Andy Byrne

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Andy Byrne

🚀 Empowering Productivity, Elevating Mindset, & Mastering Business 💼 | Entrepreneurship📈 | Success Hi there!

I'm Andy, and I've spent the last 25 years working in sales, training and running small businesses and now I'm looking at ways to share my experiences with a wider audience. This page will showcase my content around productivity, mindset and essentialism. In the last few years I've flipped my perspective, and how I work to be happier, healthier and make more money overall and here I'll talk about

some of the steps that I took to turn around some of the more challenging parts of my life. I'll show how I've become more productive, focusing on things that I'm really passionate about as well as spending more time with the people I care about and what is essential in my life. I hope you'll join me as I discuss some of the systems and processes that have worked for me, as well as some of the challenges and opportunities that we all face. If you like my content, please feel free to follow me on my other social media accounts all available here: https://linktr.ee/andyssmartlife

01/09/2025

Top of Mind - August 25th
Pictured: The long anticipated first day back at school arrived, but not before Anna really showed us some amazing word action on scrabble, getting the highest single score of the game. We had another little cocktail day and a milestone in 3D Printing...

Most of the last week was taken up with the usual August / September thing for all parents and that is the return to school. Unlike a lot of kids I'd guess, Anna was looking forward to going back and really enjoys school so she was ready and willing on the day itself and seems to have had a good first few days and has gotten on well with her new teachers.

Before that though we wanted to make the most of the week and the time after school before homework and all other activities begin, so we took another trip to RIOT for some non-alcoholic cocktails, but unfortunately their kitchen was closes so we missed out on burgers this time, so, while she was a little disappointed, she still enjoyed getting out.

At the weekend we chilled out at home and played some old computer games, Anna is particularly fond of the Secret of Monkey Island and is already on number 2, so we all did that together to try and solve the puzzles.

Afterwards she was in a game / puzzle mood so we cracked open the scrabble and Anna came in a close second with some really good use of high scoring letters and ended up getting the highest individual score during the game with 36 points and was leading until near the end of the game. Great to see all the words, vocabulary and spelling coming on so strong.

Elsewhere I've been working on some halloween and christmas products for 3D Print Dub, and the printer hit a milestone of over 3000 hours of usage since late last year so has been running consistently about 35% of the whole year. I've had to do some maintenance and cleaning frequently, so it's probably time to considder a second one given the usage.

This week I'll continue college prep and course creation so nothing new...

25/08/2025

Top of Mind - August 25th
Pictured: While I work on 3D printer maintenance and creating new storage for filament, Anna practices early Christmas songs on the Ukulele before taking part in her first Hell & Back challenge. She also found time to help me make Anna in space stickers.

With school returning next week, Anna wanted to capitalise on the last few days of freedom and, along with play dates and crafts at home she also did her first Hell & Back in Kilruddery, Co. Wicklow. She was only disappointed that it wasn't more challenging in the kids course, but fun was had with her GAA team all taking part.

After receiving a box of books and goodies from one of MH's friends in the UK, along with a Ukulele book of Christmas songs, a lot of time was spent practicing these with the intention of doing a little show on Christmas Eve this year, but it's also encouraged her to write her own little tunes.

We had a couple of Anna / Daddy afternoons where we played computer games, built a scale model of our own house and even designed some stickers of Anna in space using AI tools and some printable sticker paper, so these are now littered all over her room.

Along with some meetings in the college, I've been prepping for the new term and have a lot of content still to write, but it will be good to get back into the routine when the classes start, but at home I've been doing the usual of tinkering with the 3D printer as well as creating some keyrings for the team at the bar I drink in, just for fun.

With so much printing going on I had to build more racks to store the extra filament so a brief trip to the hardware store later I've increased the storage space by 50% with room for more down the line if I need to, but the setup is pretty crowded now with all the tools and materials.

This week we're prepping for Anna's return to 3rd class on Wednesday, which is causing some apprehension, but we're keeping busy to take her mind off it and will make the most of today and tomorrow...

18/08/2025

Top of Mind - August 18th
Pictured: Crafting, designing and making were the order of the week and myself and Anna built everything from home made clocks to water pistols, while also creating recycled plastic skulls. Also got out and about a couple of times and cleared the garden.

Most of last week was spent at home just doing bits and bobs. With my exams and assignments finally corrected and behind me we focused on crafts and Anna wanted to get a clock for her room, so we decided to build one with 3D printing, markers and a clock mechanism.

She designed little penguins on the face chasing the fish on the hands so we were kept busy for a while and this is now proudly displayed in her bedroom. We also built a 3D Printed mechanised water pistol as it's something she's been looking at since having water fights with her cousins in France.

We also took in a couple of movies at home, so Anna is now a big fan of the Enola Holmes movies on Netflix and can't wait for the 3rd one to come out, but still re-watched her new favourite, K-Pop Demon Hunters about half a dozen times.

For the 3D business, I've been working on recycling print waste and excess plastic and have made some molds of skulls and tea-light holders, which not only uses up all the extra material, but also means that failed prints can now be re-purposed into something useful.

Given that I'm still on summer break, I got out a couple of times during the week also, but nothing crazy and both nights home at a reasonable hour to get up and do things the next morning bright and early, but I think, getting closer to the new term this will fade out, particularly as I still have lots of content to create for the modules.

In the house, I organised, created new storage spaces and shelves and most importantly cleared some old plants and weeds growing out of the back wall to hopefully prevent any damage to the stone work down the line. The clear garden meant some star gazing at night, and Anna even saw a shooting star.

11/08/2025

Top of Mind - August 11th
Pictured: Full week with the girls back from France, so plenty of trips and activities, including cinema nights, fancy food and an extra special Anna - Daddy day with burgers and kids cocktails. We also had a visit from Mammy-Johanna which kept us busy.

The week began with a day out with myself and Anna just catching up after her month long trip to France. As something a bit different we waltzed down to RIOT bar in the afternoon for a delicious burger and some custom made kids alcohol free cocktails. Anna even played a fantastics game of pool while we were there.

Later in the week we wanted to get to the cinema where possible so myself, Anna and MH took in the Fanstastic Four at the Lighthouse Cinema, our preferred place to go. We really enjoyed it and Anna thought it was 'Fantastic', but her favourite movie of the week still went to K-Pop Demon Hunters on Netflix... :D

Anna still had a packed schedule of activies including a trip to the zoo with friends and then a the weekend we had Johanna visiting us which left them to paint amazing waterfalls while myself and Marie-Helene went to see Superman and had a couple of drinks in the Belfry.

Mammy-Johanna took us to our favourite bistro PHX on Saturday and as always we had a lovely late lunch after some shopping in town. Anna's appetite is huge these days, and it never ceases to amaze me that she can finish off huge burgers wherever we seem to go. Myself I enjoyed a long overdue Steak au Poivre.

Although she was disapointed when her granny left on Sunday, Anna has been keeping busy with Lego and making them into K-Pop characters, so I think she has a new favourite movie.

This week I have to pop into the college a couple of times for some papers and to check in on some exams, and I'll be working on some new designs for 3D Print Dub, but overall I'm going to focus on starting the early prep for the new term where it looks like I'll have about 5 modules to teach. Watch this space for more...

04/08/2025

Top of Mind - August 4th
Pictured: Anna & MH are back from their month in France so there was lots of Anna / Daddy time this week as she was delighted to be back home. I've been working on some Halloween 3D items, but also getting out to see people in different bars for a change.

With a mad scramble to clean the house earlier last week, I more or less had the place ready for Anna and Marie-Helene returning from their month in the north of France. Anna was excited, emotional and very happy to see me and the feeling was definitely mutual so lots of time together followed for the rest of the week.

Even after only a few weeks she's grown and become more confident and her level of French, as well as her appetite, have come on leaps and bounds. So as the girls settle back in we've been taking it easy and staying at home mostly to catch up and chill together.

The house is now much more lively and strangely this has actually helped me to focus and I managed to get some tricky networking and IT problems solved which had been eluding me for a while so always a plus. At the same time, the chaos of a young girl running around can already be clearly seen with teddy's and toys everywhere. :D

I did still get a couple of opportunities last week before they got back to pop around a few places and catch some friends, and had a great old laugh with Ro from Pawn Shop as well as some more of the industry people before they headed off to All Together Now. Part of me was jealous I haven't done those festivals in years, but I also don't think I'm up for camping and dancing in the rain. :P

For the little 3D business I've been working on some custom orders as well as some designs for Halloween products, while also finally finishing some Irish / Dublin related items that hopefully will do well when launched.

I've a few repeat assignments to mark this week as well as prepping some new content for the coming term, but at least I have plenty of time so I'm not going to focus too much yet.

28/07/2025

Top of Mind - July 28th
Pictured: Anna literally burying herself in the the French beaches along with a trip to the Dragon of Calais as she gets ready for her last week over there. I spend too much time working on 3D printed products, while also catching up with some old friends.

With only a few days left on the long trip to France, Anna is getting in as much excitement as possible, between trips to the beach, ziplining and seeing the famous Dragon of Calais, the entertainment doesn't stop. That along with an impromptu celebration for Papi-Dou's birthday it's mostly keeping her mind of wanting to be home.

Back at the ranch, I've been working on a new product for the business which took me far longer to design than I had anticipated, but hopefully it will do well as I'm fairly pleased with how it came out as well as how much I've learned about CAD and graphic design in the last few months. Watch this space as it will be launching soon.

With that in mind I've had to stock up on filament for the machine to be sure that when orders do come in I've plenty of supplies and everything can be produced pretty quickly.

Still though taking some time to get out and about and caught up with some old friends on Friday evening in the form of Paddy and Anne which is always chaotic, fun and interesting all at once. Brought me back to old Gypsy Rose and very early RIOT bar days. :D

This week I'll have a lot to get done before the girls get back from France. Between cleaning the house and getting everything ship-shape to marking repeat assignments I'll have my hand's full the next few days. The emails from students contacting about the repeats at the 11th hour are coming in thick and fast so always a stressful time.

Other than that I plan to be mostly off the grid for a bit to catch up on some sleep debt that I've accumulated over the last while as well as fixing some servers and techie stuff I've been putting on the long finger. My inner geek / OCD head will thank me later....🤪

21/07/2025

Top of Mind - July 21st
Pictured: The girls are still having a ball over in the North of France and enjoying the sun, food and family. While at home, I'm prepping an order for another retail store to take the 3D products, as well as doing some coding for the first time in ages...

The house is still kinda quiet with Anna and MH still in France, but I've been blaring rock classics around the place for the last couple fo weeks and binge watching TV shows that I've been meaning to check out for ages, so while I'd love to say I'm being really productive, it's mostly chillout this coming week now that I've finished another module for the college.

We got another retail store stocking our 3D printed products this week and I worked around the clock, or at least the 3D printer did, to get the order ready as quickly as possible, and this morning I delivered it so watch this space for the next shop selling my designs!

I'm already gearing towards the Christmas period and hoping that some of the festive and gift related products will do well including reusable gift boxes for small items and jewellery. I'm working on some other ideas but it's early days for them at the moment.

In the meantime, I've been meaning to work on a couple of useful projects for my home lab, so took a couple of days to do some vibe coding. For those not in the know, this is AI assisted coding as I'm very rusty, but after a couple of false starts I finished off a couple of useful pieces of webcode to help me around the house and with other projects, including a web based 2 factor authentication backup tool incase I ever lose my phone.

The plan is more of the same for this week and maybe divert to looking at some designs for Halloween for the Etsy store, but I want to make sure I don't neglect some of the more popular ideas and designs.

I'll also be marking some repeat assignments and papers, and doing some more coding, so nothing exciting planned, but at least I'll be kept fairly busy during the day.

14/07/2025

Top of Mind - July 14th
Pictured: A new product launched in our Etsy store in the form of a reusable gift box. The girls Whatsapp calling me from France. Delivering anther order to one of the retail stores, and the temperature spiking upstairs in the house during the heatwave. 🥵

After 4 long weeks of evening classes, I've finally finished teaching for the summer, again. Assuming the college doesn't ask me to take on anything extra. Now I have the fun task of marking repeat assignments and exams, but hopefully this will mean some time to work on my own side projects for the next couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, Anna and MH are still enjoying the food, weather and fun over in France, but calling every day to check in and keep my spirits lifted. Anna is having a blast, despite occasionally missing home. Having her cousins there helps though, but reminds her sometimes why she's glad she doesn't have siblings.

I've been struggling a bit with the heat ove here, and in particular during the last few days with the heatwave, and on the top floor of the house there were times when the place went above 31 degrees which made sleeping difficult so my routine is all over the place at the moment. At least with nothing pressing to get up for in the morning, I can binge watch tv at night and crash during the day as needed.

Elsewhere I've been working on a couple of ideas and products for the little side business, with an eye towards Christmas and Halloween. The reusuable jewellery sized gift boxes will hopefully be a hit when the gift giving season starts, but for the moment I'm looking at designing things with a more local or Ireland focus.

We're still working on getting our products into more stores, and I've another order to drop off today into a local place and will follow up on some of the potential new places this week along with fulfilling some adhoc requests.

For the rest of the week I'll focus on odd jobs at home and hopefully get a little sleep if the temperature drops.

07/07/2025

Top of Mind - July 7th
Pictured: Anna & Marie-Helene have gone to France for a month to spend time with cousins and grandparents and enjoying the sun, fresh air and kids cocktails. Meanwhile, I'm working on products and useful items for the 3D business including a hurley mount...

The house is very quiet at the moment as Anna and MH are over in Calais for the month to spend time with the French side of the family. While Anna was initally sad to leave, she's adapted quickly and is having a ball with her cousins and enjoying the weather, the beach and the amazing food.

Marie-Helene took some of our products over with her to get some photos in the sunshine there and this has meant some great photos and reels on Instagram. The pace slowed down a little the last couple of weeks, so I'm keen to get pushing again this week to see about getting into more stores.

In the meantime I've also been working on some new products and ideas for the rest of summer and looking ahead to the halloween period which could be really interesting for the business if I can come up with some cool products.

For the house though, I've been doing some bits and bobs and creating things to make the place more streamlined, so you can see now a hurley mount in the hallway to keep Anna's gear off the floor, and I'm looking at making that design available too.

There's also some new posters and banners ready to go into the shops as 1 has asked, and hopefully now that we have them others might be interested, but for now I want to touch base with our existing retailers early this week to keep on top of them and ensure they're still happy.

Other than that, this week I'm continuing to teach an entrepreneurship module at the NCI and will be taking a small break at the weekend to go back through my other modules' content to have it all prepared and updated for the new term in September, so no rest for me.

Also looking this week at getting stitches out after having some scar tissue removed from my face.

30/06/2025

Top of Mind - June 30th
Pictured: Another Anna centric week with the last day of school and everything that comes along with it. We've been comparing photos from day 1 of this year to her last day, plus we went from the apartment to the new house! She's also now been to space! :)

While I toil away at creating content and delivering evening classes, Anna has been having a ball between her play dates, school tour and the last day of term she's been more than ususally busy and it was so fun to compare the first day of school photo to the last day. (Bottom left).

On her last day, unlike most kids who would have asked for McDonalds or something like that, she wanted to have her celebration lunch in our local tapas place, Mi Casa where she sampled her usual favourites as well as some other items. Are we surprised that my girl has expensive taste???

She and MH got out on Saturday for her GAA family fun day while I spoke at an open day in the NCI, and we all met up in town later to catch a little bit of the Pride Parade and to get Anna a new camera before she goes on holiday to France for the next few weeks.

Elsewhere, as part of her membership to Crunchlabs, a Youtube based STEM program for kids, she got her selfie projected onto a satellite in orbit and a photo of that taken and beamed back down to Earth, so her face as been officially in space!

For this week I have another module to deliver as well as write very rapidly to be honest, while the girls pack their bags and get ready for their month in France. Anna is looking forward to heading over and seeing her cousins and grandparents, but also is apprehensive about leaving me for the summer, but I know she'll be distracted by all the activities over there.

We've also managed to get our 3D printed products into a 3rd shop this week, with Manor DIY in Stoneybatter now stocking our keyrings and we've another couple in the pipeline. Hopefully we can keep this momentum up and really make this little enterprise work!...

23/06/2025

Top of Mind - June 23rd
Pictured: Anna's plants in the garden are starting to bloom. She and I took an Anna / Daddy day to go shopping and get lunch, while at home we prepared a new order for another shop we've got our products into. At the weekend Anna showed off her new styles.

Last week was a bit chaotic for me as, at short notice, I was asked to teach an evening class Monday to Thursday, and although it's a topic I'm familiar with I still had to scramble to create slides and notes for the sessions which kept me very busy.

This allowed Anna and Marie-Helene to get in plenty of trips out, shopping and several play dates in the house, so at least Anna was kept occupied while I worked, but the poor thing found the heat very trying at times.

To say thank you for her patience I took her shopping on Saturday afternoon since there was no acting class, and she picked up a new sun hat, some accessories, a book on Taylor Swift and we capped it off with lunch at Eddie Rockets. MH had some friends over in the evening so we disappeared and watched a movie until it was her bed time. :)

This week will be her last week of school, so there's plenty of activities organised as well as her school tour before the break and prepping for her trip to France to visit grandparents and cousins.

Meanwhile, we've managed to get our 3D Print Dub products into another shop in town, so watch this space as you may be seeing more of our items about the place over the next few weeks. We had a small initial order which was delivered this morning so hopefully they'll do well and we'll get a bigger one next time, but all in all it's going better than expected.

Again this week I'll be teaching in the evenings, and it looks like I'll have another module for the next 2 weeks also, so on top of correcting assignments, exams and dissertations I'll be kept out of trouble for the most part.

For the rest of this week though I'll be finishing off content and working on some new, unique product ideas.

16/06/2025

Top of Mind - June 16th
Pictured: Had a good presence at the Stoneybatter Festival for the 3D Print Dub side hustle, from signs, to plaques and some designs I did for them. Meanwhile Mammy-Johanna visited to catch up with Anna giving myself and MH a chance to get out for a drink.

The focus for the week was on the 3D Printing Business and I was busy making posters, banners and designs for the Stoneybatter Festival. From providing their volunteers with badges to designing some posters for the barriers and entrances as well as creating plaques and prizes for the events, we managed to have a pretty visible appearance at the weekend's festivities.

We had a pickle crown for one of the food competitions and a best road plaque for the 'Pride of place' event and I rushed a pull up banner to have in the background on the stage for parts of the day. Hopefully this will help get the word out about the local products that we're offering. :)

To help out with the weekend, Mammy-Johanna paid us a visit and Anna got to show her around as well as watch the 'Woofstock' dog show during the festival. It also meant that myself and Marie-Helene could get out for a quiet drink on Friday night, catch some of the artwork in the pubs and have a bit of time to unwind.

The week wasn't without other work though as I've been asked to deliver an evening course over the next 2 weeks at very short notice. Thankfully it's very similar to some of the other modules I've taught, so there's a small distance to cover, but with it being condensed to 10 days, I'm scrambling to get content written and ready for Monday evening.

The downside to teaching evening courses is that it does mean less opportunity to get out and enjoy the longer evenings, but it's always good to have another string in my bow and it does mean that I'll still have time during the day to get out and about assuming I get all the material finished. Did also missed a few of my gym days this week so this will be fixed this coming week.

Address

Smithfield
Dublin

Telephone

+353856969133

Website

http://www.andyssmartlife.com/, https://linktr.ee/andyssmartlife

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