Growth & Jobs | Find an idea that can make your business a success – O’Connor

BEING SUCCESSFUL as a business owner requires more than coming up with a brilliant idea and working hard. You need to learn how to manage and grow your business. In the process, you will face numerous challenges, and your ability to meet them will be a major factor in your success or failure.

According to Michelle O’Connor, strategic business adviser and execution specialist, managing a business is no walk in the park. It is a complex endeavour that requires a well-rounded skill set and a strategic mindset.

“We help businesses to plan for growth and devise strategies for the long term. We help them to set their goals and then how to figure out where they are and how do they get to where they need to go,” O’Connor said.

FLOOD OF INFORMATION

O’Connor said the world is changing quickly, and so the strategies and habits that worked in the past do not guarantee success today. You may be starting a business for the first time or working to pivot your company in a new direction. Either way, running a business today means staying open and taking in an ever-expanding flood of information.

“It is asking those triggering questions, assessing the market, looking at their competitors, looking at how they are currently operating and then we work through what we need to do differently in order to achieve the targets that they have,” O’Connor said.

Customer experience is the impression you give your customer. It tells them what your values are and how much you care about them, and this impacts their perception of your brand across each stage and touchpoint of the customer journey. This means that businesses need to focus on every step of the buyer journey. You need to identify the problems on that path and offer new opportunities to create a great customer experience.

DIFFERENT OUTLOOK

“We help you to overcome the different hurdles. As business owners you are in the middle of the work, getting things done. So when you have someone from the outside looking in, it gives the business owner a different outlook. When you are in the operations, you do not have a lot of time to be looking out,” O’Connor said.

“Once you have now planned, you set your goals and work through the action plan. On the execution side for each of these goals that you have set, what are the guidelines that you need to follow? What will be your short- and long-term goals to achieve those goals? It is also important to review these goals. Many of us have a lot of great ideas, but the results come from in the execution,” she added.

O’Connor started her business in 2018, helping small entrepreneurs in varying fields. In 2021, she decided to switch gears after having three clients that were doctors. After she was able to work with her first client to iron out the challenges she was having in her business, she received several referrals to doctors in the medical field. Then she decided to create a niche market for medical practitioners.

“It was a full circle kind of experience as back in high school, I wanted to become a medical doctor. I decided to niche down and serve them. At the end of the day, I am really passionate about people achieving their goals. I am also passionate about what I have learned in my corporate life to make other entrepreneurs and business owners’ lives better. They do not have access to the resources of other large organisations,” O’Connor said.

The St Catherine native said economic circumstances did not allow her to further her education after high school. “For me even in fifth form, it was all about getting to school and getting home. After I finished fifth form, I got a summer job and I was very excited because I would have money. I was not able to do sixth form, so I kept the summer job,” O’Connor said.

While working, she applied for the pharmacology course at the University of Technology (UTech) because at the time, they accepted applicants who had not done sixth form. However, as luck would have it, by the time she applied the following year, she still could not afford it, and the course now required A’ Levels.

ANOTHER PLAN

She devised another plan and worked for four years and obtained additional business subjects that would assist her in matriculating into the business administration course at UTech. She kept her job and attended UTech on a part-time basis to obtain her degree in finance with a minor in marketing.

While in her third year at UTech, she realised that she was learning about business and finance but was still unclear about the concepts. She felt that if she had a job in a financial institution, she would be able to learn more. Against all the criticism she received, she applied for a job in the call centre at Jamaica Money Market Brokers (JMMB).

After 17 years, when O’Connor left the organisation, she was manager of corporate planning and execution. While at JMMB, she was promoted four times, and the knowledge and experience she gained far superseded her expectations.

“For me it was just about the goal. When I am in a space, it is always what can I do to make it better. When I got the job at the call centre, a friend of mine told me that there are thousands of people that work in a call centre. Your job is to stand out and make the difference,” she said.

Now, O’Connor assists medical practitioners to stand out, develop business strategies that make their businesses more manageable and profitable. Customers, she said, want and expect a great experience from beginning to end, and they are willing to pay a premium for it.

“Every business is born from an idea. Some ideas are riskier than others. Some ideas seem like a good plan at the time but fizzle out over time. There are a few approaches you can take to find an idea that can make your business a success,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor said that if you want to create a product or service that people are willing to pay for, it has to be unique, useful, and high quality.

keisha.hill@gleanerjm.com