Women’s Idea Network chapters
Local chapters of women’s only network group meets monthly for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Colerain
Second Wednesday each month
Pebble Creek Golf Club, 9799 Prechtel Road
Eastgate
First Thursday each month
Receptions/Eastgate, 4450 Eastgate Blvd.
Northern Kentucky
First Wednesday each month
Receptions/Erlanger, 1379 Donaldson Road
Loveland
First Tuesday each month
Receptions/Loveland, 10681 Loveland-Maderia Road
Mason
Second Tuesday each month
The Manor House, 7440 South Mason Montgomery Road
Middletown/Monroe/Trenton
Fourth Thursday each month
Brown’s Run Country Club, 6855 Sloebig Road
West Chester Twp.
Third Wednesday each month
Beckett Ridge Country Club, 5595 Beckett Ridge Blvd.
SOURCE: www.womensideanetwork.com
MIDDLETOWN — Women who gather for lunch in area networking groups are conducting business, not just “chit-chat.”
Almost four years ago, Deborah McCurry started Women’s Idea Network in West Chester Twp., a women’s business networking group that meets once a month for lunch. In April of this year, McCurry made the women’s network a LLC business entity and opened six more chapters in Middletown/Monroe/Trenton, Mason, and other Cincinnati-area locations.
The business network has gone from 29 women in West Chester to 130 to 150 total today, McCurry said. The members, who pay $99 a year to join one chapter or $199 a year for all chapters, are free to talk about anything, she added.
“You look beyond the business card, there’s a woman,” said McCurry, who also lost her full-time job this year.
The former property manager got the idea for the women-only groups when she noticed several of her tenants were women running their own businesses. She invited a few to lunch and nearly 30 showed up.
McCurry, 54, is looking for volunteer chapter leaders to help open more chapters in other communities such as Lebanon, downtown Cincinnati, Blue Ash, Hyde Park and Anderson Twp. She would eventually like to make it a profitable venture, although she also says she started it to help people connect and promote their businesses.
Last Thursday on a sunny afternoon at Brown’s Run Country Club in Middletown, more than 10 women met.
“I joined WIN because it is all women and it is a smaller group,” said Marwa Staton, a market manager for National Bank & Trust in Franklin.
During each meeting, McCurry goes around the table and each person says a few words to update the group on their companies and lives. A lead speaker gets five minutes to promote their business, in this case Andrea Debatin, who owns Curves fitness centers in Trenton and Hamilton.
After meeting through WIN, Debatin became a customer of Wendy Rousseau, a sales executive for National Processing Solutions, whose company now provides the Curves owner credit card processing services.
McCurry said, “I think women wanted a place to come.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2551 or clevingston@coxohio.com.
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