WORKING FROM HOME IS NORMAL FOR DOMINICK
He left Dublin for Enniscrone
FOR those lucky enough to still be in employment, working from home has become the norm during the course of Covid-19 crisis. However, for the past two years, an Enniscrone man has been doing just that, building his business from the ground-up within a stone’s throw from the shores of Killala Bay. Dominick Barrett is the founder of the aptly-named Atlantic Star Consulting, which has established itself as one of the leading firms providing data and research services for a whole host of major clients.
A former student at Jesus and Mary Secondary School, before embarking on his third-level education at NUI Galway, Mr Barrett initially worked in the Central Bank in Dublin before swapping Dublin 1 for his home village and the opportunity to found his own company.
Having taken the plunge in 2018, Mr Barrett told The Sligo Champion that his decision to relocate to west Sligo and establish his business is one he remains content with.
“I love it,” he says, of life back in Enniscrone. “Given that I’m from Enniscrone it probably made more sense to come home, and also it does help when you are starting a business to keep your costs under control. Dublin rent is fairly crazy so it made more sense being from Enniscrone to come back here.
“In terms of how I find working and living in Enniscrone, it’s a big change in pace from working in Dublin. You can’t really beat going for a long walk along the beach during your lunch break.”
Working in the financial industry predominantly, Mr Barrett says the experience he gained while working the Central Bank spurred him on to delve further into what companies needed to maximise their potential.
Outlining the main functions of his business, Mr Barrett explained: “We provide market intelligence and research services, mostly to large institutional clients, some of which would be household names. We create our market intelligence through a process of gathering and creating new data on a particular industry from the bottom up. We then combine and link together all the data to create granular insights on our clients markets for them.
“I built up a lot of experience collecting and analysing data in my previous job, I worked for the Central Bank. I wanted to explore ways to use these skills and techniques to create valuable insights for businesses, enabling them to navigate and understand their markets better than ever before.” The curiosity and insight Mr Barrett gained from his work with the Central Bank led to him taking the decision to establish Atlantic Star Consulting. Having made the initial move to set up the company, he then went about making sure he identified exactly what was needed by companies in the financial services industry in terms of advice and guidance, and how his skillset and data gathering skills could combine to provide a unique insight for clients.
“When I was working in the Central Bank, my job was to collect and analyse a lot of data and I began thinking ‘What applications could this be used for?’, not necessarily just that data but data in general. ‘What do firms need?’
“Really, the business grew organically from a lot of conversations I had with people in the industry. I would literally just meet them for a coffee and ask ‘What is important to you?’. I built it through demand-led trial and error really, going out to firms and asking, ‘What is important to you, what are the biggest challenges your business is facing?’ Any company, really, exists to solve a problem so what I was trying to work out was what are the problems businesses have, and what could I do with this skillset in order to help these companies solve those problems. There was a gap in the market there, so it was a process of trial and error to try and refine that.
“At the moment, because my background is in financial services, these are the types of clients that I would be speaking with, so it is pretty much the financial services market that I would look at.”
Of course, the decision to take the punt and set up a business is but one step - there are many other hurdles to clear before any company begins to establish itself and grow.
The success of Atlantic Star Consulting from an early stage was recognised in 2019 when it was announced as the Best Start-Up in the Sligo section of Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur.
“For anyone setting up a business, it is pretty daunting,” he says.
“But it teaches you a lot. The most difficult time is those first few emails you send reaching out to people, trying to establish those first few connections but luckily I’m at a stage now where I’ve built up all my channels, I’ve built up that network really well and there’s a really good client base there. Thankfully, I’ve been able to carve out a niche for myself in the financial services market because what I’m doing really is sort of unique. What I’ve done in terms of market intelligence is kind of a pioneering technique of collating all of these different types of data and if you can link them together, it’s about creating those new, granular insights for companies to tell them more about their market.”
Mr Barrett continued: “The actual process of starting a business was relatively simple. We’ re lucky that this is a pretty good country to setup a business in, and in terms of building those first few clients and building those first pieces of work, it really was about reaching out and building relationships with people. It ’s something that really cannot be overstated,