PODCAST 1

Grace is hosting an episode about lifestyle entrepreneurs and their impact on society. She interviews Stephen O'Hanlon, a county footballer and lifestyle entrepreneur, who shares his experience. Grace discusses the definition of entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. She mentions an article about how lifestyle entrepreneurs in the hospitality and tourism sector manage work-life balance. Grace explains that lifestyle entrepreneurs turn their passions into profitable projects. She mentions Linda Hand, a local businesswoman, as an example. Grace also discusses the challenges of being a lifestyle entrepreneur, such as focusing too much on passion and not enough on profit. Stephen talks about his business, which focuses on team strength and conditioning training. He explains how he decided to start his own business and the advantages of being located in Monaghan, a sporty county in Ireland. Stephen also mentions the possibility of expanding his business outside of Ireland. Hey everyone, it's Grace, back again with another episode of Guiding You To Your Goals. This week, we are diving into the world of lifestyle entrepreneurs and their impact on society. On today's episode, we have a special guest, Stephen O'Hanlon, Monaghan County footballer and lifestyle entrepreneur. Stephen is coming on today's show to give us an insight on what life is like as an entrepreneur. So as you heard from the intro, today's episode is talking about lifestyle entrepreneurs. To all my listeners out there, you all know what entrepreneurship is. But as Ron Stott cited in Curatago and Hodges 2001, entrepreneurship is the dynamic process of creating incremental wealth, or in layman's terms, creating a business or idea to turn profit. That understanding of entrepreneurship is easy to grasp, but what is a social entrepreneur? Marchant and Modier in 2011 describe a lifestyle entrepreneur as entrepreneurs that are somewhat motivated by the need to succeed at living a certain quality of life by maintaining an income which allows them to survive. The idea of being a lifestyle entrepreneur really interests me as you are turning your passions into projects that suit your journey or path in life. It is different to the usual standard and provides you with the freedom to live your life on how you want to live it. I recently stumbled across an article that was written in 2020 by Sun et al. which discusses how lifestyle entrepreneurs in the hospitality and tourism sector manage their work-life balance. What is so interesting is that the data shows three types of findings. One being, lifestyle entrepreneurs consider business as a style of living, not work, which to me sounds so unusual to what I'm used to. Secondly, there are multiple ways to manage boundaries in the work-life such as temporal tactics, physical tactics and psychological tactics. The article goes on to explain this in much more detail of course. It was also found that both personal and contextual factors related to destination influence work-life balance for lifestyle entrepreneurs. You guys should definitely give this article a read. So some of you guys may still be a bit confused as to what a lifestyle entrepreneur is. Some examples that I like to give include cooking, teaching or training. Let's take cooking for an example. Cooking is your passion, you love to bake, you love to cook, you love to try new recipes. You realise that your passion is strong for cooking and you want to take it to the next level. Lifestyle entrepreneurs take their passion and turn it into profit. Let's say I decide to start giving some cooking classes. I can choose when the classes are held, I can choose where the classes are held and I can work it on my schedule. So now that you guys have a better understanding of entrepreneurship and a lifestyle entrepreneur, I think that we should start looking at the challenges and the positive and negative impacts that can come with being a lifestyle entrepreneur. Henderson in 2002 sums up a lifestyle entrepreneur as being fuelled by the desire to earn respectable living, find satisfaction in career attainment and achievements, as well as spending quality time with friends and family. A lifestyle entrepreneur I would like to mention is Linda Hand, a local businesswoman in my town who makes home sense from her own house. She has fans in local chemists and pharmacies as well as homeware stores and enjoys spending time with her family. She has a passion for what she does while earning profit on the side. It allows her to stay at home with her children while still doing something she enjoys. She has a great base market at home and does well for herself without the stress of a 9 to 5. Just before we move into talking to Steve and our guest speaker, I would just like to mention some of the challenges that come with being a lifestyle entrepreneur. So Ivancheva et al. in 2023 talks about how lifestyle entrepreneurs sometimes focus too much on the passion and not enough on the profit. Like we said, it's not all about the profit, but if people aren't focusing on the profit at all, it means sometimes they can run into a loss, which as we all know isn't ideal for any entrepreneur. This episode of Guiding You To Your Goals is sponsored by O'Hanlon Performance for all your stress and conditioning needs, whenever and wherever. Use code GRACE10 to get 10% off your next session. Hi guys, so I'm absolutely delighted to have Stephen on the show with us today. He's going to talk a little bit about what it's like to be a lifestyle entrepreneur. Hi Stephen. Hi Grace, thanks for having me. So, I would just want to chat about how you feel your life as a lifestyle entrepreneur is going. So, would you consider yourself a lifestyle entrepreneur? I suppose I would. I've been kind of involved in sports, at least for my whole life. So, I'm thinking about what I wanted to do when I get older. I knew that I wanted to involve sports in some capacity. So, what I've tried to do is manufacture a situation where that was a case. So, yeah, I probably would consider myself a lifestyle entrepreneur. Okay, that's perfect. So, could you tell me a little bit about the business that you set up? Okay, so originally it was set up as a partnership. And basically what we were doing was we had a small game space set up where we were taking all the individuals by us. From there, we got requests to take teams and manage their strength and conditioning and training. We started with just one or two teams in year one. From that point, my partner went away traveling. And since then, I've been a sole trader. And that is the business I've been involved in a lot. So, more or less, it's team strength and conditioning training. And it's, again, the main focus of the business. There's still some individual training taking on, some online training. I do work as a strength and conditioning coach in KUDA for the daily sports program. But primarily, it would be team sports that we would cater towards. That's kind of the main focus of the business. Okay, that sounds great. So, when did you first decide you wanted to start your own business instead of just joining any company or any other non-design? Sorry, too late for a difficult call. The first time I probably saw a nominee that I wanted to work for myself was when I was working a part-time job in college. I mean, we were in 2018. So, we were in my second year of college. And I worked all summer, a 12-hour shift in a war-torn factory. And I told myself, there's got to be a way that I can monetize other knowledge I have or other skills I have in a way that would be more enjoyable for me. So, it was in mid-term of that year. I don't know if you call it mid-term of college. It was study week or something along those lines. And in October of that year, I was trying to go back into the war-torn factory or do something else. And I decided to run a camp, an athletic development camp for youth athletes. And I made it four or five times. We would have an athletic side of the week in the war-torn factory. And I thought to myself, okay, well, there might actually be a future in this. But I think I always wanted to work for myself growing up. And my personality probably dictated that I like to do my own thing. But it wasn't until I realized that I really could do that that I decided to really push forward with it. And I wouldn't have known that until I did it. Okay, perfect. So, we've got the understanding about your business. So, we know that your business is sport-related. Do you find that the location, which is Monaghan for those who are listening, was it benefit you to the multiple clubs and the fact that it's a very GAA and sport-related county? I would say Monaghan is a really advantageous place to live in general because you're – I would say yes, but maybe not for the reasons that you might think. It's an hour from Dublin. It's just over an hour from Halifax. You know, you just don't want to roll from just up to Halifax. There's a lot of big populations quite nearby. Yes, Monaghan is a really sporty county. But I think that those advantages are huge as well. So, we would have – I would have teams in Dublin. I would be working in college. I have two teams up north. So, Dublin basketball is something I've worked with for a while as well. So, those big populations are probably an advantage. You're a short distance from a lot of big areas and sport-related areas. So, yes, I think we're an advantage for sure. Probably more so because you're closer to a lot of big populations than just because Monaghan is a very sporty county. Okay. So, that's great. So, we know that Monaghan then has links to all the nearby towns. Do you like the idea of working locally as such or do you feel like your business could thrive outside of Ireland, for example? I love working locally. I really do. You get to know – it's very much in a smaller community. That's one of the things we work with, which is switching grids. Yes. To a lesser extent, at least in terms of the loads, it's still somewhat local. Like, I don't want to get an hour and a half, two hours max. The first time it was two hours. You still know these people in the community as your colleagues because it feels almost local. Yes. A lot of the GAs are, I suppose, even out of the county. It's a smaller community. Yes. What's it like to live in Ireland? I think it is transferable. I think that it would have to change. It's like the focus couldn't be on getting football. Not that the – the business focus was never on getting football. It just so happened that a lot of getting football teams were attractive more so. Yes. So, yes, definitely it would attract the Irish out of Ireland because I need, for a start, additional coaching over and over. I would love to work in the UK or in the States where we don't play football. It is a sort of professional setting. Professional, I suppose. Yes, definitely. I think it could be transferable to the country. I think it would just be maybe a different capacity. So, like, you wouldn't be working as a soldier. You'd probably be employed. Yes. That's what I know. It wouldn't be such a business that I would be employed. I understand. Yes. Okay. So, what do you think are the main challenges you face as being an entrepreneur? The main challenges would be dealing with the things that aren't the reason you go into the business. Like, I love coaching. I love working with people. I love sharing a vision as a, you know, subject. I don't love invoicing. I don't love doing accounts, making sure I keep receipts. You know, I don't love all that. So, that would be the biggest challenge for me. You know, staying on top of all that. It's really great stuff that keeps the business actually, like, if you have to do anything, keep the business going. Yes. For me, it's very, very easy to, you know, go over the culture of where our head is. We can take a training session, a sharing session, whatever it is. Even programming, I think, would be really interesting. But, you know, sitting there and going through the course, I find that I put down a lot. I put it off. I put it off. I put it off. So, for me, that would be the biggest challenge. Okay. Perfect. I just have one last question for you. Have you any advice for anyone wanting to set up their own company or business? So, I'd like it all for all the things that came up in my head. It would be just for someone to look at somebody who has done, who has set up their own business. You know, it's similar to what yours is going to be. So, you're not going with somebody who, you know, for me, it wouldn't make sense to go and speak to somebody who, you know, was a manufacturer of plants or something like that. Trying to speak to somebody who has done something similar or has done something similar. Yeah. They can kind of give you an insight into, you know, just talk about the challenges there. Like, I thought, instead of, you know, going to a coach, you know, some sort of curriculum where you know all the other things that you have to do. Yeah. And I think it would have been helpful to, not that it would have deterred you from doing it, but it would have been helpful to know how important those things are in your process. So, definitely go and speak to somebody, as many people as you can, who have done something similar to what you were hoping to do. Okay, perfect. Well, thank you so much, Stephen. This has been very informative. And I think that our listeners will really enjoy having you on the show today. So, thanks a million. Thanks very much for having me, guys. Thank you. So, guys, that's all for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed all that we had to talk about today and our interview with the very lovely Stephen O'Hanlon. See you guys next week.