Today was a day of 2 halves. I will start off with the positive as it will lead onto the negative. So today had pretty much dominated everything that we had done for the last 4 weeks. It was our first talk. I was pretty anxious to be fair. I got to the NEC really early because i wanted to at least see the Inspiration theatre and to know where i was going to be. I hadn’t seen it up until this morning so that put my mind at ease. I took my laptop with and left it sat up until about 09:30 just so i could refresh my memory of how i was starting off. Once i got started i was ok it was just making sure that i could get off to a good start.
Id set a reminder on my phone for an alarm to remind me when i had to leave. It was a slow selling day to be fair so i set off about 15:15 to make sure i had enough time to get to the other side of the NEC. When i got to the stage i could see that they were running behind which was ok, i didn’t mind if anything it relaxed me as there was still another person to go on before us. It was Marcus Leach on before us so it was an interesting listen. One problem, the Beef was still awake and he was due a sleep any second now so for the next 15 minutes i swooshed furiously and eventually the Beef fell asleep. He slept through 90% of the talk and woke up at the end and gave the crowd some smiles and claps. The talk went well and like most things it is never as bad as you think.
So, as you can imagine first talk done, on cloud 9, adrenaline blasting. I got back to my stand and then for the next 20 minutes got a telling from Benn. You will have heard me talk about Ben. Dont get me wrong i have loads of time for him but sometimes he can be a real tough task master. The way i described him to him was that he is like an oppressive step Dad, he cold grill you for 99 days straight and then on the 100th day he puts his arm around you and tells you that you have done a good job and you almost forget the rest of the crap you get. He then makes a good point by saying that sometimes i need the pressure on me to find another gear and that is true to an extent. Sometimes though you just want a “how did it go?” or something like that. The NEC is a stressful time for suppliers and with it being a bit of a slow start means i opened myself up to be a bit of an easy target. Such is life and that is how it goes. Just hoping for a better day tomorrow.
