This week’s Ambassador Feature is with Joslyn Hutchinson, The Engaged Space
2019 AusMumpreneur South Australian Business Excellence Award – Gold winner
Joslyn Hutchinson is the Managing Director and Principle Consultant of The Engaged Space, a holistic HR and Business Consultancy that creates great workplaces and drives business productivity through its people. The service delivers an outsourced HR Department that tailors its services to the specific client needs. It supports business owners to build and manage their workforce in compliance with legislation, create a great workplace culture and improve employee engagement.
Joslyn is mum to Harry, 6 and Evie, 3 and an experienced HR and Business Operations executive. She has a strong track record across a broad range of industries, volunteers as a not for profit Director and she recently completed her Masters of Business Administration. She is passionate about creating high performing workplace cultures through setting a strong HR foundation and using employee insights to drive strategy. She also delivers mentoring and coaching to business owners and people leaders that improves their wellbeing by reducing the overwhelm and isolation of running a business.
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Tell us the story behind why you love what you do and why you’re so passionate about sharing your message.
I’m passionate about enabling efficient and effective businesses, as this contributes to a healthy economy, drives business growth and creates opportunities for future generations.
Delivering accessible HR and Business advice I see as critical to not only business growth but also the wellbeing of small business owners. By having a dedicated advisor, it can strategically and operationally assist improve business decision making, decrease overwhelm and contribute to reducing the sense of isolation felt by many small business owners. With wellbeing strongly linked to happiness and life satisfaction and the impact of long term poor wellbeing and stress increasing the risk of developing a mental health condition, it is important to be proactive about business owner and employee wellbeing in the workplace. Watching business owners who have been stuck transform into confident decision makers is very rewarding.
Tell us a story about a challenging time you faced, how you overcame it and what lesson/lessons/wisdom this experience has taught you about life and business.
In an authentic mumpreneur moment, The Engaged Space was created pacing the halls all night with a screaming one year old and a questionable level of sanity. My outlet became developing a business plan that would see me launch softly with a very limited amount of initial capacity in that first year. With a child who didn’t take a dummy or a bottle, I just didn’t have the opportunity to get out and hustle. This experience highlighted that there are many approaches to launch a business and enter a market and it’s important to align your life and business with an approach that works for you and your family.
Managing this finite time has been an ongoing challenge as I recommenced study, accepted a director position and my business began to grow rapidly. Recognising that I was reaching my capacity, I made a mindset shift that stopped searching for balance, which in itself implies an unachievable 50:50 split and I worked to compartmentalise my life and focus on being highly productive and achieving key priorities with work and then creating quality time with the family. I have an amazing community around me, but I continually need to assess my capacity and I do this by thinking about my business and life holistically and then make decisions about what can be outsourced to achieve what I need to achieve. My strategy is to reduce the opportunity cost of me doing everything, therefore I need to focus on my strengths and building the business.
What are 3 pieces of advice you would give someone starting out in business?
1. Be clear about what success in business looks like for you to determine what you will set out to achieve.
2. Focus your energy on activities what will get you closer to achieving your version of success.
3. Build a strategic business plan that researches your industry and your ideal target customer; determines the critical factors to achieving success within your market and sets your value proposition and pricing model. This will help inform and guide your business decisions and provides a plan that will assist manage the resources and capacity that you have.
What is your proudest business achievement? Why does this mean so much to you?
This would be deciding to invest in my own development and then successfully completing my Masters of Business Administration, which I initially commenced 10 years prior. Life happened so I didn’t complete this as quickly as what I would have liked, however the academic process was life changing and has opened my mind to the complexity of business, which has influenced the way I operate and the advice I now provide my clients.
It would also be remiss of me not to mention the Ausmumpreneur award, which has increased my confidence and has given me the motivation to focus on business growth.
What’s next for your business?
I have actively avoided marketing my business, whilst studying but now that this is complete it is time. I have been pre-empting this by working in the background on my internal systems, resources and tools to assist manage the scaling of the business and I’m now working on the marketing strategy to do this. Separate to this is the recent development of a training strategy that will enable businesses to access content that will help them to build their own HR and business capabilities and link to structured mentoring programs.
If you could change the world, and money was no object, what would you do?
The impact of human development is creating an undeniable impact on the Earth and therefore a focus on sustainability, defined as the ability to assist meet the needs of now, without compromising the needs of the future, will be critical for more businesses to be a part of (World Commission on Environment and Development).
To enable the change, I’d increase the awareness around sustainability and support businesses to increase their environmental literacy that will inform a sustainability agenda. We need to create a norm, where businesses across all industries strategically work to a sustainable business agenda and this becomes a competitive advantage. If every business could just start making small incremental improvements by innovating the way that they do business it will create a significant impact.
Finally, what do you believe is the secret to success?
The secret is to stop putting limits on ourselves. We need to be conscious of the way we speak to ourselves, what we do and what we strive for. We need to be brave and stop working to these limits and stay focused on what is possible. We then need to ask ourselves why couldn’t we be the one to do this and then follow it through with confidence.
To connect with Joslyn and The Engaged Space, please visit :-
Website: www.theengagedspace.com.au
Facebook: www.facebook.com/The-Engaged-Space-Consulting
Instagram: www.instagram.com/jos_theengagedspace/
