My grandfather told me “If you want something – work to get it, if it’s not reachable – fix it”. And that is a lot what Harlequin International is all about. Helping small businesses to fix things they need.
It is hard to reach out to people in the world we live in. We are presented with so much information and our brains has to sort it all every minute. A lot of the information falls in the cracks, unless we are bombarded with ads from a company we often miss it. This is very hard for small businesses to get through. Who has a budget with thousands of dollars laying in the mattress?
About 7 years ago I owned another company, Harlequin Solutions, that focused on helping small businesses with all things they didn’t have time for. It could be anything from social media to filing papers and answer phones. One thing I also did was organizing networking events. This was before Covid so online events wasn’t as big as it is now. But these events were quite popular and a lot of people was disappointed when I announced that I was closing my company to pursue another avenue (EMS).
Last year I started missing the small business life more and more and that’s when I came up with starting Harlequin Tea. This was the first product that I had developed from beginning to end. From doing research, importing tea, blending the tea, designing packaging, budget, packaging, promotion, social media, etc etc etc. I had only sold services before, never a physical service. It was a huge deal for me to embark this project.
Harlequin Tea was and is my side gig. Something I love to do for fun, but also with the intent to bring in some extra $$$. And while bringing it to the market I have been reminded of how important networking is. Word of mouth is the best advertising you can get and it is free! The support of friends, family and other small business owners is so important.
All this has been lingering in my mind over the summer. A little hesitant if I should start up the networking circus I was hosting all these years ago. Well, then in August I got my real estate license and now more than ever networking became so important again. As my schedule at my full time job had changed as well, the opportunity to start up networking again raised. So why not? Welcome to Harlequin International, Networking & Events.
There are a lot of ideas in my head that I would like to implement but I will take small steps. First of all, many networking opportunities are during daytime. I can’t be the only one who has a job and no opportunity to do networking during daytime! So I will try to schedule the events during late afternoon and evenings. Sometimes maybe on a weekend! I will not do the same day week after week or month after month. That hinders a lot of people that has kids with after school curriculum to come. If I rotate days you may be able to come now and then. Some of the meetings will be online, some of them in person. Myself, I prefer in person but I know that is not possible for everyone. So I will try to do a variety. I will try to have a speaker or presenter each meeting. So if you are a speaker or would like to present your business, please email us and tell us about yourself and what city you’re in. That’s another thing… Where will the in-person meetings be? Well, I will start to host them in Kaufman and Van Zandt county and my plan is to expand to outlining counties in 2024. Please let me know where you live so I can accommodate and plan.
As you probably have figured out, everything is in the planning stage yet. But we have our first online meeting scheduled already! October 18th at 7pm, and this will be an online meeting! You can join us on zoom on following link: https://zoom.us/j/91857525364 and please RSVP here on the webpage!
If you have any suggestions, comments or input, please let me know. This is a one man show so I always appreciate input! I hope you will enjoy the meetings and get a lot out of it!
