Last night I took part in Made It, a new lecture series here in Dublin which has sold out 3 out of 3 events so far and brings speakers from different industries together to talk about how they started their projects from scratch. This month saw four of us talking about starting our small Irish businesses from home.

With my presentation, I really wanted to drive home the point that you don't have to know absolutely everything when you first start out. You'll learn stuff as you go along and there are always going to be people there to help you out. If you are enthusiastic and people see how hard you're working, they generally will want to see you succeed and are happy to help you do that.

I was so impressed with my fellow co-presenters. Anne from Rothar talked about starting a business with a social mission on a shoe-string budget. Paolo from Homestay discussed figuring out what your ambitions are for your business and asking people to put their money where their mouths are to determine whether or not you have a good product. And Kevin from Gruel Guerrilla / News of the Curd talked about using your business to help other local businesses and how much fun he's had bringing complete strangers into his home week after week for the past 2 years.

We got some great questions from the audience regarding starting up. I wish I had time to sit down with people to talk about their business ideas. I love fleshing out ideas with people and helping them with their social media and communications. If you were at Made It or are a new small business/ blog in need of advice, do feel free to get in touch with me at hello@sexsiopa.ie. I'm happy to help.

Huge, massive, gigantic, dinosaur-sized thanks to the awesome ladies of Made it - Emily, Lucy, Mary, Zoe and Aoife for having me down to speak. It was one of the most organised, smoothly run events I've ever had the pleasure to participate in. You guys are badasses!