OOOh.... if I see any more chocolate, coffee or wine this week... I'll probably just guzzle it happily whilst engaging in interesting conversations with the nearest businesspeople to me. Yes, it's been a monster networking week for me, with 3 events in 3 days. Usually I manage 1 every week, and we run our No Frills Business Networking for Women evenings on the 3rd Wednesday of each month (ie this week), but last night's Make Your Mark Ambassadors Networking event at beam in Wakefield is the one that's filled me with the most ideas.
I met loads of fellow ambassadors, all dedicated to encouraging people to get involved in businesses, and sparking inspiration in areas of our community otherwise not well known for entrepreneurship. We first came across Make Your Mark when we started the No Frills nights, and decided to apply to become ambassadors because I feel very strongly that businesses need to work with schools and colleges to encourage the next generation to have ideas and confidence. We're intending to do our bit for the Global Entrepreneurship Week by inviting young business minded women to our November No Frills event which falls smack bang in the middle of it.
I ended up deep in conversation with James Clegg from Operation Hoodie. James lost a good friend to cancer at far too young an age, and his response was to start something amazing. It chimed with me, because my mate Kim's death to a brain tumour when we were 20 has so far led me to run 2 Races for Life (5k) and a Run for Life (10k) to raise money for Cancer Research Uk. We're also currently shooting a naked calendar at the studio which hopes to raise money for breast and testicular cancer charities. I hope to connect these dots and see if we can help James out. Watch this space!
So .... networking is fun, and as someone who likes to talk about anything at any given moment, and is passionate about our business, I am settling into it as a natural, but it's essential for businesses to find others who they can connect with to push their ideas forward, and I hope to report back soon with some exciting developments!
Friday, 18 September 2009
Friday, 4 September 2009
Sanders' Pregnancy Economic Recovery Model
I am no economist, and I am pretty much an accidental business-woman. When my sensible mates chose to study maths, economics and business studies at A-level, I was tackling English literature and philosophy and ethics of religion. I wanted to learn what words meant and why people used them to make things. Then I fell in love with photography and became one of the many photography students who graduate every year who never paid attention to such considerations as how to keep body and soul together while you are creating works of art which speak eloquently to the viewer. I expected the world to recognise my talent with payment as soon as I had my degree in my hand. Now sometimes I forget the details of our fees and charges, carried away by the idea of taking the pictures. I am a photographer first, qualified to take photos, and I have a post-graduate certificate in what translates as observing how things are connected in visual culture.
But.... when I was growing up, my parents had a private day nursery, situated in our lovely big house in Chapel Allerton. The ground floor was for the kids, and we lived upstairs. My mum was a nursery-nurse, and set up the basics of the business when she was on maternity leave with my big brother, and when I came along, my dad quit his job at the foundry and they took it from there. It eventually became one of the most successful and best regarded nurseries in the city. By the time of the last serious recession I was a teenager and was helping out after school when they needed an extra pair of eyes in the garden, or a spare nose-wiper and hand-washer. I remember hearing them talk about how things were going to get very difficult, because people would lose their jobs and stay at home with the kids instead of bringing them to the nursery. And then people who might've been thinking about having a baby, or a second baby, would think again. Sure enough, the numbers got thinner at the nursery, and mum and dad had to open up the nursery at the weekend for kids parties (which was my job - make sure no-one trashed the place, tidy up if they did, make party food, clean up sick, clean the toilets....). Dad also predicted that the first thing people did when there was money again would be to have those babies they'd been holding back from. Sure enough, we had a clutch of 8 3month olds start with us as the country started to climb out of the doldrums. The lesson I absorbed from that was that you can tell when the economy is starting to recover becasue people start having babies again. I think dad thought it was because of the types of jobs the parents worked in, in Leeds's business district, in the media, in the NHS, they'd see the early indicators and get cracking on with kids ahead of anyone else.
When Jo and I started the studio, we reckoned that we'd spend the recession slowly getting the word out about the quality of our portraiture work, and that by the time people started having kids again, we'd have built a really solid reputation, with lots of happy customers telling their friends about us, and that we'd be in a great position. That's still hopefully the plan, but it's occurred to me that my dad's reasoning might've been the wrong way round. I think the end of the recession is brought on roughly 9 months after the deepest point.
I know lots of couples who've either just had or are about to give birth in the next month or 2. When there was no money to do anything else back in January and February, I bet I can make an educated guess as to what people got up to. All the things you have to do when you know there's a small person on the way - the painting of rooms, the buying of cots, car-seats, new cars, maybe moving house - help to stimulate the local economy and suddenly there's more money to go around, and as more and more people go through the same pattern, the whole country moves back into action. (I was about to say the black, but that's not going to happen for a while.)
I have done no research. I may be utterly wrong, but I'm enjoying telling everyone that I have formulated this model from the point of view of 2 generations of Sanders', each with small businesses dependent on people having babies regularly.
Good luck and congratulations to everyone about to add to their family. Come and see us when you're ready for some lovely family photos.
But.... when I was growing up, my parents had a private day nursery, situated in our lovely big house in Chapel Allerton. The ground floor was for the kids, and we lived upstairs. My mum was a nursery-nurse, and set up the basics of the business when she was on maternity leave with my big brother, and when I came along, my dad quit his job at the foundry and they took it from there. It eventually became one of the most successful and best regarded nurseries in the city. By the time of the last serious recession I was a teenager and was helping out after school when they needed an extra pair of eyes in the garden, or a spare nose-wiper and hand-washer. I remember hearing them talk about how things were going to get very difficult, because people would lose their jobs and stay at home with the kids instead of bringing them to the nursery. And then people who might've been thinking about having a baby, or a second baby, would think again. Sure enough, the numbers got thinner at the nursery, and mum and dad had to open up the nursery at the weekend for kids parties (which was my job - make sure no-one trashed the place, tidy up if they did, make party food, clean up sick, clean the toilets....). Dad also predicted that the first thing people did when there was money again would be to have those babies they'd been holding back from. Sure enough, we had a clutch of 8 3month olds start with us as the country started to climb out of the doldrums. The lesson I absorbed from that was that you can tell when the economy is starting to recover becasue people start having babies again. I think dad thought it was because of the types of jobs the parents worked in, in Leeds's business district, in the media, in the NHS, they'd see the early indicators and get cracking on with kids ahead of anyone else.
When Jo and I started the studio, we reckoned that we'd spend the recession slowly getting the word out about the quality of our portraiture work, and that by the time people started having kids again, we'd have built a really solid reputation, with lots of happy customers telling their friends about us, and that we'd be in a great position. That's still hopefully the plan, but it's occurred to me that my dad's reasoning might've been the wrong way round. I think the end of the recession is brought on roughly 9 months after the deepest point.
I know lots of couples who've either just had or are about to give birth in the next month or 2. When there was no money to do anything else back in January and February, I bet I can make an educated guess as to what people got up to. All the things you have to do when you know there's a small person on the way - the painting of rooms, the buying of cots, car-seats, new cars, maybe moving house - help to stimulate the local economy and suddenly there's more money to go around, and as more and more people go through the same pattern, the whole country moves back into action. (I was about to say the black, but that's not going to happen for a while.)
I have done no research. I may be utterly wrong, but I'm enjoying telling everyone that I have formulated this model from the point of view of 2 generations of Sanders', each with small businesses dependent on people having babies regularly.
Good luck and congratulations to everyone about to add to their family. Come and see us when you're ready for some lovely family photos.
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