Link: http://acetalentnet.com.au/docs/business_mums.pdf

as featured in the "Inspired" magazine, Autumn/Winter 2008
by Fran Molloy

For former management consultant Denise Hall, the flexibility she needed as a mum has become the key to her success; her business is based on supplying talented consultants, who work as ‘free agents,’ to organisations who need their skills for a short-term project, often in project-based fields like organisational development and training.

She channelled her inner entrepreneur and with another mum as business partner, established aCE talentNET. With her extensive experience as an international management consultant, Denise could have had her pick of top executive positions; but she felt that, as a single mum, she needed a certain level of flexibility, and that is difficult within a large corporation.

Now, she works about 25 hours a week – during school hours – and is able to earn a good income, while keeping an active role in
parenting her daughter.

“You don’t have to bust a boiler to make it work,” she says, adding that she sees many parents caught up in inefficient work settings
that waste the time they could be spending with their children.

Efficiency and responsibility are key to making her business work – and her team is not bound by office hours. “We structure our
days around what needs to be done – the work to be done is addressed rather than the hours that need to be filled.”

Technology helps to make most of Denise’s work location-independent – and she has a lot of trust and respect for her team of co-workers.

for the full article... read on