It’s all about relationships:
This is what parent-friendly professional development looks like.
I will admit, I didn’t take many notes this time around because I was too busy meeting people, making coffees, ensuring everyone was having a good time and mixing together.
We were joined by Carlo Lombard, a Marketing Strategist who’s worked with world-renowned brands and leading organizations, tech, and media companies throughout his career and Rose Cain, whose career spans over 30 years in the Ottawa tech sector and is current VP of Business Operations at Solace, Ottawa Chapter President of the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals and a member of the Sales Enablement Society.
It was an interactive workshop-style event, where people (and their kiddos) got up, moved around and actually…spoke to each other (gasp!)
It was structured as follows to maximize content in a short period of time, presented around a continental breakfast spread and children’s play area to ensure everyone was well fed and content.
10 AM: Registration, Food, Play + Networking
10:45 AM: Guest Speaker Intros
10:50 AM: Carlo spoke about ‘The Secret Of Selling Yourself Short’
11:15 AM: Rose spoke about ‘Developing Your Sales Pipeline’
11:30 AM: Audience Q&A
12 PM: Open Networking, Food, Play + Event Wrap Up Before Naptime!
Some key takeaways on networking, marketing and selling yourself:
- Start by identifying your ideal customer and actually talk to them, ask questions!
- Talk less about yourself, listen to others and learn more about them.
- Take the time to build your network, focus on relationships and meeting people.
On lead generation, developing your sales pipeline and closing sales:
- Closing sales is not an ‘event’, it is a ‘process’.
- When people aren’t closing enough, they’re often missing in one of these three key areas: lack of defined ideal customer, quality and consistency of leads, quality and tenacity of follow up.
- Be persistent.
On mixing business and babies and how/where to start:
- Seek mentorship and a good network of advisors.
- Find a community to link in to and if you can’t find one…create one as I (Amy) have done with Babies, Business + Breakfast.
- Get your mindset right and act as if: go where your ideal customers are, do some research, it doesn’t cost much to ask questions, print up business cards and start introducing yourself and your business idea to test the market.
Feedback from some of our attendees
“Love the interactive and engaging activities.”
“Appreciated the interaction, networking tips, simplicity of the presentation. Love the concept and hope to attend future events.”
“Wish there was time for more! Good amount of info in short time. Thank you, would love to see more opportunities like this.”
“I really enjoyed it and it was nice to meet parents in the same boat as me.”
“More meetups please!”
“FUN!” (from one of the children in attendance)
Special thanks to our supporters!
Thank you to our venue partner Algonquin College’s DARE District and staff member Victoria Ventura for hosting us in their Incubator space; to guest speakers Carlo Lombard and Rose Cain for sharing your marketing and sales wisdom; and to all the parents who registered to attend and showed up with/without your kids to support more inclusive business and professional development programming.
Special thank you as well to to Newcomers in Ottawa for visiting us to film the experience for your audience!
- Click on their ‘Ottawa Community’ Instagram Stories to view an intro of our even
- Watch Networking tips from Carlo Lombard on their IG TV
The vision for Babies, Business + Breakfast™
Hiya, my name is Amy Lynch and I’ve been participating in personal and professional development since my two children were newborns (they’re currently one and almost three years old), as a result of the belief I could keep doing what I loved to do as a parent, alongside my children.
It wouldn’t always be easy or comfortable, but along the way I started getting into my own bringing babies into business settings rhythm and in doing so, became an accidental activist. I started writing about it, speaking with other parents and advocating for more inclusive spaces and business experiences.
As it turns out, others also believe parenthood and professional development don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Like my newsletter readers, event attendees, guest speakers, business sponsors and community partners who join us to mix babies and business, blurring those life and work lines a bit more!
Babies, Business + Breakfast™ is focused on providing parent-friendly professional development, through an online newsletter and face-to-face event series, designed to start conversations, share ideas and create a sense of community.
Learn more about Babies, Business + Breakfast™.
Flexible + Remote Work Resources For You:
FREE Digital Resources, Templates + Guides
• Template – Remote Work (With Kids) Time Blocking Made Easy [LEARN MORE]
• Guide – Babies + Business Mini Guide To Navigating The Corporate Jungle (With Kids) [LEARN MORE]
You can also follow my parenthood + professional development adventures on Instagram and via my previous blog posts.
Read about my previous experiences bringing babies into business settings in the following blog posts:
- Mixing Work And Life
- Making It Easy To Get That Ice Cream In 2019
- Speaking At WordCamp Ottawa 2019
- Babies, Business + Breakfast Summer 2019 Pop-Up Event Focused On Marketing And Sales
- Creating Parent-Friendly Business Spaces And Experiences: Transcript Of Lightning Talk For Eastern Ontario’s WEKH
- Baby in the Boardroom: Transcript of my talk for CreativeMornings Ottawa
- How She Built It event recap from May 2019: Mixing babies + business
- Reciprocity and parent-friendly event planning
- Parent-friendly presenting in real-time at CreativeMornings Ottawa
- Visiting Algonquin College’s DARE District with kids
- Visiting Invest Ottawa with kids
- Participating in Impact Academy with a baby
- Attending Creative Mornings Ottawa while babywearing
- Touring coworking spaces as a parent
- Bringing children into the boardroom
Notes From Another Land 