Chairman’s Business Networking Blog, Thursday 11th December 2014.
It was a reasonably good turnout, 20 in all, 10 of whom appear, from the members sign in to have been battering the door down at 6.30.
The Ed Slot was retained by our Education and Development Office himself David Plumley, his theme this week was trust, the necessity to build it and the importance of maintaining it.
As to the Performance League, Paul Booth was out in front closely followed by the Kevin’s; the Kevins I refer to do not include the honorary Kevin….Alan Shaw.
The 60 second round was quickly upon us and Peter Hood was first up, reintroducing himself to the group and not looking for any more work in December, apparently available in January.
Marcelle was telling us about coloured diamonds, in particularly yellow ones which are apparently given their colour by nitrogen. Talking about colour, Alan Shaw was at a seminar with the Chief Planning Officer for Rochford who was in favour of developing greenbelt and Alan was against it. Rochford has little or no greenbelt and therefore you can see the Chief Planner’s point of view whereas our honorary Kevin thankfully has a broader based view and his request for a show of hands confirmed that most of us agree with him.
Most other members were very much on message without delivering anything outrageous. Nearest however was Mike Rogers who was approached by an Asian gentleman from Hounslow with a Swedish passport? Mike Rogers did not reveal how he dealt with this potential mortgagee but rumour has it the government agencies want him on a “tracker”.
Nick Cooke just stopped a house from falling down after an over enthusiastic builder took down walls without consulting him. By contrast our builder, one of the Kevins, has been giving clients refunds. A dangerous precedent…
Next week it’s the Brian Painter Show. He was therefore, no doubt in anticipation, relatively low key this week. Nothing too gory; He is looking for people who, when they get into a lift have a racing heart, feel hot and have jelly legs. Their phobia extends beyond lifts apparently and ultimately reaches the dizzy height of air travel. If you see one (someone with jelly legs that is) send them to our pilgrim and they will soon be riding the lifts in New York having first flown there. Let’s hope Santa doesn’t need his services.
A big thank you to Stuart Smallcombe for awarding me the Oscar; I think it simply leaves me to remind you all that if there is anybody at your dinner table on Christmas Day who dribbles…you know what to do.
By now we could smell the bacon but undeterred there was still some business to get through.
The Meeting Secretary’s Report revealed just over £7,500 worth of business written and 25 referrals. It is always a good sign when the numbers of referrals exceed the numbers present.
With this information in front of us we all felt like breakfast but there was still one more thing to do before we all adjourned and that was Paul’s Synergy Team Report. The Finance Group’s dinner took place on Tuesday evening It started with beers in the Blue Boar and finished with prawn crackers at Plum Valley. Once again the success of the group is largely down to Paul’s organisation which was faultless as usual.
We resumed with Dean Caldon’s 10 minute presentation. Professionally done, he made his presentation on the television screen, taught us all about the increases in stamp duty and warned landlords of people who rented their properties who had tenants who used their properties for growing cannabis rather than as a residence. These presentations always need good preparation and clearly Dean had gone to a lot of trouble in putting his presentation together. Photographs of members showing degrees of emotion from glum to ecstasy; the members who illustrated this range of emotions included Mike Rogers and his was not the face of glum. Congratulations must go to the photographer who made this all possible and to Mike Rogers for maintaining his equilibrium in the face of evidence that he can be cheerful.
Reasons to be cheerful were maintained in the testimonials and referrals round with particularly good efforts from Kim Redwood-Lee and Kevin Radford.
I hope that with no encouragement from me in this Blog you insure that you all turn up next week with your presents to witness the annual Brian Painter extravaganza.
Great meeting everyone and look forward to the Brian Painter experience this coming week.
Great 10 minutes and really looking forward to the Brian Painter experience… Will he hypnotise us?
Rochford… my first thought was to flatten it & create the extra greenbelt but that would then mean that the present residents needed to relocate, so, leave ’em there please and develope it.
I happen to know that Santa isn’t afraid of flying as he booked his round the world with me 🙂
It has been a good year at EBF. Let’s keep the attendance up … even on the dark, damp mornings. Having said that I must miss the amazing Brian Painter Experience this Thursday as Jackie and I will be doing a show and meal in London the night before. BTW an angram of Brian Painter is “Brainier Pant” … which might explain where he does some of his thinking. See you all again on Jan 8th
Excellent 10 Minutes from Dean very professional – well done! Also good amount of referrals keep it up people!
Well done ,Dean, on a very professional 10 minutes.
Good to see that our Chairman was awarded the Oscar, all down to “the throne of inspiration!” He should also receive the Booker prize and have his Blog on Radio 4’s “book at bedtime” instead of sick one scheduled in January.
Got up , got out of bed,dragged my comb across my head. Made my way downstairs and drank a cup. Looking up I noticed I was late ,grabbed coat and grabbed my hat ,made ebf in fifteen minutes flat.
Then meeting you lot makes it all worthwhile. Who would have thought you could have a good chortle at that time of the morning.
Very good 10 minutes by Dean.
Thanks everybody for all the referrals. Have a great xmas