To answer this question, it’s easiest to explain the difference you’ll notice in heart-led leaders. Maybe you are one and don’t even realise it! Impact-focused leaders are servant-hearted, and value authenticity, honesty, vulnerability and put relationships with people as their priority, not making money. “Profit for purpose” is a concept many impact-focused leaders and business owners will identify with.

Can you be a successful business owner and be impact-focused? Yes, absolutely.

Because focusing on serving and making a positive impact on every stakeholder in your business, including your local community, tends to lead to profit! In relationships where you serve well and share how you seek to make the world a better place, people will be led to choose you/your business/brand as the one they want to work with, buy from or work for as members of your team!

So in a roundabout sort of way, hopefully you’ll see that leading with heart and seeking to serve ahead of personally gain is actually critical to business success long term. 

Characteristics of impact-focused leaders: NOT self-absorbed, manipulative, coercive or pushy. Instead they ARE looking to build community, connection, and deliver value. Value is a real focus of an impact-focused leader, but there’s nothing more important than bringing positive change. The desire to really serve customers/clients well, deliver a quality experience and maintain relationships long-term is a focus but their approach looks beyond the business to the impact their work has on the wider community and world around us! This includes how they look after their teams, their suppliers, how they give their time and resources away to benefit others. It tends to be a golden thread that runs through the way they live their entire lives, not just how they run their businesses. It’s a way of life, and a state of being. Impact focused leaders strive to focus on the bigger picture and not get bogged down in small thinking

Mutual support, trust, vulnerability and the ability to share honestly is crucial. But so is the desire to make a difference, as a member of our community. Our ability to collectively increase our impact is dependent on building relationships where trust is present. And these relationships is what our membership is about fostering. We love to help you grow your business through the power of relationships and working together with other women.

If you’re new to business or very experienced, it doesn’t matter when you understand that relationships are always valuable when all parties share the same intention: to help one another rise! If you love this ethos, come and join us!

Yes and no! The Inspire UK Membership gives access to The Inspire Network, which is an app-based group on a networking platform, designed to support the forming of relationships between our members. But we’re not “networking” as some people tjunk about it. We aim to empower business owners, which encourage members to be “proper networkers” and help one another by creating connections with our wider networks and circles.  

This is a good group to join if you don’t like salesy referral networks where you have pressure to send everyone work. We believe you should find people you align with and help them out, and ensure reciprocity wherever possible. We see one another as fellow humans on our own missions both within business and beyond, and to achieve these missions, we need (and want) to build relationships as individuals with people we like. At Inspire we do relationship-building and meaningful peer support as a community rather than “referral networking” and we don’t expect anyone to be put under pressure to make referrals unless they want to! 

We’re truly not just a network though! We also offer masterminding through our membership and we’re an organisation that focuses on collaboration and peer support. We are focused only on helping women to develop a very close-knit community where they support rather than sell, so members are discouraged from viewing one another as “prospective customers” and instead to see the opportunity to help one another. You’ll see better results in your business when you put people first.

Yes, within the parameters we set out, and we advise you not to seek to sell to other members as a priority, but instead to educate and inform them so they can help refer you business!!

The Inspire Network meetings are a place where you get a chance to meet to chat with others and find out more about them, as well as to share about yourself and see how you might be able to help others, which is what we consider networking in a more traditional context to be about.

Our Inspire Masterminding calls aren’t the place to promote yourself unless someone is specifically asking for help and it’s something you can assist with. We encourage you to share your knowledge and wisdom rather than simply suggesting that a member might want to work with you.

We encourage you to use our app/web browser-based group, The Inspire Network, to connect in between meetings and find like-minded members to become part of each others’ Secret Sales Team where you feel you can trust each other to really deliver quality and value to those you refer to each other, and also you may choose to use members services to support one another, but it’s not an expectation.

There is nothing additional to pay to attend The Inspire Network networking sessions which last 1hr and are usually at lunchtime, so you can take a break and join us with your cuppa/lunch. The days vary to help as many people as possible access meetings.

We run meetings every month except August and December.

The Inspire Network group associated with our membership is hosted on Guild which is designed for mobile use first, so it’s really user friendly while on the go. It’s available on an app which is recommended, but also within your website’s browser. You will be sent an email upon joining with details of how to join. You should ensure that your email used when signing up for a profile on the app matches your Inspire UK Membership details and ensure your name also matches the name you registered with.