About Us
Beckenham-based women’s business networking group, Laptops & Lipstick, was formed in 2011 to provide women in business with a regular, structured, and motivational forum for business and personal development.
It was started by a small group of like-minded business women who recognised the potential for combining structured business networking with informative and inspirational speakers in a relaxed and supportive environment. The aim is to provide women who are passionate about what they do with a platform from which to exchange ideas with other business women and tap into a wealth of expertise to help grow their business.
The best part is there’s no pressure to pass leads or make referrals — the focus is on forging long-term relationships with others in the room so that the members of the group effectively become a second sales force working on behalf of you and your company.
Over the years, our group of members has grown and evolved along with a healthy sprinkling of visitors at each meeting. Our Chair leads Laptops & Lipstick, assisted by a small Committee of members who meet quarterly to ensure that everything continues to run smoothly. Our AGM is open to all members and is our usual blend of business and fun, where we review finances and progress, and decide collectively where we want to take the group over the coming months.
Since 2012, Laptops and Lipstick have supported many charities, and each year we nominate a new charity for our members to help support, including a free annual membership, thereby enabling the charity to join our monthly meetings.
We fiercely protect the integrity of Laptops & Lipstick by remaining mindful of the overall balance of our women’s business networking group. For this reason, whilst there are many fantastic multi-level marketing businesses in existence, we only offer membership to one-person-per-business-category. Similarly, we keep in mind how many start-ups and one-woman bands we have versus larger organisations and more established firms to maintain a good balance. The Laptops and Lipstick members’ charter outlines all the details and benefits, which one of the committee members will guide our new members through.
Why not Join Us at our next meeting and see for yourself?
Charity Begins at Laptops & Lipstick
On our first birthday we introduced a charity membership to be offered free of charge to a local organisation for a two-year tenure (the original idea was to review this annually but time goes very quickly when you meet monthly so we soon extended this!).
During the nominated charity’s membership period we commit to supporting their events and to organise an event of our own to raise awareness and funds. Since our inception we have supported three fabulous charities – St Christopher’s Hospice, Bromley Mencap and now the Chartwell Cancer Trust. We have quizzed, run, baked, jumped out of planes, rowed and, err, drunk prosecco!! In return, our nominated charities have committed fully to being part of Laptops & Lipstick – attending monthly meetings and passing business referrals and leads wherever they can.
When the time comes to find a new charity we use social media to spread the word that we’re looking for a new charity partner. We then invite interested parties to complete a one-page application and to visit a meeting. After which point it’s all down to a vote at our AGM.
Alive Online
Laptops & Lipstick business networking group has long established and well curated profiles on Twitter and Facebook where we like, share and promote the activities of our members.
We also have a members page on our website where each member gets to outline what they do. And that must be worthwhile because it’s the second most viewed page after our home page!