Joe McGinnis, Braidwater: Here to stay

For Joe McGinnis, CEO of Braidwater Group, building a lasting business has meant combining determination, strong partnerships and a commitment to continuing a family legacy spanning more than 50 years.

From navigating funding challenges after the recession to growing the business with BGF’s backing, Joe reflects on the key milestones and lessons that have shaped Braidwater’s journey.

Watch the full interview or read Joe’s story below.

My name is Joe McGinnis, I’m the CEO of Braidwater Group. I’ve spent a lot of time on different building sites through the years. My family’s been involved in the building industry for over five decades, so I grew up in building.

My father started Braidwater, it’s gone through many permutations, and we’ve been working on social and private housing now for a period of time.

I first became heavily involved after the last recession. There were a lot of challenges in the business, we had a really, really good core team, and we knew that residential housing was always in demand in our local area. So we identified that gap and the more we worked on it we started to understand that the market was very strong.

We formed partnerships with landowners, tried to get those jobs on the ground, and then we started looking for funding.

Being in a remote part of Northern Ireland, funding opportunities for house builders post the recession were little to none. The first problem we had was that there was there were only a small number of local banks, and the second problem we had is that they didn’t want to lend, so there was a major gap.

A moment of step change for us was starting on the new journey, a new path of funding partnership with BGF. Until that point we had a lot of different informal funding arrangements with partners, family resources, that type of thing.

BGF offered an opportunity where we could bring in equity on a basis that we just get on with running the business. One of the other drivers was once we started to meet the people that were involved in BGF.

BGF gave us a lot of confidence in what they were doing, how they were going to support us, and that this form of equity was different to others.

The partnerships had a massive impact on the business. We wouldn’t be able to do what we’ve done in the last 10 years without the partnership with BGF.

The decision to exit the business was set out more or less at day one. We identified that most likely we would keep the business in family hands. It’s been here for 50 years plus, so we might as well keep it another 50.

We worked out a plan with BGF to do that on a manageable basis. In one way, we were sad to see the end of the partnership in that form, but at the same time it was great to reach that milestone to say look we’ve done what we said we would, we’ve achieved a whole lot more than we ever had thought, and we hope that we’ve achieved the same for BGF as our partner.

What we’re most proud of as a team I suppose is the team. We’re really trying to ramp up the next generation of executive and management team within the business, so they’re not reliant on the family as much.

In the early days we had a small core team and we were directly involved in everything. Now we have different disciplines across the business from land-buying, planning and technical, construction, commercial, sales and accounts.

We have a lot of really strong people who’ve grown over those years. Now we’re allowing that to settle and to give them opportunities that maybe they didn’t think they would have had before.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that the small connections you make along the way, sometimes insignificant, can sometimes turn out the most important. They can open doors to relationships and partnerships that you never thought you would ever have.

The advice I’d give an entrepreneur starting out is probably some advice given to me by my granny. She said read everything. I always find that there’s like a thread, you could find a thread of something you’re interested in anywhere and anything. If you follow that thread it’ll take you to places you never thought you could go.

We do take a lot of pride in seeing and hearing the stories from the people, from the tenants, from the homeowners when they get their keys. So it’s a great achievement. It means a lot to us to have involvement in our local community.

There’s a history in our family, our wider family, to contribute to local society, to employment, to building homes, creating opportunities for young people.

All those things are valued by all our family, and we work really hard to maintain that. We think that it’s incumbent on us to keep that tradition alive.