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We’ve taken on another new client today – MumsClub and specifically, the Business and Baby Show 2011, on Saturday 1 October 2011, from 10am – 5pm. But first, a confession…

As many of you will know, I don’t always agree with the MumsClub, Mumpreneur or Business Mums labels because I want women to be recognised in their own rights, not just as mums or mothers, but as smart women who have the ability to make significant contributions to our economy. Having said that, I don’t have any better ideas for labels and they’ve got huge klout and help women help each other, so I love them, even though the names of them aren’t always my favourite thing!

With thanks to Nikki Pilkington (all round social media queen) and her blog for giving me the heads up on this one.

There’s an interesting bit of software that lets you know how other people are seeing you on twitter. I’m going to use it with my clients as it’s a quick and easy way to show them how others perceive you.

Here’s mine:

Here’s something that will surprise you. I had a review with a coach this morning. I know, I didn’t have myself down for being the type of person who has coaching either, but there I was. Carmen McDougall doesn’t know that I’m writing this blogpost as she knows I was very embarrassed to be working with her at first. But today, I’ve done lots of things with her. Some practical and theoretical stuff and just one ‘kooky emotional thing’ – the combination of all that has done me the power of good.

The fact that she knows very little of the intricacies of my work is irrelevant. In fact, it is probably a good thing. She helped me take a good look at what I’m doing, the offers that are on the table at the moment and make some decisions.

I want to do some new work that’s not going to pay as much as other stuff, but has the potential to be very good for my career. I want to do some other new work  that is going  to pay well, but has an element of risk and won’t be quite so exciting. And I need to continue my old work, as it’s what has got me this far, and don’t want to ditch it. I don’t think that would be the right thing to do. And I want to continue contributing to charities where I can.

I now have a plan in place which will enable me to do all that in 2011. And that makes me feel confident, in control, and that I’m going to be able to get back to enjoying everything rather than feeling dictated to.

So without an financial incentive for me or affiliate link or anything commercially related, I want to wholeheartedly recommend Carmen MacDougall to you, because if she can have the impact on your outlook, performance and profitability that she has on mine over the last few months, then it would be unfair of me to not share her with you.

So on Thank you Thursday, I’d like to thank Carmen MacDougall and encourage you to think about using someone completely un related to you, your field of experience and knowledge to help you grow your business, maybe someone like Carmen? :)

Who do you want to say thank you to today?

What were you born to do?

What were you Born To do? The new campaign from Save the Children has not just caught my eye, it’s got into my head. Not least because I’m working for the PHG Foundation on the Born Healthy project, which is working in a very similar area.

But there’s another reason too. I’m trying to work out what my purpose is right now. DH and I are shattered, the boys are pooped and we’ve not got back into a routine since the Christmas holiday – and it’s March next week. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN????

So much good stuff has come our way since the start of 2011, but I don’t know, I’m just not sure what to do – I’m near capacity from a consulting perspective and that’s good, but it means I’m going to end up turning work away soon, which is something I don’t want to do.
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A big organisation is interested in outsourcing lots of their printed publications to Weston Communications. Another one is interested in bringing Weston Communications in to take their online and social media engagement  strategy  forward. And then there’s the New Baby Guides, and the Young Families Bump, Baby and Toddler Shows! As well as my usual smaller clients. Something’s got to give, but what? So going to the Born To bloggers conference today was the perfect opportunity for me to take some time out and think about it.

What was I Born To Do?

I’m using thinking about what I was Born To Do to help me focus on my life and where it’s going at the moment. I was born to be a mummy. Not just a mum, or parent, but a mummy. To me, I’m parenting when I’m teaching our boys how to do things, being a mum when I’m sorting out logistics for birthday parties and a mummy when I’m giggling with them when we read a book on the sofa, or letting them climb in our bed in the middle of then night. In ten years time, there won’t be much mummy stuff left that they want  from me, so I want to try and be as  much of a mummy as I can, right now, whilst it’s still wanted.
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But how do I do that whilst working full time? I don’t know if it’s possible, because I’ve been really struggling with it recently. Honestly, I don’t if it is possible….

Watching the videos today at Save the Children, I looked around at my fellow attendees and thought “Is anyone else finding this really hard?  Is anyone else on the verge of tears? Does anyone else want to stick their head in the sand and run away from this because it’s such a big thing – and I don’t  know how I can contribute to it?” I wore mascara today – so I didn’t sit there sobbing. But I wanted to. I had tears in my eyes. I felt so small, so inept, so, I  don’t  know, lost, I suppose. I felt so overwhelmed with thoughts of my family, the families I was watching, the families of the Save the Children staff who go into these countries to help people and children in need – and the families of the people who go to film, shoot and relay the situations back to us in real time.

It was upsetting. I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t. But what it has done, is give me hope. If #blogadesh can get a message to 10 million people about what’s happening in the world, if the Make Poverty History Campaign ensures that countries are relieved of their impossible to repay debt, and if Save the Children can get into stricken countries and set up safe play centres for children within hours, then I’ve got to be able to work out what I was Born To Do, haven’t I?

I wonder how I can be what I was Born To Do – be a mummy, a worker and someone who makes a difference. I’m going to keep working at it. Thank you #bornto and Save the Children for giving me insights into your campaign and the inspiration to keep working at what I was Born To Do.

Please comment below and tell me what you were Born To. And vist the Save the Children Born To site, so you can learn more about this brilliant, challenging, amazing opportunity we all have to contribute to making a positive change in our world…

How does this bird help me make money?

I had a hot chocolate today with someone whose opinion I value dearly. Whose guidance and support I seek as often as I dare, as she’s an uber busy lady. She’s just taken to an iphone after being attached to her blackberry for work for a number of years and doesn’t ‘get’ the twitter thing. So I got her a little book for Christmas with what’s what and how it works. As she doesn’t follow many people, she’s just seeing me on her screen, so I felt very conscious of that tonight as I was whittering away.

She asked me how I make money from twitter? So I thought I would share it with you as well, because it’s kind of simple but still hard work… The short answer is that it brings me clients. Literally.

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I saw someone tweet the other day that they were thinking of hiring someone for PR and Marketing so I messaged them to say “Hello, I’m here and busy, but depending on what you want I may be interested”. We skyped. I explained what I have to offer, and what questions to ask of other people, to try to gauge how to compare everyone they would speak to. They came back yesterday and asked me to do 6 months with them.

Someone else follows me on twitter and can see that I’m in the NHS, New Baby, Family and Parenting market. She called me out of the blue, I was on my way out and she asked me if I’d like to look at working for her with a new product she’s got coming out. I said “yes, of course” and I’m meeting her next week, with our respective non disclosure agreements to hand, to work out a way forward together.

So twitter is great. It sends people to the Weston Communications website, and people call and email me to ask me to work with them. Simple. Eh? Not quite. I put a lot of work into being engaging and not sycophantic with people. Lots of people do the latter and it irritates me. I don’t do link swaps or anything like that, so I know that the people and businesses which follow me are genuinely interested in me. And vice versa.

Twitter – my online life, and my real life have been so great to me. I’ve never actually written a pitch, or presented a business pitch to anyone. It’s all been word of mouth. Whether on line or offline and I’m actually seeing that as a strength now, because there’s no better introduction than a recommendation eh?

I waited a year to find this..

I have wanted this calendar and weather chart, for our boys, for months, no, nearly a year. I have looked online, in shops, asked people to help me find it and had no  luck. Until today. So when I came across this today, in Jo Jo Maman Babe, I bought it. Quickly! For  £32.00. And as a bonus, I’ve learnt something useful on my relatively new “seo aware” road of discovery.

But what’s struck me about it is how hard it was to find it. And I don’t think of Jo Jo Maman Babe as being a place for this kind of thing – in my mind, it’s more pregnancy clothes and newborn stuff. Which I suppose is the core product range actually. It’s funny how something like this has set me off thinking about how you can best market baby product, toddler products and stuff to families. It’s even got me checking out their seo and how they are coding this, because I really had searched high and low for in on the old interweb…

http://www.jojomamanbebe.co.uk/sp+Pictures-Canvases-My-First-Calendar-Blue+A3252

This is the long link to it. There’s no baby, toddler, children’s, or child reference in this is there? Do you search for “First” of anything? I don’t. Wonder if someone in the baby marketing team @jo jo maman bebe would be  interested in this blog post? Probably not, but I’m going to send them the link to it anyway :)

So now, the outlook’s rosy – I’ve got the present I’ve wanted and learnt work stuff too. Good result all round…

I’m asked regularly as to how I get my work done. So here’s three things that make Weston Communications PR and Marketing, the New Baby Guides and the Young Families Bump, Baby and Toddler Shows possible:

1. My husband. He is quite literally “the daddy”, in every aspect. He’s taken to play dough,  cooking,  train tracks, making pack ups (lunches in a sandwich box) to a toddler’s changing whim and sometimes,  ironing and cleaning. He thinks he does more of the latter than I do, but we’ll not split hairs over that. Not least because someone will have to tidy up after those hairs… Ahem. And as well as doing full time daddy daycare, he’s also an electrician who goes out at short notice to help people. Usually when they’ve tried to do something themselves to save £££ and messed it up. I’d hate to have to go and fix someone else’s mistakes whilst they watched me, quietly seething… But he does that as well. There’s no end to his talents. And did you see our fireplace? He made that as well.  And our fitted cupboards upstairs. he’s an all round top bloke.

And that’s without me going into how he supports me through thick and thin, emotionally and physically…. He’s my cheerleader and sounding board, the person I shout at when people annoy me, or don’t pay their bills on time. I count my blessings in having found him.

2. Hannah Elsom. She’s known as the “Glue” of Weston Communications for a very good reason. Because she brings everything together, and sticks it in the right places, so it all works nicely. Need something scheduling, there’s Hannah. Need admin, fiances, coaxing and cajoling doing, there’s Hannah. Need motivating and keeping off facebook, mumsnet and dare I say it, the Daily Mail online, there’s Hannah. She’s amazing. She’s made such a difference to my performance, and enabled me to move forward and develop Weston Communications into something that I never thought possible. Every time I think, “thank god for Hannah”, I tell her how grateful I am for her – she usually looks at me all “??? she’s off  again”. But it’s nice to know you are  needed and valued every so often, isn’t it?

3. My cheerleaders. My mum and dad, my brother, TJ, Debi, Eileen, Rachel, Carmen, Karen, AKT, Lorraine, Annie, Jacqueline and Kate. I’m sure there are more that I’ve not remembered, so I’m sorry if I’ve forgotten anyone. It’s so important to have different cheerleaders for different things. When I think I can’t be a working mum any more, I call Rachel Yoxen, who reassures me that it’s ok that my house  is untidy and that if I had a weekend to myself, it would be filled with sleeping. When I worry that I’ve stretched myself too much,  I have TJ, Eileen and Debi on hand, who reassure me about business matters and direct me towards Susan Jeffers and Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway… And when I want to know how to do something parenting related, I can call on Lorraine, whose knowledge of food and allergies is amazing, and Karen, Annie, Jacqueline and Kate are such good mums that I’m confident to ask for their advice and reassurance on anything parenting related. And Anne of course, if my moral compass. If I’m not sure if something is a good idea or not,  I call Anne. She’s so straight, it must be hard to get dressed in a morning. 

I love and am so grateful to them all for everything they so generously give me and my life and help me on my path to, well, I’ve not quite worked that one out yet….

What and who makes your work happen? Have you told them how much you value them recently? Tell me here, who you value and if I can think of something appropriate to send them as a small reward for what they do for you, I’ll put something in the post….

Am expecting lots of replies for this one, so get writing now…

Should babies watch TV?

This is interesting research. Apparently, we shouldn’t be letting our children watch TV until they are two years old.  There’s all the “isolated piece of research” stuff, which is valid and should be noted but, frankly, I’m getting a bit tired of all this. Surely most things are ok in moderation?

Elliott was 16 months old when he started watching TV regularly. Why? Because William arrived and I wanted him to be amused / distracted whilst I fed the newborn. Please don’t mention the box of special lego or drink/biscuit that only comes out when mummy is feeding the baby. That’s a 10 minute fix at best, not a 30 min fix, which the TV provides nicely.

I suppose I could have been more creative - how did people feed babies and amuse toddlers before the TV arrived? I don’t know. Answers on a postcard please. Elliott used to want to fiddle with William whilst he was feeding, so I couldn’t sit with the two of them…

I’m so grateful that I’ve moved on from a lot of my maternal guilt and feeling that I should do everything perfectly. Two years ago this sort of thing would have really affected  me. It even goes so far as to say that it’s not enough to be watching “educational” sesame street style programmes. So that’s my Mr Tumble argument out of the window then.

Don’t we have enough to be feeling confused about? Couldn’t they have found out what TV has a positive impact, so we can do more to help our children learn from it. Is it realistic to think that a child won’t watch TV before 2 years old? What is there that’s an absolute no go for you? 

I can’t think of much that is entirely a no go, other than the usual behaviour and personal safety stuff. Are there things that you won’t let your child watch / see / do because it’s not good for them? Do other people support you in that, or question it?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it…