The day the SAS heard a Dragon roar!!

Well, where do I start?! What an absolutely amazing few days I have had since my shock win of a #SBS award from the hugely popular businessman & Dragon’s Den star Theo Paphitis!

So let’s go back to Sunday 25^th March, it started as any ordinary day, the sun was shining & spring definitely felt like it had arrived. I had, had a lovely day with family and friends and at 17:30 on the dot my trusty phone alarm went off for me to send my weekly tweet to Theo (yes that is the Monica in me, never wanted to forget!!) Each week since I started entering #sbs I would try & come up with something different to try & get Theo’s attention, I tried ones playing on the ‘SAS’ theme, jumping out of helicopters, great to have around in an admin emergency, you get the picture! But, that night I went with a very straightforward tweet:

"@theopahitis #sbs Been Busy supporting growing businesses all week, it will make my Sunday if I get a #RT from you! www.staceysadminsolutions.co.uk"

Ok, I may have then thanked all my lovely followers individually who re-tweeted my entry, and named drop Theo into every tweet, but hey a girl has to try, and I was on a mission to get my ‘golden ticket’ to the much talked about #SBS Event!

I sent the original tweet at about 18:15 & then carried on with my usual Sunday night twitter madness with all the networking events that take place every week! Fast forward to about 21:10 & I get the first congratulatory tweet about my #SBS win – yes, I got 2 congratulation tweets before THE re-tweet from Theo showed up in my interactions! At that moment, I literally and I mean literally fell off my chair! I then had to remember to start breathing again! I ran straight upstairs to tell my husband who doesn’t really get Twitter, but understood the impact a re-tweet from Theo could have, after I told him about when my lovely twitter pal Nici from @Woodandwillow1 won a few months ago.

To be honest I am not quite sure what happened after that! I know I phoned my mum but the rest is a blur! By the time I got back to the laptop & my hands had stopped shaking enough to type again, I had had something like 183 interactions & they didn’t stop! I started thanking everyone for all their lovely words of support at about 22:00 but by 23:15 I was in the infamous twitter jail! I decided to try & get some sleep & would start again in the morning.  I took a note of who I was up to in the thank you’s and smiling from ear to ear went off to bed. I got very little sleep as I was still in state of shock and so excited at the prospect of going to the #SBS event the following Friday.

Monday came & I was still running on adrenalin, the congratulation tweets didn’t stop all day and I had to write my press release – easy I thought, I do this all the time for other people, was it heck! My brain was whirring so fast with a million & one things I wanted to say but couldn’t get it together! Finally, after about 2hrs I had nailed it and was happy with what I had written. The press release was saved to my website & I started sending it to all the local papers and magazines. By Tuesday morning it had been published online by 2 local papers and will be on print on Friday! To say I am over whelmed is an understatement!

So, there you have it, a blow by blow account of my #SBS win! I hope I didn’t bore you? I just needed to get it all out, lol! The lovely @ShelliBobbins sent me a screen shot of the moment Theo re-tweeted me, which I will forever look at & smile and think ‘the day the SAS heard a dragon roar!!’

To network or not to network, that is the question?

If you are in business you will no doubt have heard the buzz word of the moment, ’networking’ & have invitations coming out of your inbox! But what is networking and is it worth it?

Now, to be fair I have only been to a few a network meetings & they all seemed great; lots of other eager & enthusiastic people wanting to spread the word about their particular business.  There was tea & biscuits and it was all very British, with everyone politely listening to each other’s 5 minutes in the spot light where you  ‘sell’ your goods or services and tell of any exciting news that may have happened since the last meeting. But, in all honesty I did not see the benefit (sorry!)

Don’t get me wrong it was lovely to meet other likeminded people and talk to them about the benefits and pitfalls of owning your own business, and I did hear some useful tips, but I don’t make any particular effort to go anymore. The main reason being the timing of the meetings, most are either early morning or after ‘work’ hours and being a busy working mum of 2 young boys and with a husband that works shifts that makes it incredibly hard.

I know there are lots of mid-morning ones too but they don’t work for me either! I am fussy aren’t I?! I work on a ‘pay per hour’ basis so for me to leave my home office for even 2 or 3 hours in the morning is not just difficult but also not financially sensible! By the time I have driven to the venue, been to the meeting, chatted with people and driven home again, I have lost valuable billable hours and more importantly I am not there for my clients should they need to speak to me.

I totally understand the need for ‘networking’ and I think if your business is a local service such as a plumber, electrician, beautician or something that has fixed boundaries within your area, then I think they are fantastic. But if you sell goods online, or offer services nationwide then I really think you need take into consideration the time & effort it takes you to go to these events versus spending time on social media platforms which will get your message out further and to many more people.

My business is ‘virtual’ in every sense of the word, with clients based up & down the country so I don’t have any ‘boundaries’ for my work area. So, for the time being at least, my networking will remain on my ever faithful Twitter. During the course of any one day I can ‘network’ with thousands of people in a single tweet J plus I can drop in at any time & always find someone to chat too!

And before anybody asks, no this blog is not sponsored by Twitter, lol! Just a twitter addict ;o)