Growth & Jobs | A man of many talents

GARFIELD DALEY is a man of many talents. He is driven to achieve and excel in all areas of his life, including spiritual, financial and family. He is a native of Jones Town in west Kingston where he lived with his parents and siblings until the family made the move to Duhaney Park in St Andrew.

Daley graduated from Ardenne High School where he worked assiduously before enrolling at the College of Arts, Science and Technology, now the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech), where he pursued a bachelor of engineering degree. He then went on to do his master’s in business administration at the Nova Southeastern University in Florida.

“I was both technical and loved the business arena. At high school, it was the thing of the day to be in the science group. Those people were considered the brilliant ones. I wasn’t brilliant by any means, but I loved the sciences, and I was a part of that group. But deep down, I had a strong love and desire for the business subjects, and I hoped that later on, the opportunity would have arisen for me to go into the group that would have taken business and economics and those other things, because I loved those things also,” Daley said.

Pastor Gladstone Clarke played a significant role as a mentor and role model in Daley’s early life. “He was a builder, a farmer, and he did other businesses. I learned from him the importance of having and doing multiple things, even though you might have a common, single objective. I looked at how he operated, and somehow they seemed to just merge, and he was able to take care of his family. He was also able to help others,” Daley said.

Daley desired and really wanted to do what he loved, which was engineering, but he also wanted to take on his next love being an entrepreneur. “I just loved letting things happen, doing things on my own, taking it from beginning to end, and deliver a product or deliver a service. I just loved that from those early years with him (Clarke), and also, I caught onto the building and construction from him. So, to this day, in addition to some of the other entrepreneurial things that I have undertaken, one of them is construction. I have done a few construction projects,” he said.

Today, Daley is living his entrepreneurial dream. In addition to construction projects, he operated a trading company, while he also did electrical consultancy.

“These kinds of things allow me to hone some skills and to see and appreciate what being on your own is like, what working to satisfy the needs and demands of others are, and just the gratification and satisfaction of knowing that you are contributing to other people being happy and carrying out what it is that they want to carry out – you playing a part by supplying them with services and products. I saw myself as someone helping somebody else, helping a broader community, and this is really what I personally wanted to do, and so I was happy doing just that,” Daley said.

Daley is the founder and chairman of Entrepreneurship Partners Limited, a professional services firm that is dedicated to assisting clients navigate the changing dynamics of the business environment, to enable them to achieve their business goals. They provide expert advice and guidance to businesses that are seeking to improve their performance and deliver value to their stakeholders. They also work closely with their clients to solve complex problems, improve their business operations, and achieve their goals and objectives.

“Entrepreneurial Partners’ consulting and business advisory services offer a unique blend of hands-on collaboration, tailored to the budgetary constraints of MSMEs. They prioritise empowering leaders and their teams, delivering measurable and impactful results, and providing a distinctive approach that sets them apart from other consulting firms,” Daley said.

Some of their key considerations, he said, is building a strong platform for competitiveness and recognising the landscape as it is. “It is very competitive. We are going to come into your space and we are going to look what you have. Look where you are and see how we can build a strong platform to allow you to be competitive,” he said.

According to Daley, they align corporate strategies with strategic business goals and objectives. This, he said, is very important to the proper operation of the entity and the potential for scaling that must not be overlooked.

“Sometimes there are assets that we have, and we do not know the value of them and how to properly utilise them to your benefit. When we look at and implement what is called an asset rationalisation programme, we analyse your assets and we rationalise them to your benefit,” he said.

Entrepreneurial Partners Limited will once again host the Re-Align Business and Investment Conference, that will bring together entrepreneurs to not just network, but to re-evaluate and realign their businesses.

“MSMEs will benefit because when you look at the cadre of business leaders and the speakers that are going to be there, they are willing to answer pressing questions. We will hear from people about how they made investments that have worked for them. It just cannot be better than this. We look forward certainly to having all our business people in the MSME space,” Daley said.

The second staging of the Re-Align Business and Investment Conference is scheduled for July 23 at the AC Hotel Kingston.

keisha.hill@gleanerjm.com