So, it has
been well over a week since my last blog about winning my #SBS award from a
certain Mr.Paphitis and what a week or so it has been!
When I finished my last post I had just about recovered from the shock of winning and was breathing normally again! Skip forward to Friday 30th March and the day had arrived to go and meet a dragon! To say I was excited was an understatement but I was also a little nervous as nobody knew what to expect.
I travelled up to Edgbaston with the lovely Amanda a.k.a @CrecheonLocatio (www.crecheonlocation.co.uk) and her husband Damian who were kind enough to drive. We were having a relatively smooth journey until we hit the M40 junction of the M25 when we saw the big red X signs for closure – aaaah! So, we quickly decided to carry on along the M25 & figure out our new route plan. Between the SatNav & our smart phones (what on earth did we do before these were invented?!) we found an alternative route –phew!
At just before 12pm we arrived at the stadium and as we pulled into the car park we saw the ‘Theomobile’ and everything started to feel much more real! Me, yes me, was off to see a Dragon!
We entered the building and everything was being handled brilliantly by the team from Rymans, we got our badges and off we went to the waiting area. Now the nerves really started to kick in!
It was the strangest feeling walking into a room full of ‘strangers’ I say strangers because even though I tweet a LOT and often daily with a fair few people who were in the room I didn’t have a clue what most of them looked like! It really was surreal! So you would find yourself looking at badges and thinking 'oh yes, I know you'! I was on a mission to find Kim from @WelshRoyalCryst and Nici from @WoodandWillow1 - eventually we tracked each other down and it really was like meeting old friends!
Whilst we mingled the main man walked past as he headed towards the conference room, he was such a gent and stopped and chatted with people and shook hands. All of a sudden everything felt very real!
So now, the moment everyone had been waiting for had arrived and we were all ushered into the conference room. We all took our seats whilst the Black Eyed Peas track ‘I gotta feeling’ blasted over the stereo. Theo's live tweet feed was being shown on the big screen and everyone was tweeting him to see if they could get their's seen - I was always just a bit too slow!
We were welcomed to the event by the lovely Kypros Kyprianou the CEO of Rymans; he spoke of how excited he was to support the #SBS event and then he welcomed the man we were all waiting for for Mr. Theo Paphitis!
Theo didn't let us down in the slightest! He spoke honestly about why he had started #SBS, why he felt passionate about inspiring other small businesses and wanting to share some of his 'luck' to help us move our businesses forward. He joked about how we all shamelessly wrote wrote press releases name dropping him and he said 'I love it, that's why I started this whole thing in the first place'. He then introduced us to the brand new #SBS website and there all of a sudden, I was on the big screen! I has known about the new site for about 3 days but had been sworn to secrecy by the development team and Rymans! Anyone who knows me would have known how hard I found that! Theo then made all of last weeks winner stand up *crimson moment for me!*
Even after a nearly epic 3hrs on stage, Theo then made sure we all got the opportunity to have our photo taken with him & that famous smile never faltered!
I can genuinely say that the whole experience was amazing!
It really has lit a fire within me to drive not only my business forward but I
am also now looking at other ventures too – so watch out Theo I may be after a
seat in the den soon ;o)
Love it & So spot on!
ReplyDeleteFab blog post Stacey and it was lovely to finally meet you!!
ReplyDelete