One of my favourite things to do is to give a presentation. 

I love public speaking. It fills me with energy and it's the crowd that feeds me with it. 

But I used to hate public speaking. 

In my first year of university, I had to present on a marketing project in front of the class - about 90 people - and I remember how nervous I was and how my nerves got the best of me. I was sweating, my voice was trembling, I couldn't look anybody in the eyes and I don't think I managed to transmit my message to my public. I was ashamed when it was all over. 

My initial reaction to this 'failure' was that I was never going to do public speaking again. I was terrified and I never wanted to experience this again. 

But after a couple of days, my attitude changed. I decided that I was going to overcome this fear and I was going to become a terrific public speaker. 

I don't know if I am a terrific public speaker but I can certainly say that I no longer loathe giving presentations in front of small and large groups, I love it and I welcome it. The more, the better. 

So how did I do it?

Over the years, I've been called a machine, a rocket, a powerhouse, a bulldog, and all of these with a positive connotation thanks to my endless energy and ability to get a lot of things done in a short amount of time. 

Many people have asked me how I do it and how I continue to do it consistently. 

I always say I have developed very good time management, organisation and planning skills over the years and use the right tools for me to help me. For example, my Google calendar is my project management tool that more or less owns my professional and personal lives.

I block time not just for my meetings but also for the things that I need to get done such as projects or certain action items as well my personal engagements like coffee or dinner meet-ups with friends, travel plans etc. I even colour code my calendar so just with a quick glance I know if my week or day is full of meetings or space to work on projects or a ton of personal engagements. 

Everything is in my calendar. If it's not there, it's not going to happen.

However, in addition to these skills, constantly being able to push forward and to do more comes with intrinsic motivation - basically the desire to do something. 

And that's based on inspiration.

I often get asked two questions: 

• How did you manage to build your own brand? 
• What makes companies stand out in a blue ocean? 

To both of these questions, the answer in its simplest form is value. 

I began blogging in 2012 while I was still a student with a couple of important goals in mind: learn how to write better as I wanted to pursue a career in PR but was studying International Business, and share all the knowledge I was gathering with the world so that I can help others and by doing so, build an audience. 

Over time, I developed a pretty good readership, expanded my social networks, made tremendous connections and eventually became recognised as the person who invented Inbound PR that led to a book and a ton of speaking engagements. 

I did this by recognising the unique value I could provide to the market that was somehow not there - contributing my inbound marketing knowledge to the public relations practice. 

As for companies, I spent years in consulting

This is a guest post by my friend and colleague Sharen Murnaghan. 

There are two times a year when we deeply reflect on things: New Year's Eve and our birthday.

Typically, we reflect on what happened during the past year; what our plans or hopes are for the next year; what we accomplished in the past year; what were our failures and what were our successes.

August 18 was my birthday and it caused me to reflect on all these things and in particular to focus on successes.  

This was driven, I suppose, because I had recently watched Richard St. John’s Ted Talk on the 8 Secrets of Success. I even sent it to the WhatsApp group I share with my kids aspiring that they will watch it too and thus make them think about how they can become successful.  (Yes, I confess to being an ambitious mum!)

The Definition of Success vs. the Idea of Success

You have a great idea in your head and you really want to share it with the world. You think you should write a book because you feel like you're an expert in a certain field but you have no idea how to get started and what to do.

Writing a book sounds like such a complicated process and it'll probably take you years but you can't afford that because the world moves so fast. How do you make this happen?

Since I published my book in April, that's exactly what a lot of people ask me.

I run a learning session at HubSpot to answer those questions and as always, I don't want to hide this behind closed doors but I want to share it with the world. 

Instead of writing a nice, long post I thought it might be cooler to record a video where I go through the slides I used at HubSpot for that learning session. 

I cover 3 things:

Disclaimer: By no means do I claim to be an expert on writing and publishing books. I simply want to share with you my experience and what I've learned while I was going through this process.

How I Wrote a Book in 2 Months [Video]