On Monday 7th Nov, Vic attended another inspiring event, this time for female entrepreneurs in Derby, hosted by Karen Cureton and Victoria Lofthouse.

There was so much great content that Vic felt it was important to share the juicy findings with you all.

Gemma Brown from Smith Partnership:

Gemma spoke about the importance of strong terms and conditions, when engaging with clients. Her handy checklist included: 

  • Price and Payment terms
  • Delivery (if a product or a service)
  • Returns (if a product)
  • Liability / limitation of
  • Termination
  • Force Majeur
  • IP rights (ownership of content if relevant)
  • Other policies to note, eg Privacy Policy
  • Governing Law (eg England and Wales)

Gemma stressed the importance of putting contracts into place BEFORE work is carried out and paid for, and to have them written from scratch (or existing contracts checked over by a solicitor) to ensure they are robust.

Karen Cureton Consulting

She questioned us all to consider the following points, and asked if we've been mentioning these in our socials recently:

  • Who am I?
  • What do I do?
  • What was my journey to this point? (eg career path)
  • Who do I work with?
  • Why do people like to work with me?

These very basics are totally underestimated by us all from time to time, as we expect our social media followers to KNOW all of these answers - yet of course, not all will do. It's important to dust off some posts you've put out a long time ago, give them a sprinkle of new magic and repurpose them.

Karen also gave us access to her 'create 100 social media posts at lightning speed' and we furiously noted down lots of post ideas for our businesses to take home and create!

Vicky Stanton:

Vicky challenged us to make our own 'trophy cabinet' with photos, quotes and awards, to look at daily and remind ourselves how far we've come, what wonderful things we've achieved, and to help us to feel that success as we start each day. Think I'll stick mine on the inside of my wardrobe so I can have a little 'power up' every morning! he he

Here's Vicky Stanton sharing all her useful knowledge.

Gemma from The Little IP Company:

Who knew there's a so much to know about Trademarks, Copyright, Design Law!

We were asked to look at examples, such as movies, products, photographs, music and comment on what we thought they would be protected by.

I mean who knew that a sound or a smell could be trademarked??

Good job Gemma knows her stuff!

Having her on board could mean someone doesn't have rights to stop you trading under your business name, or alternatively, in the event of a business sale, she could potentially make your company sell for more!

Victoria Lofthouse:

Victoria finished the day with a challenge… to list all the things we do and write scores of out 10 next to them for:

  • How important is this task to my business?
  • How important is it that I am the one who does it?

As a business owner, I ran Touchpoints Marketing as a solopreneur for 7 years but now we are a team of 6, and I sometimes find it hard to delegate tasks that I'm so used to doing.

The good news… this activity gave me a clear plan of some of the tasks I need to have discussions with the about. Sometime identifying the changes that need to take place is the biggest and hardest part… putting these into action is now just an easy process to follow.

Thank you to Karen, Victoria and the speakers for such an inspiring day. I can't wait for the next event!

You can find links to these totally awesome ladies here:

Smith Partnership - https://smithpartnership.co.uk
Karen Cureton Consulting - https://curetonconsulting.co.uk/
The Little IP Company - https://www.littleipco.com/
Vicky Stanton - https://www.vickystanton.com/
No Drama Delegation - https://nodramadelegation.com/