Kitchen-Tables and Business Buddies

Do you have any business buddies? You know, friends that you can call up, natter about your business with, have a little whinge to, and ask for a bit of advice.

I didn’t really have any business buddies when I started my business, but I do now. And oh how I adore them. Seriously. Without them I’d be a wreck.

I guess I have three types of business buddy: Whenevers, Kitchen Tables and Quarterlies.

 Whenevers are my closest business buddies and I call them or they call me whenever. I usually speak to them weekly and we talk totally honestly about all the good stuff and all the bad stuff. I think having a small business can be quite a lonely experience if you don’t have someone to rant to and celebrate with.

 Kitchen Tables are a monthly get-together of women doing fab stuff. My friend Cindy Luken of Luk Beautifood started the ball rolling on this with the Table of Fabulousness. At Kitchen Tables we all get around the, er, Kitchen Table and talk. So we talk about what we’ve been working on in our businesses and what we are going to do over the next month. We kinda keep each other accountable. We’re also like a merry band of cheerleaders, advisers, and shoulders to cry on.

 Quarterlies are the business buddies I catch up with quarterly. I started scheduling a proper quarterly thing because I had all these fabulous business friends who I never got round to catching up with. Now we pop our coffee/lunch in the diary 12 weeks in advance. Sounds a bit formal but I need that kind of discipline. My quarterly buddies are a huge inspiration to me and I always come away from a catch up feeling totally invigorated.

I think everyone needs a few business buddies. You don’t need to do the whole “Whatevers, Kitchen-Tables, Quarterlies” thing. It just works for me. But if you know a few small business owners I think you’d be mad not to start a Kitchen Table. You can start it slowly. Invite a few friends for lunch and chat about business. You don’t need to make it too formal but you do want to keep a sense of business about it. We’re busy folk and haven’t got time to be ladies who (just) lunch.

And if you are going to do the Kitchen Tables the easiest way to do the business-bit is this.  Ask everyone to take a turn saying what they’ve been doing in the month just gone, what they’ve got planned for the month coming up, anything they’re stuck with and anything that’s gone well. After a few months you’ll get in the swing of this and you’ll find the conversation becomes very real.

If you don’t know any small business owners you could try going along to a local networking group and seeing if you meet any like-minded people. You only need one person to start a Kitchen- Table. You can then grow it as you (and your fellow Kitchen Tablers) meet other similar people. Eventually you will have enough. I don’t think you need many more than 12. It becomes unwieldy.

If you’d like to meet fellow folk from The Business Bakery community let me know. Sometime in the future (when we’ve worked out how!) we’d like to help you get in touch with each other in a more automatic way. Until then contact us here with your location and we’ll keep a list of who’s where and put a shout out for more local Kitchen Table-rs for you via Facebook. We’ll then pass you relevant contact details and you can take it from there. Not perfect but it’s a start.

Finally if you have a bunch of buddies and you all fancy doing our Healthy Income Program you can join as a group of five or more and get a discount. Details at the bottom of  this page.

What about YOU. Do you have business buddies? How do they help you? Fancy telling us in the comments?!

 

 

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