Billericay Business Networking Blog – 24th Feb 2014

Chairman’s Business Networking Blog Tuesday 25th February 2014.

19 members present with apologies for absence from Brian Painter, Adam Hotson and Mark Waller.

It was an inauspicious start, the Leadership Team introduced themselves rather unsuccessfully to the meeting.

Jim-you’re the Meetings Committee Chairman not secretary.
Anne – you are the events co-ordinator. Social Secretary was close but it took you far too long to remember.
Scott-I know everybody does know who you are but you weren’t quite sure how to describe what you did.
Nige-you got closest but I was slightly distracted by the long tube or hose lying beside you, although more of that later.

Now I know you can all do better next time and as if to illustrate this Nige promptly delivered an excellent Ed Slot. The theme was the importance of every member being alive to the opportunities that will arise during the week to locate potential new members so that our group continues to grow. It neatly coincided with my suggestion that each week we will announce one particular vacant category for us all to focus on. If you ensnare a likely victim announce it on the group email. Don’t be shy about getting more than one along.

This week it’s a general insurance broker! What! Another person involved with insurance I hear you say…. Yes quite correct. Go out there and see what you can do for next week.

So to the 60 second round.

Ian Douglas was first up and claimed that he would go anywhere in Britain, whilst Jim Henshaw was willing to provide all types of protection insurance policies but doesn’t do pet insurance. Robert Osborne effectively told us he would go anywhere in the mortgage market including commercial and Fred Harcourt said he would talk to almost anyone. Mark Heath will apparently polish anything, from small domestic to large and Iain Martin declared his ability to consolidate all your remote controls into one.
So the above contributors gave me a theme of members willing to go anywhere, do anything, or pull anything together.

It was others that produced the more esoteric; Nige Kirby declared he had a long one, produced a long one and told of how effectively use his long probe. Redolent with innuendo it reminded me of his declaration from last week that he could fix anything with as pipe in it. This fitted in nicely with Paul Lefever’s concerns that our fuse boards were protected from when we plug in “little devices” and Vivienne Nwalema once again puzzled me with her “logistic speak”. I think I feel a 1 2 1 coming on.

It was left to Peter Hall to try and cram in all of his thanks to various members for their contribution either past or future and promptly won the Oscar.

All-in-all, an interesting 60 second round which was then followed by an equally interesting 10 minute presentation. Scott Griffiths inevitably, in conjunction with his business, is the master of technology and he treated us all to a presentation on the television screen that the more luddite of us can only dream of. A very effective 10 minutes indeed. It also had the added benefit of getting us all up from our seats and over to a different part of the room which only aided the digestion.

The referrals round saw a continued improvement in numbers of referrals passed and the winner of the speakers prize will apparently be able to tailor it to his own benefit which is something of a service that Scott was offering in his 10 minute slot anyway.

Hugo Heij has a very cheerful and pleasant demeanour, he very generously congratulated Great Britain on their sterling efforts on the ski slopes and the superb achievements of 4 medals at the Winter Olympics. He was still smiling and exuding bonhomie when he finally declared that he thought it compared very favourably with Holland’s efforts…24 medals. For heaven’s sake! Holland is completely flat. In games that focus on downhill racing; bob sleigh, skeleton and lots of other events that involve you going downhill at speed, how the hell do they do it!

I look forward to seeing you all next week. I can’t however go without referring you to last week’s Blog and despite his absence relaxing in the Canary Islands I believe Mark Waller managed a posting today on last week’s Blog. It remains to be seen whether he will keep up with things from afar and post on this Blog.

“to friends across the water…”