I have just come from the November meeting of the Ballina Shire Home Based Business Network. It was another informative and inspirational morning filled with great ideas and advice to take home and try.

I would highly recommend these meetings to any home based business looking for information, inspiration or the opportunity to meet local small home based business people in a similar situation.
Jane Laverty, Economic Development Officer of Ballina Shire Council and Nadia Elliott-Burgess, Business and Promotions Manager of Ballina Chamber of Commerce welcomed the group and introduced Tony Krimmer the Small Business Field Officer of the Northern Rivers Area Consultative Committee who spoke on the Australian Government Initiative, Small Business Answers and their development goal to promote the growth and profitability of the Region’s small business enterprises.

I had the opportunity to have a chat with Tony after the meeting and he was very interested in the Search Marketing services of eMedia Worx. Tony was saying that he sees online marketing as a very important part of a website’s success and that he had seen many small businesses pay thousands, and tens of thousands, to have a website only to see it sit there and do nothing except look outdated. He believed that many small businesses would benefit from online marketing services.
I agreed, saying that building a website without search marketing is like building a specialty shop on a country back road. No-one knows its there and no-one can find it. You need to place your website where the traffic is looking for you.

Guest speaker of the morning was John Hale from Next Step Consulting who gave his ‘Secrets to Small Business Success’. Always inspirational, John didn’t disappoint and has a way of taking you outside your business to look at it with fresh eyes and he has a way of making all the big issues appear simple and achievable to all. John took us through the five main stages of small business growth. Existence, Survival, Success, Take Off and Maturity. John held our attention by taking a few personal experience stories to, and in one case literally, ‘cliff hangers’ to illustrate his point of how determination and commitment can help you overcome your obstacles.

Don Hogden of All About Home Loans gave an informative and helpful advisory segment on ‘Loans for Self-employed Small Business Owners’. After John Hale had shown us that ‘cash flow’ was a key to small business survival Don’s fact sheet was welcome and up-to-date advice from the ever changing financial industry. Don and his wife Sue are members of the HBBN and offer a very friendly and approachable financial advisory service.

The meeting was rounded off with a Member Business Profile given by Margaret Orr of Pines on the Plateau who presented her Luxury Boutique Lodges and gave us a background on how she established her successful business.

Held the first Wednesday of each month the Ballina Shire HBBN is a project initiative of Ballina Shire Council Economic Development and Ballina Chamber of Commerce and Industry Inc.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Conferences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.