Method acting & Social Media

I was telling my friend about the social media arm of The Business Lounge. We have a few accounts on board now and my friend, who I shall call Pamela, - it's not her real name but I've always liked it because my mum had a very glamorous friend called Pamela. She wore short dresses, false eyelashes and had a beehive but that's another story.. Anyway Pamela asked me about the social media accounts we manage:
Pamela - 'So do you just tweet the same stuff out for everyone'?
Me - 'No, each brand is different so you have wear that brand for every comment or blog'.
Pamela (bored by now and looking at her nails) - 'So it's a bit like being an actor then'.
Me - 'Exactly'!

I hadn't thought about it in that way before but Pamela is right. Managing other people's social media is like being in a film and playing all the parts yourself! (Oscar winning performances of course). Meryl Streep has nothing on me. Today I have been an accountant - very professional and smiley with a twist.  He only has to look at your business figures and the tiger will be unleashed in him. He will single handedly rescue your company and make it flourish to it's maximum potential. Raaaaaaah! Hear him roar!

Just after lunch I became a car salesman. Oh but this was no ordinary car salesman - this was a car agent! Yeah that's right... only the BEST car agent in the land. They are swish! They are super cool! They will sell your car and source another without you even having to leave your office. They are also young and very good looking and like to have a cheeky convo now and again on Twitter and Facebook - I like that account, it's fun to manage.
After my Bafta winning performance as a car agent, I had a cup of Earl Grey to get me into character for Lady of the Manor, another account. It's funny but I type with a straighter spine than for the others, like I have a book balanced on the top of my head a la Lucy Clayton. A beautiful manor house just 2 hours outside of London that speaks for itself with its grandeur and history. As I stroll though the grounds of Facebook, Google+ etc, stopping to sniff the roses and marvel at the fountains in my head, I feel peace and calm enter my body. Ahhhhh,what a wonderful place for a divine wedding or a business retreat....

Cut to the stage where my old friend Rob De Niro is about to announce the best actress award. 'And the winner is...  Meryl Streep'! Oh well, maybe next year.

Of course, it's a bit like being a builder as well. You spend so much time on other people's social media that it's easy to neglect your own. It's the brand hat that often changes style or doesn't quite fit properly so you try this and that until that eureka moment when you say by Jove, I think I've got it! Other people's brands and social media persona's are sometimes much easier and straightforward.

"Please accept my resignation....

I do not want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member". So said Grouch Marx in his wire to an elite club of which he was a member. Much misquoted through the years. However the Groucho club was named in the spirit of this quote.

The modern food buff would barely recognise the London of the late seventies and early eighties. There were a few bistros serving 'foreign food' but modern British cooking and the Gastropub were light years away. Most pubs were smokey dives with a jar of pickled eggs on the bar and bags of pork scratchings behind it. Private clubs were classified by class.The working class had working men's clubs and the upper class had gentlemen's clubs. The latter were often fine but fading buildings stained with generations of cigars, port and discrimination. 'The winds of sexual equality could only eddy around Pall Mall, but things were about to change'....
In 1984 a large stucco fronted townhouse at 45 Dean Street Soho, and it's now famous dining room with vaulted roof and glass ceiling (hidden as a store room)  became the Groucho Club. It had previously been a restaurant since 1880 and was most famously known as Gennaro's, a favourite of Dame Nellie Melba. Gennaro, the proprietor would often greet guests at the door and present each female guest with a red rose... This appeals to me and for some reason I have a picture in my head of the large annoying opera singer from the Go Compare adverts waiting at the door with a red rose between his teeth.

I am very much looking forward to TheBusinessLounge making its own small piece of history at the club this Thursday March 8th. The dinner will be in The Mackintosh Room overlooking Dean Street on the 2nd floor and hosted by the irrepressible and inspirational Jonathan Macdonald. This dinner is sold out and has been for some time but we have another booked in the diary for 10th April (selling fast). In this wonderful building where tales of murders and shootings occurred in what is now the supposedly haunted Gennaro's Room, we will be discussing business war battles and developing business relationships that will hopefully continue and thrive. Deals will be made alongside much conversation, food and beverages. If those walls could talk.. well our dinner probably wouldn't be as dramatic but it could be one of the most profitable for those in attendance.
We are very excited!

One Martini shy of Nirvana

Something is going to happen, I can feel it. It's that moment when you feel your business is going in the right direction after all the wrong turns and previous wading through mud - This is a metaphor of course, we haven't as yet, literally waded through mud. Although we did get quite close to it once when we were stuck on the A12 in a thunderstorm after a dinner in Colchester.

There's a rumbling underfoot, a sound of distant drums heralding a new turn in the road. I'm a great believer in positive thinking but anyone who has a business will know how difficult it is to stay positive all the time and not lose sight of the main objective... Oh boyo it's hard!
However, in this time of cutbacks and recession, I still think it will happen, in fact, IS happening right now..
Perhaps I'm being naive - I've always been a glass half full person after all, especially when Sainsbury's do that 3 bottles for £10 thing I love so much. Perhaps it's just hanging out with Jonathan Macdonald (as you do). He's so positive, without being in-your- face-annoying and he makes you feel like anything is possible. He's just so darn bright in every sense of the word and he'll be hosting our dinner at The Groucho Club in Soho on March 8th next week (sold out). He will also be co-hosting our first dinner at The Leven in West India Quay London on April 19th . Come on board and email Patsy@business-lounge.co.uk for more info
If you haven't yet heard of Jonathan (Where have you been)? Check him out here or just Google him - he's everywhere.

Life Coaches

When I first joined the Business Lounge, I said to Patsy; 'Why don't we allow*life coaches to become members of the Business Lounge'? 'It's because there's so many of them '. she said ' and they would outnumber everyone else by 3-1'. I didn't think too much about it but there does seem to be an awful lot of life coaches around the social media sites. A life coach is not to be confused with a business coach or consultant, who we do allow to attend dinners. Their third eye approach can prove invaluable to SMEs. It must also be said that a good life coach can  prove invaluable to an individual, there's just not enough room for all the life coaches who wish to attend a business table discussion.

Twitter in particular is full of motivational quotes from certain coaches. In fact, I have just flicked to Twitter and there are 2 on my screen:

* ‘Your beliefs don’t make you a better person, your behaviour does’. - What does this mean? I'm not being deliberately obtuse. Does it mean that if you want to punch someone on the nose, for example, you should behave differently? Is that not just common sense..... in most cases?

*’If you don’t like the situation you’re in, change it. If you cannot change it, change the way you think about it’. - Ok... am I missing something here?

I really don't want to upset anyone but why are there so many motivational quotes doing the rounds right now? Some quotes are quite profound and a good one can alter your perception of the way you look at life. We all have our favourites. I actually said to someone recently 'Do not judge me until you have walked in my shoes'. Yep I said it, it's out there and it was very apt for that situation. However, most run the danger of turning into tired old clichés and alienating the very people you would like to inspire.

What next, inspirational music bites? Maybe instead of quoting something inspirational, we could hum the theme from Rocky. Da da da da da-da da dadada - Yo Adrienne, I did it! ... Actually that might work.

*No Life Coaches were hurt during the making of this blog.

Spangles!

Who remembers Spangles? Unashamedly showing my age now but furthermore, who remembers Olde English Spangles? Urban dictionary describes 'spangled' as 'A term used when a person has over-indulged, be it with drink or drugs' and when I googled it, I found a DJ called Johnny Spangles - love that name! Spangles - incase you were wondering, were square fruit flavoured sweets with rounded edges and a dimple in the middle - a bit like Tunes but without the 'makes you breathe more easily' bit.

Things move on, times change, Marathon becomes Snickers, Opal fruits become Starburst and suddenly we stop dialling numbers on a round dial, we email instead of speak aloud and everyone's on the social media bandwagon. 

Maybe because it was my birthday 3 days ago but it got me thinking about how people used to run businesses in the 70's or 80's. Before email, Twitter, the Book of Face, Google, blogs, websites. When they got up on a Saturday morning, instead of firing up the laptop, did they fire up the Granada like John Thaw in the Sweeney and drive to the office to meet and call people? Renew their ad in the Yellow Pages? Wait for the calls to come in? Did they even work on Saturdays? How did they get anything done before the internet?

When you think about it though, the pace has changed and so has the platform but everything else is still the same. Whether you're trying to make your ad stand out from all the others in the Yellow Pages or be heard through the white noise of Twitter, it's not very different.

Don't get me wrong, I love Social Media, it satisfies the chatty, nosy geek in me but there are so many posts every day on Twitter telling you how to get the most out of your social media. some of it is very interesting but I'm not gonna lie, a lot of it bores me to tears. The internet has enabled the world and its mother to become a social media expert and use words like glocalisation and disintermediate long-tail mashup. I don't have an issue with specific terms or over used phrases but it doesn't seem to go anywhere. There's no original thought.  

I may be about to go out on a limb here but I don't think there is a divine science to social media. If you are lazy or a self indulgent bore, your social media will reflect your personality eventually. Whether it's your own or social media that has been out sourced to you. Unless you have imagination and direction, you will never cut through the busy market place of the 'me me me, listen to me' social networking sites. I would never proclaim to be an expert. I'm just good at it. Confident, yes. Arrogant, no.... and for the record, Olde English Spangles were awful and are no longer in production. Some changes are very much for the better!

Well bless my soul, it's Friday!

Until fairly recently, I used to work in an office for a large corporate insurance company. Anyone reading this is probably already nodding off... the word insurance does that to people. I would wake up at 5.30am and not get home until 7pm - if I was lucky. A lot of my day was spent on the A12 and I spent most of the week wishing it away and longing for that faint glimmer of goodness that was Friday. If Friday was full of sunshine, lollipops and the odd bottle of Pinot, then Monday was a piano dirge in hobnail boots. Wednesday -'hump day', would bring a slight loosening around the shoulder muscles upon the realisation that the majority of the week was behind you and Friday was almost within touching distance.
I would read motivational quotes about work but I couldn't see past the A12 and the constraints upon my time.
So, the upshot is, I left my job and began working on www.business-lounge.co.uk with Patsy. I still get up very early and I work even longer hours. I don't even notice 'hump day' and it was only this morning when I turned on the news, that I realised it was Friday!
I work for myself now and that means I work Saturdays and Sundays, high days and holidays and I love it! Yes it's risky and yes I miss that Friday feeling a little bit but I don't have the Monday morning blues and a hankering for 5pm every day..

I'm constantly on the look out for articles and items we can use in our social media practice so in a sense, I never switch off; but would I swap it for the corporate life of before? Not a chance in hell!

A good day to start a blog!

It was my birthday yesterday. I won't tell you how old I was, other than to say, it's quite a substantial figure. Patsy and myself found ourselves on the docks of West India Quay in the drizzling rain about to view the new London home of the Business Lounge. We had  already braved the Docklands Light Railway system and the new Stratford International Station and here we stood... on the dockside, sharing a broken umbrella, staring at the beauty that is The Leven.
I've always wanted to live on a wide barge but have never quite managed to step from suburban terra firma, well this is the next best thing. I get to visit and hold exclusive dinners on someone elses!
The owner Lorna, met us on the pontoon and led us inside to the exquisite art deco themed interior, complete with piano in the corner - Oh you have no idea how much I hope some brave CEO or company director will get up after a dinner and give a blinding rendition of 'On Mother Kelly's Doorstep' or a quick blast of Schubert!
Lorna cooks everything for the dinners from scratch and judging by the aroma coming from the kitchen, she could give Gordon Ramsey a run for his money.
Anyway a deal was made over some superb coffee and The Leven is now officially the London Home of the Business Lounge. Hurrah! You know when you have a feeling that something will be good? I have that feeling about The Leven.

Afterwards, we found ourselves back on the dockside looking at the magnificent backdrop of Canary Wharf and decided to head into Town and visit Gordon's wine bar.. it was my birthday after all. A meeting with friends and 4 bottles of wine and a cheeseboard later.. well that's a whole new story ..
Excited much!!