Women entrepreneurs in rural Ireland: ‘It has given me such huge confidence in what I’m doing’

Former broadcast journalist Lyndsay Considine had toyed with the idea of setting up her own digital marketing business, “but never had the guts to go for it”. Then Covid struck, within weeks of having her first baby on New Year’s Day, 2020, and suddenly she and her husband Daniel were re-evaluating their lives.

Parenthood has that effect on people. So did the pandemic.

“I was on maternity leave with the baby. Daniel [a broadcast journalist] was still out at work because, obviously, radio was an essential service. It was all very isolating,” says the 36-year-old. It prompted the couple, both from Longford town but who had studied, worked and rented in Galway city for more than a decade, to move back to their native county to be nearer their families. This enabled them to buy their own home — in Drumlish, 13km outside the town — and acted as a catalyst for Considine to develop entrepreneurial skills, while Daniel joined Shannonside FM in Longford. Having left a marketing job in the local enterprise office in Galway, after some years working with Galway Bay FM, she was initially looking for another public-service post in Longford. However, she reckoned she had nothing to lose in trying out her business idea while job hunting.

Indeed, there was nothing to lose and greater autonomy to gain by founding her own firm, LC Digital. The idea of having greater flexibility as her own boss while bringing up their daughter Ava was “hugely important”, she says. “It made sense to me. I felt I would get more time with her, which I have done.”

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However, juggling the two roles became a challenge as the business started to take off. “I found it difficult to discipline myself to make that divide between family life and work life because I was working at home and had set up my home office. I felt like I was never off. When I was spending time with Ava I was checking emails and stuff like that.”

It was through participation in a development scheme for early-stage women entrepreneurs living in rural Ireland that she learned to be more disciplined. Known as Acorns (an acronym of accelerating the creation of nascent start-ups), it’s a free, six-month programme funded through the Department of Agriculture.

Women tend to suffer from, for want of a better term, ‘impostor syndrome’ a lot more than men do. We had a lot of discussions around this: ‘What am I doing?’ ‘Am I qualified to be doing this?’ ‘Who am I to set up shop?’

She applied because she didn’t have a business background, Considine says. “I felt I really needed that edge in terms of being a business person, rather than just someone who does a bit of freelance work for themselves.”

The opportunity to network with other people, many of whom were in similar positions — who had young children and were trying to work from home — was also a huge attraction. Acorns, now entering its eighth year, takes in 50 women annually, and they are split into regional groups of seven, led by an established entrepreneur.

“I was learning to navigate the business world which, as an employee, you are shielded from a lot of that,” says Considine. For her, the gender-specific nature of the programme had a big role to play in its success. The circumstances and challenges that women face are often quite different from those faced by men, she says.

“You just felt comfortable and happy that people understood what you were going through. Women tend to suffer from, for want of a better term, ‘impostor syndrome’ a lot more than men do. We had a lot of discussions around this: ‘What am I doing?’ ‘Am I qualified to be doing this?’ ‘Who am I to set up shop?’”

Looking forward now to hiring some freelancers to help cope with the Christmas rush, Considine would highly recommend Acorns to anybody like her who is a bit “green” when it comes to business. “I feel so much more in control now. I definitely felt a little bit lost and I was chasing my tail, but Acorns has given me such huge confidence in what I’m doing.”

Business-wise, she sees no disadvantage in her rural Ireland location “as my clients are all over Ireland. I think that was one of the benefits that Covid brought with it, that people are so much more accepting now of the ability to [be] remote for a lot of things, particularly with what I do.”

On a personal level the location is ideal, and the couple are so glad Ava is growing up with her family around her. She attends creche part-time and has “two doting nanas” in the locality to help out at other times. Although Galway is just an hour and half away, “it was only once a fortnight or once a month that we would have time to pack her up and bring her down home”, Considine says, “but now she has daily contact with her family, which is lovely as well.”

Another participant in the last round of Acorns, Swedish-born food entrepreneur Emilie Mjörndal (43), had followed her former partner and their teenage daughter Sophia (15) to the Ring of Kerry.

“My daughter is half Irish. She was born in Paris; she is special needs and life in the big city didn’t suit her,” she says. Mjörndal was separated from Sofia’s father, who was living mainly in Co Kerry, and she thought it would be a good idea to try their daughter in a rural Irish school. “We did that and she loved it. So I packed up my life and moved to Ireland.”

She lives close to Sofia’s father in Glenbeigh, and their daughter can go in between the two houses. Having arrived here early in 2019, by June of that year Mjörndal had opened a bakery and cafe in the village, with her ex as her business partner.

“My dad is an entrepreneur so I never really considered life any other way,” she says, her first foray into catering having been running a burger joint on the beach at age 12. Her Swedish parents moved the family to France when she was a small child and she attended international school in Paris. Although she moved back to Sweden to attend college, the French capital was where she built up her own culinary concierge business, supplying snacks and meals to some of the world’s biggest tech firms, starting with Yahoo and expanding to many others, including Goggle and Uber.

“When I moved [to Ireland], obviously, you need to get a job straight away and I took a job in Supervalu while looking at what I was going to do.”

She had noticed, on her first evening going out to shop in Glenbeigh, that there was “no food” — at least nothing that matched her idea of food, having cooked from scratch all her life. “In Paris we are very spoilt with fresh markets and fishmongers,” she says, but over here: “I saw the kids coming into the deli at lunch, eating white bread rolls with deep-fried goujons, and I knew my mission was definitely to bring good food.

Even if you have baked 15 hours, when you finish with a walk with the dog on the beach and a swim, the stress is gone

“I was horrified that the kids are training their palate with frozen crap, really. How can we expect them to know how to nourish themselves when we have taught them to eat crap? There is a problem of obesity here and that is also something — I exercise six or seven times a week, I go swimming every day — I don’t understand.”

Was it a culture shock coming to live in Kerry? “I think because I grew up as an ex-pat there is no such thing as a culture shock any more because I have never been at home,” she replies. “I can basically put down my suitcase anywhere and it doesn’t really matter.”

Although she was bringing a wealth of entrepreneurial and culinary experience to the opening of Emilie’s Woodfired Bakery and Kitchen, she was keen to make social and business connections. “Things work differently when you are in a different country. I knew I needed a network and when you are out in the country and working as many hours as I am working, you don’t have time to go out and meet people. When I researched I fell on Acorns and it was just as applications opened. It was a really lucky find — the right place at the right time. It’s fab.”

Relationships between business partners and financiers can be strained at times, she says, and you need somebody else’s point of view. She can understand why the all-female aspect of the programme works in Ireland, although it wasn’t what attracted her.

“Me personally, as a Swedish person, I don’t necessarily see the importance of it being all female because we are in a complete egalitarian place.” Whereas she feels that “it is still pretty fresh that women are entrepreneurs here”. Although she and her former partner co-own the business, people come in wanting only to speak to him. “I am fine with that because I have nothing to prove but I can see how that would be very difficult if you weren’t confident yourself.”

In the first Covid lockdown, they turned the 64-seat cafe section of the bakery into a delicatessen shop, serving the locality with fresh produce and takeaway meals. “That really put us on the map,” she says. A lot of people had moved down to the area during the first phase of the pandemic, they discovered Emilie’s and “spread the word about our brand, which was very beneficial”.

This summer they also opened a production bakery in Killorglin, which supplies the wholesale market as well as its own cafe and bakery there. With Emilie’s open all year round, seven days a week, employing about 30 people at the height of the season, she spends on average 100-120 hours a week in the bakery.

Is she happy with that work-life equation? “I think it is a temporary sacrifice. If you go in to be an entrepreneur and [think] it is going to get you all that freedom, it’s not what it does.” Instead, she suggests, you need to push hard towards certain goals and, if you see you are not reaching them, then reassess.

“Even if you have baked 15 hours, when you finish with a walk with the dog on the beach and a swim, the stress is gone,” she says. “It’s washed away. I run a B&B in my house as well. You meet lots of people, even though you don’t have time to go out. It’s a great balance.”

Her goal is to make the business a household name for fresh food and to be bought up within six years. “Then be able to step out of full-time production, have a consultant role and be able to go on and create my next project, which I already have in my head. In Ireland, here, local. It’s important to give back to the community that has been good to you. “Knowing myself, I will probably wander off to create projects elsewhere as well,” she adds, “but my base will be here from now on. I am looking to build a house; I am looking to settle.”

Future prospects

When Linda-Gene Byrne (40) and her family moved to the Hook in Co Wexford in 2019, she knew she had to find an alternative to traditional employment to combine with raising children.

It was before the big shift to working from home and for most companies it wasn’t an option at that time, says the former Green Isle Foods sales director. Their previous home had been in her native Portarlington, Co Laois, and travelling the 40-plus km to the office in Naas “wasn’t the worst commute in the world”.

The timing of the family’s relocation to her husband Patrick’s native county was prompted by their eldest child turning four. They reckoned if they were going to move, they had to do it then “to get him settled into a place before he starts school”. But once they were ensconced in their new home, between Saltmills and Fethard-on-Sea, Byrne began to consider her future prospects.

She had seen a 2018 survey that found of the €5 billion spent by Irish consumers online, €3 billion went overseas. “I was really shocked by that. Even a small percentage of that back in the country would be massive for the overall economy.”

Putting thoughts into action, she set up The Holding Pond, an online outlet for Irish craft and design products. She buys stock from Irish makers and sells it through the website and pop-up shops. “I don’t have a making skill but I enjoy the business side of it,” says Byrne, who launched the company in February 2020, four weeks before she gave birth to their third child. It was a race against time as “I knew if the baby arrived I wouldn’t get launched,” she laughs.

You have to be a little bit easy on yourself and you have to be flexible with your goals

Being her own boss and not having to commute to an office is a “huge” advantage for family life, she says. The online nature of the business gives great flexibility too, as she can work when the children are in bed or at the weekends. Patrick has his own engineering business and is currently working with a company in Waterford, Monday to Friday.

“Being at home with the kids is fantastic but it’s nice to have something to keep working on as well,” she says. While you’re constantly thinking about the business, at least you’re home, there is less stress and you are managing your own time, she says.

The business was running two years when she started Acorns in spring of this year. With a good mix of women around the table, she says, it was a “really good sounding board as everybody is extremely honest. It’s a very positive way of building confidence, building your business and looking at different strategies that you might not otherwise have looked at.”

Most of her fellow women entrepreneurs have children as well, and understand the challenges. “Every one of them is trying to make everything work, to keep all the balls in the air. It’s good to link up with like-minded people like that.”

Does she see any disadvantage operating from rural Ireland? “None whatsoever. As long as I can go online, I can work from here or go over to my parents’ house and work from there. We have a great network of couriers and they call to me as often as I need.”

Having had a fourth baby just over three months ago, and the other children now aged six, four and two, Byrne acknowledges that there are weeks when she can get very little done in the business, but says she can make up for that on other weeks. The couple are also renovating the former mill attached to their farmhouse home.

“You have to be a little bit easy on yourself and you have to be flexible with your goals. It’s good to have your ambitions,” she says, “but there has to be a little fluidity with it.”

- The deadline for applications for this year’s Acorns programme is midnight on Friday, September 23rd. Female entrepreneurs living outside the cities of Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford, who have started a business since June 2019, or are planning a new venture, can register their interest at acorns.ie to receive an application form