Friday with Heidi: First Impressions

I am bleary eyed and bed-headed having been out at the finals night for BEST Women in Business awards last night.

I was one of 75 finalists across 20 categories who had been selected by the judging panel to be through to the final.

In my category, Health and Wellness, I was one of 9 businesses from across the UK to be up for the gong. I didn’t win this time but am delighted to have been whittled to one of 75 from over 500 applications. I can’t imagine having to go through those and judge them all.

However, the night gave me some great inspiration for this weeks FWH. I had two first hand experiences of first impressions last night that have been worthy of conversation.

1. We arrived early to miss the M25 and, before we were all suited and booted, I saw a lady coming out of the hotel venue to fill her boot up. I didn’t know her, I’d never seen her before. But she came up to me, hand outstretched and said “hello Heidi”.That’s impressive. I know we have social media and I now know she worked on organising the event, but to remember my name from a possible 75 guests was impressive.
2. At the dinner I was sat next to a chap who was the plus one for his wife – who was one of the nominees. He was quite a disgruntled chap and took no time at all in telling me how terrible working in self employment was, the hours are terrible, you can never have a holiday and life was better when his wife worked in corporate.I had to change the subject. I might have ended up being rude. But his first impression on me stuck and I found it hard to shake off.

So I’ve resolved to make better first impressions with the people I meet.

I’ve been told at various times this year that I am ‘scary’, that I ‘look like I have it all figured out’ and am ‘unapproachable’. Not the internal image I have of me at all.

Here’s my take on these comments.

• Scary = confident in my environment.
• All figured out = constantly thinking about figuring it out.
• Unapproachable = reserved

What image do you portray?

How do others view you?

What do you talk about when you first meet someone?

If you want to see me in the flesh, face to face and putting my first impressions into practice I’ll be running a free Introduction to the Metabolic Balance health programme on Wednesday 8 November.

It’s at Wokingham Cricket Club and starts at 19.30 – 21.00.

Places are free but we’d like to know to reserve you a seat so please click this link to make sure that you get a place. We have about half the allocated number left.

https://metabolicbalancenovember.eventbrite.co.uk

I’ll share with you who the programme is suitable for, what you can expect in terms of results and benefits and some of the background around why it’s been successful for over 25 years in helping people to lose body fat, balance hormones, reduce inflammatory diseases like high blood pressure, aching joints, menopausal symptoms and lower the requirement for pharmaceutical drugs like blood pressure tablets, thyroid medication and headaches and migraines.

I promise I won’t be scary, I’ll be completely approachable and I’ll have it all figured out in a non-threatening way 🙂

Have a great weekend.