INTANGIBLE as it may be, time is a commodity, a valued item or input when building and running a business. Equally, though, time, and particularly a lack of it, can prove to be an obstacle.
INTANGIBLE as it may be, time is a commodity, a valued item or input when building and running a business. Equally, though, time, and particularly a lack of it, can prove to be an obstacle.
Six years ago, Generating Time director Angie Spiteri had just had her first child and, six months into motherhood, wanted a change from her 17-year career at the tax office so decided to do a course in business coaching.
Advised that the course should take three months to complete and aware that, without a niche offering business coaches can struggle, Ms Spiteri set about her challenge of completing the course in the given time frame.
As she studied in the two hours that her son slept each morning, Ms Spiteri began to recognise the challenge that faces every business – not having enough hours in the day.
“I did the course, when I had him on maternity leave. In the manual it tells you, you can finish it in three months, just follow this study plan and you’ll finish it. So naively, when my boy was sleeping, and my dad was sick and I was taking him to hospital, between these two things, I studied,” Ms Spiteri said.
When she finished the course before the allotted time, her contacts at the academy were impressed; so impressed that Ms Spiteri was offered the opportunity to open a branch of time management courses under its name.
“They didn’t do anything in time management, it was going to be part of their business, they were going to branch out and do more than just coaching, they were going to do other management modules to expand their business but they never did,” she said.
Ms Spiteri then opted to start her own consulting business and went about creating a customer base, having recognised her all-important niche market.
“I got my niche, fell in to it, of course I should have known what it was all along,” she said.
“I have been specialising in efficiency really, it’s time management but with a focus on being efficient.”
She has now worked with companies from all sectors, teaching close to 1,000 individuals how to work efficiently.
Ms Spiteri is not immune to the trappings of time management; lack of time recently became a problem again with the arrival of her second child 18 months ago.
“I do face-to-face workshops and … I can’t keep travelling to Sydney or Melbourne or wherever. I can’t keep doing that with the kids, not as frequently as I need to,” Ms Spiteri said.
“I want to be a good mum, a home mum. I only have two hours to do it (work). Every mum has the same thing. It’s a hassle getting the kids organised.
“My whole reason of going into business was because I didn’t want to put my kids in day care. When I say that I mean, of course you put them in day care because it is good for them, but I didn’t want to put them in from seven in the morning to five at night every day. There is nothing wrong with that, but I just didn’t want to be doing that.”
Ms Spiteri sees the daily pressures for parents running their own business reflected in her own life, and she has had to make changes to her business in order to cater to her family’s needs.
Juggling that with still wanting to grow her business, she found herself in a bind.
“It’s holding back your business, not going over east, when that is the only way, face to face,” she said.
Ms Spiteri decided to make her coaching modules more accessible by putting them online in February, hoping both her clients and her time bank would benefit.
“Putting it online has made it more accessible for everyone. It is still early days. I think face to face is always good, because it gives you credentials immediately, people see what you are about. I think online is about getting the marketing right,” she said.