Growing my network - and yours?

One of the hardest things about working for myself from home is the isolation that can come from working five days a week (often six), with only the family pet for company.

 Ideas that sound great when I run them past Muffy sometimes sound stupid when I mention them to a client. Convincing myself that I am doing the right thing, when there is no-one in ‘the office’ to agree or disagree, is more challenging than I would like.

 Which is why a lot of owners of small businesses go business networking.

 A whole raft of groups have sprung up across the country offering breakfasts, lunches, or evening events, where we can go to widen our business network, enhance our ability to pitch for business and get invaluable tips from those who are in the same situation.

 I’m currently a member of two of the more well-known national groups and since I started networking regularly, I’ve found that business opportunities are becoming more common.

 I wouldn’t yet say that Martin Warrillow Publishing Services is anything like a roaring success, but I do feel much more confident about the future than I did six months ago.

 If you’re a part of the networking world, you probably won’t need to ask the names of the well-known groups; if you aren’t but feel you should be, reply to this blog and I’ll email you some details.

 One of the things I’ve learned about networking etiquette is that you should never denigrate another group in public. It can be embarrassing when someone you meet turns out to be a member of a group which you have just been loudly denouncing in another conversation ten feet away.

 So I won’t do that but I will tell you about one of my favourite groups. Shortly before the end of summer 2011, a friend who is a lifecoach and fellow naturist told me about the Nationwide Alliance of Business Owners. He is a member of one of their groups in Leicester and although I felt that was too far to travel at 6.30am every other Friday, a spot of Googling uncovered a group in Solihull. That’s just half-an-hour down the M42 at that time of day, so I decided to give it a try.

  Part of the secret of business networking in this fashion is finding the right mix of people.  I’ve been to groups where you could feel noses being turned up at you. I’ve been to groups full of interesting people, but out of which I was never going to get any paid work.

 And then there was NABO Solihull; I’m not one for joining things straight away (I can’t afford it) but I joined after just one two-hour meeting. It was full of friendly people going through the same problems which I was facing, as well as people with years of experience who knew how to put us right.

 We had a laugh and a smile, some interesting discussion and I felt this was going to be the right thing to do. Within two weeks, I had won enough work to pay my annual membership fee.

 Since then, a lot of the group have become good friends, people I can turn to for advice as to how MWPS can move forward. That’s what business networking is designed to provide but I think very few groups do it as well as Solihull NABO.

 Our members include a web designer, a couple of business advisers, a learning and development consultant, three accountants, an acupuncturist, some life coaches, an estate agent, a photographer.....oh, and a freelance journalist and writer.

 But we would like some more members; it’s a cliche of business that if you stand still, you go backwards, so we are keen to increase our membership. 

 We meet every other Friday from 7.30am-9.30am at St John’s Hotel, Solihull. Breakfast costs £12 (although we do a starter deal for new members) and if you’re interested, I can let you have details of annual fees. Just reply to this blog

 And if you decide to try us, you’ll hear some of the best elevator pitches on the circuit...

Warrillow - that's an interesting name......

It is rather inevitable that with my surname, I am regularly asked: “That’s an unusual name, where does it come from?”

 And believe me, I’ve tried to find out. Even before ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ became a hit on the nation’s television screens and even before censuses stretching back to the 1870s could be easily searched on a computer screen, I was looking for my ancestors.

 I’ve trawled through ancient records books and newspaper files in libraries as far apart as Worcester and West Yorkshire; I’ve spoken to my few remaining elderly relatives; I’ve stood in graveyards in Bewdley and Dewsbury looking for signs on gravestones. And I’ve come up with........... precisely nothing.

 Watching ‘WDYTYA?’ drives me to distraction because the celebrities featured obviously have teams of archivists and researchers searching through the records before the programme is even commissioned. I, as the only son of an only son, have just me to do the research.

 And as the years go on and I become ever more aware that, as the childless only son of an only son, the Warrillow line will expire when I do, I become ever more determined to find some answers.

 So here’s where we stand at the moment. My father, whose 76th birthday on May 18 2012 coincides with the writing of this post (Happy birthday, Dad!) lives pleasantly and healthily in retirement in southern Spain.

 The death of his father is my first memory of the loss of a close family member. My grandfather spent all his working life in a carpet factory in Kidderminster, in the days when the industry provided employment for almost all the working-class men of that Worcestershire town.

 He retired in 1972 and like so many men of his ilk, even today, had no clue what to do with himself when going to work in the factory didn’t dominate his life.

 I still remember the telephone ringing early one Saturday morning in 1973 and waking me up, before my dad rushed out of our house to where his father lived, less than a mile or so away.

 I don’t remember my great-grandfather - and that’s where the problems start. Albert Warrillow appears to have been born in 1872 and died in 1963, a year before I was born. If you follow the obvious trail through websites such as ancestry.co.uk, it leads you back to a family who lived in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent in the 1830s. Yet family stories put the Warrillows in the 1870s in West Yorkshire, somewhere around Heckmondwike or Batley. It seems that they moved from there to Kidderminster, following the carpetmaking or woollen trades from the White Rose county.

 And I can find nothing in the records to support this. It seems that my great-grandfather was married twice, following the tragic early death of his first wife; when asked about it by my father when I was still a toddler, his second wife appears to have refused to say anything. These things were not talked about in Victorian England.

 So here is where the brick wall starts to be constructed. I have found records which suggest that Albert Warrillow was either born in or placed into a workhouse; I can’t find anything to confirm that. I have a piece of paper which purports to be Albert’s marriage certificate; where his father’s signature should be, there is a simple ‘X’

 This, of course, is not wholly surprising because many working-class people in these times were barely able to read and write - but it is of no use to those of us trying to trace the family history!

Now, I may have a name for Albert’s second wife but if you key that into the 1911 census records, it brings up roughly a dozen possible answers. The researchers and genealogists on ‘WDYTYA’ may have time to sort through them all in search of the right one; as a freelance journalist trying to keep the financial wolf from the door and the bills paid, I don’t.

 So I guess this post is aimed at those of you out there who have done this and succeeded. Is there a right and a wrong way to go about it? In the internet age, is it still necessary to spend hours in libraries and local records offices trawling through ancient documents?

 Of course, I don’t expect to find the answer in five minutes; I would just like to know that I’m going about it the right way - and that my dad and I can discover it before it’s too late.

How to lend a hand to British Naturism

Regular readers will have noted that there hasn’t been much activity here in recent weeks. Having initially started with the good intention of blogging at least once a week, it has slipped back since the New Year to being once a fortnight and this is my first post in almost three weeks.

 Shameful.

 Of course, blogs aren’t like newspapers, which have to come out on a particular day; that’s one of the good things about 21st-century technology but something which those of us weaned on daily press deadlines have to get used to.

 With blogs, you say something when you have something interesting to say and have time to say it.

 This hiatus hasn’t been due to a lack of ideas - my life is so full of interesting stuff these days that I could think of six different subjects a week - but rather a lack of time. I’m pleased to say that while my business career isn’t exactly booming, there seem to be enough things going on to keep me busy and, crucially, to keep financial despair at bay.

 But Mrs W and I have just spent the weekend at an event which I couldn’t fail to blog about - the first-ever British Naturism National Convention.

 Held at the picturesque Ilam Hall, a National Trust property right on the Staffordshire-Derbyshire border and high in the Peak District, NatConv was a conference and training weekend for everyone involved in the naturist community – clubs and swims, regions and individual members. 

 BN hoped that members would see it as inspiration to ‘do something’ with their interest in naturism, rather than just lying on a beach or jumping into a pool.

 Despite having around 11,000 members and putting on events all year round including extravaganzas such as Nudefest and the Alton Towers weekend, BN has a full-time staff of precisely zero.

 There are three ladies based in Head Office in Northampton, who do all the administrative work on a jobshare basis; there is general secretary Tracey Major, who oversees them and there are three paid consultants including commercial manager/marketing supremo Andrew Welch and yours truly as editor of the BN magazine.

 A lot of members think Andrew and I are paid employees whereas in fact, we are on annual contracts and have other work outside BN.

 Given that, how do we put on events such as AT, Nudefest, Great British Skinny Dip, Natconv and all the swims, saunas and ‘Big Days Out’ programme, as well as do all the promotional, marketing and campaigning work for the cause of making naturism ever more   acceptable?

 We do so with the sterling help of a small band of volunteer members, who give up their time to devote some effort to a particular little part of each project. That group is difficult to quantify, because people like to help out with things going on in their area, so that someone living in the south-west may put a lot of effort into Nudefest in Cornwall, but may not even attend our Blackpool weekend.

 So we are always in need of more willing help and NatConv was a weekend of talks, workshops and practical sessions designed to broaden the number of members equipped to help make a difference to naturism in the UK.

 The sessions included looking at how we sell naturism to the media, getting the best out of BN’s regional and club structure, a look at the progress being made on BN’s rolling three-year plan to improve the organisation and so on.

 It sounds quite intense but the 80 members who attended between Friday afternoon and noon on Sunday thoroughly enjoyed the weekend and all said they came away inspired to do their bit for naturism in 2012.

 That’s crucial; it’s a mantra of ours that although the age profile of BN members is not exactly teenage and the organisation could always do with more money (why not leave us £50 in your will?), BN wouldn’t die through old age or lack of cash, rather a lack of hands to help put on the growing list of events that help improve our revenue streams.

 Our growing band of Young British Naturists members (for the 18-30s) is really helping to spark some positive things, but more members mean more hands, more brains, more ideas... 

 If my ramblings encourage you to try naturism this summer (yes, we will have summer eventually!), why not join BN and get involved? It costs less than £1 a week for a couple, you could meet some fabulous people, visit some great events (Nudefest 2012, our week at Newperran in Cornwall, is just five weeks away)...and enjoy the special experience which is naturism.

 You could be helping keep BN alive for the next generation of naturists.