Tarasis Enterprises finds success by putting people first, its founder and CEO Mairead Mackle tells Olivia McGill.
Tarasis Enterprises, operating in Armagh, Belfast and Dublin, has been providing services and solutions for the health and social care, housing and renewables sectors across Ireland for almost 30 years.
Its founder and CEO Mairead Mackle highlights the importance of effective leadership and working to your values.
“The significance of balancing innovation and social responsibility, fostering a family business culture aligned with both business success and positive societal impact, is a key takeaway. Innovation keeps the business alive”
Why did you set up Tarasis Enterprises?
My motivation for setting up Tarasis Enterprises came from a deep desire to contribute to the betterment of communities and industries. I set up the company almost 30 years ago, then named Homecare Independent Living. After a strategic review of our operations last year, we decided to streamline our key business divisions under the Tarasis Enterprises brand. Our priority has always been to think beyond business; to create sustainable and innovative solutions that tackle social and environmental issues like social care, healthcare, homelessness and energy.
The company has four divisions: Tarasis Heathcare provides in-home care service; Tarasis Housing provides crisis beds for the homeless and produces modular space solutions to help tackle housing shortages; Tarasis Support Services helps prevent repeat homelessness by working with people experiencing addiction and mental health issues; and Tarasis Renewables uses anaerobic digestion to deliver affordable, renewable energy.
What makes Tarasis Enterprises stand out?
Our unwavering commitment to innovation, social responsibility, and a people-centric approach makes us stand out. Tarasis not only delivers high-quality services, but we prioritise making a positive difference in the world. Our beef production division Kingsbury Wagyu is carbon zero – all of the waste from the animals goes into an anaerobic digester which produces green energy. We’re hoping to open another plant within the next six months.
Because we are so purpose and society driven, we’ve set up two not-for-profits under our Tarasis Foundation arm. One invests in the community through fundraising campaigns and the other helps female entrepreneurs. I set up the foundation in 2011 after I went India to study corporate social responsibility. Business is about much more than making money, the people we serve depend on us and we run a people centric business. It’s also a family business with a family culture. In our housing division we look beyond provision of a house to what actually causes the person to become homeless in the first place. We provide a service that supports that person to retain their tenancy. I am so proud of our fantastic team, our family culture and our mission of using business as a force for good.
“I’ve learned the importance of resilience, adaptability, and continuous learning. Effective leadership, building strong teams, and maintaining a clear vision are crucial to success”
What challenges did you meet and how did you overcome them?
On the journey to building Tarasis Enterprises, I experienced lots of challenges from financial hurdles to market competition. Every day in business is a challenge but it depends on how you look at it. There are problems with recruitment, retention, building a team, creating the right culture and financial challenges. A huge challenge with continuous growth is funding and streamlining processes. I was fortunate to secure a 10K bank loan to get me started all those years ago. Funding is becoming increasingly difficult. Even for a business that has a proven track record like ours it is very difficult to fund for new projects. You have to keep at it, if you’re determined to do it, it will happen.
A net-zero world will create big challenges for every sector, including our own, but we’ve already started on this journey and we’re excited to be investing in and expanding our renewables business as a key priority in our five-year strategy. For those that embrace it, the opportunities are huge. The real challenge will be to keep costs in check.
Challenges are things that we have to work on, learn from our mistakes and move on. We have innovative leadership teams that are not afraid to think outside the box and that’s been good for growth. You also need to trust your team and allow them to put their stamp on the work. When my twins were born at 30 weeks I had to step away from the company. It was then that the culture we had built really came to the fore; everybody stepped up and got on with it.
What is the support for entrepreneurs like and how could it be improved?
Today the entrepreneurial support system in Ireland has its strengths; there are fantastic support and networking opportunities and some excellent government initiatives. However, there are areas for improvement, such as enhancing mentorship programmes, and start-up funding especially for female led start-ups. Strengthening these aspects would contribute to a more robust and supportive environment for aspiring entrepreneurs in Ireland.
What lessons have you learned, and what would you pass on to other businesses?
I’ve learned the importance of resilience, adaptability, and continuous learning. Effective leadership, building strong teams, and maintaining a clear vision are crucial to success. Continuous learning is really important because you have to develop and learn new ways of working and leading. I consider myself a values based leader, your team isn’t going to be successful if they don’t know where they’re going.
Thirty years ago, while I was pregnant with my second child, I started my business from my kitchen table. Since then, while the business grew, so did my family – today, and I’m a proud parent of seven. During this time, I quickly learned the importance of building a solid team, a team which I can trust to lead within the company, if I, for whatever reason, cannot be there. One of my strengths is developing leaders, and over the years I have chosen leaders who have a similar outlook to me. It’s the job of a leader to share the vision – It’s my job to create an environment for them to be the best they can be. A lot of our senior team have grown up in the company, they came in as students and are now running a department.
The significance of balancing innovation and social responsibility, fostering a family business culture aligned with both business success and positive societal impact, is a key takeaway. Innovation keeps the business alive. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. You can’t stand still in business, you have to be changing and moving all the time. Balancing innovation with social responsibility comes back to values
and purpose. I want my business to create a better world. I want it to be more than the bottom line, that’s who we are.
“We have innovative leadership teams that are not afraid to think outside the box and that’s been good for growth. You also need to trust them to put their stamp on the work”
What is your proudest moment?
I have countless proud moments in my personal life as a mother of seven. Professionally, I am very proud of our Tarasis Foundation, the charitable arm of our company, which houses iCare and Evolve. iCare is built on the belief that kindness and collective action can transform lives, we run several annual campaigns though iCare which allows us to give back to the communities we work in and to those who need it most. Evolve is a CIC which empowers and inspires women to become female leaders and entrepreneurs. We provide free webinars, workshops and resources to help women especially to establish or develop their business. Seeing the Tarasis Foundation helping others makes me very proud.
What are your plans for the future?
The future of Tarasis Enterprises involves strategic growth plans in housing, support services, renewables and healthcare. We’ve already made a strong start to our new 5-year growth plan and have made good headway on our new job target, but we will continue to do what we have always done – focusing on the positive impact we can make to other people’s lives. I aspire to maintain our commitment to continuous improvement and long-term success, with a focus on increased social impact and sustained innovation within the organisation. Our investment arm is also focused on new areas of innovation, specifically in sustainable beef production, setting up Kingsbury Wagyu where we have adopted a circular economy approach with a net zero delivery system.
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