Behind every great tradie is a woman rolling her eyes.
This is the title of a new book by Helen Cowley, a Munruben based business coach and consultant.
The book details Ms Cowley’s introduction to the world of small-business ownership and the lessons she’s learned along the way.
“I’ve been working with small businesses for 35 years and I wanted to write a book that would be helpful to small businesses,” Ms Cowley said.
“In particular, over the years, I’ve seen a lot of tradie businesses where their wives end up helping them, which is basically where I started.
“So I thought I would go through and write my lessons learned, but as I wrote I realised more and more how I was thrown in the deep end, and a lot of women are.
“I don’t think a lot of women are recognised for the part they play within business.”
The process of writing the book gave Ms Cowley the opportunity to look back and laugh at the challenges she faced while ‘helping out’ in a small business and raising a family simultaneously.
More importantly, those times of stress enabled Ms Cowley to emerge with lessons on how to make it through similarly stressful times.
“It’s about saying [to women] ‘you’re not the only one’, here are a couple of lessons I’ve learned and you might have had slightly different experiences but you have to look at it in a funny light,” she said.
Ms Cowley doesn’t consider herself to be a “good” writer, but writing a book that would be a light and interesting read, accessible to people in small businesses, and in particular, encouraging women in business was important to her.
“A lot of women just feel like they’re, as the book says, just helping out. They’re just given a little job, but they end up doing so much of the work,” she said.
“Often that’s not their main role and they’ve got another job, or they have got kids to worry about, or whatever, but they play a big part [in the business].
“They don’t often recognize how big a part they actually play. And I think neither do we.”
Any personal benefit Ms Cowley received from the writing and publication of the book was an added bonus.
“It helped me to look at my story,” she said.
“I ended up with a little bit of depression at the end of that particular cycle of my life. And it helped me go through and recognise how much I’ve learned and how much I’ve taken on in doing that role.
“One of the first things I did was to write a business plan for this particular business, and that’s what I’ve ended up doing for 35 years, that’s what I’ve helped people with business plans.”
Behind Every Great Tradie is a Woman Rolling Her Eyes is available in print and on e-readers online.
