Brentwood Business Netwokring Blog 6th Feb

Chairman’s Business Networking Blog – Thursday 6th February 2014

22 members (if you count Alan Shaw twice… which he did!!) and 2 visitors Kevin Smith an Aerial Satellite Installer and Simon Baldock a Window Fitter. They both expressed a wish to join.

A lively meeting which started with the announcement that Kevin Brooks was the Performance League Winner. Congratulations Kevin.

David Plumley delivered the Ed Slot and, as is frequently the case, his thoughts turned to the much celebrated Mr Deming (yes I have been spelling his name incorrectly hitherto). The said Guru who is attributed to bringing Japan into the 20th Century, commercially speaking, apparently listed 7 deadly diseases. David regaled us with the first 2:

1. Lack of consistency of purpose remedied by both maintaining both short and long term goals and basically not farting around in between.

2. The second deadly disease, which is sort of linked, is an emphasis on not to pay too much attention to short term profit against long term gains.

All in all, a coherent message for us all to contemplate.

Then before we knew it we were into the 60 second round.

Notable contributions included:-

Neil Lewer who talked about matching stains . I have a friend who has a dog who does that!! He also produced a can of “Mr Sheen” in an attempt to upstage Michael Adelizzi’s mould spray. Thus a theme was struck that extended well into the referrals round. I would challenge anybody to make suggestions as to alternative uses either for Mr Sheen or Michael’s mould spray that were not mentioned at the meeting.

Marcelle declared the stone for February to be Amethyst which she declared signified sobriety and is much loved by the Obama’s. See! EBF, nothing if not an educational experience.

There followed a series of contributions that were seemingly mundane but which I found interesting.

Jeni Pritchard said Barclays are lending to small businesses and she has almost achieved her annual target to date.
Mike Rogers went to London this week. Graham Wright is moving people and business of all types and Richard Reed reported Airline sales. My general comments to all of these is the same…really?

Kevin Radford was awarding the Oscar this week. He avoided blank verse but told of a young lady going to South Africa, her washing her jeans, destroying her passport, spending a lot of time with the Consulate, finally finding out that her travel insurance did not cover her for this. For those thinking of going on holiday wearing jeans and looking to wash them during the trip, contact Kevin Radford. He also finished off with a ditty just to maintain his ascendancy as the meeting’s Bard. Oh and he awarded the Oscar to Neil Lewer for introducing “Mr Sheen”.

Kevin Brooks, in true London bus style, followed Kevin Radford and talked of a failing shop front outside West Ham’s Ground which reminded me of a failing footballer up front inside West Ham’s Ground. I say this with all due deference to those West Ham supporters of a sensitive nature.

Kim Redwood Lee experienced the twilight zone in the strange requests she had received from her clients during the week. It was appropriate that she should be followed by Alan Shaw who has inhabited said twilight zone for some time now. He was commendably early, although when he wrote his arrival time the second time round it was 5 minutes later, which I suppose was the difference in time between the 2 signatures. Life can sometimes be very confusing…

Scott Griffiths played a game of 2 halves; he told of the creative side of building web sites and the importance of protecting your brand online. His theme followed through to Brian Painter who spoke about a lady called Merry who was afraid of birds, had 2 cats and after being taken back to the age of 3, when a pigeon had flown into her face, repented her fear, joined the RSPB and killed the 2 cats. By this time you will appreciate that we were plunging back into the twilight zone and this was compounded by Paul Booth’s offering of a client who could not find his accountant.

In retrospect the whole 60 seconds was bizarre.

This 60 second round was followed by a really good 10 minute presentation from Michael Adelizzi who spared us the slides and even his notes and gave a really good presentation of his business; he sort of demonstrated the consistency that Mr Deming advocated. I was struck by certain things:

1. When his father ran the business alone he just tiled floors.

2. When his brother joined him they went up the wall with their tiles.

3. After Michael had taken over the business he brought bathrooms from upstairs to downstairs. I did not think he was trying to persuade his customers to do likewise but he did tell of a man who wanted big black sparkly tiles throughout

You sort of got the impression that Michael could sell anything to anyone. A good presentation and deserving of lots of referrals.

Talking about referrals, the referrals round produced recorded business in excess of £35,000 with 22 referrals, excellent.

Lots of the teams met immediately after the meeting preparing themselves for the visitors day on 6th March 2014. Good luck to everyone on that.