The graphic designer friend I met through LinkedIn bought me lunch this week at the Hard Rock Café. Hooray for social media! It certainly brought back memories, and not just seeing Sting’s guitar in the flesh. To be clear, I didn’t see Sting in the flesh – well I did, but not close up. He was plastered across my bedroom wall for a few years, smiling down on me as I slept. I only saw him twice, at a distance, in a crowd of 12,000 people. Although, my friend met him at a private party and said he elbowed her out the way of the bar. That put me right off him, I can’t stand rudeness.
No, the memory that flashed through my mind was of queuing up outside Hard Rock with Adey and Michael on my 15th birthday. It was the first time I’d experienced anything quite like it and no restaurant has ever made quite that impact since – and I have been to a few!! So back to Sting’s guitar… despite my on-off love affair with Hard Rock, I never knew it had a little museum in the shop’s basement – an abandoned bank vault now filled with signature guitars and memorabilia of stars I know, and some I don’t. Fenders, Gibsons, LesPauls… names I often hear banded about in my kitchen.
Madonna’s iconic pink bustier from her
Blond Ambition tour’s there, now that’s something I wouldn’t mind winning in a raffle. Which is a bit ironic, as our lunch was followed by a meeting with the Soldiering on through Life charity to discuss rebranding and their upcoming raffle. I’ll tell you about that in a couple of weeks – the prizes are actually better than Madonna’s old cast-offs… a car, a Breitling watch, De Beers diamond necklace.
I saw some other LinkedIn friends on Thursday at the Doyle Club networking event. As the club specialises in property and construction businesses, I have introduced a couple of my property-related social media clients to its charms. And this week business opportunities were flowing, despite the heat and the late honey and mustard sausages.
Before the networking kicked off, someone gave a talk about goal-setting. As you may know, setting realistic and achievable goals is something I help business people with, always encouraging them to aim high. So it was interesting to hear it from a participant’s angle. It’s said that we only take away one thing from any training session or workshop… the thing I grabbed was this fantastic Michelangelo quote: “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” It’s very true.
Rude or not, I still love this – original, of course, not hip hop rap version: Every bond you break, every step you take – I’ll be watching you. Yeah, it’s a bit creepy. Facebook stalking’s probably ok, unless you really are watching every move – or Twitter celebrity stalking, which keeps my brother-in-law busy. If, however, you would prefer to know less about social stalking and more about learning how to maximise social media for business, click here.
And feel free to watch me take every step – or be brave and follow…. @WeekendWitch.
Not really sure what this article had to do with Really Readable Writing but it was interesting to think about Madonna’s undies languishing in the basement of a Hard Rock Cafe. Totally not my gen on any account. You must be a really readable writer, however, because I finished the article even though I couldn’t relate to any of it. Good job.
Thank you Diane. I post in the Really Readable Writing forum in the hope that people find it really readable. So I’m glad you read it and, hopefully, enjoyed it!