July's Business Brew

Monday 28th July was our very first first Business Brew!

What is a "Business Brew?"

This is our version of an informal business network. We want to bring things back to the very basics of networking, creating an accessible network for our local communities.

This means that the focus really is on you and your business. We want to get to know you and for you to get to know everyone in the group. We want you to promote your business and your services, we want to discuss what sets you apart.

We also want to provide meaningful help in a safe and supportive space; we know that "2 heads are better than 1" and we know that our community is full of resourceful business people who have tried different strategies; we want to provide the environment where we can all share this amongst ourselves and share the load together.

With a full house and very engaged attendees, we were absolutely thrilled with everyone’s contributions to the July Business Brew and we are so very excited to be starting off with such a strong foundation.

That foundation all comes back to you, so thank you for making it such a success.

Below is a list of everyone who was in attendance; we encourage you all to stay in contact with one another and support each other’s businesses. Interacting with everyone’s socials and website is a great way to support one another with no financial investment.

• Michelle Michelle's Essential Business Support

• Amanda Akira-Bella Photography

• Brad & Torie TBJ First Aid & Safety Training

• Wayne Virtual Bean (web designer)

• Hugh Avoca Community Arts & Gardens Inc, and Gallery 127

• Susan Mindful Arts Therapy

• Cheryl Creations By Crae (homecrafts)

• June The Crystal Lady (Maryborough)

• Keely KJ Cleaning & Co (cleaning and yard maintenance)

• Kerrie Lush Puppy Groomers (small & medium dogs)

• Kerry Resin Flo Products

• Hayley Pure Balance Kinesiology

We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude for our wonderful hosts, Bird On A Wire cafe. They went out of their way to make their space comfortable and provided us with a wonderful coffee & cake discounted package; the perfect combination to get everyone's minds working! Thank you so much for being such gracious hosts for our first Brew.

We would also like to shout out a big "thank you" to Wayne (Virtual Bean) for sharing so much knowledge around websites! One of the key pieces of feedback we have received from the business community is the endless struggle with social media engagement, websites and the ever changing algorithms of Google and the web, making it hard to get the same engagement that we are all probably used to from years ago. Wayne gave us some very valuable insights into these topics, as well as some wonderful easy-to-use advice to help with our online engagement.

We hope the business plan templates that were provided were good fuel for thought; even with a successful and long running business, a business plan is a great way to re-evaluate your current business situation and perhaps identify new ways to move forward, especially when times are a bit tough.

Where to from here?

1.      Ballarat is our next Brew, to be held in August.

2.      Our next regional Brew will be September: we will host it on a different day and time in the hopes to broaden our network attendees.

3.      We would love your feedback and suggestions for how to make our next Brew

better.

4.      Follow each other’s socials by using the list above to locate your fellow Brew

members.

5.      Join our Facebook group and pop a post in there (introduce yourself or your

business, you are welcome and encouraged to promote yourself: )

https://www.facebook.com/groups/917276298368274

6.      RSVP to our next meeting: we’d love to see you there!

Are you interested in hosting our next Brew at your business? Please let Michelle know so we can get it organised!

Are you thinking about running a Brew topic? We would absolutely love for any and all of you to have a chance at running a topic; we are here to support you through the process if you are keen but are nervous.

Do you have any topics in mind that you would like covered at one of the meetings? Please let us know and we'll make it happen!

Once again, thank you so much to everyone who came. We are working hard to make sure this is a successful and valuable community resource, but we cannot do it without you.

We hope this post and this Brew helps you make more informed decisions in some aspects of your business and we hope you have established valuable networks.

Until next time, stay curious and stay social!

Amanda & Michelle