Guest Blog from Liam O’Kelly, CEO of AirSpeed Telecom

by Liam O'Kelly

As the winner of the RSM Entrepreneur of the Year Award for last year’s European Business Awards, we have been invited to write about what winning has meant to us. Primarily, I can say that it was an absolute honour to win this award. All of the extremely hard working team at Airspeed Telecom were delighted with the accolade and, on a personal level, it made me very proud of what we have all achieved over the past ten years.

Just to underline that, receiving recognition for what we have achieved at AirSpeed Telecom from such a high calibre judging panel represents a significant endorsement for our business. The win has served to encourage us to focus even more on continuing the success of the company and building on the growth that we have already achieved over the last few years.

Winning has also made a big difference with our clients, internal team and potential customers. Clients were all delighted with the win and many of them have gone out of their way to congratulate us on winning the award. Internal morale among the team has had an enormous boost. And of course, it’s great to be able to tell potential customers that we are an EBA award winner!

We have also had some extremely positive media coverage in national broadcast and print media such as RTE and The Irish Times, and particularly strong online coverage in global outlets such as www.SiliconRepublic.com.

Finally, through the European Business Awards networking events, it was also great to meet so many like-minded business people who are passionate about delivering quality products and services to markets across Europe. From a networking perspective, it was fantastic to listen to some of the other participant’s stories. I would highly recommend any other businesses taking part – it was a wonderful experience from both a professional and personal perspective.

Good luck to this year’s entrants!

Note from EBA on Airspeed win: Airspeed spotted a gap in the market to deliver leased line replacement services for Internet access for between 30% and 50% of the cost of competing products, without compromising on high quality standards. The result was the establishment of a highly successful business achieving upper quartile levels of growth with the potential to continue their success to even higher levels.