Sponsors, Speakers, and Sausage Rolls: My Chaotic Day as an Event Host | EP303

Moments from my first (and last) live event at Castle Theatre in Wellingborough reveal powerful business lessons and heartfelt connections as we approach the podcast's fifth birthday.

• Reflecting on hosting my first live event with a discussion of the venue, attendees, and overall experience
• Acknowledgments to our sponsors: 

Becky Kerr Photography - LINK

Businesswomen Unltd - Link

Val Adaway UW - Link

The Altitude Experience - Strategy call

• Highlights from our speakers

Nicola Tonsager - Podcast

Andrea Rainsford - Women Winning in Business

Cheryl Laidlaw - Link

Janine Coney - May Day

Diane Watson - She Can Prosper

• The importance of setting boundaries in business and identifying your "why" for maintaining them
• How financial empowerment goes beyond revenue to include wills, critical illness insurance, and proper protection
• The powerful impact of Catherine Chapman's breathwork session and Cat Googe's laughter yoga
• Support for our speakers running the London Marathon for Meningitis Now and Brain Research UK
• Announcement that live podcast episodes from the event will be released in coming weeks

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Chapters

• 1:23 Welcome and Five-Year Anniversary News
• 4:38 Event Sponsors and Gratitude
• 10:46 The Altitude Experience and Business Growth
• 12:34 Speaker Highlights and Key Takeaways
• 22:42 Breathwork, Laughter, and Marathon Fundraising
• 28:57 Final Reflections and Future Episodes

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:33

You're listening to the Mindset in Action podcast, the place to be to grow and streamline your business. I'm your host, donna Eade. Let's jump into the show. Welcome back to the podcast, everybody, I am so glad to have you here today for this episode. Now we are sneaking very, very close. In fact, it's nine days until this podcast officially turns five years old. Eek, I can't quite believe it.

Speaker 1: 1:11

So today I actually wanted to do a bit of reflection because my event happened on Thursday and I wanted to talk to you a little bit about that and, yeah, fill you in on the details if you weren't able to come and join us. So we met in Wellingborough at the Castle Theatre, which is our local community theatre location here in Wellingborough, and it was a glorious sunny day, which I felt a little bit gutted about, because the last thing you want to do when it is gloriously sunny outside is sit in a black box with no windows on the inside, so that was a little bit of a shame. However, we did get outside for lunch, we were able to go and stretch our legs during the break and things like that, and anybody who had to travel any length of time got a beautiful, beautiful drive up to Wellingborough or down to Wellingborough and back home again. So I am glad that people actually got to enjoy being out there, because I don't know about everybody who came, but if I hadn't been there on that day, it is likely that I would not have seen as much of the sunshine as I actually did, because I tend to come into my office, which is, as I have probably said before on the podcast, it faces north, so it doesn't get any sunshine until the very, very last point of the day. So wherever it sits, the sun is just about coming around to the front right now, and it's half past four, nearly in the afternoon, so I can't see the sun in my window. I can see it on my neighbor's houses across the road, but it will sort of come around a little bit and, and just before it sets, I'll be able to see it from the corner of my uh office window. So that is what I'm looking at when it it comes to the sunshine. Um, so I don't feel the sunshine when I'm working and I will sit in here and I will work all day long without taking a break, particularly, I'll go and make my cups of tea, I'll go into the kitchen and it'll feel like a tropical heat wave in there. And then I come back in my office and I'm freezing cold and I want to put the radiator on. It's a little bit crazy. However, I might go out for a walk, but that's usually about a 10, 20 minute walk, so I probably saw more sunshine on Thursday than I would normally see on a Thursday, so I was very grateful for that.

Speaker 1: 3:44

Some big thank yous that I need to put out on the podcast for this was to say thank you to my sponsors. So the first sponsor I wanted to thank was Becky Kerr Photography. She did an amazing, amazing job on the day of taking photos for the event as well, which was amazing. So some of those have gone out on my social media today, so do look out for those. And then she also sponsored the event. So if if we hadn't had the sponsors, the event wouldn't have been able to go ahead. So I am so, so grateful to everybody who sponsored.

Speaker 1: 4:21

But Becky is a brand photographer. She does a lot of commercial sort of events and things like that. She's fantastic. And she also works with one of my speakers, janine Coney, and they are doing a day very soon. Definitely check out I know it's on Janine's I'm pretty sure it's on Becky's as well on their Instagram, where they are pulling together their expertise and producing photography for you. That is really going to enhance you and your brand. So Janine talks all about visibility and all about brand strategy and she's really, really good at what she does. So the two of them together are a powerhouse effect and they are doing a day in May that you can have them for the whole day. I think there's sort of six of you that are going to be there for the day. It's going to be fantastic. So I will leave a link in the show notes for you to go and check that out as well. But thank you to Becky for sponsoring the event.

Speaker 1: 5:17

The next sponsor is Business Women Unlimited. Business Women Unlimited has been such a game changer for me in my business. I don't think I would be sat here without the ladies in that community. So thank you, debbie Gilbert, for all of your support and help on the day and also over the years, because it has been incredible. I have loved being part of Business Women Unlimited.

Speaker 1: 5:44

For those of you who don't know, I run the online meeting for Business Women Unlimited, which is on usually the third Tuesday of the month. So if you go to businesswomenunlimitedcouk, you can see all of the events there and all of the online ones I host. So if you want to businesswomenunlimitedcouk, you can see all of the events there and all of the online ones I host. So if you want to come and spend some time with me outside of listening to the podcast and other events that go on that I might be at, you can come and join me every month on that network meeting. So I will leave a link to that in the show notes as well. A link to that in the show notes as well. Debbie also runs the Best Business Women Awards, which is a fantastic way to recognise women in our area in entrepreneurship, and they celebrated 10 years last year and I do believe that applications are open for this year's event. So if you have a business and you are a woman, there be a category for you. Go and find your category, enter the awards, because this is a really prestigious awards and it can do you so much good to have that PR around an award finalist entry or a win. So definitely go and check that out. She also has a podcast, the awards show. I'll link that in the show notes as well.

Speaker 1: 6:55

And then the next sponsor I wanted to say thank you to was Val Addaway. She is a utility warehouse representative and she sponsored the event under her UW hat. Uw, for those of you who don't know, is a utility organisation that brings sort of all your utilities under one roof to save you money, brings sort of all your utilities under one roof to save you money. So I actually have my gas and electric with them at the moment, but you can also get your broadband and your mobile phone with them. And if you have all of your utilities with them, that's when the savings really sort of kick in. And you can also get a cashback card with them. So you just load up the card, spend it on your weekly shopping and stuff and you get money off of your bill that way as well. So it's a really good way of utilising your spending to save you money on your bills. So I will leave a link to Val in the show notes as well. So thank you for sponsoring the event.

Speaker 1: 7:51

Val that I want to mention is Jenny Donato, who was unfortunately unable to come and join us for the event because it was her daughter's birthday on that day. And if I am a believer in anything, I am a believer that we run our businesses so that we can be there for the important occasions. So it was absolutely right that she did not come to my event and that she was there for her daughter's birthday, because that is why women, especially mothers, do this kind of thing is so that they can be there for their children, so they can go to the school plays, so that they can go to the Christmas carol concert, so they can go to events and sports days and all of that jazz and especially their birthdays be there for their birthdays. Because if you're in, you would have to book a day's holiday to do that, but if you're in business, you can just shovel your business stuff around. So I really appreciated that she couldn't be there, but I am so, so grateful that she sponsored and she sponsored with her business at the Altitude Experience.

Speaker 1: 8:56

Now, the Altitude Experience is something that I wholeheartedly believe in. It is a fantastic way of growing your business. She basically works with around 30 coaches and mentors I am one of them to help business owners to find the gaps in their business, the biggest wins that they can get, and locate a coach or a mentor that is going to be able to guide them in that section and help them to move forward with it, and she's had some fantastic return on investments with that over the last couple of years. The team has got stronger. It's going to be absolutely a fantastic experience. If you choose to go through it, there is a free discovery call. So if you wanted to find out more about how you can join the program, what it actually looks like, how you're able to access all of the coaches because it's not just one or two coaches you get to work with you get access to all of the coaches through the platform. There is sort of three focused coaches that you work with. You get access to all of the coaches through the platform. There is sort of three focused coaches that you work with as part of your program, but then you get access to other coaches as well in other ways. So it is well worth a call to see if it is something that would suit you, especially if you are stuck in business or you are just on the beginnings of business.

Speaker 1: 10:17

One of the things that I wish I had had when I started out was somebody to guide me to what I needed to do to set my business up correctly in terms of what did I need to focus on? What is a sales funnel, like you know? Give me all of the basics and show me what I need to do. And I didn't really have that. So I was swept up as a lot of us are, in the marketing of all these big entrepreneurs that said, if you just do this, you'll be, you know, earning 10k a month. If you just do this, you could have a hundred thousand dollar launch if you just do this. And and I did this I went here and I tried that and it didn't work. And I went here and I tried that and it didn't work. And I went here and I tried that and it didn't work.

Speaker 1: 11:01

And if I had just had somebody who would have been able to say, look, what is it that you want to do? Because I was trying to do what everybody else wanted me to do and I wasn't looking at what I wanted to do. What do you want to do and how can we make that happen? That is what Jenny can help you with. That is what the altitude experience can help you with. So, if you are interested in that, I will leave the strategy call down below for you to click on as well. Make sure that you let her know that I sent you over on the form that you fill in and, yeah, I hope that I might see some of you over there because it's a fantastic program. So that was all of my sponsors and I would be remiss if I did not also thank my speakers, because they were phenomenal.

Speaker 1: 11:45

So the day started out with me being absolutely a nervous wreck, running around like a blue ass, what's it and I love the way that I said what's it instead of fly, and I did the swearing bit. But never mind, that is kind of what it was like on Thursday morning in my house. We got up, we got dressed, we ran around, shoved things in cars and we arrived at the castle and the door was locked. So there was our first hurdle. But luckily somebody came rather quickly and we were able to get into the space that we started to set up. My other half started to do all the tech stuff, make sure that we could record the event. So that's a little hint for you of what's to come.

Speaker 1: 12:28

But we also then started to welcome in our guests. So Debbie and Diane turned up and Debbie bless was my head registration chief and made sure that everybody was signed in and got a goodie bag. Diane Watson was one of my speakers. So they arrived. Janine arrived, andrea arrived. It was fantastic. Everybody started arriving. We only had one no show and she did, bless her, message me and let me know that she wasn't going to be able to make it, which was such a shame, but it was fantastic to get a 99.999% show up rate. That was really fantastic. And all my speakers turned up, which was good, because one of them had me heart palpitating a little bit.

Speaker 1: 13:14

So we had First up. We had Nicola Tonsaga, who is the podcast host of being Soul Confident. She has a book called being Soul Confident and she is the founder of the Soul Signatures and she is all about aligning yourself with your true purpose, and your purpose can change people. So that is what I kind of took away from our conversation together is it wasn't about finding the one thing that you're going to do, heading down that path and never deviating from it. It was going with what is right right at this moment and being happy and willing to make changes down the line when that purpose may well shift. So that was a really good takeaway from that conversation.

Speaker 1: 14:04

Then I had the extremely phenomenal Andrea Rainsford talk to us about planning and what that means to her, and she told us a bit of her story and why it is so important for her to plan. And she spoke about just not not dealing with other people's issues. You know their issues are their issues. If they're hung up, that they can't get hold of you at a certain time, that's their problem, not your problem, and that you have to have really strong boundaries. But the biggest thing that came out of it for me is knowing what your why is, because if you don't really know why you're doing something, then you're never going to make it happen.

Speaker 1: 14:47

So for her she works two days a week and that might not work for you. You might want to work more than that. You might sit there thinking, oh my gosh, I don't know what I would do with five days that weren't working for me. But if you had a strong enough why as to why you wanted to only work two days, then you could make it happen as long as you planned. Well, but if you haven't got a strong enough why, there's always going to be something that pulls you back into the office. There's always going to be something that is going to creep into that time when you're not supposed to be working. So you need to really understand why you want to set up your business the way you do. What is it that it's going to give you if you do it that way?

Speaker 1: 15:31

So for me, I try not to work on Fridays. It doesn't always happen, especially now I've got the part-time role that I do as well. It is a bit of a bit more give and take with Friday. However, when I do keep it free, I make sure that I am completely offline, and so if I have to pop on on the weekend, I don't feel so bad because I have had that Friday free. I would love to have a more solid four-day week. However, I don't have the biggest why for it at the moment because my partner works Monday to Friday. So having that extra day off doesn't give us more time to do stuff because he's not around. So it's nice in the fact that if I've got something to do, I can go and do that on my own and I'm not missing out on time with him. But it's, it's one of those things. It's a bit more give and take. So it's not a strong enough reason at the moment for me to make it a solid boundary, but I'm okay with that and that's what it is. Really understanding your where you're okay with letting go of that boundary a little bit and where you need to make sure that it is actually solid. So for Andrea, it's a health thing for her. She's going to make sure that she only works that time because her health depends on her having enough downtime, enough relaxation, enough time to go for walks, et cetera, and that is what works best for her. So we had a great conversation all around that.

Speaker 1: 17:01

Then we had the wonderful Cheryl Ladlaw come and talk to us about AI. It was a really interesting conversation because so many people use AI every day and don't even realise they're using it, or they are absolutely terrified of chat and Gemini and all of those other ones and don't know where to even start with it. So we had a bit of a conversation around that and I was really excited by the possibility of upgrading my chat to be able to have assistants that are dedicated to certain tasks. That will allow me to reduce the amount of prompting I need to do. So I can set it up to only dish out UK English. I can set it up to only speak in my brand voice. I can set it up to only be focused on writing emails in a certain way or creating blog posts in a certain way, or whatever it is, and that blew my mind. I didn't realise that you could have these separate assistants on the paid version, and that blew my mind. I didn't realize that you could have these separate assistants on the paid version. So that was really interesting.

Speaker 1: 18:07

Then we had Janine Coney. Janine came on and spoke to us about audience building. Now Janine has over 10,000 people on her Instagram, and so you might well say that she is an influencer, and that was what she was talking about. She was talking about how she built her audience and kind of became an influencer, and that wasn't her plan. She also talked about not buying followers and keeping it organic, but how she, when she realized that she was becoming an influencer, which wasn't what she wanted to do, she actually ended up losing a lot of audience members when she started to actually talk about what she wanted to be talking about, but she gained them back. So we were talking about how you can build your audience and what you really need to focus on when it comes to audience building. So that was really interesting.

Speaker 1: 19:00

And then I spoke about podcasting. So I had a conversation with Catherine Chapman, who was one of my students. She is the host co-host, of the Far Too Fabulous podcast. Unfortunately, her sidekick, julie, was unable to come up for the event, but these things happen so she wasn't able to make it up, but it would have been fantastic to have been interviewed by both of them, I have to say. But Catherine did an amazing job. She interviewed me, talking about my podcasting journey, why podcasting is important for businesses and the difference that it could make. So we spoke a lot about that.

Speaker 1: 19:39

And then, finally, we had Diane Watson on stage, and this is where we took a bit more of a serious turn. I mean, to me the whole day was serious. If you are serious about your business, you take it all seriously. But Diane's got a very special mission. She is the founder of a movement called she Can Prosper. She wrote the, the book she Can Prosper. You can download that.

Speaker 1: 20:03

I believe it is on my bookshelf if you want to go and check that out and she wants women, especially, to be empowered and secure in their finances, but not just in their monetary sense, but also in the sense of having wills sorted. So, in the event of a partner's death, you're secure, you know exactly where the money's going and nobody can contest that or they can, but they're not going to get very far that you have critical illness insurance, especially as an entrepreneur and especially if you are a single woman, because if you can't work, what's going to happen? It's really important to have these things in place, insurances in place, because, yes, you might never need them and let's hope you never do but what if you do and it happens to more people than you would expect? In the last couple of weeks I have had come across my Facebook page people that I am either connected to or must be friends of friends, two guys who've had strokes. So, making sure that you have got all of the necessary things in place to make sure that you are protected and taken care of in case of any eventuality, it's just so, so important.

Speaker 1: 21:38

And we all put these things off because we don't want to think about death, we don't want to think about potential critical illnesses, we don't want to think about diseases that may be terminal. We don't want to think about that, and I understand that as much as anybody else. It's just not something't want to think about that, and I understand that as much as anybody else which it's just not something you want to think about. But, um, think about it once for for a day or two, and get all of that stuff sorted, and then you never have to think about it again because your premiums are going out automatically and you don't have to um, dwell on it, but make sure that you are secure. That's what I got out of my conversation with Diane. So then there was just two other topics that happened that day, and I was just so, so pleased that I asked these ladies to come, because I think it really did do exactly what I said, which was round out the day nicely.

Speaker 1: 22:32

We had a beautiful breathwork session with Catherine Chapman. She is Pilates teacher, she is the founder of Vitality Rooms and she is a breathwork instructor, and those are just a few strings to her bow. She has many others and she was phenomenal. It was so, so good. She played Alicia Keys Good job while we were doing this breathwork, and I actually had to stop because obviously I was. I'm hosting the event. I need to not be in a puddle of tears when we finished that, so I had to stop doing the breathwork because I could feel myself getting emotional, and it was just so, so, so powerful for so many people in the room. So that was beautiful.

Speaker 1: 23:15

And then Kat gave us a laughter yoga session. And now when I say laughter yoga, a lot of people start thinking how on earth am I gonna laugh whilst I'm stood in warrior two or something like that. It's not actual yoga poses. The yoga part is the, the breath work part of yoga is what they pull into laughter yoga and and just laughing and just enjoying the moment. And it was so incredible. And the reason that these two women have a very special place in my heart is because of the work that they do, because they are trying to fill everybody's life with vitality and joy, and why wouldn't you want more of that in your life?

Speaker 1: 23:56

These two wonderful souls are also running the London Marathon in a couple of weeks for two different charities. Catherine Chapman is running for meningitis now Due to a family loss that they suffered just two years ago, where her niece passed away from meningitis at age just on her 20th birthday. Absolutely devastating, and I get goosebumps saying it and it's very hard for me not to end up in a puddle of tears for her and her family. And yeah, they have raised an incredible amount for that charity in the last two years and they are continuing that. So I'm recording this, just as her husband should have finished the Brighton marathon for their team today and she will be doing the London marathon and he will be doing the London marathonathon as well, actually in a couple of weeks. And Kat Gouge is running for Brain Research UK for her friend who suffered a brain injury in the middle of the Great North Swim. I think it was and, kat, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it was in the middle of a swim. She was literally in the sea competing and she could have drowned. She could have died right then and there they had to airlift her to hospital. She spent a long time in hospital and came home in January, I believe. So Kat is running for Brain Research UK for her friend.

Speaker 1: 25:27

I will leave you links in the show notes to donate to those two charities. We did a silent auction on the event um to raise some money for that. I will be able to give you the total of that um next week, I think um or the week after, and let you know how much we raised for them for that event. But we had lovely donations from Janine and Becky. They donated one of their spaces on that shoot day event with the brand clarity event. Trudy Avery, the logo lady, she donated a brand clarity call. I donated a podcast strategy session and then we had um. Debbie gilbert donated linkedin um, course that she does, which is so good. It really shows you all of the magic that linkedin has that you don't even realize. You just think it's social media. You go on your post and you come away. You like people's comments and things like that. There is so much more available. Um, and her three hour program. Really, um goes through. All of that is incredible. So I want to say huge thank you to those people who donated prizes to the auction. Um, we, we, I hope, are going to raise quite a good chunk of money for those two ladies running the marathon. So there is a link down below. If you do donate from clicking the link in the show notes, then please use the hashtag MALive25 when you do your comments so that they can see that you came from this podcast. That would be amazing. So that is it.

Speaker 1: 27:12

That was the day. It was fantastic. We had a beautiful afternoon tea provided by Amy's Vintage Teas, based in Northampton, and it was incredible. They bought it all on beautiful vintage crockery cake stands and plates crockery cake stands and plates and we had. We had our lunch on those little tea plates of all those vintage crockery sets and the cakes were amazing. The sandwiches were lovely. The sausage rolls were something very special. They were not your asda sausage rolls. They were really beautiful and what they did was they did a whole cake stand tray for our gluten free attendee and they did a couple of cake stands with the dairy free options on as well and labeled them for us, which was absolutely wonderful. We also had birthday cake. Like I told everybody I would bring birthday cake, I bought two different types of vanilla and a chocolate and people were allowed to take those home with their goodie bags, which went down really really well. So that was it. It was a fantastic day.

Speaker 1: 28:21

I feel like I blinked and I missed it. My partner was absolutely fantastic at doing all the tech stuff for me on the day. Wouldn't have been able to do it without him. Absolutely fantastic and, yeah, I feel like I feel like I blinked and I missed it. And then I was just exhausted and people were like, have you come down yet? I was like I don't even think, like it happened, like I feel it feels a little bit like a fever dream, but that was it. It was. It was fantastic. I really enjoyed myself. As far as I am aware, everybody a really good time who came up and spoke to me afterwards. I was really really delighted to be able to bring together a lot of different connections that I have, so different communities that don't know each other. So people knew some people in the room, but then there was new people for them to talk to as well, which was really, really wonderful. So that is it for today, guys.

Speaker 1: 29:16

That was a rundown of my event. A little bit of takeaway from each of them. What is going to happen is you are going to get to hear those conversations that we had on Thursday, as I deliver them in podcast form to you, so live podcasts coming your way. I haven't actually listened to any of them yet, so I'm hoping that the recordings are going to be OK. My other half seems to think that they are all good, but we'll see if they meet my standards, I'm sure they will, and they will come out to you over the next few weeks.

Speaker 1: 29:50

So it is my birthday episode next week and I have a call out for you guys. So if you are listening to this and you've been a listener for a while, I would love it if you would DM me and tell me what your favourite episode has been over the last five years, or what you've enjoyed about the podcast over the last five years. And what I will be doing is I will be collating that and reading them, reading some of those out. I am going to put it on my Instagram stories as well. So if you want to come over and comment there, I'll be putting it on my Facebook. So please do, let me know your favourite thing about this podcast and we will share it next week for our fifth birthday episode. Join me there and I'll see you soon. Bye for now.