The monthly ladies networking function Woman at Work was held on the second Wednesday of this month because of school holidays.  Last night’s function was held at the promise grill in Meyersdal and it was really nice and cosy.  There was roundabout 80 ladies attending the function and the guest speaker for the evening was Marietjie Tame who owns the local Alberton newspaper called The Tame Times.  She spoke about marketing your company in these tough times.  A lot of people are in the frame of mind to cut out some of their advertising to save on costs and this is a fatal mistake.  Take a company like Coca-Cola for instance who spend millions on advertising.  One employee suggested that everyone on earth knows Coke and will keep on drinking Coke regardless of if they advertise or not.  So technically speaking Coke could save millions and decided to give it a try.  Within 6 months Pepsi had replaced Coke as the number 1 selling soft drink in the world and it took Coke 12 months and three times as much money to get back to the top again.  Which just goes to show you that everyone needs to advertise their company and get (and keep) their name out there.  There are millions of ways to advertise your business and not everything is going to bring you business immediately but the client might keep your business card and later on when they require your services they might pull out your card and give you a ring  

 The charity of choice is a new initiative called no regrets, reach for life. Margaret Janeke is the main driving force behind it, she was a lecturer at UJ when she got called upon by the Lord to serve his purpose.  She changed and modelled her thesis  and created lifeskills manuals (and now a DVD) on how to live your life.  (and what to avoid)  Basically BOUND is a lifeskills initiative which helps young teens to realize their potential and helps them to keep control of their freedom and to live lives which isn’t overshadowed and ruled by drugs or dangerous sexual activities.  It was very inspirational to hear Margaret speak as she has been through process of having the visions you have for your child shattered by drug abuse and has such a passion to help others.

As always there was lots of sponsorships and prizes to be given away in the lucky draw and this personalised “one-of-a-kind” sports bag was just one of many prizes.The whole idea of a networking evening like this is to support other likeminded women in the South that we can build our businesses, whilst having fun and a bit of social.  Sometimes we laugh so much that my stomach muscles hurt…

Riani