Opportunity Plus Motivation Means Success

Patrick Daly:

Hello, this is Patrick Daly and welcome to Interlinx. Interlinx is a programme about connections, international business, supply chains and globalisation and their effect on how we live, work and travel in the world today. And today on the show, we’ll be talking to Laurence O’Kane, businessman, entrepreneur and founder of multiple businesses in the pharmacy, medical and cosmetic sectors, both at the retail and the wholesale level.

Laurence is a native of Draperstown, County Derry. Pharmacist by profession. Started out on his entrepreneurial path in 1986, and the businesses that he’s directly involved with are five. They include O’Kane’s Pharmacy Limited, which is a retail pharmacy, Pharmacy Supplies Limited, which is a wholesale pharmaceutical OTC distributor, iMED Healthcare Limited, which is a pharmaceutical manufacturing distribution company, bBold EU Limited, which is a known brand self-tanning range, and Mediteq Healthcare Solutions Limited, which is a hospital infection control solutions company.

Across all these five companies, there’s in excess of 180 staff, maybe more at this stage, and turnover well in excess of a hundred million euros. So, welcome Laurence, and thank you very much for being here with us today.

Laurence O’Kane:

Very nice to talk to you, Patrick, yeah. Sounds as if I know what I’m doing from all those things you’ve said, but you might find me out.

Patrick Daly:

I’m sure you do, Laurence. So maybe to kick things off, if you could give our listeners an overview of your career, I guess both in work and then in business over the years up to this point.

Laurence O’Kane:

That’s no problem, Patrick. I suppose in simple terms, I’m 63 years old at this stage of my life. Born in 1960 in County Derry in Draperstown, a small town in the Parish of Ballinascreen. I was the youngest of 10 children, so there’s the typical large Catholic rural family in the North of Ireland.

My brothers and sisters were all teachers and nurses, and we got one obligatory priest, which we had to get from 10 within a large Catholic family in the North.

Patrick Daly:

It had to be one, yeah. It had to be one.

Laurence O’Kane:

Luckily it wasn’t me for the pressures of Ballinascreen. So I came along, it was 5 girls and three boys at the end of the 10 and the family. So the time I got to the 10th, we weren’t sure what I was going to do, so I did my A-levels and then actually repeated them. I was clever at school, but I didn’t work a lot and I repeated my A-levels.

My oldest brother was teaching me chemistry at the time and I was going to do teaching as he was teaching me, and he talked me out of it by going, “Bloody hell, do not do teaching. Go and do something you might make a few pounds at,” which was pharmacy. So I drifted into pharmacy into Queens in 1981 or ’82. In and around that, in ’81.

I did my degree there at Queens. Qualified as a pharmacist, you do a one-year training year. I finished in ’85 after I got my year’s training down in Belfast. Had a very enjoyable experience at Queens, enjoyed every minute of it. Didn’t do a lot of work, but I enjoyed it a lot.

Patrick Daly:

That’s the main thing, isn’t it?

Laurence O’Kane:

Aye. I think the first recommendation would be for students, do enjoy your student life, it passes fast. But make sure you come out with your qualifications at the end, which I did come out with a degree in pharmacy. I came out in ’85 and I worked… At that time the rules around pharmacy in Northern Ireland were changing where it was limited access into pharmacy, so you had to buy an existing pharmacy or otherwise you couldn’t open a new contract.

So I just came out of the year that that was starting, so I jumped very quickly into owning my own shop. I bought an old premises. My brother lent me 10,000 pounds and the bank lent me 15,000 pounds. I bought an old premises in Draperstown and I went in, got the wellies on and I got the hands dirty and done up the shop. Opened it in September, ’86.

That was my first shop opened there in ’86. It was interesting times. It was three pharmacies in a small town and my two colleagues weren’t too fond of me. I was the young upstart, but I grew on them that much, in 1989 I bought the two of them over. I bought the two of them. One of them go up for sale and I approached the other guy to see would he buy it. His words to me were, he says he didn’t like the way of the sale the first one and he liked me less, so, I thought I better buy the two. It’s not going to work as a partnership.

The strange thing I always remembered, and when I tell the story, I always tell the young people I’m telling, in 1989 the base interest rate was 17% in the North of Ireland. Probably across Ireland, 17%. So I paid 21% interest on 280,000 or whatever it was at that time. The first year I didn’t make very much money, but I paid off my debts. That gave me control of my own village, my own town.

So, it’s the two. I’ve now two pharmacies, I’ve built a couple of nice pharmacies, redone them, invested in them over the years. So they have the two retail pharmacies, they turn about two and a half million a year, employ about 25 people and provide very good service to the community. So I’m very proud of that.

1991, I joined up a fellow who was doing perfumes into the pharmacy at that time, perfumes into pharmacy and cosmetics were fairly basic stuff. This guy was a lovely fellow, a great salesman. I joined up with him because he couldn’t run a business and I probably at that time couldn’t either, but I thought I could.

So I started Pharmacy Supplies, which is the company that we sell into front of shop across Ireland, mostly. 70% of our sales are into Southern Ireland and 30% in the North. Well, 25% and 5% in Scotland. It’s a business now of 25 million turnover. It’s moved up wee bit since your numbers, the last time you spoke there. It’s quite good, it’s decent business, decent EBITDA, and it’s a fairly essential part of the supply chain and to front of shop and pharmacy in Ireland.

Then 2009, along with a fellow, Paul Murphy, he approached me to start a business. I didn’t really want to start anything at that time, but I sent him away twice and he came back with a view that we should do parallel imported medicines into Ireland. So we started iMED. Myself and him started in 2009, and it’s turning over on its own about 120 million euro last year.

Patrick Daly:

[inaudible 00:07:23]

Laurence O’Kane:

Yeah, it’s quite a lot of turnover. Very high, low-margin business, but it’s all medicine. So it’s quite an interesting business, but it takes a lot of management.

And then I started up my own tanning brand. The funny story about the tanning brand was the girl who developed the tan along with me, I met her in Reagan’s Bar, which was an unusual place to suggest to somebody come and working for you, but that’s where the first interview took place. On a Saturday night when I met her, she said she was trying to get into something in beauty and I thought, “Crikey, we could maybe create something.”

So, we’ve got the bBold tanning brand, about two and a half million turnover, some very good products and [inaudible 00:08:05] within their range. We now have a team in there of research and development people, so I expect it to grow quite a bit in the next two years. It’s doing about two and a half million at the moment. A lot of interest from the UK in it now, so we probably will branch into the UK retail and we’re ready. Our online sales to the UK were, last year were in around 900,000 or so. It’s got legs.

2016, I decided to get involved with a medical solutions or hospital solutions disinfection company, Mediteq. A woman, Lynne McGrath who had worked with Ecolab and myself and Paul and another fellow who’s actually deceased since, John. But we set up Mediteq, very good company, going really well. Has won a few big HSE tenders over the last year or two. Good EBITDA and a strong growth, team’s growing as well. We’re quite an exciting company, probably there’s a lot of value on it, maybe more than some of the other ones with less [inaudible 00:09:14]

Patrick Daly:

Yes, that’s an impressive stable of purebreds you have there. So, what’s the most interesting thing that you’re working on right now for yourself?

Laurence O’Kane:

Probably at the moment, I’m working on another company at the minute, along with a local young accountant who approached me three years ago. It’s called PROTEC Technologies, Limited. It’s a company that we’ve set up in the sports recovery area. The main thing we’re looking at is all that type of equipment that you have.

Particularly, we’ve developed a very, very good model of recovery boots, which have been very popular with particularly the Irish rugby team, four or five of the fellows in it took a great shine it and would’ve used them even over… I was going to say during the World Cup, but maybe that’s not a good time to say it. But certainly used it during the Five Nations or Six Nations. So they’re using it.

We’ve had a lot of interest from some of the very senior footballers. Zinchenko, who plays for Arsenal uses them, and a couple of guys playing for Real Madrid and few of the Premier League footballers. So it’s just starting, but it’s probably the project that’s starting on now that I think is about to take off. Literally got legs with the boots, the leggings.

Patrick Daly:

Yeah. Pardon-

Laurence O’Kane:

I hope.

Patrick Daly:

Excellent. The industry sectors that you’re involved in, what is something about those different sectors that you actually don’t like, that you think maybe needs to change in those sectors?

Laurence O’Kane:

Because where I’ve dabbled and it hasn’t succeeded is where I’ve dipped away from pharmacy, and maybe that’s a warning on the recovery thing though. The recovery is in some way connected to the physiology of the body, so it interests me.

But they don’t actually put me off. Working with pharmaceuticals and working with medicines, there’s always going to be demand and a growth and the need for medicines and for medicines for people to support them. That’s why we’re living longer.

So there’s nothing within that sector that really puts me off, other than it’s very competitive and you do have to be prepared to put your money down at times. It’s high-risk. I’m a risk-taker anyways, but that would be the negative of it. The risk part. Risk assessment.

Patrick Daly:

How do you evaluate risk? I guess you’re not a reckless risk-taker, so you’re some sort of calculated risk-taker. How do you balance that?

Laurence O’Kane:

I suppose what I do is I am a complete risk-taker, so therefore what I do is I employ very, very good accountants who drill numbers and then throw fire warnings. I think what I’m good is, I’m good at not realising what I’m not good at, so therefore I get somebody in that’s more of a challenge.

I love my staff to challenge me on anything I’m doing. That always keeps me in check as to what, yeah, kick on, but kick on in a measured way. I have some really good accountants who’ve worked their way in large companies, but now I give them roles as chief executives and that. To me, that’s how I balance my risk.

Patrick Daly:

Okay.

Laurence O’Kane:

[inaudible 00:12:39]

Patrick Daly:

I was interested as you were telling the story of the different businesses, not all of them, but most of them, you mentioned that there was another partner or somebody involved. How do you manage those relationships when you’re part-owning a business with another person? What approach or what element of your personality makes you good at that kind of thing?

Laurence O’Kane:

It’s a very good question, Paddy. The only business that I have [inaudible 00:13:11] I’ve spread my wings a bit now, but most of the core business that I have were a hundred percent my own. But iMED was the first time where I really went and that was a 50/50. It’s really about getting the right person or somebody that has a different skill level than you do, or a different ability.

Paul Murphy’s background was very much corporate pharmaceuticals, whereas my language wouldn’t even fit into some of the conversations that we’re having at a corporate level, so Paul would lead on certain elements of it. I’m quite astute at logistics and warehouse [inaudible 00:13:47] people and understand what’s important to the customer because of my pharmacy background.

If you get the right partner, it works really well. I’ve had one nasty experience, which didn’t work for me, but again, it’s a good learning from that. I think a lot of people don’t learn from their mistakes. I’ve made mistakes. It might sound like a wonderful story, but I’ve made lots of mistakes. None that have done me any harm, but-

Patrick Daly:

Yeah, none have been fatal.

Laurence O’Kane:

None have been fatal, yeah. I’m not planning on any if I can avoid it.

Patrick Daly:

So although you might not think of it in this way, but a lot of what you’re doing there, it’s leadership. It’s leadership in different forms. I know you’re involved in the community there in a big way locally in Draperstown. What would you consider to be your most important leadership characteristic that you think has enabled you and sustained you through your career? All of those different elements of it.

Laurence O’Kane:

I think probably my best quality is that I’m able to engage with people and talk to them at whatever level. I’ve always used that approach of, while I’m very clear in my strategic direction, I’ve always given people time to give their input and at the same time be prepared to say, “No, I don’t agree with you,” or, “I’m going to do it a different way.”

But I think my strength is to be able to pull people together. I chair a few committees. [inaudible 00:15:17] I was 40, I was bored with my life and I went into the health service and I chaired local commissioner, which is a mixture of politicians and health professionals. It was quite an interesting group to try and chair, and yet I got on very well at it, and people got on very well with me. I think I actually recognised that I had abilities and qualities that other people didn’t have to bring people on board.

Sometimes if you make a decision, you nearly already have it made, but it’s to make people feel as if they’ve been part of that decision. Maybe that’s not fair, but I’ve used that at times where you’re fairly clear what the direction is, but if people get the ownership of it, then they’ll buy into it and they’ll pass the message. That’s probably one of my strengths, I think.

Patrick Daly:

Yeah, so-

Laurence O’Kane:

Plus, I think… Sorry. I think I’ve got a good sense of humour as well, Paddy. So I can easily diffuse things with humour.

Patrick Daly:

Yeah, it’s always important. Yeah. I guess to have done what you’ve done, you have had to have a certain level of ambition. What motivated you in the past to take the path that you chose and what motivates you now in what you do? And what part of what motivated you has stayed constant and what part of it has changed as your career has progressed?

Laurence O’Kane:

I suppose in the very early years, your motivation is to try and make yourself a living and create a living for your family, and then you get to a level where you’ve enough to do you. So therefore, if that’s your only motivation, there’s no point in continuing. So for me then, my motivation has always been to create success, create successful business, and to bring people around me and let them share in that success.

That’s still a motivation. And yeah, the reward for that is it usually ends up making money or it usually ends up with a form of financial reward. But the motivation has always been to create locality employment, was one of my big motivations, and I do that well. But the most important thing to me is to create a successful business that people that work within it feel proud of and can enjoy, and enjoy their working life.

That has worked for me. Not everybody goes that approach. I would be very close to most of my staff in terms of, I would know what was going wrong with them or it’s just the nature of probably get too involved with some of the details, some of the problems. But overall, that has worked for me as a reason to do it. And the byproduct of that is that usually successful.

Patrick Daly:

Interesting.

Laurence O’Kane:

When I was on the EY journey, I think it was Donald O’Brien or one of those guys who’s made a lot of money, I’ve got the wrong name. Anyway, he’s a telecommunications guy [inaudible 00:18:21] he’s in the EY group, I don’t if you… Very, very successful man.

He asked me, I was telling him my story, and he actually said to me, “I think you’re more of a social entrepreneur than an entrepreneur.” I said, “Well, is that a bad thing? Maybe I can’t put up my 300 million versus your 300 million and my net assets.” But ultimately I think a lot of people go into entrepreneurship and then to donate to people in the community. Whereas my motivation has always been to make it successful for whoever’s been involved with me on the journey. Sounds corny, but it’s true.

Patrick Daly:

No, it is genuine because you wouldn’t be doing it otherwise. Because I guess as you said, you’re trying to make a living and then you survive. If you get to a level, then you go on more, it needs something else. And then you thrive and then in a way you arrive. So you’ve gone through those three phases and to keep at it, there has to be something. That’s what it is for you.

Laurence O’Kane:

That’s what it is for me, aye. We grew up on the family of 10, a lot of poverty. We were reasonably poor because there was no inside toilet and we lived in no electricity. So the first step getting out of that was a good step, but as you say, there has to be more to life and long-term motivation, otherwise it wouldn’t be still trying to open up a new company or do something.

Patrick Daly:

Yeah, yeah.

Laurence O’Kane:

[inaudible 00:20:03]

Patrick Daly:

That’s an interesting one as well. When you’ve come from a background like that, you’ve got a built-in motivation to move away from that. What do you think about next generation people, say, people coming in the generation after you that maybe have grown up in a more comfortable, more affluent background? What do you think the challenge is for their motivation? I don’t know whether you have family or whether you’ve seen that in your own offspring.

Laurence O’Kane:

Well, that’s an interesting question, Patrick again too. And I see it, I have two lads and a girl. My daughter’s gone into the retail pharmacy side of it and she’ll take over that part of it over the next while. The other two boys are not interested really in running the businesses. They’re happy enough to work within them, but they’re not driven to do what I’ve done.

I think ultimately it’s a big challenge for second generation entrepreneurs if you’re born into the family or are fortunate enough to have a family like me who is entrepreneurial, because whatever I have done, they can’t do it in the same way. And even if they do it better, they’re not going to get the credit for it that they deserve.

I’ve seen that even within the EY Group, when I was away in Hong Kong, 50% of them were second generation, and there was nearly a feeling that even, and it wasn’t spoken out loudly but I heard it in my head anyway, that the second generation ones weren’t as good as the first ones. Whereas there was some great examples of people who had taken ordinary businesses and absolutely drove them to a different level.

We’ve a bit of a local company here, Heron Brothers in Draperstown, and they were a small building company, good, very successful. When I say small, made lots of money. But the next generation, Damien Heron’s taken over, they’re now like at 500 million net assets, and yet probably people wouldn’t give him the credit he deserves. So there’s a mixture, and I think it’s just more difficult if you’re second generation. I think you’re hungrier and you’re more driven when it’s your own, then you’d have to do it all yourself.

And ultimately, if you’ve been successful and your children have been well looked after, because when you come from a peer background, you always want to give your children more. Whether it’s right or wrong, it happens. And so therefore you end up, I wouldn’t say spoiling them, but you’re certainly making life more comfortable than what you had. So it’s more difficult for them to be motivated.

Patrick Daly:

Yeah, it’s an interesting dilemma. So now you’ve done a lot, but is there anything, what is something that you’ve always wanted to do and you haven’t done yet?

Laurence O’Kane:

There’s nothing that I would actively point out and say, “God, I really want to do that.” Not from a business point of view, because something comes around the corner, I’ll probably do it anyway. I’m still motivated to do more. So it’s nothing that from a business point of view I don’t like to do.

And I’m not that mad about travel or I’m not that mad about… My life in general, I’m quite content, quite happy. I keep a few racehorses now as a mad passion that I have. If I had anything I would want to do to try and… Just bred my first colt there last week. So if he could run in the Derby or something like that, that would be an achievement.

Patrick Daly:

Oh, yeah [inaudible 00:23:33].

Laurence O’Kane:

A bit left field. I’ll still do business, but something like that would give me great pleasure. I might be sending the mare down south next week for another foal for next year. So hopefully it’ll-

Patrick Daly:

Excellent.

Laurence O’Kane:

Something that’ll be interesting.

Patrick Daly:

So outside of work and then obviously the horses, but are there other things that you like doing outside of work?

Laurence O’Kane:

Not really. I love listening to music. My father was a great man for music and song, just old silly songs and old dairy songs and all sorts of songs that he picked up [inaudible 00:24:09], but he always remembered the words of them. But I think I’ve got a great interest in music, great interest in song, can’t sing myself for nothing, but I do sing even though I can’t.

I love listening to Spotify. I just stick it on there. The amount of songs that, in terms of my business life that have inspired me, in terms of even my own life, some songs are John Prine and Kristofferson. And maybe even Dylan, not so much, but still listen to them as well. But certainly John Prine and Kristofferson, some great lyrics in there that if you’re not sure about something, I could give you a song that has an answer for most business problems that I’ve…

Patrick Daly:

Yeah, that’s really interesting. I never had anybody say that to me before. You ask guys what they do, normally they say they’re reading and they’re reading this book or that book or business books and all of this kind of thing. But that’s an original answer.

Laurence O’Kane:

No. And certainly, there’s so many. My staff laugh at me because we’re in the middle of a meeting and somebody’s come up with something to learn, and I’ll throw in a line out of a song. They’ll go, “What the hell is that?” Probably, I’m starting to annoy them at this stage. But if you’ve got a problem in life, there’s a song with an answer, yeah.

Patrick Daly:

And in terms of reading, are you reading or listening to anything, podcasts at the moment? Do you listen to that kind of s-

Laurence O’Kane:

No, I don’t read very much. To be honest, I did O level English they don’t have English and there was two novels and two plays that you had to learn at that time, and I didn’t read any of them at that time, so I’m not going to start.

Patrick Daly:

That’s when you were at school, having more fun than anything else, yeah?

Laurence O’Kane:

I spent most of my school life having fun. Most people who’d meet me from my school days and from my Queen’s University days remember me more as somebody who was good fun rather than somebody who was a good student.

Patrick Daly:

Yeah, yeah. So what do you think now, what are the prospects for the Northern Irish economy, the all-Ireland economy, given where we are now? Brexit has passed and we’re in some sort of a post-Brexit world, and Northern Ireland has a special kind of position in that whole UK-EU thing. Where do you see the economy in Northern Ireland, how it relates to the rest of Ireland?

Laurence O’Kane:

I think Northern Ireland will equalise or maybe even potentially surpass parts of Southern Ireland if they take this opportunity correctly. It’s a very unique position we’re in. I can see some enthusiasm around it with some of my colleagues in Northern Ireland and in the North right across it. There’s different people. There’s opportunity here now that wasn’t there.

I suppose to some extent salaries are slightly behind in the North, so therefore even labour and the chances of being productive in Northern Ireland and having more efficiencies are probably there at the moment and might last. But it’s a very exciting time for the North of Ireland, a big opportunity.

It shouldn’t be missed. It might be missed because politicians will fall into a nonsensical, they’ll turn it into an orange and a green element up here. We’re very good at that, whereas it’s not really. It’s a great economic benefit and it’s coming if we take it.

With assembly back in again, there seems to be some mutants of it, but anytime I speak to any of the politicians on either side, they can see the benefit and the opportunity. There’s obviously the issues around sovereignty and that, but if we can move away from the sovereignty issues and think about the benefit to people, massive opportunities.

The massive problems too across Ireland. The whole health service across Ireland, North and South, it’s in big trouble. But in terms of opportunity, particularly a couple of companies I’m involved in, there’s massive opportunity. And there’s companies from Europe looking into the North of Ireland that have never looked into it before. And if you’ve been at a property or somewhere to build a factory, there’s a lot of people will be looking to go there because the workforce are quite good.

There’s a lot of pluses for the North if we stay stable for [inaudible 00:28:31]. It’s going to take stability for a couple of years or three years with the Executive and see where we’re going with it. But I genuinely see it as a big opportunity.

Patrick Daly:

Okay, excellent. Well then on that optimistic note, many thanks, Laurence, for being here with us today. Been an absolute pleasure chatting with you.

Laurence O’Kane:

No problem. Nice to get chatting to you, Patrick, and some nice questions here. Threw me offline a bit, but I’ll try to come back to you.

Patrick Daly:

All right, then. Excellent.

Laurence O’Kane:

Thanks a lot.

Patrick Daly:

Thanks, Laurence. And thanks also to our listeners for tuning in again today and be aware that if you enjoyed this episode, you can find the full series of over 140 episodes on Interlinx, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Acast, and other major podcast platforms. Until next time, keep well and stay safe.