Your Pillar For Growth

so my name is ron williams investor and

entrepreneur what i’m going to try to do

today is give you a flavor for how i

operate in business how i grow business

businesses how i develop people

i’m going to talk about two things

really first of all i’m going to give a

quick piece on leadership and what i

think is important in terms of being a

leader

and second of all the kind of core

values that i utilize to give people

purpose both myself and other people and

businesses i invest and get involved in

at the tropical age of 46 i’m at that

stage where i realize what i’m good at

and probably what i’m not too good at

and one is management i’m really pretty

terrible sometimes at managing people

not good at giving lists of to-do lists

and things like that what i do think i’m

reasonably good at is leadership and

giving people that sense of purpose as

i’ve mentioned

and the core values that come with this

built around my pillar model i’ll talk

about in a moment or two

but first of all in terms of leadership

what i’d like you to do in your head is

just close your eyes and create a

virtual sheet of paper in your mind

and i want you to think about um all the

great leaders that you work for right

across your career that you’ve met in

life or even people from history so if

it’s the churchill type figures or

whatever it might be and on the

left-hand side of that piece of virtual

paper in your mind i want you to write

down everything you thought that made

them a great leader so maybe it was they

were charismatic maybe they were strong

maybe they were passionate things like

that so in your mind just think about

that later and write down everything you

loved about them

and then take the other side of that

piece of virtual paper in your mind and

then think about all the behaviors that

you maybe didn’t like very much they

were a little bit arrogant maybe they

were selfish um maybe they were rude

sometimes and write your list on that

side as well

now what i want you to do is take that

virtual piece of paper turn it right

down the middle and just keep the piece

on the left and do that

okay that’s my the best advice i can

give you in terms of leadership

being a good leader involves many things

but i always think you need a set of

core values that determines who you work

with who you invest in and who you

develop and grow and for me it’s very

much based around my pillar principles

so what does pillar stand for

p is for passion

i is for innovation

l is for likability second l is for

loyalty a is for amplification and r is

for relentless and i’m going to take you

through each of those now individually

p is for passion

if you can’t get passionate about your

business idea or the people that you

work with you’re always beaten i feel

before you actually start and being

passionate about what you do and who you

are and where you’re from is critically

important

the passion for me is really interesting

because i spent 25 30 years in what many

would call pretty steel industries and

facilities management in recruitment

into home car and things like that

what i found in terms of becoming more

passionate about those is a very simple

way of helping to do that

all three of those industries were

entries that ran aground on a ship

just off the edge of an island 25 30

years ago and what you find when you

enter those particular type of

industries is people might move the deck

chairs around a little bit but they

don’t realize that the whole ship is

just rusting rusting into the sea

what i like to do is get off that ship

get into my little rowing boat go over

to the island and start from scratch and

by building from the ground up and

developing your solution in that

particular space from the ground up

that’s where you can get truly

passionate about where you’re going who

you are and what you got to do

is for innovation my innovation for me

means many different things but i’ve

always found in the businesses that

we’ve grown over the last number of

years it’s really based on what i call

the three-legged mugging stool and

innovation has to focus on three things

the three t’s training talent and

technology now each of those things in

themselves if you don’t give enough time

enough focus on that like the

three-legged stool it will fall over

first of all you’ve got to find the very

brightest and best people to build

around your team and that brings a piece

of innovation with it if you like

second training so training is really

important if you don’t have the skills

in your organization you’ve either got

to go out and find them or you’ve got to

build them within your own teams and

i’ve always been much more successful in

building the skills and confidence and

confidence of the people around me than

bringing in new talent so you’ve got to

get that training piece right you’ve got

to innovate in that particular area

and then finally technology itself and

it doesn’t have to be the the cutting

edge technology of the moment it can be

something that’s tried and tested it can

be around logistics there’s loads of

different types of technology in that

particular space and it doesn’t always

need to be stuff that you innovate

around yourself as well

in our healthcare businesses we’ve lots

of different really interesting and

challenging projects on there around

incontinence management around

medication management but often what i

feel in terms of innovation is if we can

do one thing better than we did the day

before well then we’ve innovated and if

you can build that into the dna of an

organization and into your workforce

whether it be a carer or a cleaner or

whether it be a rocket scientist if you

can do one thing every single day better

you will ultimately succeed

first deal is also for likability

likability is a really strange thing for

me so you can never be likable to

everyone but you should try to be

likable to as many people as possible

and that’s not to be psychopathic it’s

really just to be nicer about how you go

about your daily life

the number of people i’ve met in

business and elsewhere that are just not

likable is sometimes truly exhausting

but if you’re going to build people into

your team to grow your business to grow

your your workplace workplace or

whatever it might be what you’ve got to

do is have that likable aspect of who

you are

i think shows like the dragon’s den and

the wolf of wall street and those sorts

of films and series and things like that

often give the wrong feel for what

business is like and this idea of this

antagonistic type of environment where

people have to answer really difficult

questions that doesn’t necessarily help

to grow anything it’s not a positive

ecology but if you put likability at the

center of that it changes the dynamic

second l is for loyalty so loyalty to me

is critically important

i think throughout your life throughout

your career you’re really really lucky

to find five to ten people who are

absolutely loyal now there’s a distinct

difference between blind loyalty and

healthy loyalty but if you can get that

group that little tribe around you you

can do some great things

if i look at within our healthcare

businesses that we’re involved in

my business partner there is from a

completely different background to

doogie and what we’ve done in healthcare

is grow a business employing just 50

people uh four or five years ago to a

business now employing over a thousand

in a four to five year period

that kind of growth comes about for a

whole range of things but at the center

of that is this notion of loyalty and

trusting each other’s abilities and what

you bring to the team so doing an

established entrepreneur from west

belfast has built numerous businesses

from dentists to pubs to everything else

and me from pretty much an academic

background so very proud to say i’m a

field lawyer

on a and i think that academic

background mixed with entrepreneurial

zeal and who we are as people allows you

to deliver that kind of performance so

loyalty is important when you find it

hang on to it and keep those people

around you if you’ve worked with them 20

years ago you should be working with

them today

a is for amplification by amplification

in a number of ways

first of all try and get involved in

things that actually can grow

exponentially and the businesses that

i’ve that i’ve invested in and mentored

and things like that who’ve got big

ideas and who don’t want to stop are the

ones that amplify in the right way

the other thing about amplification is

you’ve got to celebrate your wins and

being from the from the north of ireland

here what we don’t often do is celebrate

our successes because we’re a humble

bunch we’re humble people so dairy

londonderry is a humble city and we

don’t sing our positive stories half as

much as we should do and that’s why we

develop things like lab and your dairy

to try and celebrate that positivity

here in the city because it does exist

the other things i say about

amplification is you can’t just wait for

the white horse to arrive to save you

you have to develop your own uh stable

of white horses and go out into the

world and do some great things that’s

what amplification is and that’s what it

means

the final part of pillar is relentless

on how you be relentless uh i’ve never

been the best or the brightest in many

respects but one thing i can’t do is

stop

and most of the wins and most of the

things that we’ve achieved over the last

number of years in terms of relentless

is just staying for one minute longer

just doing one page more and things like

that so just going one step beyond every

single time

and that for us comes from a our family

so danny mcguire was a woman in

leicester ski back in the uh throughout

the last century and nanny maguire for

me died at the at the brilliant age of

94 sadly she raised eight kids husband

died of cancer when he was 40. she left

eight kids in a two up two down and

listened to this ski a beautiful part of

county format and in terms of danny

mcguire and what she was like from that

silent generation where every night she

went to work in the local factory came

home put the kids out to school in the

morning knitted uniforms and things like

that to generate some income to sustain

the family and did that for 15 20 30

years

she was so strong whenever she got into

she was still washing her feet in the

sink when she was 70 which i always find

quite amazing at 46 i couldn’t do that

now but she was still doing that but

when she was in her middle 80s her knees

had gone okay so her knees were in bad

shape and she got a chairlift put into

the put into the house much to her

disappointment and discussed and

everything else

and what she did was a couple about 18

months later she got two brand new niece

right so she went to the hospital got

two new knees and within six months she

phoned the nhs i believe the first woman

in the history of the nhs and then at

least to phone them to say can you

please come and take this chairlift back

out because my knees are fine now and i

can walk up the stairs yeah

that relentlessness to dignity and

things like that and the relentless in

terms of being an independent human

being was handed down to us

one of the things that i hear about um

the world today is this idea of the

snowflake generation because it doesn’t

exist and with the right role models

this idea of this relentless approach to

who we are and where we’re going and how

we grow businesses on ourselves is

critically important

so my son’s now 13 at the age of 11 he

was in the final of the north of the

cross-country championships

and a yard off the lang he got spiked

and lost one of the spikes himself

foot all bleeding and everything else

and he ran the next three mile of that

race in one spike i’m bleeding and he

finished third

not the fastest runner in the world not

the most talented but the most

relentless and this idea that we can

have the next generation who are equally

as relentless even with all the all the

bombardment of social media and things

like that we really can’t get there with

the right world models

so that’s pillar that’s how it works for

me and what i would challenge you to do

is build a pillar for yourself keep it

strong

build the foundations in the right way

build it for your family and most

importantly be a pillar for your

community thank you