Well, we made it back in one piece, without a hangover and full of plans for next year.  My old Porsche did us proud not missing a beat there and back and returning a respectable 24 miles per gallon, not bad for a 27 year old mota!  Dave, our Creative Director, was happy to be a last minute stand in as my arranged passenger Ashley had to bail at the last minute due to work commitments - now there's someone who's really gutted now.  

Our journey took us on the road to Porstmouth at 3am on Friday morning leaving plenty of time to catch the 7am to Caen.  We booked the "fast" ferry which was great, three hours instead of six and then only a couple of hours to Le Mans on the other side of the channel.  As ever the journey is a real treat with the atmosphere building the closer you get and the roads full of Brits in cool cars.

Please click below to read more of the weekend...

My best mate Dr Jason Cope is a lecturer in Entrepreneurship at the University of Strathclyde.  He studies and teaches the fascinating subject of how people run businesses, and is a very well respected academic in this field worldwide. We have spent many hours discussing the ups and downs of business and how it effects the lives of small business owners like myself.

It was early in January when Jason phoned and asked me if I'd be able to come and talk to 200 of his students about my thoughts on running a small business.  My initial reaction was "you must be bloody joking" as my experience of giving lectures amounts to a best mans speech and telling my kids to keep the noise down.  I also didn't think my limited experience would warrant a lecture, how would I fill 40 minutes?  However, after talking it through with my wife Abby, I decided I ought to try and push myself out of my comfort zone and give it a whirl, what's the worst that could happen (humiliation in front of 200 mocking students, letting my best mate down, spiralling into a hole of insecurity and depression)?

The thought of it made me feel really nervous, so I thought I ought to do a bit of research into public speaking to see if I could get some inspiration.  As good fortune would have it Peter Roper the President of the Professional Speakers Association was giving a talk about public speaking the week before I had to go to Glasgow so I went along to see if he could help me.  Peter is a great speaker (obviously) and in the hour and a half that I listened to him he taught some great tips and I started to feel I could get away with the 40 minutes I'd been asked to do.  I think my favourite tip was the one where he said when you first step up, clench your butt cheeks as tight as you can because if they are tense, your throat won't be and you won't dry up!

So, I flew up to Glasgow the night before and met up with the good doctor for a few drinks and a great bit of tucker.  Nothing like a good night out to calm the nerves and the following morning we had a Glaswegian fry up to ease the fuzzy heads - great!  Abby is a TFT (Though Field Therapy) practitioner or "tapping" as it's more commonly known.  This involves a series of tapping sequences that can be used for all sorts of things such as phobias, nerves and even slimming (made popular of late by Paul McKenna).  She armed me with a sequence for nerves and it calmed me down a treat, not a touch of nerves, amazing!

The talk went down pretty well I think.  I didn't notice anyone nod off (pretty good for a bunch of students on a Friday morning) and at the end I had a fair few waiting to talk to me and ask me questions.  I have to say, I can really see the appeal of both speaking and imparting my experiences on to students.  I wouldn't say I'm now opening the diary for further engagements but it feels good to know I've given it a whirl and hope the students got something from it too.

For more information about Entrepreneurship go to:

http://www.strath.ac.uk/huntercentre/

For more information on Dr Jason Cope go to:

http://www.strath.ac.uk/huntercentre