FORMER air hostess Jenny Esau is managing director of Wirral-based Credit Management Group UK, which offers companies outsourced credit control services. She lives in Port Sunlight with her partner, Lee.

This is an account of her day.

5.30am: Wake up early as I have BNI (networking group) this morning. I look after a couple of groups so I go to at least two meetings a week. BNI has helped me greatly with my business, not just getting business but also from a personal development point of view.

9.30am: Back to the office. Respond to emails and go through any issues. Review all outsourcing clients’ accounts.

We provide a credit control outsourcing service where we call our client’s customers as if we are them. We find our clients love this service as we take the credit control headache away from them. We believe we are very effective, and they get paid quickly.

10am: Speak to the web developers. We are launching our online credit management toolkit at the moment, so there are many tweaks to do to the site as we go through user testing.

Noon: Run through our next training course to see take-up and make any adjustments we want to make with the content. Straight after lunch, if I’m not networking, I tend to work on projects I am delivering to clients.

As part of our consultancy service, we go through our clients’ “order to cash” process and systems to improve them and then coach the relevant people.

The sole aim of the consultancy is to ensure our clients collect payment for their invoices quickly and help them reduce their exposure to bad debt. This is so important in today’s economic climate.

Many smaller businesses are so sales-focused that they forget they need to make sure they will be paid for the sale, too.

2pm: A meeting with Liverpool Chamber of Commerce. We are discussing working together with our Online Credit Management Toolkit.

5.30pm: Try to get to the gym at least three times a week, but must confess, I don’t always make it.

7pm: I arrive back home. Sometimes my partner, Lee, might have cooked a nice tea for us. I put my feet up and watch the television. Sometimes I will go networking in the early evening, but not usually if I had an early start.

I also deliver presentations for business organisations some evenings.

We often have new start-up forums where we deliver a mini- training session to educate businesses about the pitfalls of extending credit to customers.

10pm: Off to bed. I usually read fiction before going to sleep as I find it helps me switch off.