Name: Martin Tallent, Business Adviser Age: 43 +VAT

Employer: Business Link Berkshire and Wiltshire.

So what do you actually do?

Help small companies achieve their ambitions.

What do you hate most about your job?

The commute from Salisbury.

Do you think your colleagues like you?

Difficult question, but yes I think they do. I'm normally positive in and around the office, I make time for friends and colleagues and tend to know what is going on in their private and work lives.

What's the best of advice you have ever been given?

That would be from my first maths teacher, whose favourite phrase was "factorise, boy, factorise". It wasn't until years later that I realised what he was talking about. I always thought he was talking about maths, maybe he was, but factorising as in breaking problems down into all the little bits and dealing with them separately is an easy tool to use when confronted by issues that might initially seem insurmountable.

What's the best bit of gossip you have heard about yourself?

One of my clients told me that they call me the "bomb boy" because after having meetings with me, they felt that they had witnessed an explosion of new possibilities and that they were going to put the pieces back together in the right order.

What job did you want to do when you were young and why?

Anything to annoy my father, so I started racing motorcycles and working in the motorcycle industry.

If you could have a dream job what would it be?

I love cooking, sailing and travel. So perhaps being a chef on a private yacht.

What are your main hobbies?

Well that will be cooking, sailing and travel again. Can I say something about women at this point?

Greatest influence?

I think that has to be some of the ineffective and negative people that I have met. Which has made me all the more aware of how being positive and effective really does help the world go around.