This week has felt quite different to me. Despite a fair few sleepless nights (for no reason other that not being to shut off my brain), I’m starting to feel more like ‘me.’ Whether that’s just because I’ve spent few weeks doing nothing but lying on the sofa recovering, or whether it’s because the days are starting to get a bit longer and it feels like Spring isn’t too far away, but I have felt pretty positive this week.
Firstly, a couple of things I forgot to mention last week. I watched a new film on a sleepy Saturday night in – the cartoon Hotel Transylvania. It was a mildly amusing look at the monster world of Dracula and friends, and his daughter’s adventure into mixing with the human world. I also took a new opportunity last week, signing up to an agency that offered to run a facebook advert advertising my upcoming Wellbeing Retreat. After a slow and shaky start, with problems getting hold of the agency in the few days after I’d paid them my money, I’m still undecided about the success of the £100 I invested in the advert. It should run for 30 days, and the agency is reassuring me that it’ll pick up towards the end of the campaign as people have seen the advert 4-5 times before they click. The jury is currently out.
So, on to this week. Matt was away on his brother’s stag do this week, so I had the weekend to myself. I went to the cinema twice, seeing ‘Room’ on Saturday evening – a great, psychologically-interesting film about a girl who was abducted at 17 and locked in a garden shed, and then has a child. The story follows how she creates an interesting world for her 5-year old, and their eventual escape and journey to recovery. Its numerous Oscar nominations are well deserved. The second film on Sunday was The Revenant – a long, and rather tedious, film about Leonardo Dicapro crawling around in snow, eating raw animals and keeping himself warm by gutting a recently dead horse and sleeping inside the carcass. It was about an hour too long (at 2.5 hours) and felt fairly self-indulgent on the part of the film makers. The story also had a complete disregard for the dangers of hypothermia, with every character getting their only clothes soaking wet will-nilly before rolling around in the snow. My advice would be not to waste your time, but for god’s sake, give Leo an Oscar – he’s long overdue.
Firstly, a couple of things I forgot to mention last week. I watched a new film on a sleepy Saturday night in – the cartoon Hotel Transylvania. It was a mildly amusing look at the monster world of Dracula and friends, and his daughter’s adventure into mixing with the human world. I also took a new opportunity last week, signing up to an agency that offered to run a facebook advert advertising my upcoming Wellbeing Retreat. After a slow and shaky start, with problems getting hold of the agency in the few days after I’d paid them my money, I’m still undecided about the success of the £100 I invested in the advert. It should run for 30 days, and the agency is reassuring me that it’ll pick up towards the end of the campaign as people have seen the advert 4-5 times before they click. The jury is currently out.
So, on to this week. Matt was away on his brother’s stag do this week, so I had the weekend to myself. I went to the cinema twice, seeing ‘Room’ on Saturday evening – a great, psychologically-interesting film about a girl who was abducted at 17 and locked in a garden shed, and then has a child. The story follows how she creates an interesting world for her 5-year old, and their eventual escape and journey to recovery. Its numerous Oscar nominations are well deserved. The second film on Sunday was The Revenant – a long, and rather tedious, film about Leonardo Dicapro crawling around in snow, eating raw animals and keeping himself warm by gutting a recently dead horse and sleeping inside the carcass. It was about an hour too long (at 2.5 hours) and felt fairly self-indulgent on the part of the film makers. The story also had a complete disregard for the dangers of hypothermia, with every character getting their only clothes soaking wet will-nilly before rolling around in the snow. My advice would be not to waste your time, but for god’s sake, give Leo an Oscar – he’s long overdue.
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Following The Revenant, we headed to the nearby Indian/Nepali restaurant Everest and enjoyed a great meal. I took a risk, not choosing my normal korma, with a new curry option – honey chicken. This essentially turned out to be a korma, with a squirt of honey added to the top.
Tuesday saw a day of networking meetings, first meeting the rather lovely Angus Hay from The Smart Resource, a marketing guru who was recommended to me. Following a number of pushy sales calls from advertising agencies over the last couple of weeks following my first forays into paid advertising, Angus proved a breath of fresh air, with a business model of simply providing free advice to new businesses, with no catch, just a trust-building approach so that when your business is able to invest in marketing more heavily, you’re more likely to choose Angus to help you. Angus also counts as my interesting person this week, in a meeting that started with an apology for him being drugged up on painkillers following some dental work, and a good 1.5 hours of solid, creative marketing advice.
I then moved to an Edinburgh Businesswoman’s Club networking/training event, looking at how to have ‘A Totally Awesome Year,’ followed by a networking dinner with fellow coach Nicola Mcleod and friend Nikki Cinderey. This added another restaurant to the list – the highly recommended Chaophraya, with its delicious thai food. Thursday saw a trip along to the NLP Grapevine, a networking and training evening provided by NLP Edinburgh who I did my NLP Training with. This week’s focus was on creatively managing conflict, and it was lovely to reconnect with some old friends.
I also got back on track with my 30-minute walks, with a trip up my local Craiglockhart Hill at the weekend, and finished off another colouring picture. The cover has remained off of my piano, but I probably only managed about 10 minutes playing, while waiting for some posters to print.
My learnings this week are:
Tuesday saw a day of networking meetings, first meeting the rather lovely Angus Hay from The Smart Resource, a marketing guru who was recommended to me. Following a number of pushy sales calls from advertising agencies over the last couple of weeks following my first forays into paid advertising, Angus proved a breath of fresh air, with a business model of simply providing free advice to new businesses, with no catch, just a trust-building approach so that when your business is able to invest in marketing more heavily, you’re more likely to choose Angus to help you. Angus also counts as my interesting person this week, in a meeting that started with an apology for him being drugged up on painkillers following some dental work, and a good 1.5 hours of solid, creative marketing advice.
I then moved to an Edinburgh Businesswoman’s Club networking/training event, looking at how to have ‘A Totally Awesome Year,’ followed by a networking dinner with fellow coach Nicola Mcleod and friend Nikki Cinderey. This added another restaurant to the list – the highly recommended Chaophraya, with its delicious thai food. Thursday saw a trip along to the NLP Grapevine, a networking and training evening provided by NLP Edinburgh who I did my NLP Training with. This week’s focus was on creatively managing conflict, and it was lovely to reconnect with some old friends.
I also got back on track with my 30-minute walks, with a trip up my local Craiglockhart Hill at the weekend, and finished off another colouring picture. The cover has remained off of my piano, but I probably only managed about 10 minutes playing, while waiting for some posters to print.
My learnings this week are:
- Paid advertising is scary. Although its tempting to fritter away money at a low investment rate, research shows that you can get far better results (or indeed, will only see a result) by upping your budget quite significantly. The balance of spend vs reward is a bit of a voodoo art and something I’m trying hard to embrace with confidence.
- Tiredness and sleepiness are different things. Most evenings this week, I’ve been extremely tired, struggling to keep my eyes open. However, when I go to bed, I just can’t get to sleep despite being so tired. All suggestions welcome.
- There’s probably a link between me being busy getting out and about with friends and promoting my business this week, with feeling more optimistic and productive. Who’d have known…..?
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