Brentwood Business Networking Blog 24th November

Chairman’s Business Networking Blog, Thursday 24^th November 2016. 

What it was a good turnout it is now becoming. An average turnout of 24 Members present.

David Plumley did his third instalment of “the importance of attendance”.  His upbeat Ed Slot emphasised not only the benefits of attendance but the long term benefits of being a member of our group.  An old photograph from the Brentwood Gazette of 8 years ago shows our group as it then was and apparently there were 11 members in that photograph who are still members of EBF.  We must be doing something right!!!

The 60 second round revealed one or two members who are doing interesting if not unusual things.

It started with Matt Barry and his infographics.  This means putting over information in a very visual way and his demonstration of this with his lap top gave an impression of the internalwall of a pyramid.  Hieroglyphics have been replaced by infographics.

Steve Roach told of approaches he had been making to try and get a Chinese connection for Phoenix FM.  As the Chinese are mad on snooker, Ronny O’Sullivan and Steve Davis were an attraction and things seemed to be looking good for our inscrutable member.

Tina Walker was trying to persuade us to get her referrals for doing Christmas shopping.  She was perhaps slightly encouraged with this flight of fancy by a promoter that she now works for and a flock of seagulls.

Stuart Smallcombe has been down on the farm where he realised that laying cables to link disparate farm buildings ran certain risks from the inevitable farm yard animals that tend to inhabit farm yards.  A “wireless bridge” appeared to be the answer.

Nikhil Shah showed off his talents with a series of photographs, before and after, of a mouth that initially looked hideous but finished up looking so good that when the final photograph was taken, the lucky owner of this transformed mouth managed a really big grin.

Surprising announcement of the round was Terry Maylin, suggesting that he preferred good interactions with his client from a satisfaction point of view to metaphorically giving his opponents a good kicking.  Unfortunatly I don’t think anybody believed him.

Today there were not too many sartorial matters worthy of comment but two things struck me.  Kevin Brooks is definitely  promoting the cardigan.  This weeks was slightly thicker than last weeks but it was defenatly a “cardi”

Jill Willis was missing this week.  I think she was disappointed at last week’s tweed turn out.  It’s fair to say that this week was not much better and therefore, from a garment point of view, she didn’t miss much.

Brian Painter was less harsh on us this week.  Although he was railing against smoking, he illustrated the terrible effects of smoking by pointing out that every year we need to replace 150,000  smokers from amongst the population.  If our Pilgrim continues enabling people to quit that number is likely to go up.

Downer of the round, but deserving of the Oscar, was Jo Jones.  She illustrated with various bags filled with different amounts of sugar how all the nice things that we eat at Christmas are likely to raise our sugar intake sky high, it was a well presented and illustrative 60 seconds.

After the 60 second round the Meeting Secretary’s Report confirmed 24 referrals and in excess of £19,500.00 worth of business recorded.  That means for this month we have recorded more than £100.000.00.

We went onwards from the 60 second round to the 10 minute presentation.  It was Carmel Jane’s turn and she used her time very effectively and very carefully aimed at instructing us exactly what sort of clientele she wanted  particularly with regard to schools.  She provided packs to many of the members that illustrated her talents in dealing with schools and their photography needs.  I suspect she will get some direct referrals arising from this well presented 10 minutes.

The referrals round that followed Carmel’s presentation showed lots of good business being passed and left us all with a very positive feeling at the end of the meeting.

I look forward to similar attendance next week