Category: Featured

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I started a business with a baby: Melinda Holohan of eleventyone Limited

Tell us a little about your business

I’ve always wanted to start on my own but never really had the opportunity or an idea that I thought was worthwhile. But in late summer 2009 the pieces fell into place and I started my company called eleventyone Limited, which focuses on developing practical and useful products for the children’s market. I initially came up with a product that I eventually had to put on hold due to development issues, but almost simultaneously I invented and designed a new educational toy calendar called Circa that helps children understand the concept of the calendar in a more intuitive and tactile way. I have a third product in development and the plan is for Circa to hopefully pay for costs towards that product. Continue reading “I started a business with a baby: Melinda Holohan of eleventyone Limited”

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Sell advertising space on your website: Which stats do you need in your media pack?

When I looked into selling advertising space here on Business Plus Baby the first place I went was Google.  Unfortunately, most of the information I found was way too advanced and technical for someone like me who was just starting out with web advertising.

In the end I decide not to go down the advertising route at that time (more on that in another post!), but I wrote up what I did find in this post: how to make more money from your website: advertising and sponsorship because I thought it would be useful for someone else.

One thing I didn’t cover in that post was what a prospective advertiser would want to see if they were thinking of buying an ad on your site. These stats are usually part of your media pack. And so that you get more than just my opinion here 🙂 I’ve asked some Business Plus Baby guest posters what they’d like to see if they were thinking of advertising on your website. Continue reading “Sell advertising space on your website: Which stats do you need in your media pack?”

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Launching an iPhone App: How two mums launched Legacy Organiser

Today’s guest post comes from Victoria Moore who, together with her business partner Mo, launched the iPhone app Legacy Organiser (despite neither of them having a background in IT or even owning iPhones!)

You may recall that the last series of the BBC’s Apprentice featured the launch of an app. At the time I couldn’t believe it as earlier the same day the programme went out, my friend and I had launched our own iPhone app.  It was such a coincidence and hopefully a good sign for the success of our project.

Mo and I met as neighbours in the Scottish Highlands.  We both had previously been involved in start-ups and business, and last year we started talking about new ideas and ventures.  It was around the same time that I had my will drawn up.  Like many people,  I had never got round to doing this but after having children I felt a huge responsibility of making sure they would be looked after if anything were to happen to myself and my husband.  There are many moments in life when you suddenly recognise your own mortality and for me having children was definitely one of those.

Although my will dealt with legal and financial matters, I realised that there was no way of leaving details of how I would like to be remembered or my life celebrated.  Many evenings and glasses of wine later, Mo and I came up with the idea that a mobile app would be a perfect way of storing this information and thus “Legacy Organiser” was born.

However, neither of us had any kind of background in IT or new media nor did we own an iPhone between us.   The whole project has been a massive learning curve.  There is a huge amount of information on the internet about start up apps, but given our lack of experience and knowledge it was very difficult to work out what was relevant or helpful.

We met with a few app developers and had a particularly surreal meeting with one agency where we felt we were old enough to be their mothers.  They swaggered in wearing skinny jeans looking like Franz Ferdinand and appeared pretty startled when they spotted us sitting there sipping our lattes in our pastel coloured cardigans.  I think there is a presumption that people engaging in new business within the mobile app community are young, achingly trendy and technology natives.  We don’t quite fit the bill in any of these categories.

Having said that, and after months of research, we came up with a brief for our developers for the design and the functionality for the app and we spent several months working with them to get it right.  We submitted the app to Apple and having had it approved we are now beginning the process of soft launching the app.  It has been a fantastic, exasperating at times and fascinating journey so far.  We are trying to raise awareness of the app through traditional and social media.  We were delighted to be featured recently as a Virgin Entrepreneur http://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/blog/app-innovator-on-acting-upon-inspiration

My advice to anyone thinking of doing the same is don’t let a lack of IT experience put you off – look at me….I did it!

To download the app and being creating your own legacy click here:

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/legacy-organiser/id428518774?mt=8

For any further information contact Victoria Moore at victoria@legacyorganiser.com

or at LinkedIn  http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/victoria-moore/34/a08/512

If you enjoyed this post, why not join my mailing list? You’ll get weekly tips to help you thrive as a self-employed parent, as well as my a free e-book,”Running a business around a family: 9 Steps to success”.

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Do I need a business plan?

Most mums don’t need to get a start-up loan (although that would be nice!) Instead, we tend to choose businesses that need very little start-up capital and fund them either from our savings or just keep feeding our profits back it the business.

We don’t need a heavy-duty business plan to convince an investor to give us money, so do we really need a business plan at all?

Er, yes!

You may find that using a typical business plan template for a small home business is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. In fact, every time you look at the template you get this irresistible urge to make a coffee, feed the cat or do anything else but fill it in!

Here are two good reasons why you need a business plan:

1) Without a plan, it’s hard to have any direction or focus. In fact, unless you’ve done some business planning,  you could find yourself working hard for several years and still have no idea if you’ll ever make a profit.

2) The process of writing it is at least as valuable as having the finished business plan sitting in front of you. So don’t feel you that you can’t write a business plan because you don’t know where you’re going yet. The purpose of your business plan is to give you direction.  And it doesn’t matter if you change it every week.

Any planning is better than none at all, so if you’re struggling, grab yourself a sheet of A4 paper and scribble down the answers to these questions. Go on, do it now!

  1. Who are my customers? (be very specific)
  2. What problem will this solve for my customers (and do they really want it solved?)
  3. How will I check that customers want this product/service?
  4. How will my customers find me?
  5. Who are my competitors?
  6. How is my product/service different from my competitors?
  7. How much do I need to charge/sell to a) be able to pay myself a decent salary b) pay all my expenses c) have some profit left over to be able to develop my business?

I found this Remarkably Simple Business Plan from Sonia Simone really helpful, too.

If you found this post helpful, why not join my mailing list? You’ll get weekly tips to help you thrive as a self-employed parent, as well as my a free e-book,”Running a business around a family: 9 Steps to success”.

Creative Commons License photo credit: KatjaSchmitt

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