WHY ARE YOU IN BUSINESS?

©DMITRIY SHPILKO/123RF.COM

As the owner and operator of BHL Landscape Group, Terry O’Regan reaches retirement, he asks a question we should all consider

As I work my way through a rather long-drawnout retirement process - ending 50 years of close involvement with the landscape sector, old and new questions circle my head like a noisy murder of crows.

The most irritating new question from well-meaning friends and neighbours inevitably is – “What will you do now that you are retiring?” I usually respond that I expect to continue to be busy with ventures linked to horticulture, landscaping, the greater landscape and more besides and I will continue writing for as long as you keep reading.

For 44 of those afore-mentioned 50 years, I have with my fellow director run a landscape services business. One day, in the early years (before grey hair and geriatric pains arrived) I was chatting with a client - a successful Cork businessman – and out of the blue he asked me, “Terry, why are you in business?” Caught off-guard and thinking that he was referring to our landscaping activities as such, I stumbled through a few answers all spun around a qualification in horticulture, a lively interest in plants and gardens and a desire not to be confined to an office all day. He listened patiently and then said, “Terry, you are in business to make money and never forget that reality!”

His question and answer have echoed through my head over the intervening years as I strove with my fellow director and work colleagues to run a quality landscape business and make money.

I am sure it was at the back of my mind some twenty years later as we discussed the year-end accounts for the preceding year when I posed a question to our accountant – “We never seem to make much profit in this business, despite hard graft and long hours?” He replied that we do make money – we earn our salary and that is our profit. It made no difference when I protested that I could probably earn the same salary as an employee and go home free of work worries at 5.00 pm each day. He smiled kindly and added, “that is the price of being self-employed.”

Another awkward Q & A exchange occurred regularly in association with the year-end accounts when I would question the outcome for the year noting that I probably should have taken some different decisions. He regularly responded that I should prepare monthly accounts. I only finally took his advice in 2012 as we faced the full painful impacts of the Celtic Tiger crash. The exercise proved vital

to our success in riding out that storm.

A linked old question that calls up scenarios almost as stressful as the Leaving Certificate Exam figured in those visits to the bank manager (back when banks had managers and not robotic tediums* at the distant end of a phone line). As I made my case for a loan, my bank manager enquired, “Will you be generating sufficient profits to repay the loan applied for?”

Profit is a strange word – sometimes enterprises are praised if they are profitable, but sometimes that is attacked. It has appeared to me over the years that I am not the only one suffering from confusion and delusion.

Profit is not dirty money and my Cork businessman was right: all enterprises and SMEs, in particular, have to be making money. Not to fund a luxury lifestyle, but to generate the cash to pay off bank loans and machinery, vehicle leases and to build a rainy-day fund to provide for future liabilities and cover unexpected crises. We would not have survived the Celtic Tiger crash if we had not built a modest fund in the preceding hectic years.

Looking back, I realise that one of the key characteristics of being a self-employed employer is a willingness to provide answers to questions regardless of whether you have the right answer; or more importantly, have asked the right question.

Growing up in the guilt-ridden church/state 1950’s Ireland many were tortured with decisions as to whether they had succumbed to committing a mortal sin or whether it was just one of those almost inconsequential venial sins (there were long lists of diverse sins to choose from!). Moral code behaviour has moved on to more enlightened times with fewer lists and informed consciences.But in business there is still a case to differentiate between mortal questions and venial questions as the penance for a wrong answer can be painful.

With the benefit of hindsight, I suggest you might classify questions about whether you are making money as of mortal importance. There are a few other questions that fall into the same category and then there are millions of venial questions to pester you every working day. The danger for us all is that we can drown in a sea of venial questions and not spot the shark-like mortal questions in time.

So why was I in business? If the truth be told, it was primarily because I was made redundant back in 1975 from Goulding Horticulture after five years of service. Five years in which I learned the basics of landscape operations. I may well have made the move anyway as I suffered from the tendency to answer obvious questions – not a good trait for a successful employee. Of course, I also thought I would make some money.

Leafing through my articles in past issues of Horticulture Connected and Horticulture and Landscape Ireland, I seem to have tried to have posed a few questions over time and to have suggested the occasional answer. Looking forward to a busy and productive retirement I would welcome questions and suggestions re possible topics from readers – terryjoregan@gmail.com. *A ‘tedium’ is a millennial person in a financial institution who knows nothing about your business and understands even less, he/she never met you and comes armed with a setlist of boxes to tick and the survival of your enterprise may well hang on one missing tick. ✽

“We never seem to make much profit in this business, despite hard graft and long hours?”

Now in his early seventies,

TERRY O’REGAN

with roots in Galway & Waterford qualified in 1969 with an honours degree in Horticulture from UCD and pursued a career in the Irish landscape sector for some 50 years as contractor and consultant before retiring this year. For much of that time he was also an active advocate for the bigger picture perspective and thinking outside the landscape box – involving a pursuit of better landscape policies in Ireland and Europe, founding Landscape Alliance Ireland in 1995 and latterly working in Southeast Europe on Council of Europe cultural heritage & diversity projects. He can be contacted at 087-240 7618 & terryjoregan@gmail.com

Little EnterprisesIRELAND

Christmas tree grower and wholesaler

Nordmann, Noble, Fraser & Korean varieties grown

All sizes available from table top to 500cm

Site visits available once labelling has commenced & trees hardened off

Contact: LittleentIrl@gmail.com Tel: (086) 850 9644