The fabulous Mum’s The Boss is opening a new mums’ networking group in Leicester this week. If you’re in the Leicester area, I really recommend going to the Soar Valley Leisure Centre, Mountsorrel from 10 to 12 on Friday 19th February.
Take a look at Mum’s The Boss Leicestershire Launches for all the details.
For future events, see the Mum’s The Boss website.
Not in Leicester? Here’s my list of business mums’ networking groups around the country.
(This post was last updated on 22/3/12)
Networking groups for business mums are popping up all over the place at the moment. ‘Traditional’ business networking groups often don’t suit business mums too well, so they are setting up their own.
Mums are finding that typical business networking groups are held either over breakfast or in the early evening – the busiest times of the day if you have a young family. Also, the way some networking groups are structured feels a bit too stiff and formal for many, who are looking for a much more warm and relaxed feel.
If you’re wondering whether to give one a try, I really do recommend you give it a go. As well as making business contacts, you’ll be inspired by what other mums are achieving and if you miss the company of the guys in the office, a networking group could help you fill that gap.
Here are the groups that I know of, but I’m sure there must be more out there:
Mum’s The Boss – Expanding all over the UK
Busy Mums – Stafford
Networking Mummies– Dorset, Warwickshire and growing throughout the UK.
Enterprising Mums – Hitchin, Herts
Mums Business Club – Throughout the UK
Mums In Biz – Brighton and West Sussex
FIND – Durham
Mumpreneurs Networking Club – South East/ south coast
Motivating Mum – London
Scottish Mumpreneur Network – Scotland
Ladies Who Latte – UK – wide
MumsUnLtd@Viva -website coming soon, in the meantime events are listed on the Viva Networking website or email events@viva-networking.co.uk .
Business Mums Connect – Surrey and Hampshire
morningmums.co.uk – Wirral
Do you know of any more? Let me know and I’ll add them to the list
I'm proud to introduce my latest guest blogger, Mums The Boss, otherwise known as Sam Pearce and Helen Woodham. Mums The Boss is THE Bedfordshire networking group for Mums in business and they recently celebrated their first birthday. Here are are their top ten tried-and-tested free (or nearly free) publicity tips.
In our first year in business we have spent the princely sum of £30 + VAT on promotional activity, paying for an insert service which interestingly had a zero return on investment! However we have managed to appear in the local press 3 times, the national press once, and have been interviewed on our local radio station. We have had a double page spread in a local parenting magazine distributed to over 10,000 mums through the school book bags, been featured on numerous websites and been promoted by several business agencies. We have also secured free venue use, free business advice, free business books and had over 20 prizes donated to a recent raffle. And we’ve done all this without ever having to resort to bribery or blackmail. So, how have we done it? We are proud to unveil the Mum’s The Boss Guide to free (or very cheap) publicity!
We are by no means PR Gurus and these tips are non industry-standard – they are just things that have worked for us and allowed us to enjoy a certain level of publicity for free! Do you have any creative ideas or tips for getting free publicity? We’d love to hear all about them (mainly so we can try them out ourselves)!
[nohide]photo credit: Steve Snodgrass[/nohide]
Here’s a tricky question for all new business owners – how much should you charge?
If you pick a price that’s too high then you risk nobody buying, too low and you might not make a profit. Here are five mistakes to avoid when setting a price for your product or service.
1. Don’t add up your costs and then add a bit more on top
If you do this, you won’t take into account the value of your product or service to your customers, so you risk under-charging. Your product or service is worth what your customer is prepared to pay for it – find out what people are prepared to pay and use this to decide on your price.
2. Don’t look at what your competitors are charging and undercut them
You may be offering a better quality product, better customer service or offering a niche product that is different from your competitors. If so, you might be able to charge more than the competition.
Exceptions to this rule might be if you have a new way of delivering a service or manufacturing a product that means you can sell it at a cheaper price than the competition and still make a decent profit. Or if you’re selling a product that’s identical to ones that people can buy elsewhere, like books and CDs.
3. Don’t charge by the hour
There are several reasons for this. First, your hourly rate should be quite high because you’ll need to pay your own salary, tax and national insurance as you would if you were employed. Then you’ll need to factor in all the costs that you can’t directly charge for such as planning, preparation, expenses, training, insurance and accountants fees. This will mean your hourly rate will be double or treble what it would be if you were employed by someone else.
Second, if you offer a package, you can throw in some bonuses that don’t cost you a great deal, but that offer great value to the customer, so making you look more attractive. This could be a CD of your own music if you’re a children’s party entertainer or an e-book if you’re a trainer.
Third, customers are happier knowing what the total cost will be. If a virtual assistant charges £20 per hour for writing a series of press releases, the client still doesn’t know what this will cost until the task is done. Instead, the virtual assistant and client could agree in advance that the whole job will cost, say, £100.
Some clients may insist that you charge by the hour, usually if you’re freelancing for another company. If not try charging for what you’ll actually deliver, rather than the time it will take you to do the work.
4. Don’t charge what feels like a reasonable price.
This won’t take into account what it actually costs to provide that service or product.
Work out all your costs so that you know the minimum you need to charge to break even. Then you’ll know you must charge more than this to make a profit. Use this minimum value as a guide, rather than basing your charges on it otherwise you’ll be making mistake number one (above).
5. Don’t go too low
If you’re just starting out, it’s easy to charge too little then find it’s hard to raise your price later. It’s better to start with a price that’s slightly too high than one that’s too low. You can always offer a discount or special offer later if you find your price is a bit high.
6. (Free bonus point!) Don’t undervalue your own time
This is incredibly easy to do when you’re starting out. If you end up paying yourself less than minimum wage you’d be better off getting a job than you would running your own business. Sometimes the worst boss in the world is yourself!
Be confident and charge what you’re worth.
Have you made any mistakes when deciding what to charge?
Here are some excellent tips for marketing your website from marketingdonut.co.uk. Most will cost you nothing but your time!
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