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Here’s a top tip: When you’re due to meet someone in a coffee shop, arrive five minutes early and call them, saying: “Hi, I’m in the queue at Costas, what would you like me to get you?”
This way, if they say: “Oh, sorry, I’ve been held up. Can we meet some other time…” then (a) you haven’t wasted 20 minutes waiting for them and (b) you haven’t wasted the price of a coffee you wouldn’t have ordered if you hadn’t been meeting someone.
And (c) any disappointment you feel at your prospect not turning up is outweighed by the sense of extreme cleverness engendered by (a) and (b)!
This, in turn, means that you’re still feeling positive about the business and so, instead of sitting gloomily over a cappuccino you don’t want, you go out into the street to use up the extra time you now have in your diary by asking a likely person: “Hi, I’ve got a prize draw going, d’you want to have a go? You could win a car!”
Yesterday, the first person said: “No thank you” but the second person said “yes” and it turned out her husband pays £90 a month to BT – mostly for international calls which I could get him for nothing! She wants me to call him on Wednesday when he gets back from Hong Kong.
But that’s the way it went yesterday: Just before leaving for the proposed meeting at Costa’s, I was putting up the badminton net with the children when my phone rang: The voice on the other end said: “Hello, my brother-in-law gave me your card. Apparently you gave it to him in the street but he’s already a member of your club and he says I should join as well. How do that?”
So I when to see him and told him and he did join. In fact he even took the leap of faith by adding Broadband for the computer his grandchildren had given him which had been sitting unused in the spare bedroom.
And then, sometime in the afternoon, when I was back in town taking my eldest son to sort out his bank accounts (why does he have two?) he wanted to go to Smiths to buy the latest Eoin Colfer. That meant I had a choice to make: Either I could go in and mooch around the magazine rack or I could stay outside with my Win-a-Mini forms. Of course I chose the Win-a-Mini and two minutes later I was talking to two people who happened to live next door to each other – and now have an appointment for Friday.

It’s better to be five minutes early than one minute late. That’s what we teach on the company training course and as a company trainer I like to practise what I preach – but 35 minutes early??
Well, that’s when I pulled into the car park of the furniture showroom where I was due to meet my prospect in the coffee shop – and I knew I could not drink coffee for 35 minutes by myself. So I looked around for something profitable to do – and that was when I noticed a particular peculiarity: As far as the eye could see (and it can see a long way in an out-of-town retail park in East Anglia) there seemed to be nothing but other furniture showrooms… and leather sofa retailers… and bed emporia… and flooring warehouses … and bathroom specialists…
The place was a phenomenon. Ah well, it didn’t really matter. I stepped into the nearest one which happened to sell marble, granite, ceramic floor tiles, solid and laminate wood flooring… you get the picture.
“Hi, can you help me,” I said brightly to the young man behind the desk. “I’m looking for top salespeople who might like to increase their income and I wondered if you might be one of those.”
He looked interested but cagey – for which you can hardly blame him – and that led to a conversation. I forget exactly how it went but I do remember the first significant point he made: “It’s only my first week here.”
“Really? Did you work in another flooring store before or is this something of a change for you?”
He said: “I had my own flooring business but I lost it. I split up with my partner. We ran the business between us and she kept it.”
You can guess where this led us: The cost of setting up a new business… the ignominy of working for someone else for a weekly wage… how long it would take him to save up the price of starting up again for himself.
I slipped a piggy card across the counter: “Take a look at that. Which would you say is your Number One priority”.
He looked down the list and answered without hesitation: “Time with the family.” His family was now his little girl. He pulled out his phone with her picture.
Casually, as if the thought had just occurred, I mused: “You know I have something that you might like to take a look at. If I could show you a way to start your own business again – not for thousands of pounds but for just £199.75 – which would pay you enough to give you the time with your daughter that she needs with here Daddy at the same time as building up an inheritance for her future, would that be something that you might be interested in exploring further?
And the next moment we had a piece of paper out on the counter and he was poring over my diagrams of how the money worked.
Now, I have no idea whether he will watch the DVD and check out the website – or, indeed whether he really will come to our Open Evening next week and bring all his friends.
But what I do know is that sometimes my timing is perfect!

The training session at our new HQ in the Edgware Road finishes at 5.00 p.m. Our evening opportunity meeting starts at 7.30. It takes 25 minutes to drive between them – but you mustn’t arrive before 7.00 p.m. or you won’t be able to park.
These are the sort of logistical prolems which perplex the countryman up in London for the day.
With Maida Vale looming ever-larger on the horizon and the clock still refusing to get past 6.15, it was clear I was going to have to stop. Several times I attempted this – turning off the main road into a maze of residents’ parking. I could just see myself getting flushed into Marylebone Road like leaf down a drainpipe.
And then I saw a space. Well it wasn’t much of a space – even for a Mini. But then the car in front moved obligingly. The driver got out and looked – offering the helpful advice that since it was now after 6.30, I didn’t need to put any money in the machine.
Then he said: “What’s all this about, then,” gesturing at the Mini.
“It’s about money,” I said (I always say that). “Are you interested in money?”
Ten minutes later – still standing by the ticket machine – I knew this about him: He owned three convenience stores with several hundred customers ever day. His sister owned two solicitor’s practices. He didn’t take holidays. He would like to take holidays.
And he knew this about me: I am always looking out for successful business people who are willing to look at new business ideas. I could show him how to bolt on a separate income to his current business just by asking one simple question of everyone who goes into his shops.
Is it any surprise that he wants to talk to me again…
(and yes, of course I offered to take him to the opportunity meeting – and he’d have come if he hadn’t been due in Hendon at the same time).

They don’t have school fetes in Spain – at least not according to the 15-year-old Spanish student who is staying with us for a month this summer. So I took him round, explained about coconut shies and Punch and Judy (I invested Punch and Judy with all the significance of Shakespeare). But eventually he got bored with listening to my contribution to the African Drumming Workshop and wandered off. I headed for the Fire Engine.
Now, it is a fact that from the age of five I have wanted to be a fireman. Indeed in the dark days when I was broke and unemployed, I applied to be a retained firefighter (they never bothered to write back). So I went and moaned about all this to a very nice man looking after the fire engine.
It turned out he was a retained firefighter too – which means that being a hero was a little part-time thing for him. The rest of the time he had his own business supplying first aid kits to businesses.
I couldn’t help it; I asked him how that was going.
He gave me the same reply that everone else does: “Terrible.The recession’s making a big difference.
So I couldn’t really say anything else. I said: “I have a colleague who’s a retained firefighter – Keith Bassi. Do you know him?”
- amazingly the guy said he thought he did.
The upshot is that he’s looking at the website and I’m calling him on Monday – and, in the long run, that’s all that matters …

The two dried-up pieces of pizza flopped into the kitchen waste bin – joint victims of my new determination to be really, really helpful.
Unfortunately this only lasted as long as it took my wife to come in and ask what had happened to our son’s packed lunch.
The ensuing discussion about helpfulness could have left me feeling grumpy – if it hadn’t been for what happened last night: Browsing on Networkerplus, I discovered that “The Last Lecture” is available on YouTube. I had no idea it had ever been filmed. It was certainly my all-time favourite book.
If you don’t know about this phenomenon, search for Randy Pausch The Last Lecture. Believe me this is one of the most powerful stories you will ever experience and it certainly changes your view of the day ahead.
And today it did that for me. I put the pizza behind me and set out to do my wife a good turn by getting her balding tyres checked. But no sooner had the guy in the tyre centre started looking up delivery times for new ones than the phone rang. He then spent the next five minutes talking to someone else. Meanwhile it turned out I had left the car blocking the entrance. Would I move it? Would I have needed to move it if the guy hadn’t been talking to someone else for the last five minutes???
But I had a new view of the day. Of course I would move it.
And what goes around comes around: The van that needed to get into the tyre bay had a mobile phone number on the side. Instinctively I started to send a text but then I thought: “Why not go and talk to the driver? He’s probably gong to be hanging around as well – after all the tyre guy is still talking on the phone.”
So I went over and got started on the script I learned on Monday’s Advanced Leadership course.
And guess what, the driver said he was always ready to look at new business ideas.
In fact, what he said was: “Actually I was thinking of giving up the building game. There’s no money in it any more and quite honestly I’m fed up with the hassle.”
“So how soon will you be able to watch that?” I asked him, refusing to let go of the DVD until I had an answer.
“This afternoon, ” he said.

The little old lady cancelled at the last minute. They do that. Little old ladies are rarely open-minded.
So there I was fifteen miles from home and wondering what to do with myself for an hour.
A small voice in the back of my head announced: “Find someone else to talk to.”
I drove on and came to a dry cleaners. That would do.
“Hello, is this your business,” I said brightly to the girl behind the counter. Clearly it wasn’t.
She said so. She said the owners were in Colchester. Then a man in his 60s came in with “Entrepreneur” written all over him. It turned out he was the owner – or at least he was until the end of the week. He’d sold the business. He was retiring.
“That’s great,” I said, changing horses in mid-stride. “Is your pension big enough for all the things you want to do or would you be open to looking at a way to increase it. It would take me five minutes to show you. Want to see it?”
He was not sure. He had a draw-down pension whatever that may be. You could see the internal struggle going on: The dignified sceptic versus the successful businessman always open to new ideas.
I was very proud of the way I stuck to my guns. If he wanted to know any more about it, I would have to show him and that would take five minutes.
It was quite fun to have him wheedling away, too proud to ask for a presentation but too curious to leave it alone. In the end he said: “All right come round” and I walked round to the back of the building and into a huge hanger of a place with industrial washing machines dotted about in a somewhat haphazard fashion appropriate to a business which was now someone else’s problem.
I balanced my presenter on to of a spin dryer the size of car. We were there for an hour.
I would like to be able to say he joined but that wasn’t what happened.
What did happen was that I walked out with the phone number for his brother. Apparently his brother is good at spotting opportunities – and if he’s good enough for the brother, it would be good enough for my new friend too.
So I’m looking forward to helping them both get started. Who said that little old ladies are a waste of time?

Before I became a company trainer, I asked why anyone would want to volunteer. After all the money’s not that great, it takes a good deal of time – surely this was going to be detrimental to my business?
The senior trainer looked at me with that sort of patient expression one reserves for the dimmest child in the class.
“Imagine,” he said, “that you were delivering a training every week. How good would you become?”
What a very good point.
And today I was delivering a business training in Milton Keynes and my co-trainer started talking about the way the economy was affecting small printing businesses – all the ink is oil-based… and look what’s happening to the price of oil.
Now there was no particular connection between that comment the man I phoned from the bar afterwards. He was jut a name on my list – someone who had looked at my business three years ago and I’d offered to keep in touch – and guess what, as soon as I said hello and told him who was calling it was as if the conversation had never been interrupted.
Of course, it may have been that he had no idea who I was and was just busking it, but he did a good job. Then it went on like this:
Me: “I thought I’d give you a ring and see how the budget was going to affect you.”
“I was just watching it – the VAT doesn’t look good.”
“Yes – and I was thinking: A lot of my business partners these days are printers. Tell me, would you be open to looking at opening up another profit centre in your business?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, look at it this way: If someone comes to you; they’re opening up a new business and want some business cards. You could say: ‘Have you thought of having an Freephone number. That would increase your advertising response by 40%. What do you think they would say?”
Two minutes later he was getting his head round the idea of being paid every time that customer paid their electricity bill – month after month…”
So now he’s looking at the website and we’re going to talk as I drive home.

There was water all over the bathroom floor. The basin was leaking. I just knew this would happen on a Saturday.

This is your basic nightmare when you do Bed and Breakfast. Normally our little sideline is completely trouble free – ever since we moved the guests into the garage, christened it “The Studio” and told them what fun it would be to get their own breakfast.

But when you have water all over the bathroom floor, something has to be done about it – and fast.

I started calling plumbers. Fortunately I have a long list of plumbers – all those who looked at my business and turned it down because they didn’t have enough time. Now I rang them again, leaving desperate messages one after another…

Now, in order to ensure that readers’ stress levels do not get out of hand, I must tell you that the first one I called rang back within ten minutes, came round the fixed the leak. But that’s not the point of the story.

The point of the story is that I then ended up talking to all those plumbers who had looked at the business years ago and who I had now phoned in a blind panic. To a man, they called back. The conversations went something like this: “Thanks for getting back to me but I’ve found someone now. Yes, you panic don’t you… I expect you get that a lot.

“Actually, come to think of it, the last time we talked, do you remember what it was about? It was about you making money in your spare time. Tell me, are you in the same situation financially or did you find a way to increase your income?”

Of course, like every other traditional  business, they were feeling the effects of the recession. So I was able to say: “We’ve got an open evening in Ipswich on Monday, how do you fancy coming? Things have changed a lot since you last looked at it. For instance now we’re in partnership with Sainsbury’s and Boots and B&Q and Mothercare.”

The last time I did this, there was a silence on the other end of the line. Then: “What do you mean a partnership.”

So I did my three minute thing. I told him how we had 200 people in the club whose discounts were more than their bills so they paid nothing at all. I told him how most people now saved between  20% and 30%.

He was mesmerised – you can tell when someone is mesmerised. As it turns out he has a function to go to at his daughters’s school on Monday night. But he wanted me to send him something to look at .

Now I don’t know whether the plumber is going to join. But looking at my notes, I discover that he knows the company of old. He’s been a plumber for eight years and hates chasing the money. Moreover, he wants to spend more time playing golf and retire early…

Do you think it was fortuitous that the basin leaked?

What I’m wondering now is whether it would be ethical to invent a completely fictitious emergency with the fuse box and ring all the electricians who are still thinking about it… or a computer crash and ring IT specialists…

The possibilities are limitiless!

The Olympic athlete could have talked for Britain.
But then, that’s why we were there: To talk.
This was the annual schools learning project (what else would they have in a school?). It happens once a year: My friend the head of the English department gets about thirty children – year eight and nine pupils -together with ten grown ups who have lived “extraordinary lives” to see what the younger generation can learn from the older generation.
We had a best-selling author, a ground-breaking medical researcher, a holocaust survivor…
We also had me (and I sometimes wonder what I’m doing there) and we had the olympic athlete – and as I say, he could have talked for all of us.
I sat down with him at lunchtime (an excellent buffet which accounts for most of the funding) and he started telling me about his life – and did so at the same record-breaking speed which almost won him the gold medal.
And I sat there mesmerised. I’m 62 and I like to think I’ve been fairly busy but this guy seemed to have been in achievement overdrive. For instance how easy can it have been to be a black soldier in the British army in the 1970’s – and can you imagine what he must have gone through to rise to Regimental Sergeant Major?
We talked about goal-setting. We talked about “living life on purpose”… the appalling waste when people allow circumstances to dictate their future.
Oh, this was serious stuff over the sausage rolls.
And what was he doing now?
“I’m the student support manager at the High School,” he told me.
“You’re a teacher!” I said, unable to keep the exictement out of my voice – you can see where my mind was drifting: Here we had a high-achiever who was a world-class communicator and now worked as a teacher.
I couldn’t help myself: “Would you be open to looking at a way of making a second income alongside what you do already?”
It just came out. I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t supposed to be there in recruiting mode but, heck, this might benefit him. He asked me what I had in mind so I had to give him the one-minute presentation. That was only polite.
For a moment – probably for the first time – he was silent. Then he said: “Well I reckon I need to find £300,000 by 2020 if I’m going to be able to retire.”
So he’s got the DVD and he’s coming to our open evening in Ipswich on Monday.
And I’m sure he’ll be there: For one thing, this is someone who has made it a life’s work to do what he says he’s going to do.
Secondly, as I went round saying my goodbyes, he crushed my hand and winked: “See you on Monday.”

It was only a quick dash into town to get some bread while the children were at their after-school maths class. But it wasn’t going to take any longer if I gave out some piggy cards on the way.  I had shifted about 30 (only one person said “No thank you”) when I found myself walking next to a window cleaner – well, he had a step ladder and one of those king-size bum bags hanging off one side.

“Are you a window-cleaner?” I asked foolishly.

Actually it was very foolish because he said: “No I’m an intruder alarm fitter.”

“Ah well, never mind. Have a pink pig.”

“What’s this?” he asked.

“It’s about money. Are you interested in money?”

“Always interested in money.”

What happened next just goes to show that you never can tell: It transpired that he was about to take a course in how to trade the stock market. He and his friend had got fed up with waiting for their investments to earn them some money and decided they might as well gamble it. Do you think I had something that might interest him?

Then, just as I was about to pick up the children, Sue called. Sue is someone I last spoke to in January who wanted to leave it six months while she got her cleaning business started. I had left a message in the morning when I walked the dog, asking how things were going.

And do you know, she seemed really pleased I had taken an interest. She still wasn’t ready to start, of course: Her mother has been taken seriously ill and her daughter was doing her A levels. But she wants another call on August 1st. You never know how patient you’ll have to be in this business…

And so I went in to pick up the children and the Maths teacher looked at my badge: “I love the club”, it says – with a big red heart for “love”.

“This is your club,” she said. Needless to say I had told her about it years ago but her husband was always too busy. Now she said: “It’s growing then, this club? I keep hearing about it from other people.”

“Oh yes, it’s growing all right.”

“Well you must call my husband again. I’ll tell him to talk to you. We should be in this club.”