As I sit here in yet another Heathrow hotel room, having stopped over to be fresh and ready for yet another days learning on this cold but sunny Sunday, it made me think back to a time when I didn't see the need for training, or so I thought.

I can remember being asked to go on many training events and just thinking, 'I haven't got time to go, why waste the money, what can they teach me anyway?' I was king of my castle, in charge of my own business; I made the rules, who could train me? How wrong I was...

One day I received an invite from a local solicitor that I had wanted to get in with commercially, to attend a networking event locally. It was at 6:30 in the morning! Oh crikey, what a time to network, do people really get up at that time I thought, but I decided to go, this was in 2005.

On reaching the business networking event I found a room of highly motivated business people looking to work together and prepared to meet every week at this unearthly hour to promote their businesses. They were prepared to share, discuss and help each other. WOW! I had never seen anything like this before, I was hooked.