Read about my preparations to speak and exhibit at the Mind Body Soul show at Olympia on the 15th/16th November.

Yikes – only three weeks. This week has been a tough one. I don’t know why – there must have been something in the air because everyone I know has had a sh*t time in the last few days.

Because I had spent the last couple of weeks actually giving talks I had got behind on a tonne of admin – yes, even life coaches suffer death by email from time to time! I was swamped by correspondence and needing to get a tax return and VAT return completed. I am pleased now to say that after many hours sat at my computer (which decided to be on go-slow mode throughout this) I have cleared my back log, got the paperwork done and have also attended to other housekeeping activities in my business.

So now I can turn my attention back to Olympia focussed activity. On the graphics side I am starting to twitch a bit because I am still waiting on final designs for the exhibition stand designs. I really need to get them to the printer this week so that there is enough time for the printer to turn them around and still have a margin left for f**k-up time. As I type this my designer is hopefully slaving away to finalise our work.

The other thing I need to nail this afternoon is another two volunteers to help me on the exhibition stand. My purpose for the stand is to collect as many names and email addresses for my mailing list as possible. My lovely friends are helping me by providing three hours of their time to me in return for free entry to the show. So now I need to stop typing and get on the phone and get my last couple of slots covered. On next weeks blog I hope to report that all the important logistical tasks are done. Wish me luck!

Four weeks – gosh – time is ticking by. This week has been triumphant but tiring. Last weekend I spoke at the Gloucestershire Mind Body Soul Weekend in Cheltenham and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

My boyfriend, Graham, and I set off for Cheltenham last Friday afternoon, escaping from London before the Friday rush and took our time admiring the wonderful Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire countryside. A cream tea at a garden centre in Burford refreshed us for the last leg of our journey. We both loved Cheltenham; street after street of wonderfully large Georgian houses, most of them very well maintained.

The Mind Body Soul weekend was fantastic. Toyah Wilcox opened the show with a talk about how she had improved her health and wellbeing by being aware of the natural cycles created by the moon. It sounds a bit woo-woo but was actually very interesting. I too have noticed some of her observations apparent in my own life and it was good to learn a bit more about this.

My talk was at 2pm. Graham and I were unsure how many people would actually attend. He was worried for me that it might not be very many. I couldn’t worry about that – I just needed to focus on giving a good talk. We lunched outside the venue in a nearby park soaking up the glorious summer-like sunshine. Then it was show time. Thankfully 23 people trooped into the room, one of the higher attendances of the festival. Apart from a tiny brief moment near the beginning when my mind blanked out, the talk went very well. Some people were taking notes and I could see from their faces that people were relating to what I had to say, and were grateful for the hints and tips that I gave them.

Following the talk I could relax. I had a cup of tea with one of my coaching clients who now lives in Cheltenham while Graham sampled Japanese massage. Then it was back on the A40 for the drive back to London, enjoying yet more glorious sunshine.

It was the first time Graham had heard the talk and he said that the only thing that I needed to improve on is making the ending more crisp and giving people an opportunity to applaud me, rather than flap about handing them flyers and information. Feedback taken on board and will be better at this at Olympia.

This week I have been focussing on the graphics side of my Olympia presentation. One of my clients from a couple of years ago, David, is a great designer and he is helping me produced roller banner style exhibition graphics. I’m going to have two banners: one with the caption “Would You Like To Be Creative” and the other with “Stop Procrastinating, Start Doing”. We have a brilliant graphic for the “creative” banner but have really struggled to find a suitable image for the “procrastinating” one. I spent hours on Friday night trawling through online photo galleries and I think I may have found something. I’m going to email it to David later, so watch this space to see if he thinks it is OK.

As well as coaching I also do some consulting and this week was a busy week for me. I’m absolutely shattered today despite having a super long lay-in reading the Sunday Times. I’ve got a tonne of emails, admin and a looming VAT and tax return to get done – but to hell with it – for once this life coach is going to do it tomorrow!

Well – what a productive day it has been. Back in May when I first signed up for the show I wrote a list of all the necessary tasks on a spreadsheet. About half of the tasks are done and today I knocked off a few more: ordered the electricals for the stand, booked my parking at Olympia, filled out the necessary risk assessments, figured out how many helpers I would need and ordered extra exhibitor badges accordingly.

This afternoon I was interviewed by BBC London and talked about what coaching is about and what my clients gain from it.

Tomorrow I’m off to Cheltenham for the Gloucestershire Mind Body Soul weekend (at Pittville Pump Rooms if you are in the area) where I give my Six Steps To Lead The Life You Want To Lead talk on Saturday afternoon. Last weeks rehearsal was very useful and I have spent some time slightly tweaking the talk to improve it. Tomorrow morning I will have a quick run through at home and then it’s into the car and off to the gig. I plan on having a leisurely afternoon in Cheltenham before being busy at the show on Saturday.

I have decided to write a blog about an up and coming event which I like to refer to as “the biggest gig of my life.” In six weeks time, on Saturday 15th November 2008, I will be a speaker at the Mind Body Soul show at London Olympia. Not only that, I will also be manning my own exhibition stand for the duration of the show.

This represents the culmination of years of attending other people’s personal development talks and having the thought that “one day I want to do that” as well as three years of building my Lead The Life You Want To Lead coaching practice.

The journey to Olympia actually began nearly a year ago in November 2007. I had had a difficult year getting people along to my own workshops and decided that it might be easy to speak at events where someone else gets the bums on seats. I figured that there must be hundreds of Mind Body Spirit/Soul events up and down the country who would love to promote one of my talks or workshops and thus began scouring the internet to find them. I came across two event companies that looked promising. The first was Natural Health Shows that have shows in Birmingham and Cheltenham, the second was Prime Impact Events that ran Mind Body Soul shows in various locations including London Olympia. Most of the events had already happened for 2007 so it was a perfect time to look ahead to 2008. I filled out the applications for both companies and waited to see what would happen.

The waiting took several months. It was in Spring of this year when Prime Impact called me to encourage me to invest in an exhibition stand at one of their events as they give priority to speakers who are also exhibiting. Initially I wasn’t keen to spend money doing this, I really just wanted to be a speaker. However, when they told me that they liked my proposal and that I could have a slot on the programme at Olympia I began to reconsider. 8000 people go through the doors of the Olympia show and the audience for a Mind Body Soul show is my exact target market. I realised that I could use the stand to collect email addresses for my mailing list which would then, in the future, make it easier to fill up my own events. I decided to take the plunge.

Just a couple of weeks later Natural Health Shows called me and said that they would love to have my talk on their programme too. Now there would be two Six Steps To Lead The Life You Want To Lead talks happening this Autumn. How exciting!

I’ve never had my own exhibition so there has been a lot to prepare. I’ve written a couple of ebooks that I can give away to lure people onto my list. I’m also working with a graphic designer to ensure that the stand will look as enticing as possible. This is very exciting as once I have gone through the work for this year’s Olympia show, I’ll have graphics and an exhibition kit that I can use at any time in the future. This will be well worth the investment.

In the last few weeks I have also upped my PR output. I’ve hired a lovely PR lady called Sue Welham who has already got me feature in City AM and we also have an interview lined up this week with BBC London.

And then of course there is the talk itself. I realised a few weeks ago that whilst I was very comfortable with giving workshops and public speaking, Olympia was definitely a step up the professional scale and I needed to make sure that I was fully prepared. I was determined that preparation for the talk wouldn’t take second place to the fun of getting all the logistics in place for the exhibition stand so I cleared time in my diary in the beginning of September to start work on the talk.

On the advice of my own coach I also decided to have a rehearsal for the talk and this happened last Thursday. I rented the upstairs room of a nearby pub where five years ago I had given my very first Lead The Life talk. In front of a small audience of friends I tried out my current material and had a very useful feedback session with them afterwards. Now I am ready to go off to Cheltenham next weekend and do the talk for real.

The one thing that I have learned from this whole experience is that it is important to keep taking action towards your goals and exercise patience as you wait for the result from that action. At the time I applied for these shows I was busy trying to fill my own events and it looked to some as though I was ‘scatter-gunning’ my efforts in my attempt to market myself and drum up business. Now I am glad that I took the time and plucked up the courage to make the applications and I am excited to see where these opportunities will lead.