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Image / Editorial

Photos: The First 2015 Networking Breakfast


By IMAGE
20th Jan 2015

Terry Prone

Photos: The First 2015 Networking Breakfast

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The first of our monthly IMAGE Networking Breakfasts held in the Marker Hotel Dublin, saw over a hundred of the country’s brightest businesswomen being uplifted by Mary McKenna, Domini Kemp and Terry Prone.

Mary McKenna, owner of Tour America revealed how she originally feared public speaking, and how after setting up Tour America in 1995 had to battle the after effects of September 11th and the fact that people became extremely reluctant to travel to the US. Failure, she said was one of the best things that can happen to a business owner.

She also loosened up the crowd with an impromptu dance to Pharell’s Happy.

 

The incredible culinary retail queen Domini Kemp was our second speaker, who spoke of her awful battle with breast cancer and how she used fasting and wheatgrass to their full advantages while receiving chemotheraphy.

She also provided us with a new and amazing mantra:

 

Domini spoke about the responsibility of a boss to hear ideas from the introverts at meetings, who don’t necessarily speak up:

 


The no nonsense and always hilarious Terry Prone, founder of Communications Clinic reminded us that a business plan is a means to achieve an end of getting a loan for your business. She has never written one, and she cited her only goals as to be ‘alive and not in jail’, meaning that forward planning isn’t always all that constructive.

 

She reminded the audience that high grades were not all they were cracked up to be, and that if you feel you haven’t conquered all the goals you wanted to, that you have plenty of time.

 

IMAGE’s Editor-in-Chief Melanie Morris expressed her delight at the high attendance this morning: “It takes some lure to get 200 women (and one man) out of bed before dawn on the coldest, darkest Tuesday in January, but Mary McKenna, Domini Kemp and Terry Prone certainly proved the exercise more than worthwhile.”

“I learned so much, personally, from the morning. Like hearing how Mary continued to actively market her business through the recession, and thus trade her way successfully into greater profit. I loved hearing Domini Kemp’s story of staying active and working through treatment for cancer, supported by nutrition that became the spark from which she and her sister Peaches developed their latest business, Alchemy in BT2.”

“And it was with relief I heard Terry tell everyone that business plans were complete rubbish and only created to get banks to lend money. Thus we should all employ a good accountant to create them for us. Things and people pop up at IMAGE Networking Breakfasts that always surprise, entertain and inspire; and as we go in to our third year of business events, I’m now re-booted and excited for all that’s ahead.”

Guests were treated to gorgeous goodies from Clarins and Paperblanks.

 

Our next business event, the IMAGE Mentoring Workshop Going Digital, will be held on Wednesday evening, February 18 in the Merrion Hotel. If you’d like to be one of the inspirational women (or men) in attendance, click here.

@HannahPopham