Behind the Scenes of WIN: What Running a Networking Community Really Looks Like

I want to let you in on a little secret.

When people see Women Inspired Network from the outside, they see the events. The smiling faces. The reviews talking about incredible connections and leaving feeling inspired. They see a thriving community across ten locations a month and think: wow, she makes that look easy.

It is not easy.

And I think it’s time to pull back the curtain a little bit. Not to moan — I genuinely love what I do and I wouldn’t change it — but because I think there’s something really important in being honest about what building something like this actually looks like from the inside.

What people see vs. what actually happens

From the outside, it probably looks like I turn up, twenty women magically appear, everyone has a lovely time and I go home. I wish.

What people don’t see is everything that happens before anyone walks through the door. The weeks of promoting each event across social media, Facebook community groups, WhatsApp broadcasts and emails. The personal messages I send to individual women saying “hey, the next event is this week, are you around?” The nudging, the gently reminding people that yes, there is an event, even though I’ve posted about it approximately 47 times.

They don’t see the admin that runs quietly in the background. The directory issues. The refund requests. The double bookings. The last minute venue changes when a space suddenly can’t have us. The guest speaker who’s poorly and needs replacing at short notice. The website queries, the Instagram DMs, the Facebook group approvals.

And they definitely don’t see me doing most of this on my phone during Clemmie’s nap time.

A week that tested everything

This week was a particularly brutal one. Let me paint you a picture.

I moved one of my events forward to avoid clashing with half term, which meant I had two events in the space of three days. On paper, fine. In reality, my husband had gone away for two days in between, I had two co-sleeping children in different rooms and only one of me, which meant absolutely zero work got done in the evenings when I’d normally catch up. Which also happened to be prime time for last minute ticket sales.

Lesson learned. Hard lesson, but learned.

The first event at Woodbridge went really well — I’d been focused on promoting that one for the previous week and it showed. Loads of new members, lovely feedback, people thanking me for the nudge to come along. Then Bury St Edmunds came around two days later and I was exhausted, run down, and had barely had a chance to promote it properly.

I take full responsibility for that. When you don’t put the effort in, you don’t get the numbers. That’s just the reality of running events. It’s why I always say to any of my leaders — please, start with one event a month. Give yourself the whole month to promote it. Don’t do what I did.

And then, because the universe has a sense of humour, I got caught speeding on the way home in the midst of this too.

You genuinely cannot make this stuff up.

But here’s what I love about WIN

Even the Bury event — the one I felt awful about, the one where we ended up with seven of us in the room — turned out to be something really lovely. We did a mastermind session instead of the usual format and it worked brilliantly. Proper in-depth conversations, real support, genuine connection.

Because that’s something I’m really proud of about WIN. We adapt. Always.

Seven people in the room? We network one way. Ten to fifteen? Completely differently. Fifteen to twenty? Different again. More than twenty? We switch it up again. You will never come to a WIN event and get the same thing every single time, because what we do always depends on who’s in the room and what serves them best that day. I always have something else up my sleeve.

There is no script. There is no rigid format we stick to regardless. There is just a genuine desire to make sure every woman who walks through the door leaves having connected, having been heard, and having had a good time.

The real day in the life

People ask me all the time: how do you juggle it all? The honest answer is: I don’t. I’m treading water. I’m doing the priority task in front of me and hoping everything else holds on long enough for me to get to it.

I’m a full-time mum to Winston and Clemmie. Winston is at school but Clemmie is with me all day every day. My working hours are her nap times, the rare evenings when everyone is asleep at the same time, and the snatched ten minutes here and there when she’s happily occupied. I take her to events. She’s basically become the unofficial WIN mascot at this point.

On top of running WIN I also still run my Forever Living business. And then there’s the podcast to record and edit, the blogs to write, the emails to send, the Instagram to manage, the Facebook group to run and the leaders to support.

My phone is basically an extension of my hand. If Clemmie is asleep, I am working.

Nine times out of ten, I feel like I’m failing. I’m always behind on something. There is always a task I’ve forgotten or an email I haven’t replied to. I don’t say this for sympathy — I say it because I suspect a lot of women reading this feel exactly the same way, and I want you to know you’re not alone in it.

 Why it’s worth every bit of it

Despite all of that — the exhaustion, the plate spinning, the speeding ticket, the nap-time working sessions — we are selling around 140 tickets a month across ten events. The Diss event launching in June had sixteen tickets booked a full month before it even starts. The community is growing in a way that still genuinely surprises me.

And people keep telling me — I’ve been to so many networking groups, but I get a genuine connection every time I come to yours. I don’t get that elsewhere.

That’s everything. That’s the whole reason I do this.

Not because it’s easy. Not because it’s glamorous. Not because it looks impressive on Instagram. But because when I stand at the back of a room and watch women who have never met swap numbers and make plans and light up talking about their businesses — I know that what we’re building here genuinely matters.

So yes, it’s hard. Yes, there are weeks where I wonder how I’m still standing. Yes, I definitely should not have had two events in three days with two co-sleeping children and no childcare.

But I’m not stopping. Not even close. 💛

Want to hear more honest conversations like this?

Come and listen to the Women Inspired Networking Conversations podcast, available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0DM7Ooc5nLezg4u91OklYo

 Or watch on YouTube here

 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDVCZqf8LiBs92aTeEHZsWrtoNRJEVCXn&si=IhLyzUQMp-BDISh8

 Come and find your people:

🌐 www.womeninspirednetwork.com/events

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📸 Instagram: @women_inspired_network