Mel McGee is a NLP master and offers business coaching through www.supermummy.com. She has used her coaching experience to write this motivating book, which is packed with handy lists and tools to help you examine your motivation and develop a business.

I liked ideas like the ‘7 Steps to Mumpreneur Success’. The book has lots of handy hints, Supermummy tips, and little cartoons to help you focus and refine your ideas. One essential idea that Mel McGee gets spot on is about how to decide on what your business will offer. It is all too easy to decide what you would like to sell, without looking at whether this is what people want to buy. Mel suggests identifying your ‘hot’ target market, and looking at the products and services that will address their biggest concerns. The next key tip is about tasking a good hard look at your potential idea and seeing if there is money in it.

The first part of the book will work whatever type of business you want to create, but Mel goes more in depth for mums wanting to get involved in online marketing, and in particular information marketing. An online business is ideal for mums and dads because it can run from home at times of day to suit you. Getting your online marketing right is essential, and Mel guides you through the use of incentives to collect contact details and turn them into paying customers.

Watch out for a competition to win copies of this book next month.

£15, available from Amazon. 188 Pages. ISBN-13: 978-1905430512 or download from Bookshaker.

After a decade of growth, the retail and service industry is facing up to a harsh new reality: only the fittest will survive. The need to streamline the business offer to ensure that profit is maximised without compromising quality has become a necessity.

The ‘Retail Excellence’ event is an engaging, content rich masterclass. This event includes the following sessions:

The right people, right service
Building effective relationships is essential to successful retailing. We will look at your relationships with staff, clients and suppliers. Are your relationships working for or against you?

The right product, right place, right time
Is your stock working as hard as you? This event will teach you the art of merchandising to ensure that stock is selling itself. We cannot be in all places at all times, so stock must be presented perfectly to maximise sales, after all, “retail is detail!”

Costs and profit
We will look at how you can cut costs and not quality, losing excess and becoming a leaner, healthier business machine. We must remember that a recession, although painful, is temporary and we must maintain our momentum for the future; cutting quality could be disastrous!

Book onto this event:
Wednesday 29 April 2009, 15:30 to 20:00
Cost: Free
Location: Tower Hill, London

Free Crèche facilities
Complimentary crèche facilities are available at the event on a first come first served basis.

From personal experience, I’d say the latter, It took just one session with Suzy Greaves of The Big Leap back in 2003 for me to see that there was a better way to earn a living. I quit my job, fed up with attempting to do five days work in four, yet never getting enough time with my daughter. I then launched ACPR, and have enjoyed the ups, and the downs, of self employment ever since.

But what about the cost? I was lucky to have that first session free as part of a magazine feature. I then did some more sessions with a trainee life coach who charged only a modest amount. Now, I’m back with Suzy who has an affordable Golden Ticket scheme for telecoaching. At about £45 per month, it is helping me make plans for the next stage in my career as a writer, and work on improving the services I offer to women in business. I think it is a worthwhile investment  for me, and am setting up an experimental website based on some of Suzy’s suggestions which might quickly cover the cost of the coaching, and more.

If you want coaching, there are a number of coaches who specialise in working with women in business and mumpreneurs:

Karen Skidmore of CanDoCanBe

Amanda Alexander of Coaching Mums

Allison Mitchell of Mums and Dads

and if you want help with a media career try

Joanne Mallon, Media Life Coach

Suzy Greaves, The Big Leap

Most offer a free introductory session so try it: you have nothing to lose. You could also ask your local enterprise centre about business coaching and mentoring schemes.