Pressing the Flesh

Manchester Town Hall is a testament to Victorian pride, vision and skill. It’s also a metaphor for life if you think about it, as I have a tendency to do.

The council needed a building to house some people and a few filing cabinets, so they could have built something plain and ordinary. Instead, they created this neo-gothic masterpiece oozing beauty and strength to tell the world they were a force to be reckoned with. You can either be splendid and noticed or ordinary and overlooked, it seems to say.

It’s a frosty November evening but the weather seems to complement the architecture. As we stroll through the cloisters admiring the stained-glass windows and world-renowned carvings, I give Charlie a little pinch.

‘Can you believe we’re here?’ I whisper.

He nods. ‘I can. We’ve come a long way this year.’

Rather than consuming us with fear of being ousted as fakes, this place does inspire a sense of belonging. The building was created by ordinary people doing their best and it’s now filled with local businesses trading their wares, making a living and building their legacies. The jobs they do might be a little different but the intoxicating buzz of enterprise remains the same, I imagine.

There are a lot of people patting each other on the back asserting a type of camaraderie and belonging. The scene isn’t very different to what I expected except there are more women than I’d thought; every group of four or so men seems to have a woman holding her own at the centre. Of course they’ve made far more of an effort to dress up; whereas some of the male entrepreneurs think badly pressed shirts or poorly fitting suits are just fine, there isn’t a woman here who hasn’t agonised over what she’s wearing. We may be making millions for the economy but we still care what others think.

It’s all very well standing on the sideline critiquing the crowd, but at least they’ve had the guts to socialise and I need to do the same. If I’d come along a few months ago when sales were very slow, I wouldn’t have had the courage to talk to people. Everyone will tell you ‘yeah, business is good’, but I’m no good at faking it, so I’m relieved that I can say those words with conviction now.

I make Charlie promise that he’ll stick by my side.

‘I don’t know how to mingle,’ I tell him.

‘Let’s just walk up to other people who look lost and introduce ourselves,’ he suggests.

And so it starts. ‘Hello there, we’re from Mercury Travel and it’s our first time here. What about you?’

The lost people are very glad to have someone make the first move and soon we’ve created a newcomers sub-set who busily introduce themselves to each other.

I meet the owner of the hairdressing salons responsible for my original transformation. He tells me that I look fantastic, although in fairness, he has to say that if the person responsible for it was trained by him. I also meet a specialist baker who tells me that her cakes are far superior to Amanda’s and a marketing guru who assures me she can grow my business exponentially.

I express interest in what they have to say and am awarded with business cards. The currency here seems to be business cards: the more you manage to give away, the more successful you’re likely to be, or something like that. I’ve collected many but given away few.

Charlie calls me over to meet a guy who runs a law firm and is interested in us pitching for his company’s annual overseas conference, so I finally get to hand someone a business card. In the background, I hear a Spanish accent and make a beeline for the speaker. They run a language and cultural centre, perfect for another business-card giveaway. This is quite easy now that I’ve picked up momentum. I make my way into one of the cliques and adopt the persona of Patty. I have a little flirt, tell them who I am and give away half a dozen cards. If I’ve got the laws of networking correct, we should be multi-millionaires by next year.

No one here seems to have entered the business awards – or at least no one confesses to it. They all tell me that awards are ‘too much work’ or ‘not worth anything in the real world’. It could be that they did enter but weren’t shortlisted or it could be that they’re not as needy as I am. I disagree with them.

‘I don’t know,’ I say, ‘if I were an actress, I’d want an Oscar. If I were an athlete, I’d want a gold medal.’

There are a couple who agree with me but more who tell me that the local entrepreneur awards are hardly the Olympics. I don’t care, I’ve always loved a gong; from getting my first badge at Brownies to Zoe’s bronze for swimming, I’m proud of them all. I think I even put my MOT certificate on the fridge door once. Well, passing that was quite an achievement with my old banger.

The keynote speaker moves to the podium and the room settles to listen to him. The speech begins with some statistics about the growth of enterprise within the region since the recession and the need to stick together to sustain that growth. Most businesses fail within three years he tells us, and there are knowing nods around the room.

Stepping back and looking at the crowd, I’m struck by their age. It hadn’t hit me before this but most of these people look like me. The speaker later tells us that over two million businesses in the UK are run by the over-fifties while at the other end of the spectrum, running your own business is also one of the top career choices of the under-twenty-fives. Both age groups face age discrimination at work, are at higher risk of redundancy and quite frankly don’t see why they should answer to anyone else.

The speaker ends by encouraging everyone to speak to someone new, to make a commitment to helping that person in some way. I guess I could have my hair done again.

I approach some of the younger people and having spoken to them, I can picture them living in one of those loft apartments – they belong there. They’re more confident than the oldies and talk with the passion and conviction I hear from Zoe all the time; it’s not bluster, it’s conviction. I wonder when we lose that self-belief. Perhaps some people aren’t born with huge reserves, but I doubt that.

The businesses oldies and youngsters have quite different approaches. We oldies are more traditional and we swap cards with ‘Managing Director’ or ‘Partner’ written on them. Our counterparts hand us cards hailing such professions as ‘Ink Artist’, ‘Skate Beast’ or ‘Pooch Pack Leader’.

The owner of ‘Heels on Wheels’ introduces herself; she runs a mobile pedicure business, which I imagine is quite useful for people. I always fear that I’m going to ruin any work done by shoving my huge feet back into my trainers after I’ve made the rare visit to have them beautified. There’s the added bonus that no one else can either stare at or be horrified by the unkempt nails and bunions. Patty always tells me that I have feet like a Hobbit – still, what are friends for?

‘How can I help your business?’ I ask and she asks me to email my customers just prior to going on holiday and in return she’ll give them a discount and recommend Mercury to her customers.

We shake hands on the deal, then say goodbye and I step out into the fresh air to wait for Charlie. I recognise one of my fellow networkers and wish him a good evening.

‘I liked what you said about the business awards,’ he says, ‘and I wish you luck, they should go to people who care.’

I thank him and imagine my desperation to win must be written all over my face.

Charlie sneaks up on me and links arms.

‘Look at you Miss “I don’t know how to mingle”,’ he says. ‘Who was he?’

‘I don’t know,’ I reply, ‘but he seemed very nice.’