Ladies Fashion Lunch for St Annes Hospice

Michelle Hart has just told us about this lunch to raise money for St Annes Hospice.

Mondays meeting in full

Still on serious painkillers for bad tooth, 3 hrs at dentist now with no idea why I am in such pain, so I hope this blog makes sense.

Things are getting bigger and bigger at Happy Mondays, 21 inspirational women on Monday, I find it really inspiring that there is so many women locally with so much talent and so willing to share and support each other.

Penny Lines from No Nonsense marketing gave an excellent talk, I am sure we will asking her back in a few months time. If anyone would like a copy of her slides please contact me. My additions to my ever extending to do list from her talk where, get testimonials and maybe even a case study on you testimonial page. the case study would describe the challenge, benefits and solution. If you are B2C send an email quarterly, incorporate something of interest and an offer within the newsletter and use and reward your existing customers.

Penny also recommended the following:

• The networking book “And death came third” – it’s by Andy Lopata and Peter Roper, www.deathcamethird.com – so called because walking into a room full of people and speaking in public were cited as people’s greatest fears – ahead of dying, unbelievably!  It’s a great read and an excellent guide to the etiquette of networking.
•  Weekly business paper, Crains Manchester Business, www.crainsmanchesterbusiness.co.uk – an invaluable read for anyone selling to businesses in the Manchester/North West area.  As well as the weekly paper, you get access to the website archive which is useful for checking out company histories.  They also publish a weekly list focussing on a particular sector such as PR companies, property developers, restaurants etc and they bring out all the year’s lists at year-end – very useful sources of information.

 Some other recommended links were:

• www.marketingdonut.co.uk a great resource for small businesses
• www.startups.co.uk
• www.bright-marketing.co.uk
• bambino goodies blog, try and get your products reviewed here if they are baby related, as this is a incredibly popular blog  - www.bambinogoodies.co.uk

See you next Monday, Michelle hart from Michelle Hart PR will be giving us a short talk on PR.

Just a quickie

We had another great meeting on Monday, Penny Lines was fantastic, I think we all went away with ideas of how to improve our business.
I will post a detailed review of meeting asap, but I have a cracked tooth and I am on so many painkillers that life is just a bit woozy at the moment, and I am still having a childcare crisis, but will definitely post before Sue gets back from her romantic short break in Venice, as I might get told off!!!

Another two guest speakers - P81 and Context PR

Nicky Bates from P81 print (www.p81.co.uk) will be speaking at our meeting on the 2nd November, she will be talking about all the ways you can get your message out there with print and their promotional side of the business.
Context PR (www.contextpr.co.uk) will be discussing their blogging for business service on the 19th Ocotber, focussing on how important blogging is for SEO.

Two great speakers lined up!

Following feedback from the last two meetings, we're pleased to announce that we've arranged for two fantastic speakers who will come along to our next couple of Monday meetings to give us all some PR and marketing hints and tips. Details are below:


Monday 21 September at Fina Bar & Grill - Penny Lines from No Nonsense Marketing will provide some Marketing On A Shoestring essentials.

Monday 28 September at Caffe Latte - Michele Hart from Michele Hart PR will outline what PR is (i.e. it's more than just writing a press release!) how it can benefit your business and how you can go about generating some!


We hope that you'll be able to come along to one or both of these meetings as they represent a great opportunity to get some invaluable hints and tips from industry experts.

Another great first meeting

We met at Caffe Latte in Handforth today, and 17 people attended plus the photographer, the only male allowed.
Caffe Latte was a great venue, lots of space, a staffed childrens room with lots of games, crayons books etc and great strong coffee. Three children came along with their mums and they were amazingly well behaved, wait till I bring my three along!!
So some info on all our mumpreneurs.
Jane and Jane from Coji designs and Silverberry designs (see www.silverberrydesigns.etsy.com for her designs) discussed the craft fair they set up, they could not find a decent show to exhibit at, so organised their own, it is on the 8th October in Wilmslow and called 'made by mummy' contact jane on madebymummy@hotmail.com for further information on attending.
Another 2 ladies are set to launch a new exciting luxury gift website in October.
Sarah Walters offered her services as an IT consultant, she is fast becoming our twitter, facebook etc expert.
Helen from Modo UK who basically can help you with anything - walking dogs, graphics, accounts is most probably going to find herself even busier soon see www.modouk.com.
Totally inspired by Jo from www.awaywiththekids.com, what a fantastic concept, she is about to launch away without the kids!
You could also get fit with  www.fit-women.com while eating fruit bouquets from www.fruitbouquet.co.uk, 2 more great concepts,  Anne's classes are in Didsbury park and they are fun and informal and Claire's family shop is in Wilmslow.
Lisa launched recently www.alderleyedge.com a local resource for people living in Alderley Edge, full of great facts and info and it looks great.
Joanne and Liz from www.cheshiremediation.co.uk came along and if I ever need any help, these are the ladies to use, they definitely have the sensitive touch, 2 very intelligent ladies who you just know you can trust.
The other ladies I will blog about tomorrow as need my beauty sleep now, as just realised that the reason I did not like the photos Macc express took today is I still think I am thin and thirty not fat and forty!!! (that's Helen by the way not Sue, she is not even forty!!!)

Handforth here we come

Just a quick blog to remind everyone that we're meeting at Caffe Latte this Monday. Wilmslow Express is also sending a photographer along so I'll leave it to you to decide on outfit/levels of make-up required! A lot of the latter will be being applied in my case...

Busy day today - lots of writing to do, in between argiung with Monkhouses who have managed to sell half the parents at our school the wrong school uniform which is helpful. I'm off to Blenheim Horse Trials this weekend to report for another website which I'm really looking forward to, particularly if the weather stays as it is.

Don't forget to check out the resource documents on the blog as there's some really valuable information there and book yourselves a place at our wine and speaker evening on 22 October.

Hopefully see you on Monday!

Happy Monday indeed!

Yee ha! Had our first meeting today at Fina Bar & Grill and it was brilliant if we don't say so ourselves! Most of us arrived pretty frazzled (Helen and I included) as it was kids' first day of term (and school and nursery in general in Helen's kids' case!) Touch wood all went smoothly and the coffee and muffins Mandy at Fina provided certainly helped ease our furrowed brows.

We were delighted by the number of ladies who turned up - way beyond our expectations and it was lovely to put some faces to names. The atmosphere was just what we wanted i.e. all very informal but everyone still had a chance to talk about their business, what stage they were at and provided a bit of background about themselves. This then led to some really interesting conversations among the group and it was great to hear about everyone's ventures. We rounded off by agreeing that everyone had found the meeting really useful as it was nice to talk to like-minded people, make valuable contacts and realise that we're not alone with some of the concerns and questions that we inevitably have when setting up and establishing our businesses and that help and advice is never far away. We also agreed that a future session from Sarah Walters on how using social networking sites can help your business would be really beneficial - watch this space for details.

Helen and I are so glad that the meeting was productive and enjoyable as we admit we were quite nervous so, thank you ladies for all your kind words and roll on next week at Caffe Latte! Exciting news there too as I had a call from the Wilmslow Express this afternoon and they're going so send a photographer along to take a photo to accompany some editorial they're running on us. Note to self, full face of make up required.

Right, off to write a newsletter now and catch up on emails. Life? What life!

We're Off!

All very exciting - just a few days to go before our first meeting at Fina Bar & Grill in Macclesfield on 7 September and we've already had lot of fabulous Mumpreneurs saying they'll be coming along which is great news. However, the more the merrier, so if any of you out there fancy a coffee and an informative chat then we'd love to see you. Please don't be intimidated by the thought of networking as we aim to be as relaxed and informal as possible. In fact we specically set up the group as both Helen and I felt the prospect of going to some other groups was way to scary so solved the problem by setting up our own! For those of you who'd prefer something in the Wilmslow area, we'll be at Caffe Latte in Handforth on 14 September.

Elsewhere, www.happymondaysnetworking.co.uk is now live and, if we don't say so ourselves, we think it looks great so please take a look! A big thank you has to go to Michelle Kay at Your Webstar who helped us put it together (an answered all our daft questions along the way!) Michelle will be one of four industry experts coming along to our evening wine and speaker event at Tytherington Club on 22 October where she'll be talking about search engine optimisation - something we all know is important but, if you're like me, have no real idea how to do it! Michelle will explain all. Other speakers will include business coach Sarah Harkness, maketing guru Helen Taylor from Human eCreative and local personal trainer Emily Hogarth. It's set to be a fantastic evening and a perfect opportunity to network with these ladies and other mumpreneurs with the added bonus of there being a bar! Email us at contact@happymondaysnetworking.co.uk today to reserve your space.

That's it for now, off to master the scary new worlds of Facebook and Twitter before going into Mummy Mode for a few hours.

See you on Monday!