Brentwood Business Networking meeting 24th October

Chairman’s Blog Thursday 24th October 2013.

21 in attendance including 2 guests Adam Harvey – Painter and Decorator and Peter Farrell – Graphic Designer.

This week’s meeting was very much the Scott Griffiths show for reasons that will become apparent as we travel further into this Blog.

Having presented the current performance league results he was also introduced to deliver the Education Slot. He talked of hunters and farmers, explained the importance of being one of the later and held out the seductive promise of owning a Land Rover as the ultimate reward. A useful reminder to us all that regular attendance and the cultivating of personal relationships is the basis of successful networking in our group and perhaps a reason for our success.

The 60 second round was notable for Chris Sadler having his arm in a sling. He had suffered an injury which will prevent him from working for some weeks and accordingly, instead of pitching for business he couldn’t carry out, he gave us a blow by blow account of the nature of the injury, how it was sustained and what they had to do to cut out whatever it was struck in his hand. Fortunately everybody had finished their breakfast. We all wish Chris a speedy recovery.

Generally the contributions this week were solid rather than inspiring with one or two noticeable exceptions.

Graham Thurston is “doing” religion again. With a couple of churches behind him, a house dedicated to religious purposes with a different religion in each room. This seemed to be the focus of his attention this week.

Brian Painter had an articulate lorry driver who obviously told him in the clearest of terms how he could not drive over 40 miles an hour. Brian cured him of that. He is looking for other more nervous drivers so that he can make our motorways completely unsafe.

John Probert gave us 60 seconds in verse comparing his Sat Nav to his wife; it is with sadness that this aspiring Bard should now be leaving us. John has been a good member and we wish him well in the future. Ed Crocker also managed to surprise us all with another journey through inaptly named towns of Great Britain and abroad. He will no doubt be leaving the detail of his account either in a comment to this Blog or elsewhere on the Web Site.

Ed and John nearly won the Oscar but pride of place went to Dean Caldon who explained how he vetted applicants in both the selling and letting side of his business.

If any of us are slightly depressed by the onset of Winter then Richard Reed always provides us with the cheer that a good holiday can bring. This week it was City Breaks in Italy which have the added advantage of being taken over a relatively short period of time thus enabling you to patronise Richard’s services without missing your weekly EBF Meeting.

Richard Reed’s next contribution to the meeting was to report on the Synergy Team Business to Consumer Meeting that took place earlier in the week. The final stages of preparation and distribution of the group leaflet means they will probably hit the streets of Brentwood and Billericay in the middle of November. A great effort by Richard in pulling together the various parties and liaising with Dawn over finalising this most recent piece of promotion for the group and certain of its members.

The 10 minute round was a continuation of the Scott Griffiths show. He used the projector to advertise his Lapland Letterbox but also explained how he uses the Web Site to monitor and run the business, the whole presentation was slightly reminiscent of Dave Gorman. It was a great advertisement for Scott and the quality of services that he can provide.

It was the referrals and testimonials round that lit up the meeting like a Christmas Tree. If we record £100,000 worth of business in any one month it is regarded as a very good month. We were very pleased with September where we recorded £89,000. With this week’s contributions and with a week still to go we have produced and recorded just in excess of £138,000 worth of business. This is an outstanding effort and a great illustration of the continued success of our group.

I mentioned one of our visitors, Peter Farrell as being a Graphic Designer. His purpose however in this meeting was to show us some prints and also an original Gainsborough. For those who stayed behind afterwards they were treated to interesting exhibits.

In our push for visitors and new members, you have got another week to bring your required visitor. For those who have not done so yet, please make every effort and for those who have why not bring another. I look forward to a meeting overflowing with visitors next week.