Searching for a hero, social media success and #slim11

Happy New Year!

In my last Blog post which I wrote on New Year’s Eve you will have seen my resolutions for me and business during 2011. The third resolution on my list was to have a one to one conversation with Brad Burton, founder of 4Networking. On Sunday 2^nd January I was surfing Twitter (as I do rather a lot it has been said) and I saw a tweet from Brad himself. He tweeted that he was offering a ten minute telephone conversation to the first 20 people who applied via the 4N forum. As a member of BNI I didn’t have a 4N forum account but realising that I might get the chance to speak to the man himself, I quickly signed up. It was quite comical as I set the account up on my iPhone but neither the phone nor iPad would let me post on the forum for some reason. We were about to sit down to dinner but I booted up my desktop PC, ate my dinner and rushed back to the PC to post my expression of interest before the 20 places were snapped up by the other 40,000 members of 4N! I guess the fact it was a Sunday evening during the Christmas holiday went in my favour as despite an hour passing between my forum registration and posting; I managed to get the 18^th place!

Brad called me on Tuesday and we had a very motivational telephone conversation and I am busy putting his advice into practice. Brad talks extremely quickly so if you do get the opportunity to meet or chat with him, make sure your brain is fully in gear so you don’t miss anything. He’s one of the good business guys in my opinion so if he appears at a business event near you, go along and listen to him or read his book. Then come and join BNI – sorry Brad!

I was amazed at the speed in which I was able to achieve this wish though! Brad hadn’t read my Blog post nor had I mentioned my wish to him by any other means. It was simply a case of being in the right place at the right time and making a quick decision to take action.

There are two lessons we can take from this. Firstly, writing down your goals can invite some kind of magnetic force into your life to make them happen and also making quick decisions can help you to achieve success in your personal and business life. The saying “you snooze, you lose” has certainly proved to be true in this case.

Another quick decision which paid off for me was the BNI Croydon Tweet Meet last year. You may remember I posted this blog at the time and it was picked up by many people on both sides of the Atlantic including Dr Ivan Misner who is the BNI Founder. The story has now been posted on the BNI SuccessNet e-magazine portal and it includes a direct quote from me and also a link to my Blog on this site. You can read the whole article here. I wasn’t involved in organising the event, again I was just in the right place at the right time and made a quick decision that I wanted to be part of it. Look what happened as a result! These are both examples of successful usage of social media too. It is social media which brought me into contact with all of these people and social media which brought the opportunities I have mentioned. I did nothing that anyone else couldn’t have done on either occasion so it is definitely worth thinking about who you want to be in contact with during 2011. I bet they are all using social media and available to you too.

I also started my weight loss journey with a visit to a Weight Watchers group on Tuesday. At my first weigh in I was shocked to discover I weighed one stone more than I had suspected so I now have roughly three stone to lose in total. I’m not going to manage this by April so I’m still hoping to achieve my goal of two stones by the time I get married in April and I will continue with the remainder when we return from our two week Dominican Republic honeymoon. However having read up on the Weight Watchers system, I don’t believe it is the best method for me. Five years ago I lost four stones on the Slimming World plan in nine months so I will return to Slimming World and join a local group next week. I haven’t changed my goal, just the journey.

Of course, I wouldn’t be me if social media wasn’t involved somehow. Again through Twitter I have come across several people who are aiming to lose weight at the moment so I have set up the Twitter hashtag #slim11 so we can all post our journeys and collectively we can support and motivate each other. It doesn’t matter whether you’re following a plan such as Slimming World or Weight Watchers, calorie counting at home or using some other method to lose weight; we all want the same result so everyone is welcome to join in with the group. All you need to do to take part is to include #slim11 in any tweet where you’re talking about your weight loss. If you’re having a bad day, share it. If you’re having a good day, tell us. If you’ve found a great recipe let us know. There is far less chance of failure if we are part of a group like this and we can celebrate our successes together when we reach the end of the journey. If you want to take part but are not a Twitter user and want some help getting set up, drop me an email. If you are already on Twitter you can follow me @VeronicaPullen. You don’t need to follow me to take part or view the #slim11 stream although I’d love to meet you if you are joining in.

To view the stream, type #slim11 into the Twitter tweets search field and you’ll see all tweets mentioning the hashtag which have been posted in the last week. If you need any help, email me via the contact form on this site or veronica[at]veronicapullen[dot]co[dot]uk replacing the [at] with @ etc or tweet me @VeronicaPullen

It’s time for a cup of tea (sweetener not sugar!) Gosh I miss sugar but it won’t be long before it tastes the same – I hope!