YFSB Interview

Tom Freer – Wyntec.

Owner and managing director of Wyntec – ideal technology solutions.

Married to Christy  since 2001, 6 years old daughter, Arwin.

Started company in 2005, around the time of the GFC and had a 6 month old daughter. – ‘Insane, is the word I would use to describe it’

What was your reasoning to start up your company?

I went into it with an inkling that things could be done better in the area of IT – thats why I started my own business. I have come from a background of working in IT for 15 years for big corporates but…

my passion is to help and make things run better as well as just wanting to do something different.

My parents have always been small business owners, so it’s in the blood.

In simple terms, what do you do?

Stress free IT – I fix peoples computers and I take the pressure off people as IT frustrates the heck out of most people.

People rely on IT so heavily – the more they rely on it and the more it becomes supposedly intuitive the more frustrating it gets particularly when it doesn’t do what you want it to do. So we take the frustration off our customers by fixing their computers – we remove that stress!

What makes a good husband? / working for myself as apposed to working for a company…

My role is to be a provider.

The same principle for both family and business applies;

• be there,
• be available
• be flexible.

We share everything as she works full time too.

Why start your own small business?

The driving force for me in starting the business was about having flexibility. If I need to drop everything and go to my daughters ‘fathers day parade’ at school then I don’t have to worry about trying to get that time off work, I can just go.

family rhythms – school morning drop off is my thing with my daughter and then I’m always home before 6 for dinner and story time.

weekends are generally family.

I try to do more strategic things at night after my daughter has gone to bed as there are less distractions.

What is your one piece of advice to manage both worlds Business & Family?

Make time!

Lack of time is not an excuse… You don’t have to be available 24/7 for your clients, yes, you are your small business, but you can block it out even for 2 hrs a day. My 2 hours is spending time with my family over dinner and then get back to whatever needs to be done after but its about making time – Blocking it out in the calendar.