This weeks blog kindly written by Toby Acton
With it being holiday season, we convened to a meeting with reduced numbers but lots of enthusiasm.
Scott Griffiths was chairing the meeting this week in Aidan’s absence and Terry Maylin was standing in for Scott as Meeting Secretary.
The Performance League
Good numbers in our performance league, with the three top performers being Terry Maylin, Toby Acton and Paul Corrigan currently in the lead.
Education Presentation
Jane Malyon gave an excellent Ed Slot about the importance of having people who inspire you, whether real or fictional. Indeed, she has been inspired by both the fictional sleuth Jessica Fletcher (of Murder, She Wrote” fame) and the real-life actress who played her – Dame Angela Lansbury
The 60 Second Round (90 seconds this weeeek!)
Given the reduced numbers this week, our substitute Chair advised that we would each get about 90 seconds each instead of 60 seconds to relate our tales about our business. We would also revert to his favourite method of each person nominating the next to take their turn – people hastily grabbed their notepad so they could keep track of who had spoken.
As Paul Corrigan won the Oscar last week, he was now ready to judge the 90-ish second round and started by telling us about his three rules in business, keeping your wife/husband happy, your staff happy and your clients happy. He then proceeded to start the nominations.
Toby Acton (i.e. myself) explain his/my philosophy of different types of wealth – it is not just about money, it is about having a work/life balance
Nick Cooke questioned why we might need a structural engineer when buying a house – and then gave us the answers!
Melissa Jackson has been dealing with a variety of different clients of all shapes and sizes while Dave Roberts has been dealing with electric cable trip hazards in an office.
Terry Maylin will be dealing with a mediation for a small claim under £10,000 – well small compared to some of the ones he sometimes works on!
Tina was back from Weston-Super-Mare and was offering to help people take their staff out for a team building event! Very generous of her! Leann Reason also does all the work for her interior design clients, especially those who apologise about the state of their homes
Brian won the Oscar for relating a story about a rich widowed client who doesn’t trust men due to learnt behaviour – he has been helping her getting over this and saving her relationships. Meanwhile Jane Malyon is saving the whole world through afternoon cream teas!
Chris de La Prida had another fantastic travel offer this week – to Madeira this time. The Turkish bath at the hotel sounded great.
James Humphreys is looking to provide insurances to production companies, film and video companies. He has also been proof reading scripts for well-known TV series to assess liabilities.
Andy O’Neill’s new water hygiene company is looking for all sorts of clients who need tank cleansing and advice and Vince Goodman has been “inundated” with orders for Orders of Service but would still like to speak to more funeral directors and civil celebrants – very morbid (but on the bright side he does do weddings too)
Our resident accountant Paul Booth warned of the dangers of setting up a company yourself and advised us to use his services to avoid the pitfalls.
I can’t remember much of what Howard Bullock said as I was enjoying his massage too much but I am sure it was great advice about making sure people have the right level of income for their retirement.
Clara Downton showed how her role as a mortgage advisor is often just to give people reassurance about their mortgages while Scott Griffiths reassured us that we could use AI to create the basics of content for our websites that we can than tweak and personalise to ourselves.
Questions & Answers session
In the absence of a 10 minute presentation today we had a Q&A session with good questions being asked of members and informative answers being given.
Following the Q&A session we had the usual round table of recommendations, referrals and thanks and left for an earlier-than-normal start to our Thursday mornings’ work
Great meeting as always and was nice change doing the Q&A session
Thanks all
Great lively meeting with some intelligent questions showing that some members are listening to the other members 60 seconds, well done on the guest blog Toby and hope your back is better soon.
Well done Toby for a very well writen blog. Lovely to see Tina at the meeting
Yes indeed!
Another very warm-hearted meeting full of inspiration and smiles. I also like the Q&A sessions with the chance to ask some pertinent questions around the room. Always insightful. Thanks everyone – good stuff!
Great Ed Slot Jane, thank you Toby for writing the blog. Lovely seeing you all.
A warm and relaxed meeting with a useful Q&A session. Looking forward to next week
Sorry to miss you all and my 10 minutes (well, not that sorry, I had a great few days away). Looking forward to getting back this Thursday and actually a shame to miss the Q&A as they’re always interesting.