Officially a winner! An SBS winner that is
Imagine my surprise when I found out I was one of Theo Paphitis’s Small Business Sunday (#SBS) winners!
Last night I went to visit a friend and her brand new baby so lots of lovely cuddles replaced my usual evening plugged into twitter, but when I finally did pick up my phone it had very nearly had a melt down due to all the twitter action! In the space of about three hours I’d had countless tweets, retweets, congratulations and new followers! I would have skipped home had it not been so flipping icy out there – ‘SBS winner breaks neck on icy pavement ‘ wasn’t a headline I was looking for really!
By the time I got home I had very nearly 100 new followers and checking in with my website and shop stats was bit overwhelming! It was late but I didn’t really want to go to sleep, it was all very exciting. By the morning my phone had had another mini melt down and I was at my desk nice early to catch up with everything that had been going on - including lots of lovely orders (this is turning out to be a record breaking month!).
If you’re not familiar with #SBS it’s a pretty simple premise where small business owners tweet Theo Paphitis from Dragon’s Den about their company, including the hashtag #SBS in the tweet, and the winners are re-tweeted to Theo’s 316,000 followers.
So what was my tweet? Here is a lovely picture of it (thanks to @ShelliBobbins for grabbing this screen shot- smart thinking!)
As you can see Sunday I was celebrating two years since I quit my job and started working for myself, my self-employed birthday! It was exactly two years on Sunday since I worked my last day for someone else and I remember it like to was yesterday because leaving my job was actually really hard. I loved it and loved the people I worked with (I still love you guys!) and the day was full of lots of tears, a special playlist and I think I cried most of the way home – it’s hard to do that and drive! The very next day I got on a plane to New Zealand with my kiwi boyfriend for a three week holiday (was that my last holiday!? I think it was!) arrived back in the UK on Valentines day and started working out what the heck it was I did for a living.
Given the momentous occasion of the day (I may be exaggerating here) I thought that was a perfect time to give Small Business Sunday a shot – everyone loves a birthday right!? I’d kept an eye on the contest for a while and always checked out the winners, however I never expected to win myself!
So far the ride has been amazing – I’ve been sending out Press Releases and making great new contacts plus my shop is fabulously busy. I’m hoping to build on the momentum in the next week and the community among previous winners is really active, fun and helpful (you can find about about all of us on the dedicated website: www.theopaphitissbs.com)
If you run your own business and would like to get involved then my advice is to go for it, it’s a great way to raise your profile and meet some amazing like-minded entrepreneurial types!
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Great news, Sam – and an inspiration to the rest of us to get out there and make things happen!
Wow! Congratulations Sam! How exciting!
WOW Sam , that is so awesome! Congrats, and may lots more publicity come your way. Brenda
[...] Becoming an SBS winner [...]