Brian Feighan, FCA, set up LearnAltus to help executives from all backgrounds understand the key financial drivers underpinning business decisions.
I think most people yearn to be their own boss at some point and I was no different, but the reality of following your dream can be very daunting initially. There is no “mothership” and nothing happens unless you make it happen.
You realise quickly that you will have to work harder than you have ever worked before just to get your business off the ground.
Above all, you need to be passionate and commit completely. Otherwise, you won’t have the motivation to persist through the start-up phase.
I started my own business in 2015. At the time, I was Head of Asset Finance with Ulster Bank. I had started my career with Ulster International Finance in Dublin after qualifying as a Chartered Accountant with EY Ireland. I was part of a specialist team designing solutions to help multinationals centralise their global financing activities in Dublin.
I really enjoyed the work and spent the next 14 years working in the sector, including stints as a Director with AIB International Financial Services and Executive Vice President at Demica, an international financial advisory firm, before rejoining Ulster Bank in 2006 as an Investment Director in its wealth management division.
Business inspiration
Throughout those years, I noticed something: I would be sitting in a board room in London or New York closing a major financing transaction, but – apart from the CFO – the other (non-financial) executives around the table often had significant blind spots in their understanding of what was really happening.
It might be a failure to appreciate the implications of taking on additional leverage, not grasping the opportunity cost of a commercial decision or not realising how a thinly capitalised entity carries very high financial risk.
It struck me that many executives rise to leadership positions due to their talent and success in non-financial disciplines like sales or relationship management.
As managers, however, they must also assume responsibility for key financial decisions such as capital expenditure, management of working capital and ownership of financial performance and budget delivery.
It can be a scary position to be in if you don’t have a solid foundation in finance. While most leadership training programmes include a financial component to upskill non-financial managers, in my experience this training tends to be light and conceptual – when it actually needs to be deep and practical.
The result is that many managers have a poor understanding of the key financial drivers in their business and lack the confidence necessary to make good financial decisions – and the inevitable poor decision-making that ensues can prove very costly for companies.
LearnAltus mission
That experience was really the inspiration for LearnAltus, the financial training business I established in 2015, branded initially as ProTutor.
By that stage, I had decided I wasn’t getting any younger and, if I was ever going to set up my own business, now was the time. So, I left the corporate world and jumped into the unknown.
I had no grand plan at the outset and it took me a while before I settled on building an online financial training platform.
LearnAltus’ mission is to help organisations improve their financial decision-making. We design and deliver training programmes that, we believe, can transform an organisation’s financial capability.
Our training is centred around ensuring managers can understand and interpret key financial indicators and that they are confident enough to challenge and contribute to the financial aspects of key business decisions.
We build immersive decision-making scenarios and game these scenarios out in our training to help managers grasp the potential financial implications.
Lasting relationships
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned running my own business is the importance of building high quality, lasting business relationships. You will always achieve much more through collaboration than you can on your own.
You need to identify good people to partner with and work continuously on enhancing the value of these relationships – your team, your business partners and your clients. Ultimately, success is defined not by how you see yourself but by the value you create for others.
Being a Chartered Accountant has been a big advantage in this sense. I have been fortunate to develop close relationships with key personnel at the Institute.
Much of the work I do aligns with the strategic goals of Chartered Accountants Ireland so there is a natural fit.
A key milestone was the introduction of the Finance for Managers suite of qualifications, developed in partnership with the Institute’s Professional Development team. With over 33,000 members worldwide, the Institute has an exceptional reach in the business community.
Before I set up my own business, I was oblivious to the capabilities the Institute has, which has been a key enabler for the success of the Finance for Managers programme. We have been fortunate to work with some very committed clients too, which is key to ensuring employees are engaged learners.
Boot Camp
I have supported the Institute’s outreach work with secondary schools for many years. It is a fantastic initiative, which helps promote the accounting profession and make it more accessible to students.
Back in 2018, we learned from conversations with business and accounting teachers about their growing concern of the perception of accounting among students and parents, particularly in senior cycle, where the current Leaving Certificate Accounting syllabus is nearly 30 years old.
This led us to develop the Institute’s online Boot Camp programme. Boot Camp provides a foundation in accounting fundamentals for Transition Year and Senior Cycle students.
It also incorporates an online, interactive business simulation called “Be the Boss” where students take on the role of CEO of a “real life” company faced with a major strategic decision.
Since its launch in 2019, Boot Camp has exceeded all our expectations, with over 8,000 students enrolled to date. It has become a prerequisite for many schools as part of their Transition Year programmes.
Further, a growing number of accounting firms now incorporate Boot Camp into their internship programmes for Transition Year students during their work placements. We also run “Be the Boss” as a national school competition.
This provides a fascinating insight into the level of entrepreneurial talent and business leadership capability out there in Gen Z.
Foundation for success
As a business owner, I have learned that you really need to be very disciplined about how you allocate your time.
There is a view that success in business comes from achieving that big breakthrough, be it a key product innovation or a major customer win. In my view, however, overnight success is a myth.
The truth is that those breakthrough moments happen only because you’ve been plugging away, improving and refining your proposition every day for a long time.
If you look under the bonnet of any successful enterprise, you will find a lot of hard yards being fought every day.
This is what positions you to execute well on the opportunities when they arise – and they always do.
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