Ponds, Paris & A Bit Of French Polish

Meeting up with Jenny Armato for dinner last week was great and I managed to get a great interview from her after we had all been out to dinner on what made the difference to her between just diddling about on the internet and making it really big.  Not that I suspect Jennie has ever been a diddler!

Jennie is my second exclusive interview for our new Money Gym book about success on the Internet and we are going to be giving one or both interviews away as bonuses for our new Money Gym Magazine (along with the re-written property chapter of the first book, and a video of our first Business Surgery Day – yep! the whole day)

Bit of a shocker on coming back to Jennie’s hotel to find Michael Jackson had died!  I have never been much of a fan, even having seen him live twice, once being on my first date with a grown up man, for dinner at Browns and The Jackson Five feat. Little Michael Jackson at the Brighton Centre.  Don’t get me wrong, I recognise what a great songwriter he was and all, but his voice didn’t grab me.

Then the next day Sarah and I went to Paris and the Eurostar was wonderful.  Paris was hot and after Heather WALKED us to our hotel, I realised as soon as we got in there that it wasn’t for me.  My own fault, booking a cheap trip like that, should have known.  Two star hotel?  Moi?  Nah, not any more.  Used to 4* and 5* nowadays.  So between sightseeing at Sacre Coeur, we got onto Lastminute.com and moved ourselves over to Les Jardins du Marais – much more my style and air conditioning to boot.

Heather and her friend Katie had really laid on a great weekend, with two opera cast parties to attend, that great quirky restaurant on Saturday night and Carmen itself on Sunday afternoon.  Man, was it hot in there though!  No air conditioning in that ancient and beautiful building, no sireee.  Programmes as fans and a dash for water at half time.

Michael Jackson mania was everywhere, with some sort of impromptu rememberance service outside Notre Dame and every brasserie playing MJ, some of the waiters were even dressing up like him.  Weird.

Steve texted me the first MJ sick joke on the first day we were there which I’m afraid I promptly shared with our gang and some american MJ fans on the next table.  They were not sure whether to laugh or not.  Bless ‘em.

We found THE most amazing designer shop while there, selling just one particular designer – Lilith.  The stuff was so lovely we all went mad.  It was the first day of the sales so that was lucky!  This is the website and you can view her catwalk show here

And weirdly

I got shirts, tops, lovely gossamer cardigans with drapy bits, a shirt with four arms, two of which you tie up behind like a bustle….I would have bought skirts and dresses too if they had them in my size.  Worth going back to Paris twice a year for, just that shop alone.

So it turns out I can shop after all, just not in England!

The journey back was uneventful except that the Eurostar stopped halfway home for about 15 minutes, on a high speed line, which was worrying.  I twittered that I was there and that there had been no announcements, and shortly after that, there was one.  Do you think that Eurostar have someone monitoring social media for mentions?  If so, good for them.

Of course it took as long to get from St Pancras to Shoreham as it took to get from Paris to St Pancras but it was lovely to get home.

Stoupa in Greece next for a week, with Sarah – can’t wait!  You may recall that Stoupa is my spiritual home and the place where I’ll be building my house one day.  That will be a “lying on a sunbed in the Med reading” kinda holiday.

Sarah’s bringing flasks of freshly juiced vegetables and fruit around every day, as she’s convinced it will help me lose weight better than going back to LighterLife.  Some are gorgeous but she keeps slipping in “superfood supplements” which I’m not keen on.

I’m buying up books to read, having secured the one about how Barak Obama won the election with social networking, Michael Masterson’s “Seven Figures In Seven Years” (sounds a bit slow to me Mike!) and Joel Comm’s Twitter Power.

Yes, these are my preferred reading on holiday, but I will hoover up a sci-fi or two, particularly if there is a new Iain M. Banks at the airport.

No kids on that one either but I’m taking them all to Spain and they go to the beach every day after school at the moment so they will hardly notice a switch of country right now.

Talking of Spain, as they are a bit late coming to the rental market for this year, my mates Rona & Adrian have just decided to offer a 50% discount for late booking for July/September this year to any Money Gym people.  You can stay in the same stunning house as us – not at the same time though – for just £400 a week. Check it out here >>>

I’m speaking at the Topher Morrisson “Winning The Game Of Wealth” event this weekend and it appears to be sold out.  I’m looking forward to it as they get a great “up for it” crowd at Triumphant Events.  I’m sharing all about how creating a membership site can be a great way for Supporter profiles to monetise their networks.

But it’s off to the beauty salon next for a ManiPedi as they call them in the USA, think I’m going for my first French Polish, or is it French Manicure?  Then poker with the boys tonight and then tomorrow, gardening – the pond in the front garden needs attention as the water lilies are growing up through the protective net and it looks a right old mess.  Martin Avis….any tips on coping with ponds?

Have Fun, We Always Do, In Spite Of Ourselves!

Nicola

Funky Brit Furniture Design In SL

Starting a business in Second Life is hard work initially but then the potential to create an ongoing passive income is very exciting. The virtual world offers the same opportunities for business success as RL (real life) and the key to success in any world is marketing, marketing, marketing.

You can’t be a secret and still become a success so it’s a great place to cut your marketing chops.  Lots of lovely marketing tools which give you great ideas for marketing a real world business and it’s all about building a community around your business.

Examples of shops in SL that have done that brilliantly is Redgrave (H’s favourite) and Analog Dog Hair.

Hermione Watanabe likes to think of herself as a bit of a style spotter and when she came across Nesta Zerbino’s amazing furniture designs she immediately offered her space in the sky above her house, to set up a new shop [NZ Feather Designs NZ] and to help her market it, using Web 2.0 techniques.

First up a video on YouTube, then a set of photos on Flickr, all with a live SLurl attached so that those of you with SL installed can TP right on over.  http://slurl.com/secondlife/clone/117/144/401

Why not create an account in SL (it’s free) at www.SecondLife.com and pop over and have a look yourself at Crone, 117,144,401