Theo Paphitis #sbs Inspiration

Back in March I was lucky enough to become an #SBS winner.

Created by Theo Paphitis, Small Business Sunday was his initiative to recognise small businesses on Twitter.  Every Sunday between 5-7.30pm small businesses tweet Theo with the hashtag #SBS if he likes the look of your tweet, your business and your website you get a retweet to his thousands of followers.  Not only that you get a place on a specially designed website, (brilliantly designed by Metal Frog), and become part of a select few who benefit from Theo’s support, encouragement and recommendation.  It took me 2 years of weekly #SBS tweets before I won and last week was the annual meeting of the #SBS winners at the Birmingham ICC.

It was an amazing, inspirational event, meeting fellow winners and people I’ve been tweeting with for years for the first time.  It was quite daunting at first to walk into this huge place full of people who seemed to know each other.  But once you got brave and started introducing yourself to everyone you realised they were all feeling and doing the same thing.

Theo spent a great deal of time talking to us and taking part in a Q and A session with great passion and humour.  Those of us who had won this year were awarded our certificate and had a picture taken with Theo Paphitis.

I came home energised and excited for the future, with new ideas and a real feeling of achievement, so proud that my business had been recognised by someone so clever and talented in the business world.  A very exciting #SBS announcement gave us all something to think about!

I also came back with a hangover and some random photos of Birmingham!