What does this really mean? Simply put, in business your connections reflect your influence – and often determine how far your products or services will reach. That includes our customers. When they buy from us and have a great experience, they become part of our network too, recommending us to friends, family and colleagues.
After a few months away from the business networking scene – and after finally walking away from a toxic day job – I decided it was time to refresh my business plan and commit to getting back out there.
Today I attended my first networking event in months: the GrowBiz Entrepreneurs Meet-Up in the Perthshire town of Auchterarder.
I’ve been supported by GrowBiz since 2019 and have always loved their events. They’re friendly, relaxed and genuinely welcoming. There’s always complimentary food and drinks, and at some of the more spectacular evening events we’ve even been treated to three-course buffets – all at no charge.
So yes, I was excited.
I woke up with a feeling I hadn’t had in a long time: looking forward to the day ahead instead of dreading it. No longer a slave to the day job, I was actually excited about heading north for a morning of connection and opportunity.
I’d done my prep:
• Planned my route on Google Maps
• Checked where the EV charging stations were
• Looked up the parking options
• Packed my book portfolio
• And tucked in my brand new business cards
I was ready to roll.
What I’d forgotten was just how challenging Scottish winter driving can be.
The first problem hit quickly: my screen wash nozzles had frozen. As the windscreen started to get coated in road salt, my despair grew just as fast. I pulled the spray lever – nothing. The wipers simply smeared the salt across the glass, dramatically reducing visibility on a country road where stopping wasn’t really an option.
I eventually pulled over at the first junction and had to make my first strategic decision of the day. I still had 35 minutes to get to the event, but my battery level was just over 50%, giving me around 50 miles of range.
My options:
• Turn back home, grab a bottle of water to clear the windscreen – using more battery and almost certainly arriving late.
• Give up, go home and cancel – and then sit with regret for the rest of the day.
• Carry on, trusting that at the Crook of Devon petrol station I could pick up water en route.
I chose to carry on.
As I drove through the remote Glendevon hills, range anxiety began to creep in. At 50% battery, my Mini had about 50 miles of range, and I wasn’t entirely sure I’d have enough to get back home.
Images of being stranded on the roadside for hours waiting for recovery started to float through my mind. I knew there was a charging station in Auchterarder – but would it be free? Would it be working?
I kept going regardless.
What was really happening, of course, was an inner resistance to change. When we move from the security of employment into the unknown, the mind will often do everything it can to pull us back to the familiar – even if that familiar is painful.
Pain and frustration with a salary can feel safer than freedom and possibility without one.
This is something I’ve often heard Jay Hastings of Serious About Success coaching services talk about – and there I was, living it in real time.
By the time I reached the main road into Auchterarder, my battery was down to 30%. That’s when I hit the next obstacle: the road was closed.
The sign cheerfully announced it would be closed for the next 32 weeks.
Despair made another appearance.
One of the workmen directed me back onto the motorway to follow the diversion signs. Once again, my windscreen had quickly became coated in road salt, so stopping again, I used some Highland Spring water to wash it down. With magical life force of its own, the bottle cap flew off, disappeared under the car, and for a moment I just stood there thinking, Really?
I was wearing my good trousers and didn’t exactly fancy crawling under the car. Fortunately, the cap was just within reach. Small win.
The motorway sign said “Auchterarder 4 miles”. At 30% battery I knew I had at least 20 miles of range – enough to breathe a little easier. Hope started to replace the despair.
When I finally arrived at the public car park, I was already five minutes late for the event. The first few charging stations I tried were either occupied or not working. Despair, again.
Then I saw one last charging station with a green to go light on, I raced to get the parking bay and plugged in. Relief washed over me as the car began to charge.
A bonus: the car park itself was full, but thanks to having an EV, I got a space at the charger. Sometimes the future does have perks.
Now I was ready to network – only 30 minutes late.
Aytoun Hall was just across the street from the charging point. I headed in and was welcomed by a friendly group of fellow entrepreneurs. Within minutes I’d introduced myself, started chatting, and begun learning about their businesses and stories.
I was especially grateful for the tea and biscuits after such a stressful journey – and reassured knowing the car would be fully charged for a relaxed drive home.
I met:
• Mark, who has started his own whisky distillery
• Gill, a Respite Carer
• Angie, a Brand and Marketing freelancer
We agreed on a few important things:
• It’s good to get out of the house and network.
• Hot-desking or working away from home can be refreshing, even if staying at home is cheaper.
• Human contact matters – especially when you can build genuine relationships and potential collaborations.
As the conversations flowed, all my earlier travel stress started to dissolve. It was replaced by a feeling of wholeness – a deep sense that I was exactly where I was meant to be, doing the work I’m meant to do, with the people I’m meant to meet.
Freelancing in media and books gives my life a sense of meaning and purpose that the day job never did.
You don’t get paid for networking, at least not directly.
But it is one of the most powerful ways to market yourself and your business. Once people get to know you, like you and trust you, they’ll share your details with potential customers. They’ll remember you when someone says, “Do you know anyone who…?”
Your network really does become your net worth.
I drove home with a renewed sense of achievement – a feeling I hadn’t experienced in months. The stress of the morning had transformed into connection and momentum.
I’m already looking forward to my next GrowBiz Christmas lunch event.
Is that really “working”?
Of course it is.
Because building relationships, showing up and being seen is at the heart of any successful business – and your network will always be a big part of your net worth.
events
UFO Debriefing
The UFO Show Scotland last weekend was a great success. Put together at the last minute, I wanted to do some kind of media project to commemorate 25 years of the famous Falkland Incident which occurred in 1995, Fife, Scotland. I also wanted to get the broadcast out on Saturday 6th June 2020 as this was to be the weekend of the Scottish Ufo and Paranormal Conference, sadly cancelled due to lock down.
There is currently one web page still on line regarding the Falkland incident and I wanted to produce something more, to act as a kind of time capsule, a resource for future researchers and truth seekers.
I decided to do a Live Stream show concentrating on 3 of Scotland’s most interesting Close Encounters of the 3rdKind – namely the Bob Taylor Dechmont Classic case, the Falkland incident and the Blairgowrie incident.
My chosen formula was to do a virtual tour of each location and complimented with a more detailed report from Ron Halliday, a renowned Scottish Paranormal Investigator and Author of several books on the subject.
I was blessed with good weather during the 4 day shoot and on one visit to Falkland, had to do a hill walking trek just to get one shot of a landing location. I had 6 days to shoot and edit enough content for a one hour live broadcast.
The show ended up being one hour and thirty eight minutes in duration. There were many ‘raconteurs’ as I coin our online contributors. The beauty of live stream is that it’s interactive. The viewers can comment and ask questions to each other and the presenter using the comments box.
Ron Halliday was able to join us during the broadcast and did a sterling job answering the viewer’s questions and comments.
I started off by giving my own opinions about the UFO / Alien question. I have been interested in this subject for over 40 years. During the 90’s I enjoyed travelling down to Sheffield and Leeds in England to attend the big UFO conventions with some of my Scottish colleagues. I did work on some video productions which were used by Scottish researchers as part of their presentation materials.
I enjoyed listening to headline speakers such as Budd Hopkins – the alien abduction guru. During the 90’s it was a golden era of ufo abduction books, documentaries and movies. It was also a golden era (pre digital) of the ufo channellers. These were psychic mediums who were able to be the voice of extra terrestrials from other worlds such as the Ashtar Command. On Sundays, my friends used to meet in a house and after enjoying a fantastic vegetarian meal, would sit and listen to audio tapes of the ufo channellers.
Although I’ve never personally witnessed a flying saucer or aliens, my conclusions about the phenomenon were:
- Weird Shit happens
- UFOs are real, they have been captured on photographic plates, video, radar and have been reported by credible witnesses such as pilots and police officers
- The phenomenon is temporary, much in the way Taoism describes reality – we are manifest on this world and then we are unmanifest
- As science now accepts the holographic theory of reality, I mentioned a scene in the Matrix Reloaded movie where the Oracle describes UFOs and Ghosts as ‘software errors’ in the Matrix which shouldn’t really be here. This may be why the phenomenon is temporary and then simply disappears. This may also explain why in 70 years since the classic Rosewell Crash story of 1947, there has never been any physical evidence / proof of a craft from outer space in a museum for us to examine.
- And finally I made reference to the Children’s 80’s TV series Chocky, which was based on the book by John Wyndham. This is the story of an extra terrestrial who contacts a young boy and is able to project it’s mind as a hologram that the boy can see and hear. Chocky’s mission is to advance the boy’s knowledge of science and the arts. It was developed into 3 TV series, continuing with Chocky’s Children and Chocky’s Challenge. Many of these shows are available on Youtube to watch. To me the idea of telepathic communication is the most likely form of contact between humans and extra terrestrials as the distances to cross space in a metal ship are just too huge. Again these are my own opinions, and during the show I welcomed any of the viewers to voice their opinions of what they thought.
So this was my first Ufological media project in over 25 years, and I was very much enjoying the whole process of gathering content then sewing it together into 8 short videos for the live stream.
The Falkland incident involved a family encountering the typical Grey entities who were standing by a black triangular shaped Ufo. One of the main researchers of this case was Malcolm Robinson of Strange Phenomena Investigations and he has written about his research into the Falkland Incident in his books available from Amazon.
The Blairgowrie incident involved a family witnessing strange unmarked black helicopters over their house and seeing men in black walking up their neighbours path, complete with the gate opening ‘magically’ by itself.
The Dechmont Incident with Bob Taylor is Scotland’s Classic Ufo story, where by Bob was attacked by two strange spherical entities that emerged from a semi translucent saucer type craft in the Dechmont Woods area of Livingston, West Lothian. Malcolm Robinson’s book on this particular case is also available.
After the show I received many positive comments from the viewers on the show’s content and it was very gratifying indeed! I look forward to doing another Ufo Live Stream show next year, perhaps an outside broadcast from the 2020 Scottish Ufo Conference would be an exciting project to work on.
To watch the show you can find it on my Youtube Channel: Vincent Anthony Media. If you would like to find out more about the Scottish UFO scene then you can contact the following organisations / researchers here:
Ron Halliday – Facebook search for: Ron Halliday
Malcolm Robinson: malckyspi@yahoo.com
The Unexplained group on Meetup.com – organisers Linda & Duncan
Drama Queens
It’s the morning after last night’s live stream show affectionately called ‘Round #3.’ Last night had a change to the planned schedule. I was going to start off by giving an explanation of Neuroplasticity of the Brain.
Minutes before the show went live, I received an email which was so full of negativity it was quite clearly a form of attack. The person who sent me this email hit me with the element of ‘surprise’ coming from someone I would least expect. It had also been sent it at a time when it would have most impact.
The person was in actual fact, trying to manipulate. The email brought up feelings of anger, anxiety and self doubt.
However, I made an executive decision, rather than fall into this drama that the Drama Queen had set me up for, I decided to use this on the show ‘live’ as an example of how to use Mindfulness in every day situations – it was perfect!! I even thanked the Queen on the show for giving me an spontaneous opportunity to demonstrate Mindfulness!!
The message of our course is “Don’t be a Drama Llama.” That is, use your Mindfulness skills to watch out and identify Drama Queens who will try their best, consciously or unconsciously to bring you down. Then you can neutralise these people quickly before they have the chance to manipulate you to their own advantage.
Very often this will happen in the work place or even in your own home. For me this also happens in the supermarket car park:
I’m reversing my wee Micra out of a space and this has caused a flustered driver to have the indignity of having to wait a minute extra while I get out my space. That driver then will provoke by racing past me and. cutting me off. If I let them drag me into their drama I will react and the whole situation ends up as a police matter, and it’s a lose lose scenario for me and the Drama Queen.
Drama Queens will always pull you into their drama “just when life is going so well.” They have an innate ability to smell your happiness which leads me to explain why they do this in the first place.
The answer is very simple, they are not in a good place and don’t wish to be alone in that place, thus they drag you in so that you’ll feel the same way they do.
That is why the arcane message is still of value to this day – “Don’t react to people!!”
Let them put on their Dramas for all of us to watch – after all, the Drama Queens can’t touch you if you’re just observing their performance can they??!!
Anyway, many of the viewers of the show gave me some positive comments and feedback during and after the broadcast and this helped quash the efforts of the Drama Queen, it back fired, you could say.
So, there is much to do, much content to produce for next week’s show!! Stay tuned!!….
Live Stream – The Debrief
It’s been two days since my first attempt at doing a Live Stream on my show entitled ‘Mindfulness vs CONrona’ – Round #1 the big fight LIVE!!
I was somewhat nervous before the transmission as it had been over 20 years since I worked in Television News Broadcasting. However once I got started the nerves started to fade so I could concentrate on presenting and pushing the right software buttons and dials.
It was only after watching the show that I realised the limitations of using my wee laptop as the only video and audio feed. For example when I tried to do the gentle movement exercises Live, on playback I could see the laptop was struggling to mix the audio channels from my music track with my built in microphone, so at times my voice was garbled.
Lesson learned, so to give a more professional, slick looking show next time, I’ll simply pre record the exercise sequence using cameras and wider angle lenses. That way the viewers will be able to have a much better quality experience.
Also during the broadcast I realised that I was doing 5 or 6 things simultaneously – Presenting, Vision Mixing, Reading the Script, Answering comments, Monitoring what I had just said to make sure that it was at least in English, and editing parts of the script out in my head that were not absolutely necessary.
I also plan to go out and about, producing some content for the show with professional therapists / coaches and other film makers too.
Perhaps after 10 shows, life will start getting back to normal and the CONrona reality will be replaced by normal reality. Watch this space!!
We’re Live Streaming!!
Hello there!!
sorry it’s been probably months since my last post, however I finally get the time to write a new short blog.
Just when I thought I had explored most forms of Photography and Cinematography techniques, I am now experiencing the Joy of doing Live Broadcasting.
This all came about due to the current Global Lock down and it forced me into looking at instructing my classes online, in the same vain as my own university has moved my course to online teaching.
After spending a few hours researching, I became aware that there are numerous software packages out there for Webinars and Live Streaming. I was understandably confused as I wasn’t sure exactly what the difference is between a Webinar and Live Streaming.
My understanding is that Webinars are like office meetings where the participants can interact on the same screen, where as Streaming is practical for reaching out to unlimited audiences.
I then narrowed down my search to Zoom or Ecamm Live Stream. Being a film maker I naturally gravitated towards Streaming, especially as Ecamm is specific software for Apple Mac Computers.
As soon as I started using Ecamm I realised how user friendly it is, rather like Final Cut Pro X, in fact you could say it’s the FCPX of Live Streaming in it’s Powerful yet simple user interface.
The only technical hitch I’ve discovered is that I can’t use my Olympus Camera as a 2nd feed as I’m required to purchase additional hardware and leads which are not cheap, so I’m limited to using my laptop camera meantime. If I had kept my Canon 7d, it would have plugged in to Ecamm with just a USB cable.
Now, back to the blog. The first few broadcasts will be on the subject of using simple mindfulness techniques taken from the 2 year course I run in the class room. However the show will also be taking an in-depth analysis of what is going on in the world from and Alternative News Broadcaster’s point of View.
I also hope in future to work with a Film Maker from Edinburgh who has shown an interest in helping me by providing mini news reports providing a variety of content.
Watch this space!……
Aid for Africa
It’s 2019 and the Easter Weekend has arrived with glorious weather here in Kinross, Scotland. We’ve spent the weekend at Tullibole Castle near Crook of Devon, Kinross at the wedding fair. We enjoyed meeting some couples and demonstrating some aerial photography. We also enjoyed feeding the Peacocks some of our lunch and in return they put on amazing feather displays for us and some singing skills too. So am looking forward to doing some more work with Tullibole Castle in Future.
I also will be working with Jo Middlemiss of Kinross who runs the Ethiopia Medical Project which is carrying out aid work in Africa so am feeling blessed for the tools I can use to help Jo with her mission.
More updates to follow!! Watch this space…..
Tullibole Castle Wedding Fair
This weekend we’re excited to attend the Wedding Fair at Tullibole Castle which is by Crook of Devon, Kinross, Scotland. On display I’ll have a tv monitor with some wedding footage showreels and I will proudly have on display ‘Millie’ our first wee eye in this sky.
I am looking forward to meeting the other exhibitors and of course meeting new clients for 2018 and 2019 bookings.
Edinburgh Glamour Nights
The Golden Era of Edinburgh’s most glamorous Business Networking nights seems like a distant memoir. Classy venues such as Bonhams, The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Divino Enotica, Gusti, Hotel Du Vin, The Old Waverley are to name just a few of the night spots where Edinburgh’s most stylish clientele did the Business.
Two ladies ran the glamour roost in my opinion – Fiona and Gordana. I did some of the photos for their events to help promote what they were doing and I even managed to gain some clients myself.
Taking the photographs didn’t feel like work, more fun and a chance to socialise with a variety of people from diverse business’s and backgrounds. With these events there was no entry fee, you just payed for your drinks and the networking was up to you. At many of these events drinks and nibbles were provided free of charge by the venue hosts.
Fond memories indeed. These events happened in the early millennial era and now that it’s 2019, they seem so distant. I now network in rural Kinross-shire – early mornings!! A different networking experience altogether – our venue is Loch Leven’s Larder and once the sun is above the horizon, you’ll hear cocks crowing, tractors happily plough the fields while your doing your 60 second elevator pitch.
The business breakfast networking is organised by the Kinross-shire Partnership and for a small fee you receive a hearty cooked breakfast with tea coffee and orange juice. I of course supply photos for the business section of the Kinross Newsletter glossy magazine.
Event’s photography is one of my favourite types of job, there’s usually a positive atmosphere in the room. Edinburgh is a cosmopolitan city and so you get to meet such interesting people from all different parts of the globe. Kinross is central Scotland and you never know who you’ll bump into in this secret beauty spot.
But what of the golden era of Edinburgh’s Classy Business Networking Night scene? Who knows, maybe a revival is in the pipleline?! Maybe glamour Networking will be resurrected!!
Mine’s a Martini on the rocks, shaken not stirred…..
Big Country Plays Kinross Saturday 21st November
Next weekend I will be a volunteer Photographer for the Kinross Local Events Organisation, helping to shoot some music events that are part of the 2015 Kinross Winter Festival.
On Friday evening at the Campus venue the Kinross Got Talent Show opens and I’ll be pleased to take photos of the event as last year.
On Saturday 21st, I’ll be excited to photograph a band I would listen to while still at school in the 80’s – Big Country.
Photos will all be sent to KLEO first for publication in the newsletter and on Facebook. More news to follow folks.
Business Networking
Business Networking events are a way of forging new connections and getting help with leads to more business. However the true essence of business networking is to help others. If you can recommend a colleague to other business’s – that’s what good networking is all about – giving and not expecting anything in return. So this morning I attended an informal event in Perth. I made sure I was there early before 9am to set out my flyers, and grab a cup of tea while I had the chance, as I usually engage intently, so much so that, I don’t have time to drink. The event was well attended and I didn’t even manage to speak to a quarter of the attendees. I always try to remember the words of Eckhart Tolle and try to really listen to the other person, give them my full attention without thinking about what I want to ask them next. I try to avoid losing eye contact, I try not to stare across the room at other potential people I could be speaking with. I look forward to the next event, perhaps in Dundee or in Fife.
Jinja Ninja Media Solutions 