We usually touch on the highlights of the month and this month – as the festive season ensues – it has to be catching up with friends, enjoying a mini break to Marlow and taking part in Startup Bromley’s Winter Showcase event at Bromley Central Library.
As much as the latter was a great awareness exercise for the imminent launch of Life In…Bromley magazine, it was also a time to catch up with some lovely small businesses that we’ve enjoyed getting to know over the last year.
And actually, networking is a great way of not only raising awareness of what you do, but also a great way of meeting like-minded businesses. We recently attended Bromley Business Network at Bromley Football Club – it’s on every two weeks for those who don’t know about it – and were pleasantly surprised to discover a great bunch of welcoming people, but also people who were genuinely keen on supporting and help one another. And that’s what true networking is about.
Over the last year, through networking and meeting others, we’ve been lucky that I’ve been able to collaborate with others, and being able to connect people with similar synergies has been particularly rewarding.
For example, we put the lovely Jackie Groundsell from 12:30 The Women’s Company in touch with Ed from Love Da Beat radio. Next thing we know, Jackie has her own radio show with Ed – amazing! Perhaps we should launch a match-making service! But what we do know is that it’s hugely rewarding and we want to do more of this in 2022!
Automation is king!
When we gave a talk on productivity at the Beckenham Business Day last month, we mentioned that one of the ‘top tools’ for automation is IFTTT. And we stand by this – simple, automatic processes that can be set up just once and repeated automatically can save a small business so much time.
So when we recently read an article from Keap on things every small business should automate – we thought it would be great to share. It offers some great ideas on systems and processes that can be automated. Our advice? Start with one (the one that takes up most of your time) and see how you go!
Let us know how you get on – and just for some extra encouragement, here’s our usual inspirational quote!
“Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.”
– Stewart Brand, writer –