Flying Start for Women

Fresh back from three intensive days in York on the Flying Start for Women programme. Such a wealth of information has been given in the three days, helping about 60 women to understand the information required for starting a business and/or developing their business.

For me, the most useful outcomes were the the contacts made, focussing on the business model, the elevator pitch and the 1-2-1 session with my designated mentor Deborah Loth. The Flying Start team are all professionals covering finance - Sarah Thelwall, developing business and funding - Dr. Claire Antrobus, managing work/life balance and marketing - Rosy Jones, mentoring - Wendy Parvin, IP - Dave Morgan, communicating - Mark bailey, legal issues - Eileen McMorrow, company formation - Neil Butler and tax issues - Julie Shaw. Lorna Collins is the Director of the Flying Start programme and covered issues such as developing the business model and managed, amazingly, to keeping us all in line and more or less on schedule. Deborah Loth helped facilitate the event and pushed us to understand where we are now and where we want to be. It was a very good event and has given us all a great deal of information to think about and work on over the coming year.

One of the things it has made me think hard about is how much information I need to put across to people when I explain what it is I am doing. I find I respond to people in different ways rather than having a pre-determined 'pitch' that expresses what The Talking Walls is and conveys the benefits to the possible interested listener. When I am talking about it, I forget that the listener perhaps does not even understand the basic elements of the area I work in, perhaps putting them at a disadvantage immediately and switching them off before I have even finished the first sentence. As a 3D trainer, I work with people who understand exactly what this is, perhaps not entirely what it can do, but they have some knowledge of the subject, therefore when I mention animation, 3D modelling, rendering - these are all terms that they are familiar with. But, talking to an investor, or in general networking, the listener probably will not understand these terms, which is perhaps the reason for the blank looks that appear as I go through my spiel about The Talking Walls and the lack of interest that ensues.

Obviously the easiest method in overcoming this, is to always have an example of TheTalking Walls to hand - i.e. on my mobile, then I would be able to show them and let them explore it. This way the application speaks for itself and the blanks looks will hopefully change to one of understanding and excitement. When I have shown people what this is all about, it has been a very positive experience - and memorable with later feedback of other areas in which it could be used.

But there may well be occasions when I cannot show the application and need to pitch without being able to use any visual prompts - so my task, following on from what we started at the Flying Start for Women event, is to develop a few phrases that will help my listeners from non-digital arenas to understand more completely what it is I do and what The Talking Walls will help them do, and hopefully never see another blank look!