On Friday 24th February I woke up incredibly early and travelled up to the ICC Birmingham for my date with the SBS crowd and Theo Paphitis!
Back in 2021, I won the Small Business Sunday award that Theo Paphitis holds every Sunday on Twitter to small businesses all over the UK. It was such an exciting thing to happen to me and my business, and according to Theo, only 0.8% of entrants actually win.
As part of the award, Theo holds the SBS Event every year, for all winners. It's held in the ICC and is a series of lectures, speeches and advice from prestigious people and companies. Theo spoke to us for half an hour, congratulating us all, and offering advice and sharing his knowledge.
The highlight for me was when Mark Blundell, the former Formula One racing driver, who sat down with Theo for the 'Fireside Chat'. His story was amazing, and particularly love his quote to have 'the will to win', to succeed in business.
Owen O'Kane was also very inspiring! His presentation about 'Healthy Business, healthy mind' was incredibly useful.
We also had Kirstie Kavannagh from Google tell us invaluable advice about increasing our visibility on the search engine. It's now on my to do list!
At the end of the day, those of us who had not yet collected our winner certificate, were asked to queue up, receive our award and meet Theo! It's still quite a surreal moment! I gave him a print of my artwork 'The Final Lap', to which he replied, 'oooh, thank you! Mark would love this too!' I said, 'yep! I have one for him also!' He promised he would pass it on.
Now I'm back down to earth in my studio, I am buzzing with ideas for pushing my artwork and business forward. So, watch this space!
