Life Lessons with John Brennan

Real Health with Karl Henry

On this week’s Real Health episode, I’m delighted to be joined by hotelier John Brennan to discuss lessons he’s learned throughout his life and how he overcame obstacles along the way; from struggling in school to finding his passion for hospitality.
In his new book, My name is Jhon, John writes about his battle with dyslexia, life as an entrepreneur and how a cancer diagnosis wasn’t going to stop him making a new business opportunity a success.
John says being told he had dyslexia when he was younger, wasn’t something that upset him. Instead, he was thrilled with it: It’s a beautiful word, its exotic and its different. And I’m thinking wow I have that, that’s really great. It was nice to be labelled with something other than stupidity.”
We also discuss John’s diagnoses with stage four Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a treatable but not curable form of cancer. Although being told he had cancer wasn’t the only big news he received that afternoon: “At five o’clock that evening I got a phone call from the auctioneer to say we’ve bought Dromquinna, that the bank had accepted our offer. So that’s how you deal with a diagnosis like that.”
While some might think the news couldn’t have come at a more stressful time, John says it was the best thing that could have happened: “It focused my brain for the year I was having treatment. I was doing Dromquinna Manor up which was basically an abandoned site for 12 years...that kept the brain focused. You can become very demoralised with a diagnosis like that.”
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