Chairman’s blog Thursday 27th January 2022

With many wiping the sleep from their eyes all 23 of us were assembled by 7:35 and the meeting started.

The Performance League

Scott Griffiths is our new leader with all to play for this last week of January.

Education Presentation

Once again it was our Education and Welfare Officer himself who provided his thoughts. He emphasised the importance of language and not creating barriers between yourself and the client simply by an opening remark He provided 6 examples of how not to begin an email or a conversation. They ranged from the pretentious to the pompous and equally, might be seen as useful hints for scoring points over or putting people down.

The 60 Second Round

Now that we have 90 seconds to advance what our businesses are doing, or can do, we are getting better presentations that are more useful all round. Perhaps it should not come as a surprise to learn that some members will overrun despite Vincent’s best efforts.

Alison Bean, the current Oscar holder, was of course the adjudicator and went first.

Howard Bullock warned of clumsy attempts to avoid inheritance tax, for example putting your house into your children’s names but suggested that he could provide advice and assistance in making the most of tax advantages arising from how you organise your affairs

Richard Reed gave the impression of being almost cheerful. Things are starting to look up in the travel trade but it’s early days yet.

Matt Barry is now looking forwards and anticipating real live events that call for his expertise.

John Freeman’s appearance heralded the news that he is now back

Stuart Smallcombe, as part of his crusade to promote unified communications, was promoting amongst other things, headsets

We were all just settling into the meeting when Neil Bellham delivered. The good news, he is getting new bookings in; the bad news, he then went on to recite what could be found in his menus and our stomachs took over from our brains.

Brian Painter attended a lady who had recently cut down her smoking to 40 per day. His simulated coughing fit which definitely sounded authentic, Took him well past the 90-second mark. The cough can now be genuinely classified as a prop.

The Cream Tea stallion, otherwise Malyon was reminding us of her Valentine’s Day hamper. A short history lesson regarding Valentine made us realise that whichever Valentine was the source of this annual celebration the end was always sticky. Highly appropriate for sumptuous cream teas. Rather than advertising in the Times your undying affection for another, all that is needed is one of Janes cream teas and a good-sized serviette.

Toby Acton always gets good value out of his time allowance and this week was no less staccato and was also good news for those of us who have tight budgets. His retained mentoring service is on a special offer that’s £150 per month initially.

Ben Golding is making the most of the market as others like Eon fall by the wayside.

Terry Maylin was not singing the praises of meditation but of mediation. As a litigator, he recognises the importance of this particular tool in keeping the costs of litigation down with knock-on benefits for our mental health.

Paul Dulieu doesn’t just do blogs. He helps businesses promote their websites with the judicious use of FAQs. Reference to it was injudicious but he got his point over.

Melissa Jackson explained how, amongst other things, she can act as a trustee in bankruptcy and illustrated this with the story

Paul Booth has moved from his desert island tax haven to a viewing point overlooking the San Francisco bridge. It looked as if he was standing next to Nick Cooke who also was apparently admiring the red monstrosity. Talking about Nick Cooke, he won the Oscar. Alison was particularly taken with his description of all the things that can go wrong with an old-fashioned timber-framed building. Not only did he win the Oscar but this week it was in the form of a Frogster. The Frogster will of course be adjudicating next week.

The Questions & Answers Round

This was slightly foreshortened because of our late start but as usual it produced extra useful information for us all. It then it’s slightly merged with referrals and testimonials round.

We did finish at 8.31 am and once again the meeting proved very successful in its new format.

I will do a deal with you all, if you are all present to start next week at 7:20 am I promise not to forget the referrals round.