When you’re running your business, it’s hard to find time to really grow it, because you’re so busy just getting through what you have to do each day. Sound familiar? All small business owners struggle to find time to work on their business because they’re working in it. So, what can you do?

The answer is to get more strategic about growing your small business. This means proper planning and using the right virtual teams and tools to free up your valuable time and let you plan for the growth you’d like to see. This workshop will show you how!

What you’ll get from this event: 
Get Growing! The Great British Business Roadshow is a hugely valuable way to spend half a day.  Not only will you gain concentrated knowledge to help you grow your business immediately, but there are several other great benefits that come with your ticket too:

• The Get Growing! Workbook. Including top tips from all our presenters and worksheets to help you take notes on each session.
• Your chance to win £500 in cash to spend on growing your business. Yes, we’re giving away a fist-full of cash to one lucky attendee. What would you do if an extra £500 landed on your desk right now? How would you use that to help grow your business? It could happen.
• A business growth assessment from Advantage Business Partnerships, with a value of £199.00, Get Growing! attendees will experience this for free. It is a sophisticated questionnaire that uses your answers to help you identify your areas of strength and weakness in your business, and how you can improve.
• Targeted networking with other relevant businesses in your area.
• The opportunity to grab our presenters to ask your questions face-to-face and get the answers that you need. 
• Excellent offers from all of the event partners, designed to help your business grow, and including discounts, special packages, and resources. 
• Lunch! We would love you to join us for lunch. Stay, eat, network – all on us.

This workshop will be packed full of practical advice!  Here's the running order:

9.30am – Registration – Pick up your prize draw ticket! Tea, coffee and biscuits served. 

10.00am – 10.30am Service: As a business grows, resources can become a big issue. There comes a time when it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up with incoming calls and enquiries while fulfilling increasing numbers of orders and new contracts. Penelope will show attendees how to maintain a professional appearance and effectively handle increased activity. 

10.35am – 11.05am People: A growing business may well need to find some temporary help for larger projects and contracts. They may also have some regular tasks that need to be done. Hiring a freelancer could be the solution and Elance will help attendees understand what that means for their business. 

11.10am – 11.40am Break: Stretch your legs and check your emails! 

11.45am – 12.15pm Money: Understanding the financial position of your business is crucial to success. It’s such an important part of running a business but also possibly the scariest. With so many regulations, money-management can be a minefield. FreeAgent will tell attendees what they need to know to make sure their business doesn’t get caught out, whilst keeping the cash coming in and achieving growth. 

12.20pm – 12.50pm Marketing: To achieve growth, a business needs to promote itself effectively, but many don’t realise that you don’t need a big marketing budget to do that. Email marketing and social media provide small business owners with a great, low-cost, way to get new customers and keep them. Constant Contact will help attendees unlock the secrets they need to know to make these powerful tools work for them. 

12.55pm – 1.25pm Business planning: A very insightful session looking at the main reasons for business failure and how to avoid becoming a victim. Advantage Business Partnerships will explain to attendees how to identify areas for improvement to focus their efforts on for growth. 

1.25pm – 1.35pm Local support: When a business is looking to grow, it is important to have good knowledge of business support available on a local level. From financial schemes to networking events and mentoring programmes, the local support organisation representative will give an overview of what is available for attendees. 

1.35pm – 1.40pm Prize draw: £500 prize draw – don’t lose your ticket! 

1.40pm – 2.30pm Late lunch, networking and questions – network with fellow business owners and visit speaker’s corners to ask any burning questions you might have. Stay for a quick bite or head off at your leisure.

So, free up some of your time by spending a little of it with us. We’ll show you how you can make the best use of virtual teams and tools to give your business a boost.

Places will fill up fast, so make sure you get yours - register today!

Get Growing is brought to you by:

Constant Contact - Through its unique combination of online marketing tools and free personalized coaching, Constant Contact helps small businesses, associations, and nonprofits connect and engage with their next great customer, client, or member. Launched in 1998 and with over 500,000 customers, Constant Contact has long championed the needs of small organizations, providing them with an easy and affordable way to create and build successful, lasting customer relationships.

FreeAgent – A multi award-winning online accounting system designed specifically for small businesses and freelancers and small businesses. With over 35,000 customers in the UK and worldwide, FreeAgent is more intuitive than conventional accounting software, the system lets users manage expenses and invoices, automatically chase payments, analyse bank statements, run an RTI compliant payroll, forecast tax and submit VAT returns online to HMRC, putting users in control of their business finances year round.

Elance – With a user base of 800,000+ active businesses globally from Fortune 500 companies to nimble startups looking to level the playing field, Elance gives instant access to a community of over 3 million of the world’s best freelancers. Find web programmers, mobile app developers, graphic designers and other freelancers with the most-demanded skills.

PayPal - PayPal is the faster, safer way to pay and get paid online, via a mobile device and in store. The service gives people simpler ways to send money without sharing financial information, and with the flexibility to pay using their account balances, bank accounts, credit cards or promotional financing. With 137 million active accounts in 193 markets and 26 currencies around the world, PayPal enables global commerce, processing almost 8 million payments every day.

StartMyBiz & GrowMyBiz – In each area we partner up with a local business support provider who can give information on where attendees can get local help and advice to grow their business.  Startmybiz is a partnership of various organisations in Canterbury committed to supporting people to start businesses here and to making the city and district a great place in which to do so.