Serious planning...

This week I’ve spent most of my evenings getting down to some serious planning and have practically finished my business plan. It really does help you feel a lot more focused and has been fantastic for clarifying next steps.

Poor Saima has been poorly all week which has proved the worst timing as I know she has a big charity event on at the moment. It also means our first mentor meeting has also been postponed – sods law! Thought I would give her a bit of a breather to recover this week so hopefully we’ll catch up next week at some point. One thing PR teaches you is that you have to be really flexible and get on with the task at hand!

So in the meantime, I have contacted my local business adviser, Brent Business Ventures, and plan to send across my draft business plan next week for their scrutiny. Fingers crossed….

What a difference a day makes!

What a difference a day makes! I still cannot belive that BlackBrides.co.uk – a style and planning guide for Afro Caribbean weddings – was one of the lucky 10 businesses to win the BT Fresh Ideas Mentor Competition and I have bagged a terrific mentor before the business has even started!

From daydream to reality
Since the announcement dinner at the impressive BT Tower, I have gone from simply daydreaming about starting my own online business to setting the wheels in motion with every spare second I can grab! (Which, when you work full-time in an incredibly fast-paced and unpredictable industry like PR, is very little!)

Luckily my new mentor, Saima Butt, who is the frightfully bright Managing Director of BT Local Business - and a fellow North West London girl - can fully sympathise with a demanding day job, so we have spent most of week one exchanging emails and putting some dates in the diary to meet up.

She already has loads of great ideas for the business which has made me even more exciting about getting BlackBrides.co.uk off the ground. Watch this space…