When Brian Crowley founded TTM Healthcare in 2002 as a 25-year-old retiring from the boxing circuit, he put his money on his own energy and leadership. A European bronze medallist, he had narrowly missed out on the Olympics and threw himself into business, starting a specialist recruitment agency for health workers.

“We now know the requirements go far beyond an inspirational or energetic leader,” he told participants in the KPMG Founders series. If TTM Healthcare turned over €95 million last year across its recruitment, home and residential care businesses and prepares to go on the acquisition path, it’s because Crowley learned to “write things down” – especially the ground rules establishing trust between founder, management and frontline staff.

A professional head-hunter, he is candid about the mistakes he made in hiring people in the early years. “Ironically, running a recruitment company, we wouldn’t be as good as we should have been,” he said.

“If your gut is not overpowering your heart, you’re gonna have a heart attack.”

Brian Crowley

Firstly, he acknowledged he was too loyal, sometimes to his own detriment. When someone did not perform, he let it happen for too long. “If your gut is not overpowering your heart, you’re gonna have a heart attack,” he warned.

This extended to some people he involved at a very senior level in the company. When TTM Healthcare lacked discipline, he said he brought in a manager with the opposite character to impose some structure. The culture clash didn’t work out: “I quickly decided to end it.”

“I had two senior executives with whom I had to have the revolver and whiskey conversation,” Crowley added. “It’s never easy, but I can talk to them now.” 

So how did he solve this? By writing things down. He advised other founders that there is no point in scaling up unless their entire operating model is clearly laid out on paper. “I tried, that’s why it took us five years before we took off.”

Inspiration from the All-Blacks

More recently, Crowley read James Kerr’s book Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life, and realised that the New Zealand rugby team worked by a formal set of principles that guided all their actions. One example is “respect” (“They always leave their hotel rooms immaculate”).

With the top 30 leaders across the Broadlake portfolio of businesses, he sat down to establish 12 core principles for TTM Healthcare. These include respect for money – a commitment by all to spend company money as if it was their own; data-based, fast-paced decision making; and “open honesty”.  

“I can call you out on it. You subscribed to it,” Crowley said. “I cannot describe how easy it is to have difficult discussions on the basis of principles.” The company now recruits, rewards, and promotes according to those 12 commandments.

“There has to be one galvanising thought that brings everybody together,” he advised. “For us, our aim is to enhance the quality of people’s lives and everything stems from that.”

High-fives

TTM Healthcare also has a playbook for each of its businesses, with chapters dedicated to key areas such as finance, technology, etc. Each chapter contains “high-five” priority areas where progress is measured through KPIs – though Crowley is quick to add that KPRs, for ratios, tell a much more important story that absolute indicators.

In 2016, the founder met Pete Smyth of private equity firm Broadlake. The encounter resulted in Broadlake investing in TTM Healthcare, and Crowley leaving his operational role in the business he had started to join Smyth. “I knew there was substance to him,” he said. 

Crowley
Brian Crowley (left) and Kilkenny Group CEO Marian O’Gorman at the KPMG event in Stripe’s Dublin office. Photo: Paul Sherwood

Crowley’s ability to build such key relationships is probably the biggest thing he has learned over the course of his career as an entrepreneur, he added.

The partnership with outside investors has helped TTM become more scientific in its recruitment, using psychometrics and case studies to test candidates. “The reliability coefficient of an interview is 0.15, so if you flip a coin you get a better result,” he said.

Crowley is now chief operations officer for Broadlake and finds himself listening to early stage entrepreneurs pitching to the firm – something he enjoys greatly and encourages everybody to do if they get a chance. “Some of them have failed three or four times. I tell them: ‘Disney failed seven times – you’re on the right side of Disney.’”

More lessons from Brian Crowley

  • Taking advantage of the financial crisis – when healthcare providers were forced to stop taking on full-time workers during the recession, they faced potentially dangerous situations in case of staffing gaps, especially those caring for children. “We said to our customers: we will guarantee that if you need staff, we’ll supply.” TTM paid workers to be on call at home on the basis that they were ready to go to work whenever required within an hour of where they lived. In three years, its turnover grew from €1 million to €14 million.
  • Listening to customers – Brian went to visit the family of a sick child recently who felt they had received a poor service from his company. “Sit down and understand why they’re unhappy. Even if it’s their perception, that perception is fact,” he said.
  • Selling equity to investors – “When you do this, put a number down and don’t change it – because you will.”
  • Considering an IPO – “I was offered a place on the IPO readiness course by the Irish Stock Exchange but decided not to proceed. I realised the aspirations I had for an IPO were purely ego. There was nothing beyond it.” 
  • Face up to problems “Sales cure most ills. But rapid growth hides cracks and they can get bigger and bigger – don’t ignore them.”
  • Litigation “Avoid being sued.”

The next KPMG Private Enterprise Event is called Insights from Irish Family Business Leaders. It is on Wednesday November 13, 2019 on the Late Late Show set in RTÉ Studios, Dublin 4. The Currency is media partner for the event. A limited number of tickets are available for members of The Currency at [email protected]