On Monday night I spent a wonderful evening at the Fallen Angel Hotel and Restaurant in Durham. In April I was very excited to be accepted as part of the Entrepreneurs' Forum emerging talent pool and I have since been very fortunate to attend four great events and Monday's dinner was no exception. The evening started of with a tour from John Marshall round his recently opened hotel. The rooms were fabulous and John had given a lot of thought and attention to detail in every room. John delivered an inspirational speech at dinner and Simon Heptinstall chaired the evening brilliantly. The obvious rapport between these two men whose family businesses had been leaders in the North East for many years made for a really entertaining discussion.

It was really comforting to hear John's experiences of occasions where he jumped in feet first thinking that if it is truly a good idea you'll know pretty early on. This resonated with my own experiences as this was the approach my partner and I adopted for our original idea. We had the idea and just got on with it and within six months we had more than 10,000 postgraduates using our website Graduate Junction.

John also has achieved many significant goals in althetics and cycling alongside his businesses and this was also very inspirational to me as I am still very passsionate about sport. I believe that taking part in sport alongside my academic studies from an early age has given me a number of skills which I try to enforce during these early experiences in business. I think it gives a good balance and a very good release for when things aren't going right and you need to be able to clear you head and return to the problem with a new perspective. John said that sport kept him sane and I very much believe sport is key.

To top off the whole evening, the food was amazing and it was particularly exciting to be around so many other people just starting out in business. As I said in a previous post, you never know when you will get a great insight that leads to your own success. I just hope that my own views and stories can inspire other people in the way that I have been.