Enterprising Women

Supporting, connecting and empowering women in business

Outset’s sister organisation, Enterprising Women, is a national not-for-profit community that’s all about helping women achieve the success they want, by empowering, connecting, training, inspiring, promoting, celebrating and supporting them. Working with both new and established female business owners from any sector and background and from all over the UK, Enterprising Women offers a network of local business clubs as well as a range of other support, including training programmes, networking events and mentoring support.

The Enterprising Women community been honoured as National Best Practice for supporting SMEs by both the UK government and by the European Commission and the Outset service has been embedded and enriched with many of these same principles. Enterprising Women founder, Bev Hurley C.B.E., is a holder of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion and a national Women’s Enterprise Ambassador. Her presence on several policy-making and government boards ensures your voice goes straight to the heart of government to help secure more effective support for business-women.

Membership

Enterprising Women is a not-for-profit organisation and membership is normally valued at £95 + VAT per year, with any surplus devoted towards delivering additional value to members and supporting the local business clubs.

For a limited time only, all female-owned businesses that successfully register with Outset are entitled to a complimentary 3-month membership to Enterprising Women. You will be contacted and invited to start this free membership with Enterprising Women once you have successfully registered with Outset.

There are many benefits to becoming a member of the Enterprising Women community:

• Inclusion in a trusted peer-to-peer support network at local, regional and national level
• The opportunity to work with experienced business mentors, hand-picked to match your needs
• Access to guides and resources for businesses at all stages
• PR and profile-raising opportunities – using our social media channels, becoming ‘Woman of the Week’ on our website and responding to national media calls
• Access to practical, high quality and effective training and conferences
• Business development through connections to new partners, collaborators, distributors and suppliers across the UK and internationally
• Hosting or being part of our local business clubs for support, inspiration and exchange of ideas
• Opportunity to become a paid mentor as part of our leading training programmes

Visit the Enterprising Women website for more information >>>

Growth Programmes

Throughout the year, Enterprising Women offers a series of Growth Programmes that focus on the issues faced by women-owned businesses, as well as the barriers to growth that confront all SMEs. These programmes are designed to equip ambitious female entrepreneurs with the confidence, expertise and skills to realise their business’ full commercial potential, and are delivered at different levels to match the challenges faced at different stages, from early stage start-ups to £million turnover companies.

Whilst a typical start-up business may, initially, flourish on the strength of the founder’s industry expertise, the time may come when that growth will falter due to lack of key business skills, particularly in critical areas such as financial management, marketing and human resources. The goal of our programmes is to provide women with proven tools and techniques to create a personalised, actionable roadmap to effectively navigate their business’ growth.

The Enterprising Women Growth Programmes include three to five days of interactive workshops, usually spread across different weeks (to minimise disruption to your business) and cover:

• Setting and aligning personal, business and financial goals
• Creating models and opportunities for growth
• Risk and opportunity
• The key components of a growth strategy
• Sales pipelines, segmentation and competition
• Building value and financing growth
• Leadership and management skills development
• Growing effective teams
• Managing quality and performance

The Enterprising Women Growth Programmes have been delivered to over 1,000 entrepreneurs throughout the UK. Participation is by application only.