Less than 4 weeks to go!

(written on Friday 3 Feb)
Oh heck, it’s February. The last month we aren’t yet live (is that English?)

We had the last three preview evenings this week, and again had a superb response. Some really good feedback, lots of ideas, some great contacts, and even an offer from an investor! - which we haven’t pursued by the way – yet!

We may have to rewrite the planned rollout programme, because it looks like we have identified some potentially great regional managers in regions we weren’t planning on launching yet. That was always a possibility, and ideally I’d rollout the local information to the whole of the UK immediately, but that would bring with it other challenges. Such as:

- Information systems. We need to know exactly how to keep the information current, where to get it from and how to be as efficient as possible when organising it and ourselves. We can’t offer up a near-perfect system to a new regional manager until we’ve experienced it ourselves, hands-on, in the Greater Manchester region at least. So that’s a work in progress, and can’t be rushed.

- Managing teams. If we have another 20 people on our team, we will need to ensure we have sorted all the training, motivational and operational issues. We’re not there yet, simply because it’s not been a priority so far, and is something that needs planning strategically. The regional managers are such a key part of our business that I want to make sure I get the right people, and that they absolutely love being a part of this. This isn’t trial and error, it’s got to be right first time.

- PR. To promote the site thoroughly around the media in each of our regions would be very time consuming. I’m realizing that just to manage the national publicity campaign and try to focus on Greater Manchester aswell is proving challenging. It’s taking up a large proportion of my time at the moment. So to attempt all regions at once would mean we wouldn’t achieve the best results for any region. You only launch a region once, so we need to make the most of it every time.

So today (Friday) I’m meeting with Lee to discuss the way forward. We’ve a lot of ideas from the preview evenings, and we need to see what’s possible from a technical and time perspective.

We’re no closer to deciding which show we are going to exhibit at in March. We have a preference now though, but it all comes down to cashflow. There’s potentially some extra cash coming our way (not from an investor!) and if that happens then we’ll be laughing. But we won’t know for another week or so yet. So the decision’s still on hold for the time being.

In terms of my big strategic idea I mentioned in the last diary entry, I have made some progress. My problem was that I wasn’t an expert in the area concerned, and I needed to get some advice from someone who was. So I’ve used my local contacts in Manchester at one of the world’s largest consultancy firms, to get to the right person in London, who in turn has directed me to a member of his team who specialises in this area. She’s now making some of her own enquiries, to see if there’s any mileage in my idea, and we should hear back from her next week. Having been a professional advisor myself, I’ve met many people who have suffered for not getting the right advice (not mine, I hasten to add!), and wherever possible you should always use people who are experts in their field. So hopefully we’ll get an answer either way quite soon, and we won’t be wasting our time ‘going around the houses’ if it’s a non-starter.

We’ve been looking for a ‘charity of the year’ to support. We particularly wanted to support a young carers charity to provide respite care for those children who can’t do normal kids’ things, because they have other responsibilities most of the time. Occasionally they get some respite, where someone else takes over their responsibilities for a while, so they can go and enjoy some leisure activities or a holiday, just like ‘normal’ kids do.

It’s something I feel quite passionate about. I’ve always done some sort of voluntary work, ever since I was 13. I think that whenever you have an opportunity to give something back, you should do so. I’m a firm believer in ‘What goes around, comes around!’ There’s a few ways we think we can help raise funds and we met a PR consultant for the Princess Royal Trust for Carers last week, and have now arranged to meet the trust themselves at their North West regional office. The meeting’s in mid-February, so hopefully we can pursue this quite quickly afterwards, because I’d love it to be all in place by launch. They specialise in supporting carers, and have many young carers projects around the country, so it seems an ideal match for us.

We’ve now started requesting information about family & children’s events/exhibitions/activities for March onwards, and have been added to quite a few PR company’s mailing lists if they have appropriate clients. This is by far the easiest and quickest way for us to keep our content updated, but not every venue has a PR company, so we’re going to still have to sort out our system for obtaining all the information and keeping it current. Finalising and refining our system for this is the subject of this weekend’s management meeting!

By the way, if you know any leisure venues/attractions etc, please also add me onto their mailing lists kirsty@entertainthekids.com

Wow – it’s picking up apace now!

I’m not sure this diary writing and reviewing events is therapeutic or if it’s just plain terrifying me!

Kirsty