My review of my first "London Lunch"

I was looking forward to going to Las Vegas for a workshop and seminar organised by Alex Jeffreys last week, but the "day job" client had me in Singapore for two weeks after Christmas, and they want me to be back in the UK for two weeks, and then in the US for five or six weeks.

This has meant that I had to can Vegas - which was a little gutting, but I also want to spend some quality time at home with the better half. Traveling with work sounds fantastic, but when you're doing up to 70 hours a week and only seeing the inside of a hotel room and office, living out of a suitcase soon loses its appeal, trust me!

Anyway, I had the chance of swapping Vegas with London, and went along to one of Martin Avis's "London Lunches" on Friday. A fantastic three course meal in a posh hotel in London, at a very good price... Surrounded by real people all at various stages of their Internet Marketing journeys.

It was great to converse and meet such a varied group of people - I got talking to Paul Shepherd, a guy with an IT background like myself who's already let the corporate world behind (as I plan to) introduced himself almost as soon as I had arrived. This was his third London Lunch, and he helped me break the ice and made me feel very welcome.

We then briefly chatted with Nicola Cairncross- she was obviously very successful (Paul said in Wealth Management, one of the area's he's interested in along with Personal Development). Nicola said shared a golden nugget that I remember Alex Jeffreys sharing with us in his training modules... Even if she was to go bankrupt tomorrow, she could get everything back again fairly rapidly because of what she's learned and what she knows.... In today's climate, almost anyone can end up losing everything - and whilst everything physical can be taken away from you, the skills and knowledge up top can't.

We moved through for lunch, and Paul and I sat on one of the back tables. I like to be able to see everything, and not have my back turned to anyone. I like to observe and get the feel for things.

We were then joined by Glenn Leader - someone Paul has met at previous lunches. Glenn was another IT guy, but he's been fortunate enough to go "full time" in IM a good five years ago or so now. Glenn's story was one of inspiration - he's a programmer and has written various applications (such as ArtiFact) and systems to perform keyword research, automated blogging tools and article generation. He came to a fork in his day job life, and was lucky enough to generate more than he did in a year in a short space of time through one of his products, and then found IM'ing through marketing his products.

After lunch there were giveaways of various products - some created by those in attendance, others had been bought or reviewed by Martin Avis. One of the names pulled out of the hat was Lee McIntyre, who unfortunately wasn't in attendance as I've heard a lot about him and would love to meet him - but it shows that there are people at all stages from beginner right up to the top that attend these lunches - and everyone freely mingles.

I spent some time chatting to Senh - another marketer who seems at a similar stage to myself, and also met Sarah Staar. Sarah runs a video production company (covering loads of IM events), as well as being a successful marketer. She gives away a video marketing course (which I'm going to check out and if you want to, see here) as well as running MoneyMakersTV.com.

I met many other great people - Pearson, Gina, Inge, another Ian... And many more (sorry to those whose names I've forgotten; it's not intentional! I'm going to use the excuse that Martin used at the lunch, too much wine!).

From chatting to people I learned loads - there were lots of nuggets I picked up on, and also learned that although I'm on the starting blocks of Internet Marketing, I'd got bits that I could share too. I showed some other attendees some things that I found out with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Google Search Based Keyword Tool. I also was able to share the existance of Omgili.com - a search engine to find conversations.

I was able to learn about great keyword and market analysis services from ThemeZoom.com. I found out about the fantastic blog at StevePavlina.com. I made real contacts. I got asked if I'd be willing to help and work with other marketers for mutual benefit....

In short this had to be the best value £30 I've spent in a long time... A meal, great company and a lot learned, new contacts made.... More importantly it was with real people, all either successful Internet Marketers - or moving towards being in that position. All passionate, all learning and all helping each other.

If you're UK based and are able to get to London, I think the next Lunch is going to be the last Friday in March.... Maybe I'll see you there? I can definitely recommend it!