Turning tough times around

SURVIVING under harsh circumstances is about recognising opportunity and exploiting it, playing to your strengths and changing the things around you.

Success Transport owner manager Heather Jones delivered this message when she addressed last week's launch of the Women Moving Forward mentorship program.

Ms Jones concedes business is hard, and that her company has lost 70 per cent of its work due to the economic downturn.

She has coped by moving away from traditional sources of business and into new opportunities.

"At the moment with the economic climate we had to change our main core work from tipper work to oversize. Once we were carting oversized loads to the mines, now we're carting them back," she said.

Ms Jones said there were numerous opportunities, but sometimes business people failed to see them.

"When one door closes another one opens, but you've got to be prepared to change your approach completely to the left field," she said.

It is an approach that has guided the winner of multiple awards - including Telstra's Businesswoman of the Year national finals, and the WA Business News 40under40 Awards - from the beginning.

Ms Jones was living in the Pilbara with her husband and two young children in 1994, but when the relationship broke down she found herself alone and with no idea of what to do.

She carried a love of engines and played to this strength, convincing a friend to give her a casual position driving trucks for his company.

After this, she landed a job doing longer runs after convincing a second company to let her take her young daughters in the cab with her.

"I had to prove myself first, of course, 150 per cent," Ms Jones said.

She said added that in tough times it is possible to turn things around to your advantage.

"It does work, you just have to work out the ways to implement the change," she said.

"I convinced two companies to open up opportunities for me, and now I'm in a situation where I can employ 13 people in my own business."