Hello!

I have just got back from speaking at the International Autumn Fair at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham.

Now, when I was asked to do one of the seminars on the Accessories Catwalk I privately thought ‘oh no’ but I said ‘oh yes’ because I knew I ought to do it for the experience and it might be good for my business.

So of course as the date came closer and closer and my notes were not very complete I started to panic and decided to dedicate the whole of last weekend to preparing for the event. Erm, not a lot of time for things to go wrong then!

Luckily, I thrive under pressure and it certainly was pressure. My PC kept crashing and the internet stopped working as I was downloading images for my slide show! Anyway by 11.30pm on Sunday, all was prepared and I emailed a copy to the person organising the event and put a copy on a memory stick to take with me.

Less than 5 hours sleep later (who needs it – I had plenty the night before!) I was up and adding a slide to the presentation as well as tweaking my notes, eek!

I think that because I spent the 48 hours before the event actually preparing the presentation – I pretty much knew it off by heart – I had looked at it for so long. So after couple of run thoughs in my head – I’m on – complete with microphone attached to my head and battery pack stuck to my bum.

I comandeered the services of Diana Fiveash the super CEO of the British Travelgoods Association to be my slide operator and big PHEW, everything went without a hitch.

All my last minute preparations were definitely aided by the advice given to me by networking friends and especially by Jim Connolly. A trip to Guildford Speakers a couple of weeks ago also gave me some fantastic knowledge of what to do and what not to do, so thank you to them too, particularly Nicky Kriel.

My conclusion:

Next time get organised earlier Shona! But – it’s right to say YES, even if you are worried you can’t do it – because you CAN!

And You can too!

Photo: just a few of my slides 😮