Ten things you may not know about Jason McChesney
1. He grew up in the context of a family car business.
2. He was head boy at school.
3. He was laying a wreath in Enniskillen when the bombing happened, and escaped death by inches. It was a defining moment that told him life was short, and influenced his subsequent choices - looking at his own life goals, and becoming a business coach to help others do the same. Jason also narrowly escaped the tsunami in Sri Lanka.
4. He spent 18 months travelling 24 countries, and at the end of it decided he wanted to live either in Dublin or Sydney. Dublin won because it was the capital of Ireland and Ireland’s where most of his friends and family are.
5. He’s had some interesting non-career jobs. Selling door to door in Perth, working as a movie extra in Hong Kong and mustering cattle as a cowboy in the Northern Territory, Australia.
6. He’s a good salesman. He cut his teeth at IBM, selling computers.
7. He has built up three businesses from scratch, taking them into the realms of significant turnover.
8. He trained to be a business coach with the international Action Coach franchise, an experience that was short, expensive and ‘life changing’.
9. He’s seriously sporty. He’s run marathons in Dublin and New York and has completed a ‘half ironman’ – his next big goal is to do a full ironman, which involves swimming 2.4 miles, cycling for 112 miles, then running a full marathon (‘14 hours of solid go’).
10. He lives in Killiney.
What’s the purpose of the Dalkey Business Group?
It’s to help the local businesses in the Dalkey area, putting Dalkey ‘on the map’ more, promoting it as a place to do business, eat, drink, have a coffee, visit. There are two groups to address – locals, who we want to encourage to shop locally when possible, and tourists, who we want to encourage to come and visit.
What are your goals for your year as chairman?
To continue the great work that Oliver McCabe did last year with our great committee and business members. To grow the number of business members to 100, to grow the number of Dalkey Loyalty Card holders to over 2,000, to help achieve any available local grants to enhance Dalkey, to help lead and facilitate the businesses working together more in collaboration rather than competition.
For example, I don’t think the restaurants, say, should see each other as competitors but as collaborators, maybe putting together a food festival ‘Taste of Dalkey’ and bringing food experts and writers in. Recently for instance a local restaurant ran its own ‘festival event’ - they organised it on their own and it’s great to see them being proactive, but it would be even better if they’d got together with the other restaurants and got the food reviewers and the bloggers in, helping Dalkey be known as a place with great restaurants. Together we have more contacts between us so we can achieve more by working together. Engaging bloggers is so important these days.
The business group now has subgroups working on specific issues like tourism, loyalty cards, parking, the website, etc. I’d like to see all of our subgroups being active and asking themselves what they want to see happen, what they can do, and for each subgroup to have an active ‘champion’ reporting to the group regularly. In all of this, I’d like to be more of a facilitator than someone 'in charge'.
These things take time. I’ve seen in business that in the first year of a job you get to know the job, in the second year you get better at it, and in the third year you ask ‘where next?’.
These ideas also take money. We have a lot of ideas and not much money, hence the growth of membership is one of the important areas.
What’s unique about Dalkey?
I’d say it’s the heritage and literary aspects, plus we have our own island! It’s obviously also a good place to eat and drink, and for outdoor activities – but so are lots of other places.
Where is the room for improvement?
We need to spell out what’s available in Dalkey. You go to Dingle for Fungi, you go to Galway for the races, you go to Johnny Fox’s for seafood and irish dancing. I’ve seen from our dealings with people like Dublin Tourism and Dun Laoghaire Rathdown that we need to give them a reason to promote us to tourists. We have to define it, and explain it, and present it well – for example Ten things to do in Dalkey, How to spend a day in Dalkey, What to do on a wet day in Dalkey – all of that can go up on the website and be promoted through social media.
I’ve also learned from the tourism bodies that it’s not a good idea to have a festival for everything. If you do, you become a Jack of all trades, and nobody has a clear idea about you.
Our directional signs – what they call ‘wayfinding’ – need work. Tourists often ask us where the sea is. If you arrive at the DART station and walk down to the corner tourists have a choice of five roads to take and the only signs say where the library is, and where Loreto Abbey is. So off tourists go to Loreto Abbey, thinking it sounds interesting and historical, and what do they find? A school.
It costs €160 a year to be a member of the Dalkey Business Group. What’s in it for the members?
It gives you great visibility and from last year’s experience those that put in the effort got return for their own business.
It’s a good way to promote your business. You get good exposure through the website and other social media, and with the loyalty card scheme we run, you get a monthly chance to promote your business to over a thousand local people who aren’t on your own database. That’s worth having.
And you meet people. I’ve met brilliant people through the Dalkey Business Group.
Can anybody join?
We’ve had a lot of interest from people living locally who aren’t business owners, they just want to help their community, and that’s really welcome and appreciated. Instead of €160 they pay an 'associate member' rate of €80.
The Dalkey Business Group meets monthly. Meetings are in local venues and last up to two hours, followed by social drinks.To join the Dalkey Business Group, click here.
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