I got off to a wobbly start for the first session, in May, leaving home without my phone or laptop (I blame the fact that my head was full of prep for the afternoon’s radio show!). This time, though, I’ve got meetings arranged and plenty of work to do in between – although I’m more than happy to break off from that to chat to new people.

If you fancy checking out this way of working, you can still book - and if you don’t book today but find yourself in the vicinity of the Park Inn, Thurrock, between 10AM and 3PM tomorrow, why not drop in? If you do, come and talk to me. You can’t miss me – I’m the one with the large black Labrador at her feet. Merlin (if you don’t know him) is a guide dog-turned-local radio star and a highly experienced networker.

I wasn’t trying to be clever – I think in pictures and that was the picture which kept coming to mind. (The fact that someone who works primarily with sound, and has a guide dog, thinks in pictures may seem a bit odd to you, but that’s another story!). Anyway, it rang a few bells with the audience on the night.

As time went on, others started asking me about putting some podcasts together to help people at different stages of business – start-up, expansion etc – and eventually the two ideas came together (or should that be “collided”?) shortly after 5:00am last Friday, 6th November 2009 and “The Savvy Business Mountain Guides” were born. I’d already written an ebook, on an aspect of law for non-lawyers but this time, I thought, I could do something a bit different and combine the book with some audio and audio-visual material so that contributors can, literally, speak for themselves. I’ve run it past several people and so far the response has been fantastic – what do you think? Constructive criticism is as good as enthusiasm – so let me know.

It’s a major project, which I must be mad to take on at this stage in my own business life – but then, as I said to a fellow business author last week (who is in the process of completing her second book) – “You don’t have to be bonkers to go into business – but it certainly helps! The trick is to find the method in your madness, so you can infect other people with it”.

I’m aiming to get the first book launched within the year. Over the coming months, I’ll keep you up to speed with how it’s going, who I’m talking to and, no doubt, what I’m learning from the exercise. If I can work out how to upload multimedia material here, I’ll do some of that by way of audio and perhaps even some video.

If you want to get involved, email me at sherie@savvybc.com.