Founder and event director of Pendulum Summit, the world’s leading business and self-empowerment summit specializing in maximizing individual and business.
Frankie Sheahan was always passionate about personal development. Never a bookworm, as a young man he nevertheless devoured cassette tapes by Tony Robbins and Tony Quinn, intrigued by the concept of creative visualisation; referred to as mindfulness today.
As time passed, he worked through an expanding library of works on both business and sport, consistently finding a common vein that linked the two disciplines through resilience, perseverance and self-belief.
He soon found his passion in rugby and became a professional, representing Munster and Ireland. He won several major tournaments under the guidance of world-renowned coaches, and played alongside some of the best players in the game.
His career came to an end, however, in 2009, curtailed by injury at the same time the world economy fell to its knees. Frankie, alongside his wife and business partner, Norma, had reared five children and invested all of their savings in property in order to secure a pension for his family when he retired. Property prices had tumbled in some places by up to 70%, however, and after lengthy litigation Frankie went bankrupt.
Property prices dropped in some places by up to 70%, however, and after lengthy litigation with his sole creditor Frankie went bankrupt, despite his negative equity standing at only €500 thousand. To this day he maintains that if his creditor had given even a 12 month period this would have been flipped to positive equity, but he was never in a position to repay the €3 million bullet payment, hence the consequences.
Just prior to this, he and Norma decided that both they and the nation needed to assume a more positive and upbeat attitude. Backed by family, they founded Pendulum Summit in mid-2013, with the initial theme of “getting Ireland back on track.” Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, it featured profound wisdom from inspiring minds, who showcased how they achieved mastery in their respective fields.
Its maiden year say 600 delegates attend, a figure which rose to over 7,000 across two days in 2018 and saw them host speakers including Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, Jo Malone, Baroness Michelle Mone, Robin Sharma, Randi Zuckerberg and Sir Richard Branson.
Frankie exited bankruptcy in April of 2018, enabling him to take Pendulum Summit, now the world’s leading business and self-empowerment summit, to the next level, bringing the event to New York. Many locations tried earnestly to bring the summit to their city, but for Frankie and Norma, New York embodies the resilience, tenacity and can-do spirit that Pendulum Summit strives to epitomise.
Our mission as an organisation is to spread this movement across the globe. Pendulum Talks, an online platform showcasing the best of our previous speakers, underlines this ambition, enabling delegates to incorporate the wisdom from previous summits into their daily lives.
For Frankie, learning from the minds that inspired Pendulum Summit’s many delegates helped him to earnestly love what he did, but his greatest lessons were derived from the peers he spent time with at each summit. As senior delegates from the top organisations on earth, they all lead inspiring lives of their own; while wholeheartedly believing in our mission.
