Yesterday evening I spent time with about twenty five other people who are self employed or owners of small businesses with less than five employees. This was with, Love Your Doorstep Cambridge.
This is a group which aims to encourage people to use local businesses rather than chains and to work through members of the group giving recommendations via feedback on their own website as well as through the facebook group.
Those I seemed to gel with most were, the other complementary therapist there, (acupuncture) and Amelia (a first aid trainer) but also lots of commonalities with a dance teacher which makes sense given my background of playing with circus skills.
Having been told by a number of people that networking is the key to getting more clients I have started to do this, having attended two networking meetings in the past two weeks. I am going to start attending one or two more and am awaiting the results.
Despite the fact that some paid networking groups only allow one person per discipline into them, that is not the model I prefer. I see talking with those of similar mindsets to my own as being of more use and am confident that our target client groups will not be so similar that we are in cut throat competition!
It was good to hear from some of the others that they view essential oils, massage and aromatherapy in a positive light!
