It's a phrase that started in the North East but is now used nationally "This is really mint." "What a mint idea." You are totally mint." You'll know a few variations on the theme.
Someone who definitely knows one is Nicola Jayne Little because she owns the MINT Business Club. A lot of you reading this will have been to numerous business club meetings. Some of you will have enjoyed them; some of you won’t. Nicola attended meetings but felt as though something was missing because they weren’t really geared to businesses like hers.
What about the self-employed and small business owners? Nicola wanted to do something for them that focused on learning how to run a business. MINT Business Club was born.
“MINT is the membership club for solo and micro business owners who want to keep learning, keep growing and be part of a community of people who just ‘get it”, said Nicola. “Whether you work on your own as a self-employed solo, or in a micro-business with fewer than 10 in your team, MINT Business Club offers you the training, support and advice you need to be MINT.”
As with a lot of businesses, MINT Business Club has changed in recent months courtesy of the Coronavirus pandemic. Nicola and her team used to stage regular face to face meetings where she’d lead training and give members the opportunity to get together, chat and do business. That’s all changed. MINT is now an online business community until we see Covid-19 ease dramatically, although she has started hosting small groups meeting in her garden in a safely controlled environment.
“It’s up to our 180 members as to when we return to face to face meetings and training sessions,” adds Nicola. “They’ll tell us when they’re comfortable for things to return to as near normal as possible. Until then, we shall continue with our weekly Zoom training sessions.”
At the turn of the year, if you’d said to Nicola that her business club would be an online community within four months and would not be having any face to face meetings, she wouldn’t have believed you. That, of course, is something which applies to almost every business. Nobody could envisage what we’ve all been through. Put it this way, if you are still operating in precisely the same manner and without any aftereffects of the last few months, you are extremely fortunate.
And the same applies to MINT Business Club. Nicola, like a lot of you who run a small business, is in exactly the same position. She has had to move with the times. “Circumstances have forced us to change the way MINT operates, but we’ve adapted and it’s worked really well. Our members thoroughly enjoy it. I would anticipate that in the future we will have a mixture of what we used to do and what we are doing now. We’ll probably have social meetings in a face to face setting but do the vast majority of training online. For example, we’ve had up to 70 people attending online training at once, something that wouldn’t have been possible regularly in a physical training session. It works, although I must admit that Zoom meetings will never totally replace our normal gatherings for the simple reason that you cannot replicate online the sort of buzz a room full of people creates. You don’t get the banter because when more than one person is speaking on Zoom or Skype, it can get a bit confusing. However, for the purposes of a training session where I or one of the team are speaking for the vast majority of the time, it works really well.”
Actually, the 180 members are getting more value for money for the simple reason that Nicola and her team are providing more online sessions than could ever be provided in a face to face setting. So, what does MINT Business Club give you? Weekly training sessions fall in six categories. Nicola calls them the ‘Pillars of running a MINT Business’. They’re MINT MINDSet, which helps you focus on what you’re doing; Business Foundations, Money, Marketing (including Digital Marketing and Social Media), Sales and Business Growth.
All training is delivered online by MINT trainers, experts and members. Every session is recorded and made available to rewatch within a couple of days of the session with a transcript of every session to ensure inclusivity. There’s a real sense of ‘family’ about MINT Business Group. Everyone can keep in touch via a private Facebook group and of course via the video meetings.
There are mentors who provide one-to-one support every Monday in “MINT MYTime” sessions. The mentors have various areas of expertise and are available to all members. Specially focussed training sessions are provided by some of MINT’s sponsors. The North East Loan Fund and Valued Accountancy work with MINT to deliver an additional, funded training course entitled ‘Let’s Talk About Money.’ In other words, MINT Business Club is mint at what they do
.they provide support, help and training
and a sense of community to solo and small business owners. “There are five million self-employed people out there, and they are largely overlooked. By a quirk of fate, the Covid-19 pandemic has forced almost every business to change. More people are working from home which has required a greater level of trust from managers, customers and colleagues. The self-employed are innovative but they invariably have a core skill which generates most of their income. The actual running of their business can be where things go wrong.
That’s where we aim to help .and all of our members want to help too. MINT Business Club is about the members it’s for the members the club IS the members. Yes, things have changed over the past few months, but we are MINT at what we do our members are MINT at what they do .and together we can get through this and forge ahead to a future that’ll be totally MINT.”
Nicola Cook is the CEO of Company Shortcuts. The UK's leading Sales Acceleration agency helping scale-ups build a profitable Sales Engine for Growth. Her waitlist is open and is currently taking new applications for 2021. If you're interested in finding out how she could help your business, for an application form contact helen@companyshortcuts.com
