Welcome to It's a Good Life, the Podcast for Entrepreneurs, where it's all about growing

yourself and your business.

Here's your host, founder of America's largest business coaching company, Brian the Feeney.

Top of the morning to you and welcome to today's episode, The Celtic Tiger.

It's almost St. Patrick's Day, you know, that global

celebration of all things Irish on March 17th. Some people think St. Patty's Day is a bit

cheesy, but for me it's actually a very special thing to see people

all over the world gather together to celebrate our country's history and heritage.

We Irish have to be one of the only cultures in the world that's universally known and welcome just about everywhere.

And we're not perfect by any means, but we do have a pretty good reputation for being friendly, hospitable and good crack, which means by the way good fun in case

is any misunderstandings. Millions of people worldwide have Irish ancestry and this shows up in a big way on the day when everybody wants to be Irish.

So this time of year it's also a reminder of how far our little Emerald Isle has come.

When I was a boy growing up in Dublin, St Patrick's day was very simple.

My mother would pin a lump of fresh shamrock to our jumpers, sweaters known to you folks,

and we'd go to mass as a family and then we'd get in the bus into the center city and watch the parade on O'Connell Street.

Another thing I loved about the day was it would give you a special 24 hour dispensation from Lent.

If you'd given up candy until Easter you were allowed to have some on that one day

so you can imagine us buffini boys making the most of that free pass.

Back then the Dublin Parade was just a few tractors and trucks and

the group of Irish dancers doing jigs and reels on platforms standing on the back of the trucks.

So there might have been a marching pipe band if we were lucky.

These days, there's international groups and traveling from every country in the

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