Chairman’s Blog – Meeting Thursday 21st March 2012
A disappointing turnout, 21 members, slightly alleviated by two visitors; Jamie Adelizzi, offspring of the Suprema magnet Michael, who is on work experience, therefore also on breakfast experience and Ed Crocker operations manager of Nationwide Same Day Couriers, which apparently “does exactly what it says on the tin”. Ed expressed an interest in joining and an intention of coming to the next meeting which was very good news.
David Plumley delivered the Ed slot reminding us of our obligations in the 60 second round. He must have taken his own advice seriously because he won the Oscar… but I am getting ahead of myself!
The newly located screen and projector, being just at the end of the tables, will provide an interesting challenge to the likes of Scott Griffiths in presentations of various matters to the assembled meeting. Apparently, it will be shortly going wireless… watch this space.
Finally to the 60 second round, which was as entertaining and informative as ever.
Marcelle was promoting her “speed gems” service. We now know that if we, or any of our friends, suddenly decide to get married next week Marcelle can oblige with an engagement or wedding ring in very short order.
Richard Reed quoted Mark Twain and then a price of £15.99 for a tour of Vietnam. I have referral for you Richard, your potential client’s name is Huckleberry Finn.
If Marcelle was talking about falling in love so quickly that you got married on a week’s notice, Kevin Brooks described how Alan Shaw sent him on a job and he was sent to a studio flat where the “roof moved for him”.
Graham Wright has lots more stock but his serviette suffered whilst he explained all of this.
I am now starting to believe it! For the third week running Jason has been offering to lend money. Its Barclays you work for Jason, not Wonga. But I am definitely going to look round for a client to put him to the test.
No sooner do I join Terry Maylin but he stands up and offers free advice…disappointing.
Alan Shaw tantalised us before his 10 minute slot with how he was in the course of advising on turning the entrance to a leisure centre into a conference facility. As my old granny would have said, “what will they think of next”.
Kevin Radford regaled us with his successes at Cheltenham last week including chatting up Zara Philips; if he gets a referral from her for Buckingham Palace it will make a nonsense of all of this other household insurance clients. Talk about hot tips! Whilst on the subject of hot tips, Brian Painter had been reading the Times of India, albiet on line, and declared himself to be a hot flasher. Tell us something we do not know Brian!
As explained earlier, David Plumley won the Oscar… by explaining why we should have passwords of at least 15 digits for our computers. For someone who uses the same 4 numbers in the same sequence for all of his credit cards, debit cards and passwords, I was left slightly bemused.
So the 60 second round ended.
The Power Group Report featured the Business to Consumer Meeting that Richard Reed reported to us upon it in some detail.
As befits the clients and customers that the Business to Consumer Group is targeting, a mass leaflet drop is being considered. Its design will be co-ordinated by Dawn and from the discussions that I was part of at the Power Group Meeting I think it will prove to be useful promotional tool. Whether this will apply to other groups remains to be seen and I have asked for it to be put on the agenda of the other two Power Groups for their next meeting.
It was left therefore to Alan Shaw to test out the new projector facility. He managed to orientate himself successfully once he had got a rather grumpy Pilgrim to move up a couple of seats and we then saw the new projector location in action.
The “Quite Interesting” information to come from his 10 minute presentation was that new builds and historic buildings get his juices flowing… Oh Dear! Paul Booth, standing in for Scott Griffiths as Meeting Secretary, produced the outstanding statistic, namely £95,665 worth of recorded business for last month, a great effort! In addition we are up to £29.554 recorded business for this month with £11,000 for this week. The referrals and testimonials round was steady if not spectacular.
Our Social Secretary, flushed from the effort of giving some free advice, has now given us a date for our diaries for the Thames Boat Trip and visit to the London Eye,24th April 2013. He reported a good response. Anyone else interested should get in touch with Terry by the beginning of next week so that he can finalise numbers. Watch for an email from him in relation to this.
Another beautifully sunny morning and an excellent meeting. Until next week.
The caption says “It was this big and I struggled with it for ages”.
A good meeting and a visitor interested in joining up.
I need to hastily say that the 10 night Vietnam trip was from £1,599pp (NOT £15.99)but the real gem of an offer was for a 7 night Maldives 5* “Ultra” All Inclusive option from £2,299pp – and this didn’t even get a mention – what’s a guy got to do??? Low turn out still didn’t stop this from being a very productive morning.
Caption actually reads: ” … and so, although the Keddies building was very heavy, I picked it up with my bare hands and moved it across 2 yards … so as to match my original plans … “
Another very productive meeting and an interesting presentation from Alan particularly regarding Keddies because I used to work in Southend as a lad and remember the original and now we are the brokers for the current owners so arrange the Insurance on the building.
Ps I have just noticed that on the home page where the banners move across the screen I am between Brian and Marcelle – i couldn’t think of a more comforting place to be.