I’ve had to be quite flexible, as for years I said training was not my thing, but you need to go with the flow. In fact, I’m selling more SmartChartz now on the back of the training. Abiola Ajayi-Obe, Founder of SmartChartz

Ironically, it was becoming a full-time mother that kickstarted Abiola Ajayi-Obe’s business, SmartChartz. With no experience of disciplining her two girls, she soon realised that some type of task and reward system was necessary if they were to avoid constant tears and arguments.

The original chart she hung on the wall provided the foundations for SmartChartz, her business selling star chart systems for children. Since then, Abiola has diversified into offering training and development courses for teachers and employers as well.

“When I set the business up in 2004 it only provided one solution: a way for parents and adults to manage children’s behaviour,” explains Abiola. “So I’ve had to be quite flexible, as for years I said training was not my thing, but you need to go with the flow. In fact, I’m selling more SmartChartz [also the name of the product] now on the back of the training, as people who hear me talk realise that I have something they can use.”

When Abiola first began her business, she knew what she needed to do, but didn’t know where to start. “I had already found an illustrator and knew how I wanted to sell the chart, but I knew nothing about raising finance, trademark attorneys, printers, accountants, outsourcing and so on,” she says.

So she turned to Business Link London and took part in an 18-month mentoring programme (this has since ceased). “I wouldn’t’ be sitting here now without that support; I certainly wouldn’t have been as successful as quickly,” she says. Business Link London also signposted Abiola to several suppliers: from accountants to outsourcers and marketing consultants. “The latter in particular was excellent and helped me at the very beginning in constructing research questionnaires when I was trying to discover if my product was viable,” she says.

Abiola also made use of training courses that Business Link London recommended. More recently, she has been on a course on public sector contracts. “That’s my target market now and it helps to understand how to fill in their proposals,” she says. “It was excellent, as it has given me the confidence to talk to them now.”

It was an innocuous conversation Abiola had with the head of music at a school in Barnet that initiated her business expansion into training and development courses. “The teacher had heard about my product and said I must have developed some understanding of how to get children to behave on the back of developing my product,” she recalls.

Abiola started by training specialist music teachers and has since trained other primary school teachers in classroom management from Barnet (where her home business is based), Lambeth, Harrow and Kingston. But it’s not just the education sector that’s interested in Abiola’s techniques. “I’ve also been asked to provide training to businesses on managing workplace dynamics,” she says.

This takes her classroom management skills into the boardroom and businesses around the country. Abiola is realistic about what this means for the future of her business. “In order to roll out the training programme across the whole of the UK, I will have to recruit some staff to help me,” she says. At the same time, Abiola has received lots of feedback from parents wanting new designs of her SmartChartz, as well as teachers requesting a classroom product.