“How was your summer?” I asked as our forks hit our salads.  A friend and I were catching up over lunch.

“Very nice!”, he replied. “Mary and I toured Ireland for a couple of weeks.  Her family is Irish.  She’s always wanted to go back to the ‘auld sod’… so we went and we connected with a few of her people who are still there.”

“Very nice, indeed. I’m just back from there myself. And, where did you go, then? And from what county did Mary’s people come?”

“Her family is from County Cork. We flew into Shannon and drove around the southwest coast, over to County Cork, and then up to Dublin.”

“So, the usual hot spots – Cliffs of Moher, the Dingle Peninsula, the Ring of Kerry, that sort of thing?”

“Yes, we saw those but… and I can’t emphasize this enough …we really had our best times when, after a couple of days, we learned to stay away from the tourists. Busloads of tourists. Everywhere.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound easy in the West of Ireland in the summer. A lot of people go there. How’d you do that?”

“We went at different times or, more often, we went to different places. Without bus tour swarms behind us, we took our time and we met a lot of terrific people we’d never have met otherwise.”

Caithfidh tú do iomaire féin a threabhadh.

You have to plough your own furrow.

Nick Miller is President of Clarity Advantage based in Concord, MA. He assists banks and credit unions to generate more and more profitable relationships, faster, with business clients, their owners, and their employees through better sales strategies and execution. Additional articles on Clarity’s web site.