The third early morning on the trot - leaving home at 6am - this time to be the headline speaker at the FSB's AGM (or even the Federation of Small Business's Annual General Meeting!) at the Concorde Club in Eastleigh.

37 people turned up to hear me speak on the topic of "Marketing - it's not what you do it's the way that you do it" - I had 30 minutes but did warn them that they might need to drag me off once I had started...!

Now the reason I do this job is not for the money (that's not to say I do it for free, but it's not my main driver!) but because I love helping people to get their businesses OUT THERE.

So giving a talk and getting immediate feedback on how it specifically helped those who were there is fabulous. Here are the things that people commented on:

My comment about NEVER turning up to networking events with homemade business cards caused much hilarity on the table where someone had just passed round her details handwritten on bits of paper. The person who had done this laughed most of all - good on her!

My comment about not using hotmail addresses because they look unprofessional prompted a couple of groans and one head in the hand. I think they will be correcting that fairly shortly!

One very experienced networker (a BNI'er of four years standing) told me he was immediately going to change the way he described what he did based on my advice that it needed to be succinct, memorable and CLEAR.

One attendee has emailed me to say he is going to use the more resonant "You" a lot more in his literature i.e. "we help you to...." instead of "we help companies to..."

Another was prompted to send me an e-mail which opened "Really enjoyed your presentation this morning. I’ve heard dozens of marketers speak and your presentation was by far the best". Being the marketing tart I am, I have immediately asked him if I may quote him directly - thank you for agreeing Chartered Accountant Tim Lyons of www.timlyonsandco.co.uk!

I have given away a lot of business cards and already had two requests for meetings so apart from the little pearls of wisdom above another one is - seek out speaking opportunities - and put as much effort into the ones that don't pay you as the ones that do!