MaST Ireland: Belfast Telegraph
MaST Ireland was established as a training organisation for business leaders nearly 30 years ago by Frank Storrs and today his son David is the managing partner. Over the last three decades the Belfast headquartered business has grown steadily, with an all-Ireland platform, and it now employs eight permanent staff and works with another ten associates.
But the focus has significantly evolved in that time. Initially MaST Ireland (MaST stands for Management and Skills Training) was geared towards providing the personal skills needed by business leaders – including speed reading, speed writing and other practical skills. Now the training is broader and much of it is aimed at enabling executives to be strategic and effective leaders.
Kate Marshall is a partner in the firm, heading-up its programme for leadership, managerial development and executive change. She says: “I was introduced to David about 10 years ago. They had just won a large contract with a bank here in Belfast.” Kate was initially engaged to assist with meeting the specific training needs of that bank and she stayed with the firm afterwards. “We realised that we worked well together,” she says.
The leadership skills provide by MaST Ireland include business development, negotiation skills and what is termed ‘consultative selling skills’. This training supports businesses to recognise that contracts today are often won by using a more flexible approach than was applied in the past. “It is about asking what does the customer need, not what we are selling,” says Kate. “You have to spend time with the client, understand their needs and through that consultation you help clarify what their need is, then you offer a bespoke service.”
While that is the approach that MaST Ireland distils through its training, it is clear that it is also the approach it adopts in its own operations. While the business trades internationally – it has had significant recent contracts for delivery in North America and Scotland – about 70% of its contracts are in the greater Dublin area and much of its other work is in Cork and Limerick.
Yet the company’s relationships with clients have meant that it has withstood the calamitous state of the Irish economy. “We took a dip,” concedes Marshall. “But we were very fortunate that we partner with our clients. They said they were refining their lists of contractors, but because we have built very strong relationships they continued to trade with us.
“In the last year we have started to expand again. Corporate Ireland is back on track. They have taken hard decisions and they are getting their people ready and confident for the current climate.”
With an approach to business that has been so successful, MaST Ireland intends to continue in the same way. “Everything we do is based on our core values,” says Kate. “We are a very values- led organisation. What is important is to change behaviour. The vision we have is not only for people to be leaders, but also to create leaders in their own organisations. If you build leaders, the opportunities you have are massive.”
It is because of the strength of its relationships that MaST Ireland is well positioned for the future. It was also the key to winning those export contracts. “The North America contract was through a recommendation. With Scotland, we have a client here who has an office in Scotland.
“Networking is so important for our business, or any business. You need to have an office and a reputation in an area where you move into. People are careful when they make choice about who they do business with. David and I are down in Dublin twice a week.”
The approach of building and maintaining strong relationships with clients is one that MaST Ireland teaches and applies itself. It is clearly one that serves them very well.
Hand Drawn Creative: Belfast Telegraph
Hand Drawn Creative is a successful business based in Bangor that provides illustrations and creative design for clients around the world. Sole trader Neal McCullough has been drawing since he was a child.
“Even when I was 14 or 15 I was doing pictures as gifts,” Neal recalls. “I was on holiday with my parents and we bumped into people who lived next door to Giles, the cartoonist for the Daily Express. And they said they must show my pictures to him. That was the time I realised I could make something of this.”
Yet it was business and languages that Neal studied at the University of Glamorgan - skills that only became useful to him when he began running his own enterprise. His unhappiness at Glamorgan made him recognise he wanted to focus on drawings and design, so he returned to study in Belfast on an arts course.
“Then I ended up as a graphic designer,” says Neal. He worked for a Bangor company for a couple of years. “It was one of those jobs where you hit the ground running and I had lots of late nights,” he recalls. “I learnt so much, so quickly. I went from a junior to a senior designer in a very short time.”
After that, Neil moved onto London for five years, working as a freelance, for various agencies and several staff jobs. Again Neal could build-up his skills, not least by working with older colleagues who had started drawing in a pre-computer era. “It was really old school, where I could learn my trade,” he says.
But on a return visit home he met his future wife, so he moved back to Bangor. “Then I worked in Holywood for five years, in advertising, and suddenly the illustrator in me came out again. Clients seemed to like it. By the end of my time there I was using illustration for everything and I realised that was what I really wanted to do.”
However, in October 2008 the advertising industry went through a near collapse. “I was made redundant on the Friday. Over the weekend my wife said, go for it yourself and she said you can make this happen. On the Monday, we found she was going to have our first child. It was also my birthday and the Red Arrows were flying overhead leaving coloured trails, so it was almost like it was written in the stars. So we said, let’s do it!”
After doing a few weeks of research, Neal established his business in early 2009. “I did not want to go door-to-door in Belfast begging for work,” he says. “If folks in Northern Ireland heard about me, then it was going to be for the right reasons, with me having clients outside Northern Ireland and outside the UK.”
Some of Neal’s work popping-up on the internet. “ I love the American illustration style of the 1950s and my work at the time reflected that,” says Neal. An unknown fan posted one of those illustrations on the website Found.com. As a result, an art director of Time magazine saw it and phoned Neil – who at first assumed it was a friend playing a practical joke. Instead it was completely serious and his big break was being published in one of America’s most iconic magazines.
Other work in the United States and Canada followed. More recently, through a local agency, Neal picked up a major contract for the Kia car firm and has also done illustration work for Comic Relief and for the BBC’s CBeebies’ programmes Big City Park and Sesame Tree. Neal now has a strong client base that i international and local – one of his latest clients is Belfast fashion designer Bronagh Griffin, who manufactures limited edition shirts. Large commercial contracts are backed by more low key personalised work, much of it sold on his website, http://handdrawncreative.co.uk.
“Over this summer, things were getting a little tight, so I am now doing my own prints,” Neal explains. “Very short runs of 20 or 30 and they sell incredibly well. After each new print I will usually get a call saying that’s great, can we do something like that for my company.”
With a second child born recently, Neal describes himself as currently working part-time, but doing so very happily. He has a newly built shed/office at the bottom of his garden and his parents come in to do childcare. “The way I work now is comfortable,” says Neal. “I can take 20 minutes off, check on the kids and then get back to work. I have taken the stress out of my work.”
