The Seamus Fox Podcast.
This podcast has been created to share real life experiences from inspiring people in all walks of life, those who have engineered change in their own lives through a shift in thinking and beliefs. I want to share my own journey and have others share theirs so that it can help inspire others to crete the internal changes thats needed to create long lasting life changes.
The Seamus Fox Podcast.
Navigating the Challenges of Entrepreneurship. Ryan Williams.
This episode dives into Ryan Williams’ inspiring journey from his early life influences to becoming a successful entrepreneur in the healthcare and tech sectors. Ryan shares his experiences in scaling businesses, investment strategies, and the importance of resilience in the face of challenges.
• Ryan's background and early influences shaping his entrepreneurial spirit
• The growth of his healthcare company from 47 to 1,900 employees
• Introduction to Kinsia and its mission in talent management
• Creating the AMP incubator in Derry and its significance
• Insights on angel investing and the risks involved
• The balance of health, fitness, and mental resilience as a business owner
• Overcoming challenges and the dangers of contentment in entrepreneurship
• Thoughts on leadership and the importance of relationships in business
Don't miss out on this episode's rich insights and engaging discussion!
guys, welcome back to the podcast. I'm looking forward to speaking to today's guest, mr ryan williams. Ryan, welcome to the podcast thanks, seamus, looking forward to it same as that, ryan, for people that are listening in and don't know who you are, can you give us a description of who you are and what you're involved in?
Speaker 2:um, god, it's always hard to give a kind of a 30 second overview of what I get up to because, um, I've adopted the methodology shaming, so I've have as many irons in the fire as possible and something might actually just work, you know. So, um, it's complex. Look, I've been self-employed for about the last, oh god, the last 13, 14 years. I took that leap, um kind of around just as I was turning 40, um, uh, and essentially I have a number of key strands of what I do Myself and business partner Doogie Adams. We grew a healthcare company, home care company and home care tech company from about 47 staff back about 11 years ago into a business now employing around 1,800, 1,900, doing about $40,000 of home care per week and a whole range of kind of innovative tech services. That business has grown to about a 42, 43 million pound business, recently taken in some investment as well. So that's probably that's a good portion of my professional life and keeping that particular beast going in the right direction fairly challenging. But on top of that, a couple of other kind of key strands. We have a business called, a business called cancia, myself and a guy I worked with about 20, 25 years ago in, uh, in, actually in grafton recruitment. Uh, graham morris and I, we set up cancia, which is a talent management business. We do a lot of work in helping companies to understand what makes really good talent attraction and retention and we do a lot of work for enterprise ireland in that scheme as well and that as well, and it's just great.
Speaker 2:Just the two of us 50-50 type split grew up from nothing, grew up from an idea, a concept. We didn't really like commercial recruitment and we wanted to do something a little bit different that employs now what? 12, 13 people. Then we have the AMP in Derry, which you're very familiar with. The AMP in Derry was the first privately funded incubator and accelerator in the Northwest. So over my past 10, 15 years of self-employed I wanted space similar to Armabas in Belfast, to Porter Shed in Galway, to Dogpatch in Dublin, and we just didn't have it here and there seemed to be a lack of kind of. You know well, we need to grant fund this, or we need to go outsource money for this or the government needs to help it. So I convinced three of my reprobate but beautiful friends to throw in some money uh, to do I didn't renovate a building in the old everton barracks site in derry and we built our first amp uh, right at the right, at the end of covid famous fun times, as you can imagine. Essentially, then, it's not about shitting ourselves for about six months while we spent a fortune on the refurb and buying the building and thankfully now that's kind of that's worked out really, really well. It's created a really buzz in the city over the last three or four years. We've actually had three our third, seventh figure exit from people who've got involved with the AMP, who've taken up space there, who've worked across our kind of AMP alumni programs and things like that, but was genuinely four lads, three and a few pound did it ourselves. I didn't get any grant support, I didn't ask for any grant support either, uh, but very proud of the what has become. And today I'm sitting in the second building there, um, the second building, which is, all you know, is already on its way to being fully occupied, and just expand that ecology even further.
Speaker 2:And then, as part of all that kind of incubator, accelerator stuff, I do a lot of angel investment.
Speaker 2:So I probably know about 14 or 15 angel investments that'll involve me putting in anywhere between 10 and kind of 50k of investment, a high risk, early stage, pre-seed, as they call it in the game. They love their terminology and angel investment and investment generally, uh. But we also do that with what I call the 12 dirty apostles. So I maybe have about 11 or 12 mates who then look at they say, ryan, you, you're going to throw some money into that. And I go, yeah, well, here can I throw in 5K or 10K or 50K, whatever it might be, and often that turns into Jesus. We're putting maybe 200 or 300K into that particular business, which is great, and so far that's worked out well. Two or three really good exits from those angel investments really healthy stuff, big multipliers, fun stuff, stress along the way. Two that have completely bombed, which is, you know, you've got to be willing to lose everything that you put into an angel investment, for sure. And then some which are ticking along nicely, but that's kind of.
Speaker 1:So pretty quiet. Then you're saying, it's just yeah yeah, sort of pretty quiet.
Speaker 2:You need to get your ass in gear.
Speaker 1:Man, You're not really up to much it. Yeah, yeah, Sort of sort of pretty bad.
Speaker 2:You need to get your ass in gear, man, you're not really up to much. It is funny, some days you're just torn in 30 different directions, but I seem to have a really strange brain that can compartmentalize stuff. Yeah, I don't really get knocked too easy I take, I take criticism on board and things go badly and it you badly and it you know it hurts me for a day or two and then it gets, probably psychologically, probably, quite dark.
Speaker 1:But I tend to put it in the box, bury it very deep and never really look at it again, you know, but brilliant, um, the incubator. That place itself is a really beautiful spot, but there's so much here, ryan, I love to dig in there, but with every guest I always try and get a wee bit of an understanding of how this all kind of happened. So take me back, ryan, like where, like where did you grow up? What were those early inspirations? Like, what were the early challenges? Like, what was it like as a young Ryan growing up and where was that?
Speaker 2:It's probably not a typical kind of entrepreneur type track record in terms of where I ended up. So mom and dad were two special needs teachers. So I had a very warm, very supportive childhood for sure, supported across sport, athletics, cross-country swimming, all that kind of great stuff. We did a lot of that kind of stuff and competed at a fairly high level. Parents were quite different. Mom ended up being a head teacher of the special needs school.
Speaker 2:A real driving force would run through a wall still would in her mid-70s, would invade Ukraine if she thought it would be helpful. So that's the kind of personality you're dealing with there. Dad very much dealt with the school leavers within special needs so he could build or create anything from nothing and our house was examples of that a real creative, innovative mind, but, as he would admit himself, the worst commercial mind you'll ever see. So Dad would have, for example, give you an example he built a long before plastics really did did this, but he built a device for transporting pigeons. That's just they were, they were, they were using wicker baskets which were yeah I'm thinking dad made the first fiberglass one of those right.
Speaker 2:He went into a range of other uh boxes for transporting pets called trans pet right great brand at the time. But whenever I broke down just how much time and labor he was putting on all those materials and everything else, each one was probably costing him about three quid, you know. So it was brilliant at doing things and inventing things, built his own cars, all that kind of stuff. So I suppose you have that kind of parental influences. It was quite, quite healthy, to be fair, and we lived. We moved out into the country when I was about 11, 12, which I found just amazing. We had about 11, 12 acres. We had amazing. We had about 11, 12 acres. We had a few sheep, chickens, a few cows every now and again, all that kind of great stuff. So it was a. It was a pretty good childhood. It was honest. He had at school, was bright, was articulate, got a fair bit of bullying at school and whatnot. That made me probably, uh, fairly robust and resilient and it probably had a profound impact on my later life of what bullying feels like but what you can do with it.
Speaker 2:In terms of application. I loved university, went to Queen's University to study law. So it's not a typical route for an entrepreneur. Loved law, absolutely loved it. Did a master's in criminology and criminal justice but loved the kind of maturity that university brought and the freedom that it brought, the autonomy that it brought. Joined the water polo club Eventually became that it brought. Joined the water polo club. Eventually became president of the Queen's Law Society, which sounds very grand. Former president of Ireland Murray was a former chair of that particular or president of that particular group. Bishop Eames, I think, was like the president of the Law Society of Queens and then Ryan Williams, which just looked ridiculous because the only thing I was good at was organising drinking sessions for students's, why I got probably the most popular one there yeah, it was probably.
Speaker 2:I was occasionally humorous, right, so I think that's why I get in. So I want to downplay that significantly, because I then didn't go into law at all. What did law teach me? Uh, laws are very interesting. Discipline teaches you to consume lots of information quickly and form an opinion based on the evidence, et cetera. But then, more importantly, it's actually a sales degree. So how do you take that opinion and sell it to an audience? That's what law essentially is, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:That discipline and technique and the ability to spend long periods of time analyzing and understanding information, forming the opinion and then selling. It is essentially how I built the rest of my career. And it's useful.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, come out of university, went into economic development, went to work in Irvingstown, initially in community development. That was when the Good Friday Agreement was just signed, as I was coming near the end of my university career in 1995, 1996. The troubles were still there but it was kind of, you know, petering out a little bit. There's still a bit of conflict and stuff, but it was good. Um, went to urbanstown, worked with, uh, probably the most unique group of individuals, uh, that ireland has ever seen.
Speaker 2:So the urbanstown first and marcus trustees, seven catholics, seven protestants, in representative of the denominations of that little town of about two and a half thousand people who were formed in 1908. Right, the only thing is dovey didn't age that great, it was all men, it was all businessmen. Yeah, that particular group, but that's what it was like in 1908. They brought electricity to the town, they brought social housing to the town, but it was all a non-profit, it was all charitable in nature. So really positive stuff. You'd like one methodist, a baptist, two presbyterians, seven roman Catholics and they worked together for 100 years. Right, really, before I came.
Speaker 1:Very uncommon.
Speaker 2:Very uncommon, but Irvingstown a real exemplar of what's possible in terms of proper cross-community engagement and progress. So that was involved. We built like 30,000, 40,000 square foot of Enterprise Park. We built Northern Ireland's first healthy living centre. All the grants were around at that particular stage so I became adept at writing tenders and pitching for for support and finance and stuff like that. But essentially we created a really vibrant business with holds. It holds loads of different layers and income but a great bunch of people. We formed itech uh ormstein trustee enterprise company. We brought some of those trustees thankfully brought in some gender balance, uh, some ethnic balance as well in terms of that, and just took it to its next stage of its development. But I had four years there. There were the best four years you could ever ask for in terms of that early formative career type stuff it was great.
Speaker 2:And then I moved to dairy. I became, I got a, I got a non-executive role in the western health services trust on their board, and then, same time, roughly, I got offered a job with as director of business in the community in dairy. Um, why, that was great. I didn't really like the organization very much and I still wouldn't celebrate business in the community too much, but from a career development point of view I thought it gave me good exposure to bigger corporates so, which I really enjoyed. So, uh, you know, the chair at that time was um the, the top guy in dupont and invista, pat carl, great guy. He was my chairman in the northwest with some great companies here to work with, like the sea gates and and all the rest. But I learned a lot more about corporate culture and some of the things they were up to um, so got a lot out of that um, which is really interesting.
Speaker 2:And I love dairy, I love the people, I love the city, uh, and it was very much an intrinsic part of that economic development kind of ecosystem at the time and I learned a lot about what organizations are actually doing stuff here that's of any great benefit in terms of building wealth and, to be honest with you, I didn't see much of that. I saw a lot of people scrabbling around for the crumbs off the grant table Some of them doing decent work, to be fair but I didn't see any sustainability or longevity in it and I saw a lot of finger pointing and I saw a lot of people feeding off the system. Now, this is 20 years ago, to be fair, and I don't like that. That's not great for cities and I saw a lot of complaining. It's always the chip on the shoulder which I've talked about before.
Speaker 2:And sometimes it's fair and sometimes it's not.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's fair and sometimes it's not, yeah, and at the same time, it doesn't solve anything, because the only thing that solves it is yeah, you're getting off your ass and doing something about it 100%.
Speaker 2:So that was grand. I got kind of sprung off with business in the community. It was a focus on corporate social responsibility, but often it was just companies giving tokenistic kind of nods to corporate social responsibility, knowing that we get the headlines and the promotion and stuff like that. And there was a. There was a a lesser percentage maybe you know 40 percent who were genuinely wanting to make some change and do the right thing and for the right reasons and all that kind of great stuff. So probably a little bit disenchanted.
Speaker 2:One of my lifelong career mentors was a lady called edie mcginley. She was a permanent secretary in department at the time, also chief executive of I. You remember Aidean from those particular days. Aidean was a lifelong career mentor and is still in touch with me. She still dropped me a note to say I like what you've done with that there, but maybe you need to think about this. So she's still in touch. She'd be one of my five that I would go to in terms of really guidance over the years. And she said look, ryan, we've got this thing called Rediscover Northern Ireland.
Speaker 2:Northern Ireland had been selected as part of the Smithsonian Book Life Festival in Washington DC and I want you to come over and raise 200,000 of a private sector sponsorship for this program in DC. And I went Jesus Aidy, that's great. She goes, we'll get you out of BATC for a year. I'll pay for this comment. Come into the department and get going. Atc for a year, I'll pay for this economy. Come into the department and get going. That was a fabulous year, right? So I was back on board at DC.
Speaker 2:I was reporting into the then chairman of the Ulster Bank who was. I actually learned a lot from A guy that was very unpopular in some quarters but I learned a huge amount from. He knew exactly what he wanted. There was nowhere to hide when he wanted to see you. I ran across Belfast at Pelt from the Interpoint buildings which were then Decal was headquartered in. But in terms of no-nonsense business corporate landscape we did pitches from everybody to Titanic Quarter. You see Titanic Quarter now that company was just setting up. You see titanic quarter now that company was just setting up. We got them prime position and union station to build a map of what that would look like selling the real estate opportunities into the american market and union station as part of the smithsonian football festival. Check for 50 grand. Uh, ulster bank would check for 50 grand. They launched the george best fiverr, if you remember that, as part of that?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's right yeah so like we raised just over a million dollars of corporate support, well above expectation. But of course, as part of that I made loads of connections. I met Terry Brannigan then from the resource group, another character I've learned a huge amount from in terms of entrepreneurship and business generally. And at the end of that year Terry says why don't you come and work for me? And I said you know what? Why not? Yeah, went into resource group. Big facilities management company was in a buy and build strategy.
Speaker 2:I think Terry ultimately had raised somewhere in the region about 140, 150 million to make four or five acquisitions Top of the Celtic tiger. Now, keep that in mind. Right, Things were flying. Right. Banks were just giving money. You know, hand over fist. A lot of it was quite silly. So I became I giving money, you know, hand over fist, a lot of it was quite silly. So I became uh I think the negative term was called I became terry's bag man. Uh, terry was probably described me as his right hand because I was really good at writing tenders and doing pitches. That was also terry's strength. A very creative guy, a very dynamic guy, um, uh, I'm sure terry would be great for your podcast at some stage because he's very entertaining, but one of the best those guys I've ever met. Like everybody weaknesses like myself as well but those particular things were very strong and he brought me in there.
Speaker 2:It was there for about two and a half three years and it was just a train ride and I loved every second of it. We won the biggest security contract in the history of Ireland. It was a 65 million pound contract. I spent eight months writing that tender. We won the biggest security contract in the history of Ireland. It was a 65 million pound contract. I spent eight months writing that tender and doing the pitches and doing the work on it. Lost about three quarters of a stone, worked 80 hours a week. It was just epic. I loved every second of it. A lot of sacrifice, a lot of personal sacrifice, but just loved it.
Speaker 2:Terry then left the business and a kind of an aggressive team come in from another corporate to take over the business. At that stage and it was just a complete misfit for me and the guy the community was leading. It didn't like him, he didn't like me very much. Um, I knew the writing was on the wall because I was so close to terry at that particular time, um, and I just thought he was an idiot and he thought I was cheeky and arrogant and brash. And he was probably right at that stage because I was the guy who was coming in with maybe 100 million point of sales secure and I thought, well, I'm indispensable and it's a great lesson for me you're not indispensable, no matter how successful you think you are right because other people have egos at other, different things that drive them and different ideas of what a culture should be like, and that was a misfit.
Speaker 2:So at that time, look, I was headhunted. Thankfully it was. It was good time I was headhunted to go into grafton recruitment, uh, by a gentleman called jason kennedy I still very fond of jason. Um, and jason just gave me a chance in grafton. He says come in here as a business development director. Uh, I want you to grow the business internationally, I want you to win his big corporate accounts. And that started my career off in Grafton and I started there on the same day.
Speaker 2:I actually brought somebody with me from Resource, which wasn't that popular at the time, julie Cordner. He'd been with me now for like 20 years. I've taken her to pretty much everywhere I've went and is still with me in Connected Health, thank God she's a bit basically I would call her. She's more like a big sister but more like a mother. If I was perfectly honest, she's just too young to be my mother, but just great in terms of like that kind of support, infrastructure and the right person to get you but compliment your skills quite well. So went into Grafton, had a great two or three years. There met Graham Morris, who we formed Kinsia, with which because we just gelled Another guy we've been together 16, 17 years. Right, that's different. Yeah, working, but we've never had a crossword that's the guy you're in partnership with and can see it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we met at that particular time. Then it was headhunted to go to cpl. Grafton got a little bit edgy as well. Crash cam nobody was hiring uh, people got very edgy. Grafton was kind of sold to a group of investors that we went, oh jesus, this may not be good.
Speaker 2:And again, just headhunted at the right time, went to work for on her integrity and in cpl, one of the the most well-established, famous entrepreneurs we have in ireland. Um, she was an absolute class, actually still is an absolute class act, and what she did in cpl was phenomenal and, again, very different model of leadership. Uh, suzanne dolan was my md in that particular business and again that was doing the same thing. Again, grow the international business, make us more professional in terms of sales, collateral, win us stuff that we wouldn't have won, get on a round-earth flight every week, get out of here, go over to Poland, go to North Africa, go to the US and win business. And again, a lot of work there with the likes of the Googles, the HPs, the Microsofts, big corporate clients. That was my experience. And then I guess what pushed me over the edge was and this sounds arrogant- is.
Speaker 2:I just thought I could do it better and I was tired of working for other people. I just wanted to do my own thing and I was tired of traveling for somebody else and making all those sacrifices for somebody else. And I went are you not bright enough? With everything you've done your law career, you know, you've studied all your life. You were a complete nerd at school. Like is this it? You know, surely there's more in you. I'll be honest at the time people spoke to some said you're not hard enough for this yeah people.
Speaker 2:Some people said, well, there's nowhere to hide now, right. But most people went. People went, get on with it, right. And I always remember the people who went. I remember them both because both are motivational, and I set up my own recruitment business called Connected Talent. I was already a small investor in Connected Health and we built Connected Talent into a little business, became so good at recruiting for Connected Health. Connected Health eventually bought it. That was my first sale.
Speaker 2:Right, it wasn't a huge sale but it was good. It was good. It was chunky money at the time. But more importantly, it actually was the engine room that grew connected health substantially from 40 to ultimately now 1800 people. So that recruitment engine room was really important in those early years at connected health.
Speaker 1:What were the things that ran like making that move from um, being on a job and being recruited and then kind of going out on your own. I suppose for people that are listening most of the people listening to this podcast are business owners and business leaders or people thinking about entrepreneurship. What are some of the misconceptions or the things that people aren't aware of when they go into entrepreneurship and creating their own thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's a few things. First of all, it doesn't have to be you put everything, you push all your chips forward, right? You don't have to remortgage the house. You don't have to put your entire family at risk. There's ways of doing this which are a little bit more gentle and safer.
Speaker 2:So people think you know to be an entrepreneur, you have to sacrifice or risk everything. You don't, right? So what I had was a small contract with CPL to continue to do consultancy services for a period of time. Right, it was very welcome. Right, very welcome. But they also wanted it, so it was a good kind of thing. I already had a client or two lined up because of good relationships with people and built those relationships up as well. So I knew there was going to be some revenue there in those early stages and I was phasing out of employment. So I think if you can phase out of what you're doing, if you can go from maybe five days a week to three days a week, maybe to two days a week, to a bit of consultancy work while you're building yourself up, most people, if you've been genuine about it, and have a good relationship with people.
Speaker 2:that's an easy way to do it, yeah. Building a side hustle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. But also work out what you need to survive, work out where you need to be comfortable. So from the moment I went self-employed I decided, look, I have to bring home 4,000 net, right? So I need to put 4,000 pound a month into that bank account to make sure all my mortgages payments you know kids are fine, all that kind of good stuff, and that was a big motivator for me. And I think there's maybe three or four times where I maybe went into, maybe three or four times where I maybe went into maybe a week into the next month before I could make that deposit.
Speaker 2:Right, but it was I was there thereabouts, yeah, and I did that for a couple of years, did okay, and then things started to pick up, right. Then things started to get a bit more chunky and some of the businesses that we're involved in Graham and I set up can see, and it's these things that happen early on, right? People say you make your own luck and, firmly convinced, you make your own luck. So we had this idea for Kinsia. All it was was a concept, right, just a concept, and a lovely PowerPoint, a lovely logo. And Kinsia was like was Latin for confident, right. So the yeah, the dickhead lawyer in me went let's go Latin, let's find something that sounds as if it might have been around for a while. It was an idea, right, and we had two words strapline about what it meant, and it was two words work, happy. So we wanted our clients to work happier, we wanted our staff to be happy, which that's it. It was just me and Graham pretending to be staff, right, but we had like 20 years experience in the talent game and the recruitment game, like both of us was 40 years experience, loads of case studies, loads of experience. And our first tender was to a public sector employer in the Republic of Ireland, the Mental Health Commission, and we really went in with the skin of our teeth, talked about our experience, wrote a reasonably good tender but were invited to pitch.
Speaker 2:Now, when Graham and I pitched in Grafton, nine times out of 10, we walked away with a win, but we had all the experience. In Grafton, nine times out of 10, we walked away with a win, but we had all the experience. Grafton, it was a hundred million pound turnover. We were zero and it was. If you watch that film, war Dogs, it was a bit like War Dogs. And we went in and did this pitch and the incumbent was bloody CPL, right, my previous employer. And they were coming in next and there's about seven of them. And it was just me and Graham, too bald even at that stage, right, middle-aged white man, right, doing a pitch, right. We were like, oh god, jesus is gonna be rough. So we did our pitch and it was just so different. The mental health commission went we want you. Right. We thought that contract was worth a hundred thousand. Over four years the contract turned into about a million and a half.
Speaker 1:Do you think it would have been a difference if you had a new data to start going on to do that patch? Would there have been more right?
Speaker 2:now it's already more right now. Here was a funny thing. We had nothing at that stage, right, it didn't feel risky to us because everything was a bonus right, and we did bits of work here and there and we were doing a few wee projects, but it was like projects. But it was like this was our first big anchor client type thing and it was just just, it was just a game changer. And we literally come out of it and we looked up to make sure nobody was looking out the windows and we had a wee jig in the, in the middle of the one, straight in dublin. Go on here here. It was like at this time next year rodney type conversation. You know it was one of those. Yeah, so, and those will be, those will be wins like that. And then that starts to stack up a little bit. Um, uh, very lucky to get a again. It was really interesting.
Speaker 2:So jennifer nerf that you're aware of an elemental jennifer and I have been friendly now for 20 years. She knew me, she worked with me and for me in in business, in the community back then. So that was that relationship. She was working elemental, right. She said can you come in and give us a wee bit of advice here. I put a wee bit of investment in uh. But you know, seven or eight years after elemental, that was another exit right and I was on the board there. I was in the chair for a period of time, helped jennifer and leon get that to exit, um, and I went. There's something in this right, there's something in this journey and the way we do things and the way we value relationships, which you're a fan of as well. It's about the bloody relationships we build. Even the idea is secondary. Often it's the relationships that get these things done, and I think that's what I would say about the various things that I'm involved in. I'll put relationship first, idea second.
Speaker 1:So on that, ryan, there's a lot of things that you've done and you've done on a scale. You've done it at scale as an employee, and then you go on into your own entrepreneurship and you're doing it at scale there as well too. What are the differences then, did you see, between the people at scale and grow and the people kind of get stuck and they don't seem to scale and they just repeat the same processes?
Speaker 2:There's two things about that. There's two points I would make about that. Seamus, it's a really good question. So the first thing is people get to a point where they're content right. Contentment is dangerous.
Speaker 2:I think right Now some people are happy enough with that because they have a level of like okay, I'm getting my two holidays a year, I've got a nice car in the driveway, there's good food on the table, right. That makes me uneasy because I think that can be taken away really quickly In business. You could lose a client and that's done right, you're back to square one again, or COVID happens, right. So I think if you're not continually reinventing and adding to what you're doing it's like that kind of curve you know where you come up to your peak, right. If you don't reinvent again and go again, you're not adapting to the new environment, you're not taking advantage of the opportunities that are there. I think that contentment is a dangerous thing. Right, attempt is not peace. Right, being at peace with yourself and what you're doing is different. But getting content with your income, uh, in business I think, is a dangerous thing. That stops people from thinking about scaling further, right, um. The other thing is people don't know how to scale beyond a certain stage. Uh, paul, carl, a certain stage.
Speaker 2:Paul Carroll was another very senior director in CPL and he said look, not the 10 is hard. 10 to 30 is easy. 30 to 300 is hard, 300 on is easy right, because the way your company has to change and what you have to do to scale at those various levels is very different type of activity. The problem is with some founders. They run out of skill whenever they get to maybe 300. What do you do next? You know, yeah, and I think you have to learn, you have to relearn what you have to do in that new environment to get to the next level again, because the skills change. You might have been a team of three to get to a 10 million pound turnover, right. Yeah, 100 million, you might need to take a bloody 300. So how do you recruit the best talent? How do you retain it? How do you motivate it? What structure do you put them in? What support functions do you need? And often founders and entrepreneurs of other releases can't make that leap, so they get stuck is it true to say.
Speaker 1:Then, ryan because I hear this time again it's harder to run a smaller business than it is to run a larger business. Is that because you're obviously stuck in the day-to-day and doing a lot of the things that you can't remove yourself from then when you scale?
Speaker 2:Yeah, small to big, you're managing a different set of things. So you might've went from very hands-on that loved because you love doing it right, and you see this all the time in all types of businesses engineering businesses, even professional services where the lead partner feels that they have to be in every meeting. So that's a feeling on them to understand. I need to train my team and trust the team and give them autonomy and all those things and build a culture of trust, right and really good quality focus on training and skills and development and things like that. So I don't think the stresses and strains are really any different.
Speaker 2:If you asked the bad example, elon Musk or Bill Gates, bill Gates is a really good example. So Bill Gates said he never relaxed in business until he had 12 months revenue in the bank. So if the whole thing went tits up, he could pay people their salary for a year until they could get another job. So if you believe the hype, that's what bill gates thought. I want to give absolute confidence that I can give people a year, right, um, so I don't feel guilty about what happens in this particular business. So even he was haunted, and that's each. Microsoft was huge.
Speaker 1:Even he was haunted by those types of things yeah, and I think even doing that like from a logical point of view, automatically gives you that emotional stability as well. Yeah, if you have that sitting in the bank, you've got that emotional stability because you're not getting the volatility and the fluctuations in your own mind. That gives you then the mindset they go and grow when they go and acquire new business, et cetera, where maybe a lot of the times there's that month to month hand to mouth. A lot of the times it just keeps you in fear and anxiety.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and I think that's right. Fear fear, you know, tends to paralyze. Fear and anxiety paralyze, so it's worse than you can't make decisions of any description. Even you know you're here to make say no or yes to something, because you're essentially that paralyzed type of approach. The other thing I'm saying about scaling too.
Speaker 2:It's much harder to scale businesses that are that are people orientated, right, so connect the house. Good example of that 1800 people right, there's 1800 really good stories, but also can be 1800 problems, right, uh, but equally, the only way you can expand something, a business which is involving delivering home care, is to recruit more, so you have to focus on the engine room that does that and the apparatus that does that. Um, that's why I'm more conscious on the angel investment. If you're investing in something which is less people dependent, if it's on a tech platform that can scale, um, if it's easy, to easy to build, size and scale without being fully reliant on people, that's a better investment in my book these days, because that's the way things are going, we're going to have to keep that finite kind of physical resource for more specific things as AI and automation develops and things like that.
Speaker 1:So what were some of the big challenges that you faced then at the start and really growing from, like you said, was it 40-odd staff to 1,800? What were some of the big challenges that you faced then at the start and really growing from, like you said, was it 40 odd staff to 1800? What were some of the challenges that you experienced, ryan, as you start to go through that scale like what were some of the big things that you thought is this even worth it anymore, like? And then how do you kind of deal with those challenges and move past them again? Because what I'm kind of hearing as well too, in this scale is it's really really important to have a vision, like a bigger vision.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean Dickie and I were very much more talented than Glove over the last 10 years and we would spend a lot of time talking about some of the problems we were challenges we were dealing with. I think it's really good to have a co-founder right, having somebody who thinks differently, who sees the world a different way. Dickie's a self-made entrepreneur from west belfast. Um, I'm a middle class kid who went to set the law school right, we shouldn't work right what we do right, and I think you know our schooling system, our education system, uh, I think, feels different types of mindset and how people think and how they learn and stuff like that. So people who are vastly more intelligent than I were not successful in school. Right, but those people meet later, if we're lucky, in the commercial world where really good things can happen. So if you look at some of the stuff that happened in connected health and early stages, once we were diggy won't mind me saying this we were about three weeks from going bust. Right, we ran out of cash. We paid a million for the original acquisition, which was the 47 staff, and we had seven local investors involved in that and people we knew really and people we didn't want to let down but we were running out of cash and why. We were built on the scale and taking on ours and learning the bloody industry which we really no real experience of. Um, and diggy diggy.
Speaker 2:At that stage I'd owned a series of fish and chip shops in Belfast. Manny's Fish and Chips Great Fish and Chips in Belfast, if you call it that and he drove around those fish and chip shops and collected 13 grand in cash I think this was in our first year, maybe our second year of operation lifted that cash to pay the staff, right. So that's how close it was to the wire. That's to the wire. That's kind of you know, like that's how you resolve pressure, right, that's an alternative solution. You know, um, and we still laugh about that, tell that story today. But if you look at you look at something like home care, your biggest concerns, in that you're either one headline away or one regulator report from being shut down anyway. So you know, things happen, incidents happen, occurs.
Speaker 2:A difficult business. It involves people, things can go wrong easily. But navigating all of that and dealing with some of the tough issues we've had to deal with and around regulation, around commissioning and all that kind of great stuff. That's probably the things that kept us awake at night. Uh well, you tried to go into gb at one stage. It was a unmitigated just wasn't, wasn't a great result. Uh, closed the operation down after about 18 months two years per outcome. You learn, learn from that, of course, but they're all you know what I would call good slaps in the jaw. That can be quite healthy in terms of maybe not experiencing it again because it hurts and you don't like it, and you know. Try and learn from it and don't go down that rabbit hole again without giving it some serious thought, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as David Goggins says, it's building calluses in the mind.
Speaker 2:Brian Goggins says it's building calluses in the mind. Yeah, it's a great quote for him. You know I love his stuff. But yeah, I think you've got to remember the trauma. Don't let it drive you, but remember it, because they're important lessons along the journey, you know.
Speaker 1:Mm 100%. So in all of that, let's look at a couple of different things. Ryan, You've got a lot going on. You've had a lot going on in terms of what you're moving through, and I know you're you're big into health and fitness as well, too. What are some of the things that you do, Ryan, to keep yourself sharp, to keep your mind sharp, like the specific habits that are non-negotiable for you, that make you a great leader?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I'm an okay leader, because other days I'm sure people wouldn't describe me as that. I think well, if you're doing what you're doing, yeah, so I think we can't really accept any form of yeah, recognition yeah, recognition, yeah, must be a dairy thing or an NI thing or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, look, you know I've talked about it before. I've done a couple of full distance iron men. I've done probably about seven or eight 70.3 at this age. I love triathlon. My young fella's on the irish squad, um, he's very serious into it at 17, um. So the triathlon stuff in the training stuff has always been part of my life. So it's always a pretty good swimmer, a pretty good runner, running at national level, certainly never at international level like my young fella.
Speaker 2:We spent our lives driving around europe and stuff in the summertime and things. But uh, I was. It was reasonably good. I always found that really good for keeping the mind cleansed right and also giving you some really good thinking time. Swimmers are are probably among the best sports people. If you can put a kid into a pool and make them swim up and down for hours and days and weeks and months at a time, looking at a single line at the bottom of that pool, right, the amount of thinking time in that and the amount of discipline to do it is substantial yeah I think swimming in particular I love open water swimming now, because I find it a bit more interesting than swimming down a pool.
Speaker 2:So I'll swim open water where I can. But the triathlon for me, I think is is probably has built an awful lot of resilience and really doing the full distance ironman, that's where you really learn what you're made of, because there is nothing left and it's what's left after nothing's left, uh, when you think you're going to die right on that. The last 5k of that, actually the last 5k is not the worst part of an ironman. The worst part is before you're halfway through the marathon, in my view. So you're maybe at a mile you know sort of mile 10 or 11 and you realize you're not even halfway through the marathon. After 180k on the bike, after a 3.8, 8.8 swim, right, and you're still not halfway through the marathon and you just want to die.
Speaker 1:And it's 32 degrees right so what are you pulling on at that time, ryan? Like what are you digging deep down into that?
Speaker 2:that kind of pulls you through those challenges I laugh about this to people, all the people who do it right. So people have different things. So if a business partner, one of the business partners in the ampere, kevin mcmackin, he's a great runner and just a double marathon, a good time and stuff, he thinks happy, positive thoughts, right, so he's into you know what the goggins say, for example. Or you know, uh, he get, he finds something positive right in the crowd or whatever else. I go the opposite direction, I go quite dark and I call myself all these useless fuckers of the day. What's wrong with you? Get up, wise up, catch yourself on. So when I go into that kind of pit, that cellar that's where and that tends to work.
Speaker 2:For me it's not particularly pleasant, but then none of it's pleasant. It's a place I don't really mind. I don't know. I was like I spent I was bullied pretty badly in school and some parts in Armagh I didn't enjoy school at all. I didn't like it and I think I got. I'm comfortable with being uncomfortable, if that makes any sense. And I did with me probably. I mean you're doing the more extreme kind of endurance events like Ironman and triathlon.
Speaker 1:Generally being comfortable with uncomfortable is a really good thing in business as well, because lots of the time you will be uncomfortable, you know and even on that, like just saying, like kind of going to that dark place, and it's often said, I know that the biggest motivator is often the, the pain, not the pleasure. You know the move away from pain. A lot of the times you're going through that pain and it's relieve that pain and get through it in some way and the other thing is this it sounds mad, but it's like I really want to see that person again.
Speaker 2:So I think about my son, I think about people in my life and I go, I want to have another conversation with them and you're not going to have the conversation where you said, no, I had to retire or I had to drop out of that race.
Speaker 2:That is not acceptable in my mind, right.
Speaker 2:So quitting is worse than dying, right, so just keep going.
Speaker 2:And I want to have those conversations, you know, and see those people again is a really good motivator and I think, yeah, again it sounds pretty dark, but it's what gets me through the worst of those kind of events. But, like there's been, there's joy to be had as well, there's funny moments, there's funny stuff and all of that. And I tend not to take myself too seriously in Ironman and triathlons and I've written quite a few race reports which are just taking the piss out of myself after strange visits to the bathroom and all that kind of great stuff and bikes that have to be removed from your backside after 180k of you know I hate cycling, by the way, so it's, you know, you've got to be a bit self-depreciating and all that kind of great stuff how do you see those disciplines in ryan um being directly applicable to business and for all our like maybe ceos and business owners and business leaders that are um listening in that could take those health and fitness disciplines and apply them to business?
Speaker 1:how do you see that directly impacting you in terms of your performance within business?
Speaker 2:you've interviewed a lot of people on the podcast and people you know generally I mean there's a different breed of founder and chief executive and stuff. Most of them are really fit and they're all into something right. So they, I think they see you, look at you, look at what tony robbins does in terms of what he does to keep himself physically fit and mentally fit before he does 12-hour stints on stage, right? So all the breath work, all the cold water plunging, all that kind of stuff. I do bits and pieces of that myself.
Speaker 2:I think if you're not doing that, I think you're destined for poor health outcomes. And what is the point of doing all this right If we can't enjoy our time on the planet for as long as possible? So I think this idea of living well longer but enjoying the journey, right. If you think it's all about I'm doing this to retire on a pot of 10 million quid, right, that's poor health outcomes, because by the time you get there, you have no knees left, you have no hips left, right you're, you're facing your second heart attack, your potential high stroke risk, all that kind of great stuff. What is the point? Um and I think people miss that sometimes they think you have to physically destroy yourself and mentally destroy yourself to be successful in business, and we both know that's just not great it's not good, you know yeah, 100 percent.
Speaker 1:Um, and it's so often the case and I see it as well too where, as you said, like it's it's a sacrifice, they have to sacrifice everything else to get to this end point. And as you said what, what, end point what end point?
Speaker 2:yeah, get to the end point and feel like a like, feel like shit and, as you said, you can't enjoy it yeah, I think, look, I mean, like I've said this maybe before and a few other things but like, I enjoy the climb. I love the view as well, right, but I love the climb. So some people think it's all about the view, it's all about getting to the top. You know, once I get there I've made it there's always another peak to climb, right, people think, and then I can relax when I get there, then you know, this idea that we can retire and drink margaritas on a beach is this idea of like the perfect retirement. I mean, you could do that for like two days, right, yeah, but then you go, my liver, I'm gonna vomit, right? So that's not a sustainable kind of view. So I think we all need to keep climbing in some form or other right through until we breathe our last, right? I genuinely do, um, so, because keeping that brain healthy and engaged and stuff yeah, I'm with you.
Speaker 2:100, I agree um, it's really, really important. The other stuff I do, I love I do a bit of cold water plunging. You're always kind of managing injuries in triathlon. So the minute really bad hip, really bad arm in terms of swimming and stuff, but that's. I'm 50 plus, so you're always. A good friend of mine said look, pain and triathlon goes hand in hand. You will always a good friend of mine said look, pain in triathlon goes hand in hand. You will always be sore somewhere. It just moves around. So you're always going to manage something and, just like business, you're always managing a problem or two of some description. Sports, very similar Triathlon. In terms of analogy, I think good business, kind of good business approach is people always say like does it ever get easier? I approach is people always say like does it ever get easier? I, I am convinced it does right. I convince success breeds more success and people want to be associated with success, so it becomes like a sticky magnet people are attracted to that and lots of people went.
Speaker 2:I've seen what you're doing there. Can I come in and have a chat to you about this and you go. Yeah, come on in for a chat. Always have time for a chat yeah like why close the door and people, I don't have time for that, I'm too busy. It's the worst thing you could do. It's terrible for you and it's terrible for the person who just wants 10 minutes. Your time might be a waste of time, but not to them yeah, 100 percent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really important but I think like, uh, yeah, I think that the whole idea of uh, so the cold water plunging, I like that in terms of managing kind of some of the things. Sorry, I was going to talk about an analogy. So, uh, triathlon, the swim, right, swim is the key thing. It's generally open water, it's a lake or a sea. Can be very choppy, can be very cold, can be very miserable, right, just like business can be. You're lined up on the shore and everybody's mass starts usually are the way it goes and everybody runs like fuck towards the water, right, well, everybody does. The clever ones don't, right? So don't always feel you have to be first in business. In the same way, you don't always be first into the water, right, because one of the biggest problems of sighting when you're swimming in that water is you can't really see very well where you're going, right, but the crowd in front of you are doing that hard work, so you only have to look up half as much, right? So let somebody else deal with the, with the shit, the elbows in the face, goggles getting ripped off, kicked in the arms and legs by other people all around you. Find your own path, right, navigate that, but learn from those in front of you. Why would you do anything else?
Speaker 2:And then what you find is, on the second half of the swim race and triathlon, you're in open, clean water where you can just set your own pace. A, you're in open, clean water where you can just set your own pace. A lot of those guys have had goggles ripped off and fall foul of the course and have swam the wrong direction, as often happens. Right, you're in your own course, on your own path, and I think when you get past all the killing matches people elbows in the face, stuff like that look, that's where you want to be. Then you can cruise and cruise, and business is a lovely place to be right, there's, there's always going to be challenges. It might be choppy, there's other things happening out there, but you're in charge of your own destiny, if you like, and I think that's where it. I still have some terrible days in business where you're going. Jesus Christ, I question my life choices. Why are we doing this? You know, why are we going down this particular rabbit hole?
Speaker 1:And I still do that, but most of the time I just love it, just love the ride, love it. I love that analogy. Man um ryan, you've had a lot of great mentors along the way. Who kind of stands out for you, and what is it that stands out for you about them? What did they teach you? What were the the traits that you maybe took from them and embodied into your own? Um business and life?
Speaker 2:yeah, look, there's a few people there that definitely there's probably four or five in total that I go. They had a profound impact on me. You know, I think if you have more than that right, you're probably too many. Right, you're listening to too much. Aideen had mentioned. Aideen McGinley is one of my favorite humans on the planet. Aideen, what you learn from eating was she will never say a negative thing about anybody, no matter how terrible they are. Right? Uh, unlike everybody else, she's met loads of terrible people. I'm quite sure she will always find the positive in somebody or something and focus on the positive right, and I went. Try and do that as much as possible. Right, we spend too much time pulling people down and dealing with negativity. I suppose, suppose you're just going. No, but they're really good at this. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Or whatever it might be, and I think that's really important. I think Doogie Adams Doogie does make me sound originally from Bala Murphy a lot of difficult, challenging times going up and all the rest of it in West Belfast throughout the Troubles and stuff like that. I think what he taught me was probably more about sometimes you've just got to go let it burn Right. Sometimes it's just beyond your control, it is what it is and you've got to shrug your shoulders and go, yeah, right, and it's quite refreshing. Yeah, your immediate reaction to fight or flight right Is just how we're wired. But if you can decide, look, we're not in the caves anymore, we're not wrestling and fighting a crocodile out in the forest, right, just go, nobody's down. We always think that this is life or death type stuff that we do in business when most of the time it's not so, chill out, relax, let's deal with the next, let's deal with something we can't control. That's over here.
Speaker 2:Terry had mentioned, terry Brannigan had mentioned. You know Terry had a lot of influence in my career and Jason Kennedy as well. Two really good salespeople, but really good salespeople in understanding, really always track back to the customer and the client. What do they want? If in business you can do that, I keep you know. Mbas and stuff like that are fine. I understand why people do it, but they don't actually teach people to think differently, particularly about the customer and clients. They just don't right. They don't give you that level of creativity and thought process. So how do you deliver something to a client that's genuinely better, different, adds value? But you've listened to them and you've responded to it and I think when you get that right no matter whether it's services or products or whatever you do I think you win. I just do, and I think that's a differentiation just in itself. And I think there's a few people who had a lot of influence on me. I'm trying to think who else?
Speaker 2:Anne Hardy, yeah, cpl. I don't know how true this story is right, but I'll quote it anyway. I think when Alan's in his early stages, she was actually in Grafton recruitment and I think she'd asked kind of the owners at that particular stage. You know, I built a huge part of this business here, maybe a little bit of equity or whatever it might be. This will all be probably proven to be wrong, but she didn't work in Grafton, that much I do know. And I think the guy said no or whatever. So she went off and built CPL. People don't even know CPL stands for Computer Placements Limited. Right, that was back in the 80s or whatever. It was Computer Placements Limited. And she built CPL into a billion pound company.
Speaker 2:Now Grafton grew to a big company it was about 100 million whenever I left, or something like that but she built a business 10 times that size right In Dublin. Right, it started off in it when there wasn't really an it industry, for god's sake, in the 80s, right. So people like her and I go. And she did it quiet, she just quietly. She knows exactly what she was doing. Uh, she built a really good team of people around her that compensated for the stuff she wasn't good at.
Speaker 2:So if you talk down today, even at some of our staff conferences a number of years ago, years ago, she would stand up and say just want people to understand, I hate public speaking. It is my monkey, I am terrible at it, I'm working on it, it's self-development, I'm really really bad at it. And this is the woman that builds a billion pound company telling her people that she's terrible at public speaking. That's refreshing for me. Refreshing for me. Don't lose sight of you. Know what you're good at, what you're bad at. Be honest about it, be self-depreciating where it's appropriate to be, so um and and also hire people that compensate or compliment you yeah are not the same as you, because we're all hiring people the same as us.
Speaker 2:We don't move the needle yeah, fantastic man.
Speaker 1:A lot of golden wisdom and sites there. Man, a lot of good nuggets. Ryan, before we go, uh, if you got a book to share like are you reading anything at the minute or if you got a favorite book that either is around kind of mindset, human behavior or business that you'd share with the people who's listening, um, yeah, I mean, there's a couple, there's a couple of good books that I I refer back to.
Speaker 2:Um, I'm not a great reader, right, which you might find surprising. Right, I was the law degree killed me, right? I read so much. I read so much academically and then so much in terms of business every day. I find reading for enjoyment problematic, but I do do a lot of podcasts and stuff like that if you want a really good, a good book about scaling.
Speaker 2:Uh, from good to great is a really really good book. Right from good to great um, what's the guy's name that has written that? It's a really good book, but it's all about scaling. There's some really good case studies in there. It's on audiobooks and stuff as well. That's a really good book to read. The other thing I like I'm more of a podcast guy, so Chris Williamson I love. I think his stuff I wouldn't be.
Speaker 1:I like some of it yeah, for me it's more about the scale of how he's actually grown, you know from a few years ago he's a billionaire.
Speaker 2:He's a billionaire doing, essentially you know, seminars which I just go. That is epic, like you gotta yeah but even Chris a few years ago.
Speaker 1:Chris from Long Island on the podcast yeah, where he has nice sitting down, tony Robbins house yeah.
Speaker 2:I love that. I also love his honesty about a guy that was very badly bullied at school and stuff too. There must be a theme on all this, you know. But I think he's a great guy. I like the questions he asks, I like his use of language and I like a lot studies, and much more so now than Stephen Bartlett. I don't listen to Stephen Bartlett really at all the area of a CEO anymore. I think it became probably overly, maybe overly commercial, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it got a bit gimmicky, didn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it became a wee bit it gets who outrightly contradicted each other and what I would call pure science at times. So, chris Williamson, really recommend that. But most of the learning, most of the learning, most of the inspiration I get is still from business owners, from founders, from people like yourself, people I meet who are on different kinds of journeys, and I think we don't often stop and maybe absorb as much of that as we can. We go to the kind of gurus and think they've got it sorted. When you peel back the onion and you speak to someone like Chris Williams is a great guy that'll tell you I don't have my life sorted Like struggles, for example, in terms of a partner in a relationship. I'll be very honest about that kind of stuff and you go well, he must be like he must have hundreds of millions in the bank, but that's not what life is right.
Speaker 2:And the people who've made their billions right are often really damaged, often unhappy individuals, and I think if you can't build successful companies and businesses and stay happy, what's the point? Yeah, what is the point? There's no achievement because you'll never be happy and I know loads of people who've built really successful businesses who God bless them will never be happy and they go. Well, it's all about I'm going to hand it over to the next generation and the next generation are gone. No thanks, right, because they've lived with that person for the last years.
Speaker 1:Often I'm spending that happy days yeah I'm gonna be a trust fund kid.
Speaker 2:That's the way to go. I think I'd have been a great trust fund kid. To be honest, you know I could have lived that lifestyle uh right.
Speaker 1:I've actually really enjoyed that podcast. Really enjoyed the, the conversation, so much wisdom and just your energy as well, too, in terms of your your mindset around business and scaling and just kind of how you think about it all. There's a lot on there for people to listen in to and get a lot of value from. So, ryan, if people don't know a wee bit more about you, where's the best place to find you?
Speaker 2:look, connect with me on linkedin. Uh, I'm there, I'm pretty active on linkedin and all the rest of it. My other socials are pretty terrible. I'm I'm still I'm 50 now, so I'm still on bloody facebook. So I'm getting started easing myself off that instagram though tiktok if you want to go and see try dad on tiktok, you'll see me there. More training orientated about how to feel as a triathlete and uh, and how to work with a on these training 25 hours a week and stuff like that. So that's always fun. But yeah, linkedin in terms of the commercial business stuff and connecting with me generally, that's the place to find me cheers rent.
Speaker 2:I appreciate the chat man thank you, thanks for all your work, all good.