If there was ever a month for getting ‘out and about’ – July was it!
This is just as well, as with the kids breaking up from school soon, our time will be spent juggling entertaining them and working – wish us luck!
Backing business
Just going back to the end of last month – we managed to squeeze in a visit to the #GrowBromley event at Bromley Civic Centre. This was a free business event set up by the London Borough of Bromley and the South East London Business Network (SELBN) to help businesses learn strategies to help their business grow.
We loved the first speaker, Gayane Ghazaryan, who was so positive and inspiring when she spoke about the importance of mindsets and how to change it. The second speaker was Josh Hamit who gave a very interesting talk about the importance of SEO and advice on how you can improve your SEO on Google.
And the final speaker was Stephen Somerville, who spoke about co-working, its benefits and its impact on the 21st century workplace. He also touched on Contingent – which is Bromley’s first co-working space that will hopefully be opening this September.
Whistle-stop events
Early in July, we were out and about again – this time at a Schools Eco Swap evening, which was attended by delegates from 35 schools in the Bromley Borough. The meet up was intended for schools to swap inspiring examples of how they are working to reduce their environmental impact and how they are getting the kids involved.
It was a great event organised by Greener and Cleaner and was amazing to find out how much some schools are already doing to save the planet.
One of our days in July was particularly crammed – we travelled into London to attend not one, not two, but THREE Christmas events – Dobbies, Dunelm and Wilko.
It was a little surreal ‘celebrating’ Christmas in July – and very tiring whizzing from one show to the next, but it needed to be done to be able to start planning a Christmas shopping feature (for unique pressies) for an upcoming issue.
Over 50s event
Then straight after our day in London, we headed to the Nugent Shopping Centre to join a business networking meeting. We heard some interesting facts from the National Careers Service London. For example, did you know that by 2020 a third of the working population are going to be over 50?
It’s a huge issue that the National Careers Service is keen to address as the over 50s are more likely to be faced with issues such as redundancy. We also discovered that the National Careers Service London team offer access to a huge range of courses – and that a lot of these are digital and are free.
In fact, on 8th August there’ll be a meet up in Bromley from 5pm-6.30pm, for both employers and their staff, to learn more about the 50-plus courses. For more information call 020 3714 8350 or email neil.hammond@prospects.co.uk or chris.walsh@prospects.co.uk
Supporting acts
While we’ve been working on new ideas, being out and about and developing new magazine articles and designs, it hasn’t left much room for speaking with potential new advertisers.
Fortunately, July was a record month for us in terms of enquiries and we’ve been lucky enough to have the following local businesses come on board: Groom Barbers, Churchill Theatre, JLinks, Eradica Pest Control, The Fitness Link Orpington, Soulistic Therapy, Eco Domestics, Lifetime Assets Group, Festival of Flight (Biggin Hill Air Show) and the George & Dragon.
Thanks to all our advertisers for supporting us and to our readers for their continued support and suggestions.
If you’ve got something to shout about – or a suggestion or feedback on the latest issue, please feel free to email us – we’d love to hear from you!