Are you a business woman in the North West?
If you are a women in business in the North West (or anywhere else in the country – this is worth the travel!) then you need to book 21st November 2014 in your diary! If you want to have a day where you feel inspired, re-charged and energised about your business then this is definitely where you need to be!
I had the pleasure of being asked to be involved with the 4th North West Women’s Enterprise Day which was held in November 2013. The event was founded by Melanie Bryan OBE DL who is the founder of ‘Why Not Change’ and a high growth business mentor and enterprise ambassador. Melanie founded North West Women’s Enterprise Day in 2010.
The day aims to be a source of inspiration, motivation, contacts and knowledge for women in the North West who run their own business, are self employed or work in business. I found it certainly was all of that and much more!
The wide range of seminars, talks and workshops on offer make for a difficult choice as you want to go to everything! But it is a very good selection of different topics, covering everything from personal development and motivation, to sales and marketing, public speaking and finance to practical demonstrations in skills like First Aid. There were also talks from amazing women sharing their success stories and inspiring us as women to think big and take action!
Melanie devised a unique networking session that enabled everyone to get to know a vast array of people in the room. A room of 250 people at a business event can be a daunting prospect but Melanie succeeded in it being anything but daunting. It was lively, noisy and the positive energy was palpable. All I will say is that it involved several balls of string and lots of business cards! If you want to experience it yourself you will have to come next year and request Melanie runs this format again, as explaining it does no justice at all! I certainly made some great new contacts and have even got a new client as a result!
There were many new people that I met over the course of the day who were really fascinating to talk to and it was amazing to learn about different businesses. There were also many familiar contacts with whom it was great to catch up with.
The format of the day very much allowed you to make your own timetable, attend the session you wanted to and browse the other areas. I liked this as I felt in control of my own day an experience and was able to get the best out of it for me.
The Living Library of Experts is something I have never seen done elsewhere and I thought it was a brilliant idea! Basically there is a room set up with experts where you can pop along and have a chat with them at your convenience. No appointment and no pressure. The idea is Genuis!
My company was also the media sponsor for the event and so we made a video capturing the essence of it all on film. You can see this film at the bottom and it will really give you a sense of why the day was so successful.
I think as women in business we are under huge pressures to achieve and it is vital that we take time out occasionally to reflect, learn, be inspired and meet others in similar positions. The NWWE is the perfect opportunity to do that and at amazing value for everything you get I think it should be a permanent fixture in every business women’s diary in the North West!
See more information and buy your tickets here http://www.nwwe.org.uk
