Entrepreneurial challenges: 26 minutes and counting

26 minutes- that's how long you've got with me. Get on with it

The guy facing me couldn't have been any blunter. On one level I understood his impatience. He was a busy, successful entrepreneur. On another level I wondered why I'd shown up.

I'd done my homework about him and shown up with an agreed list of questions. You know that Im always open to learning from people more successful than me. But at that point I had to keep my nerve and think how I could make the best use of the time.

So I said again that I wanted to learn how he'd created his success.. At which point he pushed a large book across his desk and said "You can learn everything from my book."

I did persist and I did get my 26 minutes but you know what, the lessons I learned from that particular entrepreneur were probably not the ones that he wanted me to learn.

You see that if someone had taken the trouble to cross the Atlantic and chosen me from a list of dozens of entrepreneurs, I know that I'd have taken the trouble to allocate them proper time and meet them with a different attitude.

Not just because I love to talk about being an entrepreneur, but because I know I couldn't ever get better PR. We're taught aren't we that if we do well you may not hear about it from clients. But if you screw up then it's likely 15 people will tell all their friends about your mistakes.

Confidentiality dictates I can't pass on his name but he certainly isn't on my list of people to mention in my new book Formula for Success featuring some of the people I met on my trip to LA. And I definitely won't be recommending him as a go to guy for people I lead on the Entrepreneurial Business programme to LA.

Somewhere down the line, he will lose out on business he might have done if he'd showed commonsense and some courtesy to me.

Sharon