Our next meeting date is finally confirmed! We will be meeting at the fabulous, purpose built space at the Women’s Business Centre in East Ham on Tuesday the 17th of May 2011 between 10am and 12noon for informal presentations, networking and tea and coffee with likeminded entrepreneurs and business women. The Women’s Business Centre is a venue designed specifically to help women in business and we are very grateful for their support. Our first Confirmed Speaker is Alex Tham of the fabulous Green Eyed Monster who will tell us about setting up a shop in East London: this will be of interest to everyone thinking of opening a shop and anyone who is thinking of designing childrenswear, as Alex also runs a clothing company. Tabitha Potts of Mimimyne (that’s me!) will also be giving an introductory talk on using social media to promote your business. Other speakers to be confirmed.

You will be able to learn about how to set up a small business, work from home and be your own boss AND have a family life: not an easy thing to do and best learned from people like you who’ve been there and done it! We’re happy for men and women without children to come along too, of course – all are welcome. The Women’s Business Centre has arranged a private area where you can feed or change your baby if necessary. We will have a comfortable conference room to relax in. Older children are welcome but are parents’ responsibility!

ADDRESS
Women’s Business Centre
Newham College of Further Education
High Street South
East Ham
London E6 6ER

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We will be charging £4 entry fee per visitor to cover admin costs and there will free tea and coffee while the networking meeting and expert speaker sessions go on. You can pay online through Eventbrite or pay on the door.

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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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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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PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tower Hamlets Mums Business Club Networking and Coffee Morning for Mumpreneurs and Businesswomen

URL: http://towerhamlets.mumsbusinessclub.com

Category: Business

Description:
Tabitha Potts, owner of Mimimyne (http://www.mimimyne.com), the online store for kids, is now Tower Hamlets Representative for Mums Business Club (http://towerhamlets.mumsbusinessclub.com). The first Mums Business Club Tower Hamlets Networking and Coffee Morning for mumpreneurs, start-up entrepreneurs and business people in Tower Hamlets will be held in the gorgeous venue of Ping Pong Dim Sum in Appold Street, near Liverpool Street Station, on Tuesday 14th September from 10am to 12noon.

There is a £4 entry fee per visitor and Ping Pong Dim Sum are providing free tea and coffee while the networking meeting and expert speaker sessions go on. The first confirmed expert speaker will be Leanne Dal Santo of Smartbags (http://www.smartbags.co.uk) who will talk about how she started up her eco friendly company and combines it with working from home and taking care of her two young children. Attendees will be able to learn about how to set up a small business, work from home and be their own boss while still managing to have a family life. Men are welcome too!

Ping Pong Dim Sum has a baby buggy parking area, a toilet with baby changing facilities and a lift to the Private Dining Room on the first floor where we will be meeting. Children are welcome but are parents’ responsibility! Each guest who chooses to stay on and buy a delicious lunch at Ping Pong Dim Sum after the networking session will be offered a complimentary cocktail, alcoholic or non-alcoholic.

Address :
Ping Pong Dim Sum Appold Street
3 Appold Street
London
EC2A 2AF
Tel: 020 7422 0780
Tuesday 14th September from 10am to 12noon

Contact Name: Tabitha Potts

Contact E-mail: towerhamlets@mumsbusinessclub.com

Contact Phone: 0208 133 0961

Tickets: http://mumsbusinessclubtowerhamlets.eventbrite.com/

ENDS

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It’s been such a busy time in the run up to Christmas that I’ve had little chance to update my blog and let you all know Mimimyne’s news! First of all, I’m happy to say that it has been a good Christmas for my customers with nearly every single order getting to customers on time. I still have a little further to go to be 100% perfect, and there are sometimes problems with mail – couriers or Royal Mail – which are out of my control. For these glitches, I do apologise to any customers who have been affected. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to work on customer service and make some much-needed improvements to the website, as you requested in the customer survey, to make it easier and more convenient to use.

Secondly, Mimimyne’s Mumpreneurs meetup has been going great guns and I’m happy to say that BTTradespace have offered to sponsor this informal networking lunch for mums and women in business, or looking to start a business, for all of next year! Setting up a Tradespace has been a great help to me in terms of publicity, sales and traffic, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them for their offer to sponsor this event in 2010. I hope plenty of you will be able to come! It’s been a great opportunity to meet in person and chat with some of my favourite bloggers, ‘mumpreneurs’ and business owners and a chance to give back to the online community of businesswomen that has been so welcoming to me. Thank you everyone for being part of this event!

If you’d like to see some of our brilliant speakers at the last event, Dr Nicola Thomas of eco style blog The Ginlady, Natalie Lue of contemporary kids design review site Bambinogoodies and Birgit Medele of Clear of Clutter, visit Mimimyne’s Youtube Channel to watch their videos!

Mimimyne also benefited from some great publicity in November and December, including a fabulous article in the Sunday Times just after Christmas! The boys modelled some beautiful t shirts by Green Eyed Monster (shortly to be available on Mimimyne) and the cushions we are holding are limited edition ones by another company we love, Minimoderns.

The photo shoot was great fun, although I had difficulty stopping the boys making faces!

I was also featured with my puppy Dexter on BT Tradespace‘s mini site with an article and a video interview with me about what inspired me to set up Mimimyne.

So with a successful – if challenging – 2009 under Mimimyne’s belt, what does the future hold? As I said, I’m hoping to make the changes requested by my customers such as enabling customer reviews, shipping to Europe and maybe the US as well, offering free shipping in the UK and so on. What’s really been holding me back is time and money, those old barriers, and I’m hoping for more of each in 2010!

I’ve also been lucky enough to win 500 bags from Smartbags and am trying to think of the perfect slogan for them: if anyone can come up with one for me, I will give them 10 bags for free! These eco friendly reusable shopping bags will be a great addition to my range.

I’m also planning to add some great new designs and eco friendly products to the Mimimyne range next year. I’m particularly excited about the Wattson, a very cool-looking device that helps families monitor their energy usage. I will be using it myself in my new home office. Because – at last! – I am moving house in January and will have a ‘room of my own’ rather than a corner of the kitchen to run things from. Don’t worry, your orders will all be processed as usual, though I might be a little slower than usual to respond to emails!

Finally, as a member of 10:10 I will be working hard on energy saving in my new office. I hope to save 10% of my carbon footprint in 2010 – like all the other 10:10 companies and individuals – and have had a detailed assessment of my energy usage from LCRN which offers small businesses in London a free energy audit. I hope to reduce my carbon footprint as a business and my family’s as a household and will keep you updated on how this is going. I think most of us who care about the environment were disappointed by the Copenhagen summit and the failure of our leaders to reach a truly binding agreement on carbon emissions. Let’s hope that by continuing to do our bit as businesses and individuals we can make the difference that our governments have been too timid to make on our behalf. I think that’s the most important New Year’s resolution any of us can make!

Happy New Year to all customers, readers and friends of Mimimyne!

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Mimimyne has set up a Mumpreneurs Networking Event in East London as part of Business Mum Week 2009!

Wednesday 7th October 12 noon to 2pm
Venue: Ping Pong Dim Sum (Private Room) 3 Appold Street London EC2A 2AF tel: 020 7422 0780 Nearest Town: London

Informal networking lunch for mumpreneurs/ businessmums and women running or interested in running their own businesses, come along and meet Antonia Chitty, author of The Mumpreneur Guide, who will be giving her top tips for mumpreneurs.

Antonia Chitty will have a prize draw for her book, The Mumpreneur’s Guide, retail cost £18, and some other prizes, so bring your business cards to enter the draw!

Alison Rothwell, of the SEO Training Club, is also going to attend and give her tips on Twitter for business.

Lana Hersak-Mullins, Business Counsellor for the East London Small Business Centre will give a short talk on what is currently on offer to entrepreneurs in East London, and will be happy to answer any questions women might have about starting up a small business.

The event, in the gorgeous private dining room at Ping Pong Dim Sum (www.pingpongdimsum.com), is free to attend although you will have to pay for your own lunch, however the menu is very reasonably priced and delicious! Free copies of eco-directory The Book of Green and the Business Mums Journal will be available to take home.

More info about Business Mum Week 2009 events here

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Are you Experienced?, an article on small businesses and home working, interviewed Mimimyne and three other owner-managers.

“To mark BT Business Experience 2009, SmallBusiness.co.uk kicks off a six-part series on technology in business by hearing from four-owner managers about homeworking.

Tabitha Potts, founder of online eco store Mimimyne, set up her business from home as a way of balancing childcare commitments

Working from home has helped enormously with the recession. Although people are spending less on discretionary purchases, I don’t have to worry about having overheads. If it weren’t for advances made in technology, my business wouldn’t exist.

The biggest problem as a mum working from home is the isolation. But I do use networks and talk to other ‘mumpreneurs’ and have formed online friendships…”

Read  More

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“Recently I was rung on the telephone by a journalist who wanted to ask me about working from home. As I was chatting away to her, I mentioned that one of the risks of working from home is children interrupting you on a business call. As if on cue, I hear a “Mum”! from the bathroom, as my youngest child is not able to open the door by himself, so have to excuse myself to let him out and chat to him before returning to the phone call. So many people work from home these days, that having children within earshot while taking a work call is not regarded as the crime it might once have been – and didn’t I start my own business so I could play with the kids, go to the gym and eat lunch when I wanted, rather than at someone else’s whim? However, I have paid the price for my flexible working lifestyle, as I said to the journalist on the phone, sometimes it’s hard for me to switch off and I don’t think I’m the only one.”

Read the rest of this interview with Tabitha Potts, featured on BT Tradespace,here

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