This morning David and I went along to a business breakfast meeting, it is held every fortnight in Ware, and these particular meetings are currently chaired by Paul Violet (http://www.paulviolet.co.uk/) who likes to make his meetings very interactive (horror of horrors!) However, he’s a nice chap so I don’t like to be too grumpy about participating, today however, did sound a step too far for my limited comfort zone but fortunately I was saved the embarrassment of doing whatever it was that Paul had in mind to make our individual businesses interesting to the assembled friends, colleagues and newbies because we ran out of time. Phew!
Paul therefore took the executive decision to cut out the additional active part and allowed (expected!) each of us to just do a short talk about our business. He then jumped straight to presenting his very own, hand-made ‘Oscar’ which he very kindly decided I should be the winner of for Best Dramatic Performance. Now, anyone who knows me also knows this is absolutely the last thing that I would ever be given any kind of award for which has consequently amused a few people.
What have I learnt from this? Well obviously that Paul thought it would be ironic to

present me with his Oscar but also, to accept situations that are sometimes challenging but going with it. This hasn’t been an easy lesson for either David or myself to learn as we are both ‘safe’ kinds of people and don’t like standing up and making idiots of ourselves. However, we still go along every fortnight to who-knows-what plan Paul may have for all the attendees because sometimes we have to push ourselves outside our comfort zone to learn and grow and find where our limits are.
David and I go to a few different networking meetings on a regular basis, and we have both come to the conclusion that although it is important for us all to find the ‘right’ kind of meetings for each of us, (that is for our comfort and the results for our business) it is also important to sometimes take that step into the unknown and see where it takes us.
All of us who own our own businesses have sometimes had to take a leap of faith to push our business forward, so we’re doing our bit of pushing outside our comfort zone by starting a few new projects (all to do with networking) which a year ago we wouldn’t have dreamt of doing, and you know what? We’ve found it’s fun! We don’t actually enjoy standing up in front of a group of people yet but we have learnt a lot about networking, and we’re looking forward to our new projects and meeting new people who have a positive and can-do attitude. We’ll look forward to seeing you soon!
So, I’m off now to polish my ‘Oscar’ and find a suitable place for it! Now where’s that link to Ebay?!