious about the young Duffy. “In later years, someone described me as a serial entrepreneur, and I always found that funny. To be honest, I think the only reason I was a serial entrepreneur was that I don’t think anybody would employ me! Whilst I was a very good employee, if I saw that there was a better way to run the business, I would tell  my manager or boss that, and sometimes that doesnt endear you to people. So I think it was inevitable that I was going to do things for myself.”Through the  family business in he had begun building networks , and, perhaps unsurprisingly for an opinionated young man with a lot to say, he  developed a passion for news and media, and the pirate radio movement that was sweeping Ireland in the late 1970s and early 1980s.Instead of going to university, Gavin joined Local Radio Drogheda, or ‘Swinging Radio Drogheda’ as it was known, and within months, at the age of 18, he was at the helm of Boyneside Radio/Community Radio Drogheda, a pirate station with an emphasis on news, heading up a team of 30 full-time and part-time people. Here is a flier, advertising his Lunchtime Special show, and proclaiming his as “the first voice heard on 225”. The image is some distance from the polished media  professional of subse quent years, but the blurb gives a sense of a young man who was going places:Image Source:  THE DX ARCHIVEFor Duffy, pirate radio was a springboard to a media career, but he has never stood still or worked to a linear narrative. By his mid 20s, he was a presenter on the national broadcaster, RTÉ, but at the same time, he filed the first successful application for a licensed provincial radio station, LMFM. He remained at the helm of LMFM and presented the daily 12-2pm programme, from 1990 to 1992.At least two significant things happened to Duffy as a result of his establishment of LMFM. When this business was sold to UTV in 2004, it did so for a reported €10m, a sum that Duffy claims is the Irish and UK record for a broadcast or publishing asset.The second is that he met his future wife, Orlaith Carmody, who had approached the station seeking work as a researcher. Duffy left day-to-day business at LMFM, and founded the media and management consultancy Mediatraining.ie in 1992.“O nce Id set up LMFM and it was running for 18 months to 24 months, I wanted to move on. And I learned from that time that my abilities are best suited to the startup phase. So what I have done since then with my own businesses is, I start them up, work with them independently for 12 to 24 months, and then I look to do something else,” he explained.“Serial entrepreneur” may be a description that makes him chuckle, but it’s this approach that has seen him involved in more than 40 start-up businesses, and become one of Ireland’s most  respected  authorities on business and the workings of the media. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); The Mysteries of Success FailureIMAGE SOURCE: MEDIATRAINING.IEFOR Gavin  Duffy, there is no scientific formula for business success;  it comes down to a number of things. Hard work, focus, and, perhaps most importantly of all, resilience and common-sense over self-defeating passion.AGENT has  previously reported on  Duffy’s war ning to committed entrepreneurs, “don’t go down with the ship”,  and to ensure that whatever business you are engaged in sufficiently rewards the passion and effort you expend  in.But he admits that there are no easy answers.  From time to time  on Dragon’s Den,  the successes and failures of products that Duffy and the other Dragons either have invested in, or chosen not to, has astounded them.Even a successful investment such as Tan Organic, the world’s first and only ECO-certified 100 percent natural, organic sunless tan, completely astounded the veteran Duffy: “Noelle O’Connor came into the Den and she projected in Year Three she would have a turnover of €780,000. But within 16 weeks of launch, we had a million euro in sales!”Another product that achieved success beyond Duffy’s wildest imagination was the Aurora Hair Band, invented by Dublin hairdresser Lindsey Byrne and her partner Alex Purcell. “That was the worst prototype I have ever seen in my life,† Duffy splutters: “It kind of looked like a wire brush in a pink sock, and all the other Dragons started laughing. But I invested in it because I’d recently been asked by a large retailer to keep my eye out for ‘gadgety’ stuff that could be put on their tills. I knew I could get this thing on the counterâ€"it was just about making it presentable and putting it in the right box. A €50,000 investment was a no-brainer for me.”“However, Id warned Lindsey and Alex  to manage their expectations, as I thought  the product would have an 18-month life cycle. But the thing we underestimated was the influence of Game Of Thrones. All the female characters in it have long hair and wear it in interesting ways. So every time that comes back on television, the Aurora Band tends to  sell tens of thousands more in the UK alone. It’s a very, very successful business, and Alex and Lindsey have gone on to generate literally millions of euro selling Aurora bands.”This contrasts with th e experience of Graham and Cassandra Kelly, who secured €30,000 investment from Gavin for their business First Steps Forever. “I thought their idea, where they would frame people’s first baby shoes, was great,” Duffy recalled, “But no matter what we did, people just wouldnt buy them in the numbers they needed to buy them in.”Mistakes, Close Calls, and the Slender Gap Between Survival Failure“Ive been literally bust on about three occasions, but luckily for me, no-one else realised it. Thats how close I came…”AGED just 19 or 20 while at the head of his radio station in Drogheda, Gavin Duffy had his first brush  with something that he has encountered  several more times during his career. It was a matter of cash flow, and, Duffy recalls, the question of the station’s survival or failure came down to the sum of IR £900.“I can remember a local businessman gave me a loan, and that kept the station going. That man becameâ€"I wouldnt have used the word then, but it†™s now a popular termâ€"a ‘mentor’,” Duffy reveals.There was a similar close call  around 10 years later in 1992. “I’d made all of the mistakes that one makes, you know? Id set up with a very flashy office in Dublin, with a big rent, and then a very large client, sort of… well, there’s no other term I can use, “stiffed” me, for IR £27,000…”The memory suddenly reached across two decades and struck Gavin Duffy  like a hammer blow during a Dragon’s Den episode, when a young businessman Jason O’Reilly, who’d  just been offered an investment of €20,000 in his business, broke down in tears, recalling how an investor who promised him €20,000 had left him high and dry, and recounting the hardships he and his family had to endure as he clawed his way back from the abyss.The tears streaked Gavin Duffy’s face during O’Reilly’s breakdown. “Yeah… look, to be honest, I cry at movies as well, but yes, Jason told  his story and it just hit me like a hammer. Were still great pals. He’s a great guy, and Ive done everything I can to encourage him to become a standup comic, because he is one of the funniest people I knowâ€"he has a great sense of natural timing, and demonstrates comedic genius.”“But what I do say to people is this: I’ve been literally bust on about three occasions, but luckily for me, no-one else realised it. That’s how close I came. Ive had situations where the figures have been hundreds of thousands of euros. But you havent been in business until youve dealt with those kind of situations. I suppose now I am much more able to deal with them. I don’t lose sleep. The approach is: look, we have a big problem, we have to sort it out.”“In all cases, there was always a cash-flow issue. The underlying business was solid and the order book was good, but there was over-trading. You always have to cut your cloth to measure. You have to be very careful, and I think one of the problems with me is that because Im very good at selling, I’ve always felt that you solve the problem by going out and selling more. But cash-flow is always a problem for business. You have to watch it 24-7, and no matter how wealthy you are, it’s a problem that doesnt go away.” (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); The Human Face of InvestmentImage Source:  MediaTraining.ie“I just love the inventors. Were privileged that someone like that comes on the programme.”COMPARED with Shark Tank or other international variants of the Dragon’s Den franchise, the Irish version is notable for its humane quality. When the idea for an Irish programme was  first floated, Gavin Duffy recalls, the franchise owners Sony Pictures  were keen for  the Irish investors to adhere to the tried and tested  formatâ€"in which the Dragons “either invest or chop the entrepreneurs head off”.For Duffy and the others, fully aware of the ravages wrought on their homeland by “the mother of all recessions” at the time of t he programme’s inception in 2009, the Sony approach did not feel right.“I certainly felt that anyone setting up a business, maybe somebody whod lost a job and were resilient enough to take their redundancy money to invest it and set up  their own little business, I think that chopping the head of a person like that would have been grossly unfair, and also grossly damaging to our own reputation.“So we worked out our own system. Television demands jeopardy, and in the early days of the show, we had the Sunday night slot on the other half of the year to the crime drama Love/Hate, which had huge ratings, and people were shooting and killing, and there was all sorts of mayhem. So we decided to make the drama out of us having a go at one another, and create novelty by having some craic and banter with each other. In the very beginning, Sony had arranged for us and our production company ShinAwil to meet with the UK Dragons, for advice. But after we completed the first series, Sony b egan sending our DVDs to the BBC, saying, “Notice how these guys in Ireland, they don’t have the same pool to fish in as you, but if somebody comes in and theyre not great or they have a bad idea, they either have some fun, or knock sparks off one another about it, and thats what you guys need to start doing.”“I missed out on meeting the BBC  Dragons at the time, because I was away on business, but my colleagues back then on the Den told me that this  was the end of our communication with the BBC Dragons… apparently they did not like being told to follow the lead of the RTÉ Dragons,” Duffy laughs.From time to time, the Dragons show a more irritable side. “We record the  shows back to back, day after day, for two to three weeks, and  if youve been there eight days in a row, recording from 8  in the morning  until 9  at night, and somebody comes in offering five per cent for an investment of €200,000 in a business that has no sales, well, you can be exhausted and just respond, ‘WHAAAT???’ And that will go in the promo, because the producers will look for a type of TV aggression. But we feel that people who are starting a business in a recession should certainly be respected.”Horses, Work-Life Balance Working With A SpouseNOW aged in his middle-50s, Gavin Duffy continues to see none of the traditional conceptual lines drawn between work and private life. In many ways, life is just the same as it was when he was an  eight year old boy listening to his mother and father talk business during family mealtimes at the kitchen table.He’s continually busy with his investment portfolio, his commitments as part owner of the HRM Group of Companies, one of Ireland’s most prominent players in recruitment, and remains at the helm of his media consultancy Dorland (which owns his influential www.mediatraining.ie business), along with his wife and business partner Orlaith Carmody, whom he married in 1993. How difficult has  it been for the couple to ac hieve any work-life balance in such a situation?“Well…” he responds, “Orlaith is not my partner… shes the boss! I dont say this jokingly. Orlaith runs the consultancy business, I work for Orlaith, and thats the way we operate. Working with your spouse is strange, and it’s not something Id recommend to just anyone. Were together 24-7, of course, and thats not for everyone. But the good thing is, we’re on the same wavelength, all the time, so it has its advantages. But  sometimes I feel a right charlatan, because we could be having a screaming row about something at home, and then go straight into a business meeting, and there we are, smiling at one another! But Ive realised that when that happens, it actually helps to fix the situation. If we werent working together  and we had a row, it might fester, and then youd come home that evening and it would be ‘all picture, no sound’, you know? So even when we fall out, we fall in again every quickly, and for some reason, that has worked for us… it has done for 23 years of marriage anyway!”He  confesses that he has a tendency common to all people who are considered workaholics.“My family say Im a workaholic, but Ive always thought that if you really love your work you dont feel like youre working. But all workaholics think theyre really lazy, and believe me, theres no better man to sort of just flop onto a couch during the weekend. Im a sports nut, so I watch everything from UFC through to camogie, am very big into rugby and soccer. I follow Arsenal, so thats a bit disappointing at the moment, and follow GAA.”He reveals that his favourite pastime is horse riding. “When I really want to unwind, I love to go out on a horse, or even spend time with them. It’s a type of disease I haveâ€"not matter where I am or what Im doing, every night when I come home, I go up the yard to the stables and… and I think this is for my own well-being, I have to smell a horse every night before I go to bed… it’s inexplicable, but its just something I have to do.” (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Advice for Young Entrepreneurs“Sometimes you give it the best shot…  but the market just doesn’t go for it.”GAVIN Duffy is often asked for advice from people working in steady jobs, but who have the urge to try something else. “I often feel very sorry for them,” he reveals, “because  I have to say to them, if you don’t  do it now, you’re not going to do it.  I always encourage people to consider change.”It’s an approach that gets him into trouble with extended family when he dispenses advice to nieces and nephews. But he insists that people can be “risk averse” to their own detriment. “I’m not basing this on me and my experience, because I truly don’t know what happened in my caseâ€"it’s a strange thing, but I have never, ever, once thought, ‘What happens if this goes wrong?’, even though it has gone wrongâ€"many times!”In taking t he “go for it” approach, Duffy acknowledges two things. “Firstly, there are lots of people who have a difficulty in that regard, whatever way they were conditioned in their schooling or their family. For me, from an early age I was in that milieu of business, and so going into business was the natural progression, the next step. However, I do believe that people who are always thinking ‘what if this doesn’t work out?’ are going to find that if they keep thinking like that, then it’s not going to work out.”“But secondly, it is important for startups to consider very carefully whether they in the right place for their skills and energy. I always worry about this,” Duffy  admits. “You see it a lot on Twitter, where people tweet quotes, like, Walt Disney failed 110 times, and Henry Ford failed 42 times, but stuck at it. Now, I’m convinced that Disney and Ford, whatever number of times they failed, each time they tried it again, they tweaked it and reiterated it, and improved it.“But sometimes you give it the best shot, and you  see this on Dragon’s Den all the time, where there’s national TV exposure, a Dragon mentoring you, the investment, but the market just doesn’t go for it. What I advise there is to learn from this, and use your skills for something else. Don’t go down with the ship!”“I think people sometimes mix up resilience for stubbornness and staying with something, so in  Dragon’s Den  this is why I never ask questions like, ‘What are you projecting over the next three years?’. It does my head in, watching people trying to guess the figures and remember what the accountant told them. The reality is that you know after three months whether this has potential.”image source: mediatraining.ieGavin Duffy is the senior Dragon on RTÉ’s Dragon’s Den, produced by ShinAwil Productions. Previous episodes of Dragon’s Den season seven  are available on RTÉ Player.