Here's something nobody tells you about the elevator pitch: when you stand up to do yours, hardly anyone is listening.

It's not personal. The people who haven't spoken yet are busy rehearsing what they're going to say. The people who already have are thinking about tea, school pick-up, and the birthday present they still haven't bought. And after the tenth pitch in a row, even the most attentive person starts to drift.

That's a big part of why I set up Women Inspired Network to work differently. Everything we do is built around one strapline:

Kindness leads to connection. Connection leads to collaboration. And collaboration is where the magic happens.

I recently turned 40.

If you're picturing champagne and a fancy dinner, let me stop you there. My husband was working away, I was on my own with two co-sleepers, I had events on my birthday and the day after, and my birthday dinner was last night's pasta, warmed up. Not my finest culinary moment.

But it did make me stop and reflect.

I started Women Inspired Network in February 2025. That really isn't very long ago. Since then, I've launched the Success Circle, and now my third business: Mumma Connections, structured networking events for mums, with a guest speaker, a hot drink (that you actually get to drink hot), a little pamper treatment and soft play for the little ones.

Sometimes a business doesn’t go where you planned. It goes somewhere better.

Cherry Hills started out making funky t-shirts. She needed a creative outlet alongside home educating her daughter and it gave her exactly that. But the t-shirt market was saturated and something else was quietly forming in the background — a realisation that her real gift wasn’t in printed fabric. It was in helping children and parents navigate the messy, overwhelming, often invisible world of children’s mental health

Let me tell you something that might go against everything you think you know about business.

Your biggest competitor might actually be your biggest opportunity.

Can I tell you about Wendy?

Wendy runs Alchemy Bejewelled, a fine jewellery business where every single piece is handmade using traditional goldsmithing techniques with precious metals and precious stones. Her work is extraordinary. She also teaches workshops from her studio, makes bespoke commissions, and this year has had a phenomenal summer creating wedding rings for couples.

If you’re in your fifties or sixties and you’ve been quietly wondering whether it’s too late to do something different — this one is for you.

There is a really common and really damaging myth that starting a business is something you do when you’re young. That if you haven’t launched something by the time you’re forty, the window has closed. That the energy, the ideas, the appetite for risk — all of that belongs to a younger version of you that has already been and gone.

If you meet Ruth Leigh now, you’d never guess.

She walks into rooms with presence. She’s funny, warm, sparkly and magnetic. She has eight books published and a devoted band of superfans.

But Ruth was not always this person.

The Success Circle is our premium networking membership — the next level up from our pay-as-you-go WIN events. It’s an intimate, exclusive group of women in business who meet once a month at Hintlesham Hall for an afternoon of real conversation, expert talks, and the kind of deep, genuine connection that only comes from seeing the same faces month after month.

Gemma Gooch is a virtual assistant, a WIN leader in Felixstowe, and one of my most trusted sounding boards in business. She is also living proof that networking, done consistently and authentically, directly leads to clients.