Brentwood Business Networking Meeting – 27th March

Chairman’s Business Networking Blog Thursday 2014.

A good turnout – 22 members present.

The Ed Slot was delivered by Scott Griffiths with a very useful warning to take care when copying from the internet not to breach copyright or “steal” material. He gave 2 useful illustrations and warned of the dire consequences. It is always useful when a member who has experience in a particular area can give us an insight into things that might affect us in our day to day businesses.

The 60 second round did not follow the usual order, Scott and I thought it would be a good idea to have each speaker nominate the next and so keep us all on our toes. The reality was rather tragic. It is understandable that as we get into the round some members forget who has yet to speak, although it isn’t the greatest act of concentration to expect such feats of memory. Unfortunately it all fell down a stage earlier, nobody could remember that they had to nominate at all, let alone who it was they were going to nominate. I promise not to overestimate the intelligence of the members at that time of the morning again.

Notwithstanding procedural difficulties, there were some lively and amusing contributions.

Mike Rogers gave us “reasons to be cheerful Part 1”. Over the last 10 years the numbers of independent Mortgage Brokers have dropped from 40,000 to 15,000; the state of the economy and in particular the way banks have sacked mortgage brokers has contributed to this dire state of affairs. This of course was something that made the “old curmudgeon” cheerful. It should do really, he is has just seen his completion reduced by almost 2/3rds. There was however a warning. Apparently there is something known as a MMR, in fact a mortgage market review, which is apparently being made compulsory and will require there to be more mortgage brokers around. By this time he was smiling broadly and was so overcome by the prospect of the discomfort that the populous as a whole and potential mortgagees in particular might suffer that he going for almost a 120 seconds. This again was probably another source of cheer to the ill humoured one.
I perceive the real problem to be, in these changing times, that he will be spending more time in the “comfort and convenience of other people’s homes”. When he finally sat down there was a mixture of bemusement and irritation at the time he had spent, as a result of which everyone behaved themselves admirably in sticking to their time limits. No doubt he will claim that this is all part of the grand scheme of things in his role as bellman.I have already probably given him more time in this blog than his 120 second deserved, but it’s nice to see someone so overwhelmingly cheerful, particularly Mr. R.

Others also exuded bonhomie by virtue of the changing economic circumstances that pervade.

Howard Bullock positively relished the new ISA allowance and the freed up pensions.

Kim stated she was getting bigger, which was good news for her.

Kevin Brooks was smiling broadly at the prospect of Neil Lewer following him on a job with a client who was particularly difficult.

Scott Griffiths was positively revelling in the fact that mobile phones don’t always exhibit websites as well as they might and he was there to “reformat website responsiveness”.

Chris Sadler is trying to invent a folding business card but was more taken up with his recently converted “bat mobile”. An inspection of said vehicle did make you feel it would be better suited in a bat cave than on the road but if he restores tranquillity to Gotham City, that wouldn’t be so bad would it…?

Michael Adelizzi was not revelling in being overwhelmed by work, quite the opposite. He has had a quiet month and that seemed to suit him down to the ground.

Peter Hood also explained that he had plenty of work and was just turning up to see us all and have breakfast.

All of this satisfaction and cheerfulness was topped off by the Bard of Hadleigh. He is apparently one of a select few of West Ham supporters who thought that a win against Hull City the night before was a good thing. Apparently not a boo escaped his lips. He also had other reasons to be cheerful, namely a record commission had something to do with the ear to ear grin.

Even Allan Moller got in on the act, he is getting neighbours together to share in the cost of security lighting. He suggested we should all be looking to our neighbours to see if they want to share said security lighting. I might save ten quid or so. Seems to be high price to pay to force you to speak to your neighbours

Paul Booth’s telephone number is 224666. This was the theme of his 60 seconds. Accountants don’t need much to make them feel cheerful. It was however with some surprise that David Plumley did exactly the same thing.

Listening to the above litany of things that have made various of our number cheerful, the casual reader might regard us all as a sad load of “B……ds”.

As if we had not had enough of good humour to last several meetings, the 10 minute slot was delivered by Richard Reed who delivered it with his back to the screen that was showing his new website. Having extolled the virtues of holidays in general, he then extolled his approach to arranging holidays in particular. All in all this made us feel an awful lot better contemplating faraway places with strange sounding names.

A good 10 minutes that maintained the overwhelming feeling of deep joy that pervaded the room.

Surely this can’t last you all say… well it can and it did. The referrals round produced in excess of 25 referrals and £42,660 worth of recorded business which can be added to the existing total of £55,300 for this month. Congratulations to all!!!

Because my literary hero is Ebenezer Scrooge, I feel I must bring some sense of reality to all of this joyous fervour. I think I have come up with the perfect reminder. This month has been Visitor’s Month. What does that mean some of you might ask, and certainly it is a question that, in retrospect, seems to be a good one. The idea was that we all should go out and got in lots of visitorss, particularly for the visitors day. Apart from Stuart Smallcombe who was a very welcome addition to the fold and Jay French who visited us a week before March it’s hard to spot that any particular success being made towards recruiting more members.
Ed Crocker will be back we hope for April and Anthony Batty look as if they will be rejoining, but we must try and reject, as members, the attitude that the inviting of visitors and enrolling of members is the job of someone else.

I will therefore continue to suggest a category of membership that we should all concentrate on in the next coming week. I will mention once again this week Motor Mechanics. May I task you all with making 1 contact with 1 potential member who is a motor mechanic, whether this is by virtue of trawling yellow pages, looking at the current BNI membership or just calling in if you are passing a garage. Please make it your job to issue an invitation. If you cannot find a motor mechanic find somebody else but make this week a week to invite a visitor. The website is available with its invitation but pigeon message, semaphore or skywriting will do instead.

There now! That brought you all down to earth.

It was still a great meeting and I am looking forward to next week