I was nominated for Best Online Business at the Mumpreneur Conference and Awards 2010 and although I didn’t win, it was afantastic event as always with a lot of my favourite speakers, including Alison Rothwell of SEO Training Club, there to motivate, inform and inspire the audience of businesswomen. I went to two seminars, one ‘break-out session’ on SEO and listened to two motivational speakers. More info and links coming soon, meanwhile there’s an interview with me below by Family Friendly Working which talks about what I most enjoyed at the conference.

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I just wanted to report back on the Mumpreneurs Meetup which I organised for the Tower Hamlets Mums Business Club. It was hosted by the excellent Ping Pong Dim Sum in Appold Street, who as usual gave us their lovely Private Dining Room ( I can’t sing their praises enough, they provided lovely flower teas for the mumpreneurs and they really do their best to help groups like ours).

Our first speaker was Leanne dal Santo from Smartbags. Leanne gave up a safe corporate career as an accountant to start her business after being inspired by a visit to Australia where she found out about eco friendly non woven polypropylene bags. These are made using much less toxic processes than normal plastic bags and are reusable and fully recyclable. Leanne approached the company who were importing them in Australia and set up a handshake deal to start up her own site in the UK and import the bags from the manufacturers in China (who work from an independently audited factory and ship rather than using air freight). As she had manufacturers and designs all ready to go, Leanne’s start up costs were low. Leanne works with her husband, who focuses on sales, giving her time to concentrate on PR, strategy and design. She also has two children, and has to juggle a lot! She has lots of tips for mumpreneurs wanting to follow in her footsteps:

• Know your competitors
• Focus on sales and target your audience
• Being green is not always enough, you need to look at cost as well
• Packaging is really important for your products: make sure it’s sustainable
• Communicate with your customers: don’t forget to stay in touch!
• At some point you are going to have to pick up your phone and ring potential customers! Don’t be shy!
• Outsource the things you can’t do well to give you time on the things you do do well
• It makes life easier if you don’t hold stock!

Our second speaker was Hannah McHalick from Oh Baby London. Hannah was a graphic designer for 15 years but was on maternity leave without pay when she had the idea for Oh Baby London. She designed her babygrows (including the fabulous “Inside for 9 Months”) and came up with the company name – and designed the catalogue – while pregnant. Hannah didn’t get start up funding and just went for her idea, getting samples made up and taking them around baby shops to get whole sale orders. Her brother-in-law designed her website and she started taking orders – and getting press – right away. She was offered her shop premises two years later through the workshop where Hannah was based. However, her shop and website weren’t initially Hannah’s main priority, she was focused on wholesale orders. After a near-disaster where an order wasn’t produced in time for a big wholesale customer, Hannah realised it was time to grow the retail side of her business and switched to retailing. Her turnover was the same, but her profit was much larger. It also meant she has more than one route to market.

Hannah’s tips for mumpreneurs:

• Have some money before you start, so you don’t run out in a crisis!
• Constantly monitor everything you are doing
• If something goes wrong, try to see the positive side
• It’s really important to believe in what you are doing, and keep your eye on the prize
• Know where you are going and how to get there
• Wear blinkers: be aware of your own route and don’t spend too much time looking sideways at your competitors
• Don’t ignore scary stuff; learn to love spreadsheets and profit and loss forecasts and be aware of your cashflow
• Remember to relax and look after your health and your mind: yoga and running are both recommended by Hannah
• Switch off when it’s time to pick up the kids

We had some great mumpreneurs attending the talks, including Jennifer Robertson from Scamp Baby Gifts, who makes gorgeous embroidered and personalised pictures for babies (you can follow her on Twitter too ), and Samantha McCulloch from Virtually Optimized, who offers virtual PA services for stressed mumpreneurs like me! We also had several lovely ladies who are thinking over ideas for their new businesses (including one with a nine month old baby, and one with an eight week old baby, our youngest networker yet!) and hope to add their links when they launch. All agreed that it was an inspirational event, and we hope to meet again during Business Mum Week with advice about PR, SEO and social media.

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Angels and Urchins, one of my favourite parenting magazines, just featured Mimimyne on page 51 of their September issue! ‘What your nursery says about you’ is the title of the feature and it says of a typical Eco Mummy: “When she was 18, Eco Mummy cast her first vote: for the Green Party. Although you won’t find her at a tree-top protest, she still abides by her environmental principles. She has found a kindred spirit in Tabitha Potts at Mimi Myne, where ‘design and environmental principles are given equal weight’. Eco treasures here include the Splat cardboard chair, tree friendly wallpaper, shabby-chic furniture and storage”. There’s a photo of the Splat recycled cardboard chair, as well.

Lots of other great eco companies are recommended, it’s a great read! Mind you I’d like to think that Mimimyne has something to offer Retro Mummy, Thrifty Mummy, Modern Mummy and even Traditionalist Mummy too….

Angels and Urchins Review Mimimyne

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Calling All Mums! Achieve Ultimate Bliss by Kick-Starting a Career within Baby Massage and Baby Yoga

Mums and business are two elements which should be able to work together in harmony. As intelligent and hardworking women, mums everywhere should be able to provide for, and enjoy time with their children, whilst continuing to build and develop a successful career. Unfortunately, life is not so sympathetic to us multi-taskers, and we often find ourselves struggling to find a career path which will allow us to shine, whilst also fulfilling the important task of motherhood. Luckily, there is now a way for mums to flourish within all areas of their home and working life… By becoming a baby massage or baby yoga instructor.
What is baby yoga, you may ask? Although you may imagine a host of complex and obscure positions, baby yoga is in fact a gentle method of encouraging the neurological, physical and mental development within newly born babies. Through a simple series of carefully developed hip opening, sitting and standing sequences, the yoga techniques will help babies to grow strong and begin to understand essential cognitive processes. And the best thing is, anybody can learn baby yoga – you don’t need to have had any yoga experience to do baby yoga effectively.
Baby massage also offers similar benefits, and can help relieve uncomfortable conditions such as colic, wind and trouble sleeping. Through encouraging hand movements and calming techniques, each baby will be left happy and relaxed. Such one-on-one time with each baby allows the parent to form a special bond, as both parent and child will begin to build up essential positive experiences together, which are crucial to development in these early stages.
So, how can baby massage and baby yoga fit into a career? For many mums, the appeal of teaching may have come into consideration at some point throughout their parenthood, but the set hours and lack of flexibility are often enough to put them off. As a result, Britain is full of a variety of despairing mothers, wanting nothing more than to achieve the success they are capable of, but so frustratingly denied.
With this said, what better career path for mums, than educating other mums on how to gain maximum joy and happiness from parenthood? This is the perfect career for Mums juggling the many responsibilities and commitments they are constantly required to meet throughout their day. Through combining this concept with part-time, flexible hours, but still retaining the potential to earn a full time salary, baby yoga and massage training offers a rewarding and enjoyable career path for all mums.
Training courses give women the opportunity to earn a diploma, and become a fully qualified baby massage and baby yoga instructor. Including practical experience teaching your very own class, as well as workshop sessions and coursework, the courses are a modern day solution to ultimate career satisfaction and bliss.
Teaching others the benefits of baby massage and yoga, entrepreneurial mums everywhere can finally be given the chance they deserve, to lead a fulfilling and rewarding lifestyle.
This is a guest post by MamaBabyBliss -a dedicated company devoted to the wellbeing of mothers and babies, who specialise in baby massage and yoga training courses, as well as soothing gifts for new mums. I am happy to host guest posts from companies or charities in fields that I think would be of interest to my readers!

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http://www.foodbuzz.com/recipes/2266431-sardinas-en-escabeche-preserved-sardines-pickled-

I decided to try this excellent recipe for sardines escabeche. I adore Spanish food which is much maligned and misunderstood. It’s simple to make and took me about ten minutes. The paprika turns the oil a lovely red colour. I am hoping this is a good way to rescue frozen oily fish like sardines!

We also cooked up a lot of our organic home grown tomatoes in a fresh pasta sauce with a lot of garlic. So am feeling quite virtuous at the end of Zero Waste Week! I still have not sorted out the food composting, but it is on my list.

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I got a little behind on posts, so this will be a roundup! On Thursday I had a sandwich at the gym, as I hadn’t packed a lunch. For dinner, we had steak with left over baked potatoes, reheated. I cleared out my kitchen cupboards and found a truffle  I brought back from Italy so we ate some of that with the steak. We are not a vegetarian family, however I aim to have meat free days two or three times a week as I know that this is a more sustainable lifestyle. We also mainly buy organic meat.

On Friday we had our planned supper, lamb tagine and couscous. We still haven’t eaten our beetroot and cauliflower, do these need to be cooked today, and I am also going to try and pickle the fish!

What have I thrown away this week? A third of a loaf of bread which had gone mouldy, some grapes that had gone brown. I think this is definitely less than usual and menu planning has helped. It has made me think strategically about what needs to be eaten next and I think I have saved money by sticking to my list.

I have also been round to my mother’s house and was given two pots of her home made jam! I would love to make jam myself so once I have tackled the chutney, I am going to try this. Personally, I love cooking but find certain areas (baking, preserves) a bit challenging, perhaps because they involve measuring ingredients. Learning these skills would be fun and perhaps would tempt the children to try some new recipes!

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We had fish pie last night using my mums recipe (she is the author of the Paupers Cookbook and taught me all I know about food!). This used up our home grown tomatoes and some frozen prawns which had been lurking for a while). I fried the beetroot leaves in butter with peas, they are delicious cooked this way).

Tonight we are having a frittata, essentially a fat omelette you cook in the oven. I substituted the grated courgette in Abel and Cole’s recipe for rocket which I had in the fridge and was getting close to its use by date. I also left out raisins, as I don’t think they would work.

I have discovered some frozen sardines lurking in the freezer so am going to try pickling them and have bought some pickling vinegar. I am also going to try and make chutney from some unripe green tomatoes from our home growing efforts so I will be using vinegar for that as well. Recipes coming soon!

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This is last nights macaroni cheese, plus some sustainably sourced scampi that needed to be eaten by tomorrow. Not many veggies today but they have had some grapes!

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I forgot to take a photograph of the beef goulash I made last night with the leftover beef from Sunday, as I was too hungry and wanted to eat it… But it was very good! I added some mushrooms, chili powder, lots of paprika and served it with mashed potato, parsley and sour cream. I made a beetroot leaf salad as well, another tip from Abel and Cole. I still find the leaves a bit chewy but they are tasty, although we did have some left over. I will probably wilt them with butter as a side dish today with our fish pie.

The children are having some left over macaroni cheese that I made for them yesterday, with hot dogs. I tend to cook for them separately as the eldest is so horribly fussy, although it does make extra work for me! I’ll try and post a picture of that as well, although it didn’t come out quite right (I never get the amount of cheese right as I’m too impatient to do all that measuring).

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Mimimyne, the eco store to help families grow up green, is happy to announce we will shortly be going live on MyIce, one of Britain‟s most generous and flexible reward programmes.
Ice will give consumers extra money in their pockets at a time when they need it most. Household budgets can be tight and Ice firmly believes that consumers deserve to be well rewarded for making sustainable choices, offering access to its partners‟ latest prices, plus Ice credits on top.

Ice has been designed to reward consumers and businesses for joining the drive for sustainable living. Companies like Eurostar, Green & Blacks Direct, Green Tomato Cars, Eat Sleep Live, and a host of farm shops across Britain (to name just a few), have all signed up to offer their sustainable products and services to consumers through the Ice reward programme.

How it works is simple – consumers can collect and spend Ice credits online by visiting www.myice.com, over telephone or in-store with an Ice card. Ice credits are available for buying sustainable products and services from British businesses across multiple sectors, including food & drink, travel, home & garden, home energy, fashion & clothing, pets and gifts & treats. With no catches, Ice rewards customers with Ice credits that can be spent as soon as they appear in the customers MyIce Account and can be mixed freely with cash or card payment.

• Ice‟s mission is to mitigate climate change via mass consumer purchase power.
• Anyone can join and it‟s free, no charges or fees. After registering at www.myice.com, consumers can start collecting and spending Ice straight away.
• Customers don‟t need to collect a minimum number of Ice credits before spending them – one Ice credit can be spent as soon as it‟s in the MyIce Account – and customers don‟t have to spend over a certain amount before they will receive Ice.
• Every Ice credit is spent for the benefit of the environment. All partners have been handpicked for their environmental and ethical credentials.
• Ice credits do not expire – if customers do not use their Ice within three years, they will be spent on environmental initiatives.
• Each Ice credit is worth 1p, and Ice doubles the value of the first Ice credits you spend to 2p every time you shop with an Ice partner.
• Ice partners pay nothing unless they receive a sale. Ice manages all administration so partners get a low-cost, versatile rewards programme and targeted marketing channel to reach new, loyal customers.

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