Chairman’s blog Thursday 21st July 2022

The heatwave had sufficiently dissipated to make this particular weekly meeting comfortable. Not only were the ladies sensibly attired but there were 10 in all of us blokes wearing shorts with Neil Bellham and myself vying for the most voluminous shirt award. There were 21 of us ready willing and able when the clock struck 7:15 AM.

The Performance League

Stuart Smallcombe was rewarded with his diligence in producing acknowledgements for monies received to find himself in 3rd place. Matt Barry was 2nd and Scott Griffiths out front with 390 points after only two meetings. This could be an interesting month.

Education Presentation

It was Neil Bellham this week with a comparison between the number of things that you can do to increase your businesses turnover or profitability by 10% or increase by tenfold. His message…. always to keep your eyes on the big picture unless needs must.

Membership Matters

Colin O’Connor’s Health and Safety business of Blue Planet Consultants is bowing out on a short-term basis and he will be looking to re-join in the new year. Any prospective new member will be referred to him on a ‘first dibs’ basis but for the purpose of recruitment, his category is open.

The 60 Second Round

Vincent Goode had temporarily reverted to his darker side when producing a glamorously dressed up “Oscarina” for us punters to pitch for in our presentations. This rather dubious accolade was however keenly fought over after Vincent had presented his own over the top offering in relation to Business Cards.

John Freeman has been levitating kitchen floors in order to repair underneath them.

Melissa Jackson told us of six signs of a company in distress that warranted referral to her.

Mike Rogers had for a short period of time been very excited about the prospect of a pension relieving him of all of his worries until he looked more carefully and saw how much the monthly payment was. Neil Bellham and John Hammond could have swapped presentations as both made it clear that however good reviews might be, to be asked back was the ultimate and most effective response to good work.

Sarah Steel’s been advising through video presentation the cost of sending children to university and how we were on the cusp of a more rigorous regime. Sarah Steele presents to larger organisations and Terry Maylin also deals with them on behalf of clients. A particularly large retailer just demonstrated their incompetence over disciplinary matters and his message was for us not to be put off by the ‘big boys’.

Paul Dulieu was able to accurately pinpoint that there were 273,000 words in the English language and that we tend to only use about 10% of these. We also often get them wrong and he used as an example the word “flammable”. If this was something that you found a little puzzling you might now be in the process of lowering yourself esteem. Fear not, you are just the sort of person Brian Painter is looking for. People with low self-esteem can have this rectified through hypnosis. It might even enable you to effectively use only 5% of the English language without it severely affecting you going forward.

Interesting fact of the day came from Ben Golding…..There are more food banks in this country then there are McDonald’s….. This would appear to be a good thing and probably means that people are now eating better. Another master of the little known facts brigade was Mike Hickson who gave us a lot of information about the development of the keyboard and the benefits or otherwise of QWERTY.

Jane Malyon was equally upbeat and showed it by bursting into song. Unfortunately she was singing about Christmas and this premature use of these C word was intended to explain that December was her best month and that we should be looking out for companies that want  hampers as gifts for their staff/ customers. She did not want us however to be hampered by premature thoughts of Christmas in trying to get out there and get referrals for her. You might be better however looking to invest in woodland, although Howard Bullock is looking to dissuade a client from this course of action as he looks towards retirement, his client that is.

At the end of the round it was with some trepidation that we all awaited the announcement by Vincent of the Oscarina award. Paul Dulieu was the unlucky recipient and, as if to give a response to being so lavishly dressed , she promptly lost her skirt and a replacement had to be found. Well done Paul!  I think the message is clear going forward, don’t award the Oscar to the Mayor of Gants Hill Village.

This weeks statistics and points of note

Scott Griffiths gave us a series of encouraging statistics including

• Business passed for the first two weeks of the month £85,000
• Business passed for this week £11,000
• Business that needs to be passed for us to break £100,000……£4,000.

Let this be your challenge for next week, it would be great to break the £100,000 ceiling.

10-minute presentation – our “September Guest -Fest”

Scott Griffiths and I produced a double act aimed at launching visitor September. We are now divided into four groups and August will be spent by these groups in assessing potential visitors and getting them along during any week in September. By the end of the presentation we had all groups allocated with the month of August before us. The inviting of visitors not only attracts points but there will be group awards for those who are most successful in attracting visitors and also enticing them to join. We have a target of 40 members following this September ‘Guest Fest’.

Referrals & Testimonials Round

This round reflected the wealth of activity that there has been this month

Referral Reality Check

Likewise all referrals checked had come to fruition

An excellent meeting that left us all optimistically looking forward