5 things I’ve learned running my own business: Terry O’Mahony, Construction Leaders Club

After more than 35 years working in construction and property investment, Terry O’Mahony founded Larchwood to provide training, coaching and business growth consultancy. In 2013 he launched Construction Leaders Club – an East Midlands-based networking and training organisation which meets monthly in Nottingham and also runs specialist programmes to help SMEs in the construction sector. Here he shares five lessons he’s learned…

Build relationships
Relationships in business are crucial. I know people who have had career-long relationships that have worked to mutual advantage over decades. How efficient is that! If you can develop strong business relationships, they can help you to build businesses and careers to an amazing extent.
So be open to meeting new people, help them with their challenges and be open to supporting them in any way you can, and in return reciprocation will take place and they will probably help you in ways you can’t imagine.

Networking
When I first started my own private consultancy, I found myself reverting back to my old business development methods i.e. I went to a lot of networking events. I’ve lost track of the number of people who have tried to sell me paperclips and the like at such events!
So I found great disappointment in going to networking events, which on the face of it should be one of the most productive ways to invest our time.

That’s why I decided to set up my own networking event which would serve the East Midlands construction community who wanted to meet new people and like-minded people with a view to building meaningful business relationships.

This has worked very well and we now have a thriving community at Construction Leaders Club and we’ve been very lucky to benefit from a wide range of presentations from industry experts who have added extra value to our members.

Continuous development
Life is one big learning curve and I’ve found it’s just the same in business. I’ve always been a believer in self-development and continuous learning. As Einstein said “Insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results!”

When you’re running your own business, it’s very easy to get tied up with the actual ‘doing’…. whether that’s producing something or providing a service. You’ll be very good at that – it’s most probably what you trained in. But there’s more to running a business, especially as the business grows, so I think it’s important to look at the areas where you need support and seek guidance.

Continuous professional development is a key topic in many sectors, and for very good reason. Our mastermind programme is all about helping business people to develop themselves in order to be more effective business owners and leaders. It came about following discussions with a number of our CLC members and other attendees at our networking events. Basically they asked me for help to sort out some of their primary business challenges which led them to asking me to provide them with some form of high-level business management training to help SME business owners, entrepreneurs and senior decision makers to have a greater understanding how business is organised, planned and delivered.

So I created a program of learning, the CLC Mastermind programme, which starts off by asking delegates what their ‘Big Why’ is and ends 12 months later by asking them to give a nine-minute presentation on what they have learnt and how it has benefited them.

Focus clearly
I believe focus is a crucially important element of business success. It’s vital to appreciate the value of focusing clearly on what business you’re actually in, what your purpose is and how you can best address your chosen markets.

You don’t want to be either pointing in the wrong direction or only having a vague understanding of where your best business interests lie.

I share that lesson during the Mastermind programme, as under the heading of focus, we try to introduce the mastermind to a range of new concepts, thinking tools and strategies to help them advance their businesses and capacities.

Question business models and look at innovation
Few people understand business models and their contribution – I didn’t for a long time, but fortunately I do now.

People tend to accept their current business practices, methodologies and business models almost without question. After all we have always done things this way so why change? They don’t really understand how their businesses hang together and aren’t aware of what a business model is. I’ve learned that by regularly reviewing and innovating business models you can secure new opportunities which will help a business to survive, prosper and grow.