As soon as I knew that Hospitality wasn't the vocation I was looking for, I decided that I needed to take myself away for a few days and have a good old think about my future.

That's not something which I'd done too much of in the past.  I've been very lucky throughout my working life in working in environments which have been generally very enjoyable, reasonably well paid and, in the main, pleasant places to be.

I've been relatively successful in whatever I have done, but I was now looking for something which I really wanted to do, rather than something which I could do.  It's a subtle difference between those two things, but it's that difference which I was looking for.

I'm not saying that the things I had done previoiusly weren't challenging, interesting or worthwhile, but they didn't set my heart on fire or pass what I came to call 'the dinner party conversation' test.  During those last few months at Fujitsu, when doom and gloom was all around, one of my colleagues was telling me of a dinner party he was at where he was sat next to a man he'd never met before.  After the usual pleasantries they eventually got around to talking about the jobs which they did.  The man was the musical director of the Royal Marine's Band and he had lots of stories about the various events and places he'd been to.  It all sounded very exciting.  Of course when my friend was asked what he did, selling training courses didn't really cut the mustard.

Now I'm not trying to say that one should have a job which impresses people at dinner parties, but inevitably if the job has a bit of excitement about it, it's going to hold one's interest and enthusiasm a little more than the usual run-of-the-mill kind of job.

So I took myself away to Nice, in France, for 5 days and just spent some time alone, pondering what it was I should try to do.

Nice is a lovely town on the Southern coast of France, very close to Monaco.  Like a lot of places on that coastline, it has more than the usual number of wealthy residents, with a beautiful marina full of some very expensive yacht's and an airport with more than it's fair share of private aircraft coming and going.

You may remember from my previous sections that I used to fly my own airplane, for about 12 years or so, and travel and aviation in paricular have always been passions for me.  You only have to ask any of my friends who have travelled on aircraft with me how tediously boring and predictable I can be around all things aviation.  If I don't get the window seat, I'm not a happy bunny at all !!

In Nice there were numerous brokers who were advertising expensive boats for people to charter and I wondered if the same service was available for people to charter private aircraft.  Clearly I didn't own any aircraft, but that wasn't the point.  If I could represent the owners of these aircraft and find people to charter them for their trips, that would bring together the skills I had in both selling and dealing with people, as well as feeding my passion for aviation related things.

So that sounded like a plan.  I had to check it out when I got back to the UK, but at least I had started on a road which might have some promise.

So, I came back to the UK and went to visit a number of airline's and aircraft operators around London.  To my great surprise, not only were there people called aircraft brokers, sourcing various aircraft for all kinds of people and companies, but the airlines were extremely positive and welcoming towards me and encouraged me to go find some customers and they would be very happy to let me use their aircraft.

Sounds easy doesn't it?  Well, in January 2004 I started to make my first phone calls to prospective clients.  I still live in West London, where there are lots of major music, film, entertainment and sports organisations who I thought must use private aircraft to transport their very important and highly paid 'starts' around.  And after a number of phone calls I found out that they do use private aircraft for this, but of course they already have brokers to get their aircraft, or they do it themselves, or they even have their own aircraft, so my initial enthusiasm was taking a bit of a hammering and perhaps this wasn't going to be quite as straightforward as I thought.

Well to cut a very long story short, I spent the first year calling lots and lots of organisations, had lots and lots of opportunities which I made proposals for and learnt a huge amount every time I submitted a proposal, but ultimately I didn't get any business at all.

At the start of the second year I submitted an absolutley HUGE proposal to a car company who were doing a massive launch promotion all across Europe.  I put a lot of work into it and when I didn't get the business I decided that I'd better think seriously about whether this will ever work and perhaps I should put it on the 'back burner' for a while and think about getting 'a proper job' again.  I didn't really want to admit defeat, but living in London is an expensive business and my funds were starting to get a little low.

Well in the way that these things work out, just as I was about to admit defeat, I got some business from a major company.  They wanted to take a bunch of journalists to the South of France (how funny is that) for the day and they would like me to arrange the aircraft and go with them to make sure it all went smoothly!  So I did of course !

And that was the start.  It all went very well and, in the way that these things do, that first job led to another.  A recomendation from that client led to another client and so the game goes on.

At the time of writing I'm now just about to start the third year.  It would be wrong at this stage to say that I have a predictable stable business, but what I can say is that I have a few very good clients who are kind enough to continue to use me to source all kinds of aircraft and I find it all very exciting.

Messing about with some very exclusive aircraft of all sizes from little business jets to Jumbo's, often accompanying them on their trips, really does it for me and I can honestly say that, so far, it's just great fun.  It amuses me intensley that I can have such a good time finding and organising aircraft for some lovely people, using exclusive areas of airports whilst getting paid for doing it and if I can consolidate the business in this third year, I'll be a very happy boy indeed.