On the 7th November 2010 we were lucky enough to be retweeted by Theo Paphitis from Dragons Den! Each Sunday Theo runs a Small Business Sunday 2.5 hour session where you can tweet him your business and out of all the tweets sent he picks 6 to be retweeted to all his followers. We were one of the early businesses picked being just number 25!
Our profile on twitter increased because of the retweets and we made some useful contacts at the time too!
Little did we know that this year we would be invited to a SBS Winners Event in Edgbaston, Birmingham.
Friday 30th March came and the one morning we needed the alarm to go off! It didn’t! Quick walk with the 3 dogs to tire them out and back to get showered and changed ready for the trip to Birmingham.
When we got there I was so giddy! Theo’s car was parked outside the stadium, it was gorgeous! Couldn’t resist getting a photo of us with the car!
The event was powered by Ryman Stationary and they were very efficient at getting everyone tagged up with name badges. However as we all know each other from Twitter names most of the time networking was spent looking at peoples chests to see who they were!
I lost my husband for a moment at the event as he was admiring the Edgbaston Stadium as he is a massive fan of cricket! 
After mingling and chatting to a few businesses, we had a few sandwiches and a celebratory glass of wine from the bar.
We all then made our way to the event room, where there was Theo’s Twitter feed on screen so we all started tweeting him so we could have out name in lights, little cheers kept being done as each business saw their names pop up there.
Kip from Ryman Stationery took to the stage and gave a great introduction to the event. Then Theo took to the stage and gave a speech on why he had started Small Business Sunday and how he got started in business.
He then introduced MetalFrog a website design company that had been commissioned to create a SBS Website to help showcase the businesses that have been retweeted – which are over 300! (Chris from MetalFrog was one of the Winners!).
It’s a fantastic website, with tips, help, advice and also an exclusive member’s only area for all the Winners – a job well done by all at MetalFrog!
Theo was really down to earth through the whole presentation, I think that shone through, he certainly has a passion for business and is willing to give a helping hand to help others succeed.
Even though Theo got carried away on talking us through the website, taking our questions and then us giving him feedback on some questions, he stayed so everyone could have a photo with him!
It went alphabetically so we had a bit of a wait, but met some nice people whilst we did.
One of the fabulous winners took this fab photo of us.
It came up to our turn for the photo and I was really impressed when he mentioned that he remembered that we were early doors to the retweeting, I seized my opportunity to ask his favourite swimming stroke, I am always curious to find out from people. His is Breastroke, I did offer free tuition but I am not sure I’ll get an invite to his private pool to do some!
I am still buzzing from Friday as too are many of the other winners – which of course I have now followed on Twitter! I think the adrenalin from the event will last quite a while!
Tags: dragons den, massive fan, name badges, time networking, trip to birmingham, Twitter
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