The day the SAS went to see a Dragon!

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 30^th 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!*

  

Theo then introduced Chris from Metal Frog (the #SBS website design team) and he talked us through all the functions on the site, which is truly amazing, Chris and his team have done a fantastic job!

The tables were then turned and Theo wanted to hear from us about what we wanted from the #SBS website and in the future, people came up with some fantastic suggestions and you could tell Theo really was taking everything on board.

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)

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!!’