At this years Out On Your Own conference, All About Business were part of the large audience of entrepreneurs, students and SMEs owners who gathered in the RDS to hear guest speakers, financial services experts and of course the Dragons talk about entrepreneurship and give advice about starting up and growing your own business.

To see some video footage from the event you can click here and if you want to listen to the full panel discussions you can find them here in our podcast section.

We here at allaboutbusiness.ie felt that Niall O’ Farrell, Retail and Property Investor and RTE Dragon’s Den Panellist gave a particularly good speech about how to build a brand at this year’s conference and we thought we would share some of his tips with you.

Click here to read a list of the AAB top 10 articles to bring your start up to the next level.

• Don’t get too attached to a name, know when it is time to leave it behind and follow your gut when making decisions and listening to other peoples choices.
• It is time to protect and grow your business, a recession involves a big clean up, it is time to take stock, which of your staff is not pulling their weight and which stores are no longer profitable.
• Make sure you have the passion to follow through with your goals.
• The person behind the product is often the more important element for success.
• You must ask yourself, are the right person to run your business?
• You have to know and monitor your competition.
• Cashflow is EVERYTHING.
• Try and be the cheapest or the best, don’t find yourself caught somewhere in the middle.
• Measure the performance of those working for you, as the good staff are the people who want to be measured.
• It’s important to have a presence online, it used to be enough to just be in the yellow pages, this is no longer the case.

Innovation Dublin – Monday October 17th – Friday 18th November

For the third year running, the city of Dublin will host the annual festival, Innovation Dublin, showcasing the innovative spirit of the city. The festival will exhibit a wide range of creativity, innovation and design from a diverse range of speakers, whether it is researchers, students, entrepreneurs or large corporations, the event will promote and celebrate innovation in the city.

The Innovation Dublin festival has continued to grow since its inception in 2009, where it attracted over 40,000 visitors to 465 events and was held over one week, the following year it ran for twelve days, while  this year it is runs for a month and features hundreds of events and conferences discussing and promoting innovation throughout the city. The event kicked off yesterday, Monday 17^th October and runs until Friday 18^th November.

To help you keep up to date with the events taking place over the following month, check out some of these websites which we have listed below.

• Find out more information on the Innovation Dublin website

• Follow Innovation Dublin on Twitter here

Bank of Ireland is delighted to be associated with the following events:

1. Stillorgan LUAS Lunchtime Market (October 25th)
2. EastPoint Lunchtime Market  (October 26th)
3. Mespil Road Lunchtime Market (October 27th)

There is a lot going on and you don’t want to miss it!

An EU study on entrepreneurship has revealed that Ireland has an above average entrepreneurial spirit when compared with the rest of Europe.

The EU Survey looks at entrepreneurship and employment preferences across Europe and some of the other major world economies.

31% of those surveyed in the Republic who are employees felt that they could become their own boss in the next five years. 23% of respondents said that they were taking steps to start a new business or had done so, while a further 13% were thinking realistically about it. …