Spare time is something small businesses owners rarely have, but pursuing a hobby or course can add value to your day job. As the following examples from small business owners show, you never know where an extracurricular activity might lead your commercial venture:
Leadership
PR, sponsorship and coaching business owner Ian Rowe never expected that resurrecting his childhood dream of rowing would lead him to re-shape his company. He was encouraged to take up the sport again after contracting Olympic medal-winning oarsman Martin Cross as a motivational speaker for his business Gold Fever. “It got me thinking how much I wanted to do something which was the equivalent of winning a gold medal,” says Rowe. “I rowed at school and always felt I’d under-achieved.”
Not content with simply joining a rowing club, Rowe decided to cross the Atlantic. He joined a team trying to set a new world record for the distance. “For 18 months I rowed 17km everyday on the rowing machine in training after work,” he explains. In 2012, Rowe and his crew left harbour. But 28 days later their ship was capsized by a big wave.
“It took me a year to come to terms with the crushing disappointment,” says Rowe. “Then I decided to change the name of my company and tell my story.” Rather than hiring inspiring speakers, Rowe now relates his own experience to schools, charities and corporate organisations. “It was my hobby, but it became my business, called Atlantic Experience,” he says.
Knowledge and insight
Seven years after founding her Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire-based childcare business, Sarah Steel found herself in a public presentation considering whether to expand into Dubai. “I only went to the lecture because it was before a meeting I was already attending,” she says. “I had no intention of doing anything overseas and didn’t think it was at all relevant.”
Steel, managing director of the Old Station Nursery, regularly goes to general business lectures in her spare time. But after this session, she organised a meeting with the keynote speaker, John. “He said the exciting investment areas in the Middle East were education and healthcare, which got me thinking,” she says.
At first, Steel’s plans progressed slowly as the market in the Middle East had crashed. But two years ago John contacted her to say Dubai was ripe for investment. “I bit the bullet, booked a flight, and he showed me around,” says Steel. Since then, Steel has visited eight times and won investment to set up a chain of ten nurseries in the city. The first will open in April.
New technologies
Improving technological skills might seem an obvious way to boost your business, but extra study can teach unexpected lessons.
Tom O’Connor, founder of daily products feed CheckFrame.com, took up French lessons as a hobby. “I did the course just after I left my permanent job to develop the prototype for Frame,” he recalls. “I decided to do something for myself. I like the French way of life, so I signed up for a full-time, three-week course.”
In the evenings, O’Connor sketched plans for his business. He found the practice of learning a language was helping him organise his thoughts. “I’d been working in management, which involved softer skills, but learning French and practicing a stricter way of thinking forced me into a position of having to pick up things quickly.”
O’Connor credits the French lessons for encouraging him to go on to study coding – something he didn’t need to learn to establish Frame, but which has now saved him time and money.
Oliver Southern, CEO of house-share app Chored.net, was similarly surprised when a photography course received as a birthday present influenced his business plan. As an amateur photographer, he attended the one day session on post-production at the beginning of 2014.
“At the same time I was trying to get a designer to work for me for equity,” says Southern. He had himself designed mock-ups of the app his company planned to build. But as a former financial manager, had done so using Excel. “Mine looked terrible,” he says. “But the designer bailed. I was at a crisis point as I had an engineer ready to go – I needed designs.”
Recalling the basic Photoshop training provided by the photography course, Southern looked into whether he could do the drawings himself. By following tutorials on YouTube, he taught himself in his spare time. “I built on what I’d learned in class, and slowly changed my focus of Photoshop from photography manipulation to building assets,” he says. The decision saved him thousands of pounds.
People skills
Volunteering can benefit volunteers as much as the people they support. The Cranfield Trust matches people with business skills with organisations that need management support.
Chief executive Amanda Ticknell says a skill business volunteers often master is how to manage with limited resources. “They also learn about how to reach hard-to-reach groups, and leadership skills,” she says.
Middleton Hall Retirement Village managing director Jeremy Walford has volunteered with several small charities through the trust. He says the experience helped him look at his business “in a more holistic way and to think of the wider impact we have on the lives of our staff”. “They’ve strengthened my view that businesses have the opportunity to do a great deal more than merely be money machines,” he says.
Communications
Many small business owners want to improve their communication skills. Some choose to do so through singing lessons.
As vocal coach and musician Sadie Grist explains, students often improve their speaking voice as a result, and many also grow in confidence. “I have people who make themselves do it because it frightens them,” she says. “It’s challenging, but safe, because it’s one-on-one and very private.” Grist adds that some of her business clients find singing is an antidote to stress. “Singing is about the most relaxing thing you can do, which benefits work because you leave de-stressed,” she recommends.
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