Crafting in a Crisis: From Stress to Success - Lockdown Edition

CRAFTING has introduced me to a lot of amazing people, it has got me through the very worst times in my life and it is the core of both of my businesses. I am a crafty entrepreneur and I have quite a story which can be read in my first book, The Heartizan Way. In February 2020 the Heartizan team and I were making plans to attend The International Conference Centre in Birmingham. We had won the very prestigious Small Business Sunday Award the previous year.Small Business Sunday (SBS) is an award that is run by Theo Paphitis on Twitter for a few hours on a Sunday evening. There is a group of winners on Facebook and my first knowledge of the Covid19 virus was in that group. A few of the winners were discussing this virus and how it was killing a lot of people in China and other parts of the world, so they had decided not to attend the event. I have to be honest and at this point, I did not have any concerns of a 'flu virus' in another country and we continued to plan for the event of the year.My first business The Cuddle Bed Company won the SBS award in 2017 and I attended my first event the following year. It is an incredible day, one which I have shared with my beautiful friend and my daughter. The event of 2020 went ahead and we all had an amazing time. Theo's fireside speaker was the very crafty Sara Davies who was absolutely wonderful, inspiring and thought provoking. The whole day is to help SBS winners grow their businesses, network and even pitch to senior buyers. When I attended the event in 2018 I pitched to the senior buyers of Robert Dyas and I have been selling some of my products online with them for the last two years.After an amazing day, accepting our award for Heartizan and staying over at a nearby hotel we travelled home, happy and very pumped to implement what we had learned. Little did we know what was just around the corner.