Last week, for instance, I was talking to Danny Miles of Ability Gateway. The business springs from Danny’s unusual mix of skills – from life coaching to Blind Football – yes, really! What links those two apparently completely unrelated areas together is a desire to help a broad range of people take control of their lives and fulfil their potential. Obviously, the Blind Football side of things has particular relevance to blind and visually impaired people who have perhaps always been without their sight (or the bulk of it) and have never been involved in sport, or who have lost the sight more recently and think they have to lose their sporting hobbies with it.

Danny also wants to get involved with sports clubs, which might be inclined to overlook anyone who can’t play the game in the conventional way.

So how does that feed into life coaching, for individuals and businesses? Because at the heart of it all is the confidence to push the perceived parameters of possibility – which (as I was discussing at a meeting last Friday, with someone who has just read the Steve Jobs biography) is what links every entrepreneur there ever was, is or will be!

On that basis, there is a clear connection between last week’s and this week’s show, however far apart they might seem at face value.

This week, it’s all about women and enterprise. Next Thursday, I’m off to the inaugural CEWE conference – the Centre of Excellence for Women Entreprenneurs, established by the university of East London. I’ll be covering the event in detail on the radio on 24th November, so this week I want to set the scene.

You can listen on 97.8 FM if you’re in the Basildon and East Thurrock area, or online anywhere.

Although I won’t be around in person for next week’s show (because I’ll be at the conference), I will be there in spirit – with an amazing story that proves thae old adage: ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again!’

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.