The above photograph was taken at Sarah's wedding in 2012 so a chance meeting led to all the major protagonists meeting again nearly 5 years later at a wedding.

In fact, next Friday, 21 November I shall be attending the last London lunch for 2014. Attending these local meetings a full-time Internet marketers is an interesting experience partly because they talk about nothing but making a living.

They share everything they do, all you have to do is ask they held nothing back but, what they do is rarely what is taught.

Anyway about two years ago I had come to London for the day for the London lunch and normally I would stay till the death when usually myself, Martin, Jo, Sarah, Dave and a few stragglers go out for pizza and finish about 11 o'clock and then I go to the airport for my 1 AM departure.

On this occasion I had to go to Tooting Broadway because I wanted a special type of pan used for Indian cooking and I had a friend who lived in nearby Colliers Wood.

Over lunch I had Sarah on one side and a guy called Sasha on the other. Sasha was telling us, he owned a search engine optimization business and Sarah was saying that she worked as a local consultant as well.

I said I've never done anything like that! Never thinking that within three hours I would've had to create and start that very same business from nothing.

How did that come about?

While more or less it came about because I was an idiot! I had travelled that morning from Heathrow to the Strand with an oyster card which is a prepaid card on London transport. I had £100 in cash from my last visit and I had used that money to pay for drinks and lunch which it just about covered in central London at that time.

I have jumped on the tube or Metro's to Tooting Broadway again using my card and went to buy this pan. By this time I am out of cash about from about five dollars so I pull up my credit card and look at it in horror as it was for an account I held in Gibraltar.

So there I am, in London, 1500 miles from home with no cash and no way of getting any. I had a bit of a panic moment and then practicalities took over I and thought what am I going to do?

I went into the nearest restaurant and ordered a cup of coffee, knowing it was going to make no difference to my depleted finances. While I was mulling over what to do I was thinking of Sarah's comment that lunchtime when she said I don't know why you don't do SEO in Spain you know as much about it as anyone else and there is hardly anyone doing it.

So I asked the manager if you would be interested in paying for someone to improve the search engine rankings. He said can you do SMS texting and I said of course when did you want me to start and he said immediately.

There were two problems here the first being my laptop was in Malaga AND I could not build a site on my phone. The second problem the only thing I knew about SMS was from Sasha who had mentioned it earlier, the London lunch which was beginning to feel a lifetime away.

So the first thing I did was Google SMS texting and thought yes no problem I can outsource that. So thinking on my feet and knowing I had to get back to the airport and eat, I said to the manager I would start now if he had a laptop. I also said I would start him as my first client in the area for a discounted price of £50 if he signed up now.

So we shook hands on the terms, he went to get the laptop I hurriedly phoned Sarah who fortunately was still with Sasha and he said he would email me a blank contract. I looked in my Namecheap folder and found out that I owned eating out in London.

So that was handy I had the domain. Raj the business owner brought out his laptop, I got to work putting up his website which didn't take more than 20 minutes because I had one prototype all set up ready with plug-ins etc.

I took about 10 photographs of his restaurant on my iPhone and created the first entry in my local directory.

Having your back against the wall is really a typical way it forces most people can take action it makes them come out of their comfort zone. I was talking to my friend Dennis Becker the other day he is the famous the five Buck guy and he said that's how he started out of desperation!

Having put the first restaurant up it did occur to me how easy it was. Okay possibly I had under sold it, in fact one could say in London I definitely undersold it, but it definitely did what he said on the tin, it got me back to the airport and it fed me.

Of course the next day when I was reflecting how simple this was I realized that the key to success here was not actually the Internet it was the face-to-face meeting. Raj didn't seem to think it odd I'd gone out to hustle for business without a laptop!

He merely had a problem and I was there to solve it the deal was clinched as a direct result of the face-to-face meeting. I would not of been able to pull that deal off over the phone.

The next time I went back to the London lunch I actually went back to Tooting and signed up seven more restaurants it was easy. In fact as the song says it was like taking candy from a baby.

It didn't take me longer than 15 minutes in any one of them. The plan was to keep it going indefinitely as it wiped its own bottom, but eventually I realized the domain was worth more.

Okay, that business model may have been done to death in the last 18 months I don't know I have not looked at it but I do know several people in the last few weeks who have charged a fee for putting up a fanpage on Facebook and also for building websites.

Again this business has been secured by talking to people it's not been secured by putting an ad on craigslist. This business could of course be expanded by advertisements but it can only be started by face-to-face negotiation.