John Shegerian: Do you have a suggestion for a rockstar Impact Podcast guest? Go to Impact podcast.com and just click “Be a Guest” to recommend Someone today. This edition of The Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy, and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit, ERI direct.com. This episode of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Closed Loop Partners. Closed Loop Partners is a leading circular economy investor in the United States with an extensive network of Fortune 500 corporate investors, family offices, institutional investors, industry experts and impact partners. Closed Loops platform spans the arc of capital, from venture capital to private equity, bridging gaps and fostering synergies to scale the circular economy. To find Closed Loop Partners, please go to www.closedlooppartners.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of The Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian and I’m happy to have with us today, Aidan McKenna. He’s the regional director of the Americas for Enterprise Ireland. Welcome to the Impact Podcast, Aidan.

Aidan McKenna: Thanks, John. It’s a pleasure to be on your show. I’m really looking forward to our conversation and glad to be here.

John: I’m glad to have you. You’re sitting in my old state of New York where I grew up, and you’re up in I believe Westchester County area, but I’ve been to your country the last couple years, and I got to tell you, I have fallen in love with Ireland. I just love the people. I love the country, I love the beer. I think you have just one of the most spectacular and beautiful countries on the planet.

Aidan: Well, thanks for saying that, John. That’s kind of the reception we get and when we do business across America, we’re always welcomed. Any part of America, we’re always welcomed with open arms and it’s a two-way thing. We love having you guys over in our country Ireland, and I think that bond between Ireland and America is really strong and it’s something that our businesses we see day in day out. Absolutely rely on that and it’s a great opener for any[?] conversation.

John: Hey, before we get talking about all the important work you and your colleagues are doing at Enterprise Ireland, can you share a little bit about the Aidan McKenna story? Where did you grow up and how’d you get on this fantastic journey that you’re on?

Aidan: Great John. Yes, absolutely. When I was younger, I studied economics and geography. Went to University of Ulster from a small rural community between Dublin and Belfast, right on the border of Northern Ireland. I always had this purpose that I wanted to give back to the community. I wasn’t too sure how to do it, but one of the things that we had locally is we had a lot of entrepreneurs. We had a lot of thriving in industries like the furniture industry, the agri Food industry, and I was always fascinated by entrepreneurs.

I figured I would join a graduate program with Enterprise Ireland. We had a graduate program, and I was out in Palo Alto, and it was great where I had the opportunity to work with some of the technology companies. After the graduate program, they say [inaudible] off into the big bad world and that’s what I’d done. I joined one of those Irish innovative companies. I was their first sales person on the west coast of America. It was a manufacturing company, and that company was called Combi Lift.

They’re a material handling company. It was a great first step into the private sector, into the world of enterprise. I’d done pretty successful for that company on the West coast. I helped set up a network of distributors. I felt I found some of their early customers, and then they asked me to head up International Sales. So after a number of years, I transitioned back to Ireland. I traveled the world with them, and I done something similar. I would go into new markets, find our first customers in those markets, and then build out a team of distributors to help grow the business. After a while, I decided, why don’t I try this entrepreneurship game for myself?

So I founded a company with another co-founder. It was a technology business, and it was a difficult time in 2008, 2009 to start a business and we had a tough time really getting off the ground. So while we ultimately didn’t succeed, there was some valuable lessons into just how difficult that entrepreneurship journey is. Having personally gone through it, raised some seed money, tried to bring a product to market, and get the market product fit right, and validated. It was a challenge, but it gave me a unique perspective to the startup world and working with entrepreneurship.

Then after a few years, I come back to Enterprise Ireland. I was on this side of the table where I could sit across and share my experience of growing and scaling a business internationally, and also having to start up perspective. So I was one of those investment advisors in Enterprise Ireland, where we led investments into some of our companies, advise them on company strategy on growing internationally. Yes, now in my new role, I’m here heading up a team in Enterprise Ireland, across Americas.

We have 6 offices, 50 staff and essentially what we are here to do is to help broker those introductions to key buyers, key customers, help Irish companies, understand the market dynamics here in North America, and give them real practical advice and introductions to help them on their scale and journey. So, delighted to be on the role and delighted to lead such a fantastic team.

John: So when you say North America, so that covers Canada and Mexico as well. So it’s all throughout?

Aidan: Yes. I’ve also responsibility for Americas as well. However, I think of the scale of exports, North America represents about five and a half billion in terms of exports from Irish indigenous-owned companies. I was really interested in the fact John, of, we have about 900 active companies targeting North America and of those 900 companies that probably employ about 100,000 US people.

Ireland is actually the ninth largest source of foreign direct investment into North America and to the US specifically. So for such a small country of 5 million people, we kind of punch above our weight. We’re very much globalized, we think global from day one. I think that’s something that we, in enterprise Ireland, very much focus on those entrepreneurs that want to go global early.

John: So let’s talk about that. One of your main roles is supporting the great entrepreneurs out of Ireland. How do you go about doing that, and why is it important not to be focused just on profitability, but also on sustainability and impact? I’m just going to tell you, I have to believe that sustainability is part of your DNA and culture of Ireland, because when I was there, it might have been one of the greenest countries I’ve ever seen. I mean the green as far as the eye could see in terms of the beautiful countryside that you have there.

Aidan: Yes. I, I think so. I think we’re blessed and we have some great natural resources and the agri food industry is phenomenal there. We have a very sustainable way of producing food in Ireland and a lot of our companies have food exports as well. But the sustainability journey, when we think of a sustainable company, we want those companies to be resilient, to ideally create jobs, not just in cities and towns, but in rural communities as well.

So when we look to invest and support those startups and those entrepreneurs, we kind of have a key criteria. One of the key criteria is that we call high potential startups. Those companies that can get to about a 1,000,000 in turnover in 3-4years, create maybe 10 jobs that are globally focused from day one, and have that international focus. Because we know those companies, when they grow and scale, they will actually be more sustainable in the long run.

They’ll be more resilient to economic shocks such as COVID, such as the Brexit and any supply chain issues that might come along. The other thing that we do when we support entrepreneurs and startups, we focus on diverse teams. All the evidence internationally will show that the more diverse a management team or a startup team the more successful they’re going to be.

Specifically when we looked at our portfolio of startups that we supported and invested in. In 2012, only 8% were female led. We developed a couple of initiatives to encourage more senior leadership development for females, women in business. We had a specific strategy to target investment towards female led entrepreneurs. Just last year when we invested in about 161 companies, a third of those were female led. That bodes well for more diversity, more inclusion and ultimately more successful businesses going forward. Finally, yes, sorry [crosstalk]

John: I want to understand one thing though. Wait a second. So you’re investing in these companies or just supporting them?

Aidan: Great point. I should have clarified John. Yes. So by deal count[?] we act as a VC as well. So we’ll take an equity stick. We are actually by deal flow, we’re the largest VC in Europe.

John: Wow.

Aidan: Yes, absolutely. So we will make equity investments alongside private investors and seed investors as well. The other thing that we do is we’re a limited partner in a number of seed and venture funds as well. So while we don’t want to own the market, we’ll absolutely help create that market for diverse investor portfolios, and give our startups every opportunity to get supported.

John: We’ve become very akin to the terminology here in California and in the startup world in the United States. The term of art is incubators and really, you’ve become the major incubator for great entrepreneurs coming out of Ireland.

Aidan: Yes, I think we’ve had some great success stories, and I might get to those in a few moments. As a government entity, we want to make sure that the enterprise ecosystem is equitable and accessible. So we support third level research. We help third level research institutes commercialize that research. We have technology gateways that provide access for SMEs into third level research teams.

We also look at regions that maybe have an infrastructure deficit, a rural community that does not have a university and we’ll bring a hub and spoke model to that region, and we’ll say, what is the sector here that is being underserved? Is there a project that we can invest in? We’ll work with industry and academia towards a model of actually improving that enterprise and entrepreneurship ecosystem as well. So we’ve made some significant investments in Ireland to support the entrepreneurship ecosystem.

John: For our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Aidan McKenna with us. He’s the regional director of Americas for Enterprise Ireland to find Aidan and his colleagues and all the important and great work they’re doing to support the wonderful entrepreneurs from Ireland. Please go to www.enterprise-ireland.com. So let me understand this, you represent the Americas more particularly North America, but the Americas, do you have an analogous person or team doing the same thing in Europe and in Asia for Enterprise Ireland?

Aidan: Absolutely. We have a network of international offices around the globe. So we have offices in Asia, Japan, Australia, the Middle East, [inaudible] Europe, Scandinavia. So we have a team and I think because we’re such a small nation and our companies are thinking global from day one, our own domestic market of 5 million people is far too small.

So a lot of our companies are actually exporting from day one. It’s our network that can help them find those first customers, help them find key channel partners. I think when I was on the other side when I was that person that was trying to break into a new market. That local advice, that local enterprise Ireland office that can help me find that key customer, help me understand the local customs, whether it was in Asia, the Middle East, or indeed North America. Indeed there’s different cultures and ways of doing business here between California and New York, for instance. So our people are boots on the ground and act almost as an extended network for those Irish businesses. That’s a key part of what we do in Enterprise Ireland.

John: Let me understand this though. I’m an entrepreneur sitting in Belfast and I’m going to build this little business. I raised a little bit of seed money, now I’m starting to get traction. Do I apply to you or does one of your members come to me and say, ” Hey, we heard about your business, we want to look at it a little closer, see the kind of traction you’re getting, and we want to support and invest in you”. Who’s approaching who in this relationship and in the model that you’ve created?

Aidan: Yes. It’s a little bit 2 ways. Sometimes we’ll take an active focus on spinning out research and research teams. So of the 161 investments we made last year, 13 of them were spun out of academic research and typically we would put funding supports into those particular programs. We want more IP innovative led companies to grow and scale internationally.

Sometimes they approach us, companies come into us, entrepreneurs come into us through various accelerator programs, through various incubators, and they’ll say, ” Look, we’re developing a business here, we have we have some seed investment. Would you guys be willing to match it? We’ll do the due diligence.” Then typically we follow the founders all the way through that journey, all the way from startup to grow up, to scale up and hopefully market leaders in their own right. If those companies become multinationals in their own right, we’ll see if we can offer anything to support them in launch new products, new services in new markets internationally.

So we very much work very closely with a cohort of about 4,000-5,000 client companies. We probably invest anywhere between, 100 to 170 companies a year. So last year we invested 27 million in our 161 companies. Again, what we try to do is target those companies outside the Dublins, the Corks of Ireland. So we try and focus on supporting those companies that are coming from maybe smaller towns and villages around Ireland and that’s a really good return on our investment as well back into the Irish economy.

John: That’s so wonderful. With all those 6,000 or 7,000 portfolio companies, you truly are running almost like you said, some version of a VC model, private equity model, incubator model. It’s a little bit of a blend. Do you have a way for all of your entrepreneurs to communicate with each other and share best practices since they’re part of the greater enterprise of Enterprise Island? I mean, is there a way to communicate with one another?

Aidan: Absolutely. John, I’m glad you brought it up. We focus on not only the entrepreneur development, but also the management development and capability of these companies. So within Enterprise Ireland, we have a scaling team, a client development team that when we have some flagship programs such as Leadership for Growth, and Leadership for Growth typically takes a company that is at least 5 million in revenues. We take their, their senior leader, and we take them on a, it’s like an executive MB Edge[?] on where they come offsite.

They spend a couple of days with a peer network, typically a cohort of 20 to 30, like-minded companies. What we found is that all these businesses of various stages have common challenges. They might be in different markets, different sectors. But you know, entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey sometimes and you need, you need a fellow entrepreneur to sound off ideas. That network becomes very valuable. So probably every two years we run this program. What we found that alumni stay in touch, they grow, they learn, they keep in touch with each other and it’s just one example of the way we have supported our companies. Sometimes we have a specific call to action around, let’s say, climate and sustainability.

After we came out of Covid, we really prioritized our companies targeting what they could do to become more sustainable. We surveyed our clients, and we found that only 23% of them coming out of Covid really had any sustainability plan for their business. So what we decided to do, we launched a fund to help drive better decisions, better management support to develop high-level climate action plans for their business, how to help them decarbonize and actually help focus on their supply chain in the first instance, get some early wins and develop a plan and see how they could become more energy efficient as well.

So within that 23%, probably this year, we’re up to 80% of the companies that are now developing sustainability plans and are actually taking active steps to reduce their carbon impact, look at products and services, and furthermore, position themselves to be leaders in this space and actually be an early advantage, get an early position in the market to come to the market with this transition to low carbon.

John: When you study the history of startup world in the innovation world of the United States, Silicon Valley still is the place that even though there’s many others that have grown up in the United States in the last 15 years, Austin and Silicon Alley in New York and the Biotech World in San Diego, Silicon Valley, with its nexus to the VC money and to Stanford University and other great institutions seems to have been the place where so many of our great brands, iconic brands were born in the United States. Why Ireland? Why does Ireland punch above its weight, as you say, with regards to entrepreneurship and why it’s focus on entrepreneurship? What was the catalyst there to make it such an entrepreneurial country?

Aidan: Yes, it’s a great question now, we’ve exported some great talent as well, like John and Patrick Collison of Stripe. They started their school and their life in Limerick and Ireland and have built Stripe to be a phenomenal company. We have lots of other Irish multinationals and leaders, and I think we have a really good education system in Ireland. A lot of US companies actually come to Ireland to set up their European headquarters and be that gateway to Europe.

So we’re a part of the EU, we’re the only English speaking country now in the EU since the UK voted to leave the EU. We have a unique global perspective that common thread we talked about at the top of the show John, like we have a lot of similarities, but there’s always that view that our domestic Irish economy is too small. That if you want to be successful in business, you got to think outside of Ireland. So yes, you can find great talent, great engineering skills, great talent to build a business in Ireland.

But ultimately you have to scale that business and grow internationally. Part of the thing that we do here in Enterprise Ireland in America’s John, we encourage our clients to set up operations in North America. Hire local, get to know the local ecosystem, get embedded into it. Because we know that when businesses grow and scale and set up operations here in the US, ultimately they’re going to be more successful. They’re going to have a greater chance of succeeding and that investment goes back into Ireland as well.

John: How does this work though? I’m an entrepreneur and I have a hot and up incoming[?] brand in Ireland, and now I become a member of Enterprise Ireland. Now I’m on the phone one day with Aidan McKenna, and Aidan says, ” Okay now, your next move is you’re going to open up an office here in New York and you’re going to bring your brand to the United States.” But the next day I have a call with your colleague out of Paris and he goes, no! You’re next move to bring your hot brand is here to the EU and you’re going to set up a beautiful office here in Paris, and I’m going to show you the office when you come over here.

Then the next day he has a, conversation with your colleague in Singapore, says, ” I’m going to bring you to Asia and Asia’s the future of the planet.” How does it work between leaders like you who in other parts of the world, where do the Irish entrepreneurs want to go first before they become a worldwide brand? What’s the logical stepping stone to taking a hot brand from Ireland, which is like you said a nice controlled ecosystem in a country of 5 million and take their brand and socialize it and become a worldwide iconic brand? How do you advise your students, your entrepreneurs to make the right logical step?

Aidan: Yes, that was a great question, and I think it comes back to a couple of key factors and part of it is, we have a great team of advisors. I was one of those advisors back home. We speak to them all the time. We call them development advisors where [crosstalk] they’re speaking to the senior leadership team of those companies in Ireland. What we don’t want to do is take them in too early. We don’t want to take them over to the market when they’re not prepared, when they haven’t done their market research. A lot of that market research can actually be done in Ireland.

So we have great resources, great teams in Ireland to help them do that. We feed into that. But I think you’ll have an entrepreneur that’ll understand their unique market. They’ll want to say, we’ve got a great cybersecurity solution. We want to come to North America. We know the customers over there. So we’ll work with them on their go-to-market strategy, their product market fit, and we’ll help them on that journey. So typically, we try not to let them spread themselves too thin. Again, it goes back to that leadership development, we do that 360 of the complete business. Do they have the resources, the management team to grow and scale in the market? Well hopefully maybe not always, but we try our best to be as coordinated as possible and we work with the companies towards their kind of priorities.

John: If I’m a portfolio[?] company of the Enterprise Ireland, for our listeners and viewers, again, to find Aidan and his colleagues and to find Enterprise Ireland and to get to work with them, please go to www.enterprise-Ireland.com. You have a comprehensive approach to supporting entrepreneurs. So in terms of academic institutions, industry experts, financial opportunities, you really cover all the bases and try to comprehensively support on a multi-channel basis, your entrepreneurs and leave nothing out of what they really need to be successful. Is that the way to look at this?

Aidan: Yes, it is, John. I think probably one of the other message I’d like to send to your listeners is our team here in America talk to some large US corporate buyers and customers. Our approach would be, okay you might have challenges in various aspects of your business. We act as an honest broker. We’ll say, okay, tell us about where you’re having challenges. Is it cybersecurity? Is it infrastructure? Is it energy management? What we do then is we kind of match, see if we have any companies in our portfolio that have really strong solutions.

So what we do in our day-to-day role here, is to really get to build up those relationships and in some cases we would sign an MOU with a large group company here in New York, Northwell Healthcare, we have an MOU where we sit down with our supply team and supply chain team and we look at where are the areas that are challenging for them. We might have companies that have solutions for these, and we then put them in front of them and be that honest broker. I think that is a model that works well. It means that they’re not being overwhelmed by meeting a lot of companies that may not be relevant to them. So our role in Enterprise Ireland Americas is to really be that honest broker, help US companies find maybe key suppliers, key partners that have common challenges where our companies bring innovative solutions to the market.

One company, if I may just to kind of highlight a company is a company called X Ocean. X Ocean they’re in the ocean data gathering space and with the growth in offshore wind in Europe and now here in North America, they’re really uniquely placed to tap into a growing new market segment. X ocean developed what’s called a non man surface vehicle, and that’s like a drone, for instance, with no crew that goes out and maps the ocean bed. If you think what they’re replacing, typically this would be done by sending a crew out on a boat, a diesel engine out mapping the ocean bed with all the equipment, very expensive.

Now, this can be done remotely through satellite communication. It’s powered by solar power and they will actually send out their drones, their Usvs. To pick up that critical ocean data for not only for deployment for offshore wind and other applications in the ocean economy, but also for the maintenance of cables of offshore wind in the future. That company has gone through phenomenal growth, but again, they’re a company that is tapping into a new opportunity in the transition to renewables. They have a very innovative solution to do that, a low carbon solution, to do that.

Low impact solution to do that and that’s a type of company that we love to bring into this market that’s looking at maybe offshore wind for the first time. It’s the Irish government’s ambition to decarbonize our electricity grid in Ireland from fossil fuels to be actually a net exporter of offshore wind and renewable energy. If we get this right, if we invest properly in offshore wind on the west coast of Ireland, that beautiful coastline you probably saw on your last trip. [crosstalk] one thing we have in abundance is wind from the Atlantic Ocean, and if we can harness that, we can really help fast track our decarbonization plan in the Irish economy.

John: Wow. It’s a brand that can go worldwide because their kind of services are needed everywhere, I take it.

Aidan: Exactly. X Ocean would be an exciting company, and we have more companies, we have a cluster of companies that are tapping into the offshore wind industry. In fairness, the UK were market leaders that were Norway were quick to launch wind farms off their coast. But now as we all around the world are moving towards more offshore wind, this is a growing segment and our clients are well placed, A company like X Ocean is well placed to take advantage of that growth, and it’s our role to bring them the opportunities, introduce them to the right people.

John: Aidan, is there a point where companies graduate outside of Enterprise Ireland once they get to X amount, 20 million in sales, 100 million in sales? Or do you, once a member, always a member of Enterprise Ireland, how does it work?

Aidan: Yes, I think once a member, always a member, John, and even for some of our Irish multinationals that are market leaders, we think we can still add value. I think one of the things we do is look at maybe as they may be diversify, whether it’s into new markets or whether they’re diversifying into new products and services, we’ll always have access to people that can help them. I think one of the things that we’d like to do in Enterprise Ireland is to have more scaling startups.

Irish companies remain Irish longer. So we had this phenomenon where the latest Irish technology or services company would grow to a certain point and they would get a great exit. But that exit would mean that their headquarters would move maybe to another country. What we would like to see is more Irish companies remain in Irish for longer. So we’re now talking to companies about accessing equity, growth capital debt to allow them to be the acquire as opposed to be an acquired and grow and scale on that journey. I think some Irish multinationals have done that really successfully, and we’d love for those Irish multinationals to educate their peers on that in terms of offer them advice in terms of how they can do that.

John: The funding for enterprise element comes one from the government or also from the successful investments you make that then create a return on investment or a combination thereof.

Aidan: Yes, it’s a combination thereof, John, you’re absolutely correct. I think one of the things we encouraged to do and we try to do is to leave space for venture funds to come in. So 20 years ago there was very few venture funds operating in Ireland. Thankfully, today, we’ve helped grow that market. We’re a limited partner and a couple of other funds. So we are very, very keen to see the venture capital community in Ireland flourish. In fairness, there’s been some great venture capital firms from the west coast, from the US that have come into Ireland and set up successfully as well.

John: Aidan, you get to work with all these really interesting and sustainable and exciting brands and up and coming brands and up and coming entrepreneurs. Where is the future of entrepreneurship? Like how is entrepreneurship evolving and where do you think the future of entrepreneurship is?

Aidan: Yes, John, that’s a great question. I think there’s probably two things that have struck me in the last number of years. There seems to be a crisis every year too, whether it’s Covid or Brexit or inflationary pressures from geopolitical events and what we’re having to deal with. So I think companies need to be offering real high value. An entrepreneur needs to be really resilient, needs to be really aware of what could happen in their supply chain to geopolitical events.

They need to understand, okay and be able to react to that. So we be very careful and selective in the types of businesses and entrepreneurs feedback because we want to make sure that they’re resilient, we support them in everything that they can do. We also find then as well, with ESG investment today and indeed regulation and reporting guidelines. There’s always a push and a pull factor to these things. But I think those companies that get out on front and actually see the benefits of investing in diversity and inclusion, see the benefits of actually having social good and also sustainable products and services that offer customers real transparency on where they come from, I think they will thrive.

That will be the license to trade going forward. Those companies that are sustainable have solid credentials that they can illustrate to their customers as to how sustainable they are and whether that’s B Corp[?] or whether it’s any other ISOs that they can share among their customers, those customers and entrepreneurs are going to really be the leaders in the future.

John: So what are you allowed to talk about that you are most excited about for the upcoming year in terms of projects or other things you’re working on that you’re going to announce in 2024?

Aidan: Yes, so we’re going into a new phase of our strategy next year. So we’re, we’re closing out this one. In fairness we’re working really hard towards helping our companies reduce their emissions in Ireland. One of the things that we do, we work with companies to decarbonize their business and we’re working hard. We have specific funds to help them do that and supports. But one of the exciting things I think is what we’re focused on is some of our fast growing companies have real potential to scale and remain Irish and that’s something I’m really excited about.

We have fantastic businesses winning business here in North America, partnering with some fantastic companies and solving real problems, whether it’s cybersecurity, whether it’s sustainability or whether it’s manufacturing. We are well positioned to help those Irish companies come in and scale in the market. I think I’m excited about that. I’ve just come on board to this team and I’m really focused on making sure that we, in Enterprise Ireland North America are adding real value to our companies when they come into the market. Sometimes though these challenges are difficult for our companies, and we like to be that friendly support that can make a real difference.

John: Does it ever work in reverse Aidan? Do you ever have an Irish entrepreneur here in North America that has launched an enterprise that wants to then get socialized back in the mother country and then they join Enterprise Ireland to help them get traction back in Ireland?

Aidan: Absolutely. John. Yes, we do that and that’s the power of the Irish network. So we like to go back to our roots. So we come across companies all the time that have some kind of Irish connection that will come and seek to come back into Europe. Maybe they’ve grown successfully here and now’s the time to branch into Europe. We have a sister agency called IDA Ireland, and they’re responsible for helping those emerging businesses. So maybe it’s those established business set up operations in Ireland and they come over there and we can put a range of supports to help them get established in Ireland and get set up their European headquarters.

But I think overall, I think we’re very fortunate that we get a lot of support here in North America. We’re the probably the only country that gets a yearly invite to the White House. So it’s March 17 in St. Patrick’s Day and I was in Chicago in March when they turned the river green this year. It’s phenomenal that such a small island has such affinity and reach in such a large market like this. I think I look forward to that time of the year when our companies can come over, celebrate with their customers, with their partners, with whoever they need to celebrate with and it brings us together, it’s a great excuse to get us together again.

John: It doesn’t hurt that you have some of the greatest golfing on the planet back in the mothership.

Aidan: Yes. We won’t talk about the Rider Cup or anything, but yes I know it’s great. We’ve got some great sporting icons and personalities and I think we’ll trade on that if we can.

John: Aidan, you’re just doing some important and really wonderful work, and I’m so glad you’re able to expose and educate our audience today and our listeners about Enterprise Ireland. But what I’d love you to do is know that you’re always welcome back on the show. What I’d love to do next time is for you to come back on and bring 2 or 3 of your favorite entrepreneurs on with you and let them share their journey, starting up their businesses in Ireland, and then working with you, bringing them here to North America and scaling their business. I think our listeners and viewers would just love to hear from the entrepreneurs with you and understand how the experience really works from their perspective as well.

Aidan: John, that’d be great. It sounds like a great St. Patrick’s Day show for you. So I [inaudible] in for that[?] [crosstalk]

John: You’re on. That will be our St. Patrick’s Day show next year. You are honest and I love it. I love that idea.

Aidan: Fantastic.

John: That’s wonderful. For our listeners and viewers to find Aidan McKenna and all of his wonderful colleagues that are doing this very important work, bringing Irish Enterprises here to United States and beyond, please go to www.enterprise-ireland.com. Aidan McKenna, thank you for joining us today in the Impact podcast, and thank you and your colleagues for making the world a better and greener place.

Aidan: Thank you, John. Pleasure.

John: This edition of The Impact Podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking platform revolutionizing the talent booking industry with thousands of athletes, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and business leaders. Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent, for speeches, custom experiences, live streams, and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com. This edition of the Impact podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet and your privacy, and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit ERIdirect.com.