Excellent Start to 2013 for The Lively Business Club
The Lively Business Club got off to a great start at its first meeting of 2013.
Held at the Tern Hill Hall Hotel around 25 people attended with some old members rejoining, new members, familiar faces and new guests making a great mix of businesses that meet up to swop notes as well as business cards, discuss local issues and business problems – and generally find out more about running a business in Shropshire.
Business Watch Guarding gave an excellent ten minute presentation which, surprisingly, was more about their work with cogsatwork.co.uk on collaborative tendering and how it is possible to successfully work with the competition than about their core business, which is providing security of all kinds – products, services and literally hand-holding when an alarm is triggered and someone has to go and find out why.
New Chairman, Ray Hickinbottom (who is also vice chairman of the Shropshire branch of the Federation of Small Businesses) spoke about the support available to SME’s through the FSB both locally and nationally – through Government lobbying. Ray said: “I am delighted to be chairing the Lively Business Club meetings, the FSB recognise the importance of networking, not just to help businesses promote their services, but to provide support, especially for small businesses that often struggle to get the help they need.”
An informal network club like the Lively Business Club provides a support network of people with different specialisms who are at the end of a phone and will usually provide free advice to fellow members. For anyone just starting out in business this can be invaluable – help and advice on social media, marketing, writing press releases, where to advertise, recommend a good accountant, how to get free business banking, who to contact at the council for information on Pop-up-Shops, low interest business loans, business start-up grants, and help with research and development costs.
The Lively Business welcomes guests at their meetings - anyone can attend on an ad hoc basis and anyone can join. The next meeting will be on Tuesday evening, 12th February, 2013 at 7.00pm. For further information visit www.thelbc.org.uk.
