We arrived in horrendous rain to a well-attended meeting (19 members and 3 visitors) but left in brilliant sunshine.
Scott Griffiths was chairing the meeting this week (coping well without the benefit of a written agenda!) and Terry Maylin was standing in as Meeting Secretary.
The Performance League
With one week to go in September, Paul Corrigan is in the lead with myself in 2nd place and Nick Cooke close behind in 3rd
Education Presentation
Ben Ben Golding gave an excellent Ed Slot with some tips on questions to move conversations towards inviting visitors to EBF
New Member Induction & Existing Member Renewal
Terry confirmed that Blake Hammond had renewed his membership after one year and could now apply for the Mark of Excellence.
The 60 Second Round
Once again Scott suggested the “speak and nominate the next person” system to get round the room – so several people (myself included!) started writing down names so they didn’t lose track…
We started with John Hammond had won the Oscar last week so started and was clearly proud of his own CCTV quality followed by Tina Walker who gave us 5 points of how she saves her clients money.
Terry Maylin assured us that he can help any landlords who want to sell their properties and that they shouldn’t panic while Blake Hammond told us that he didn’t panic when assaulted, thanks to John’s high-quality CCTV!
Blake nominated Matt Barry who told us about how who he was “washing up” with a client and they were very happy with his work – and we thought that he just did great creative design!
Stuart Smallcombe ran through the various that he can provide from VoIP to Microsoft 365 and Cat6, Cat6A – sounds all very complicated but he assured us that he keeps it simple!
Paul Booth told us of a client he had helped get out of a sticky situation as they had not declared £750,000 of income – no-one in the room owned up to it being them though… Melissa Jackson our resident Insolvency Practitioner explained how she also helps her clients get out of sticky situations.
When it came to my turn, I claimed to also be an architect and a structural engineer (for businesses) and apologised to the other architect and structural engineer in the room. Howard Bullock made no apologies for telling people not to panic over potential upcoming changes in government rules around pension taxation.
Vince(nt) Goode showed us a very large and tatty business card – apparently he does smaller versions in all sorts of lovely finishes.
Scott Griffiths warned us that our websites could have been hijacked without our knowledge – unless of course he looks after them for us! Mike Skinner hijacked Chef Neil’s 10 minutes from last week compared his videography work to providing a gourmet meal in a restaurant.
Ben Golding treated us to a rendition of “the Final Countdown” (accompanied by a bit of a wiggle-dance and reminded us that the cost cap go up next week and we need to fix our tariffs. Paul Corrigan used his 60 seconds to thank various people in the group for their help and support in getting him ready for his exhibition.
Clara Downton demonstrated how she had helped an elderly client get equity release so that she could do and have the things that she wanted – including a new kitchen. By coincidence Leann Reason helped a client design a new kitchen – not the same client as Clara, I assume.
Chris del la Prida reminded us of the need to check the expiry of our passports if we are going away while Nick Cooke was just checking that we all knew what he does as a structural engineer.
After the members has all had their say we heard from our guests: Viki a Health & Safety Consultant, Joshua an Architect and George who works with Paul, our plumbing and heating engineer.
John awarded the Oscar to Terry – I’m not sure why as he didn’t explain, although as I am myself a landlord and he told me not to panic, I fully supported the award!
10-minute presentation by Blake Hammond
Blake Hammond was our presenter this week which explained the various guns lying around the room!
He showed us an excellent video of his view of how the outdoors should be used for shooting people in Airsoft games (I wholeheartedly agree!) and left us with his tagline: “Dominate the Outdoors”. From the busy Q&A session afterwards it was clear that some people in the group prefer more peaceful outdoor pursuits!
Following the Q&A session we had the usual round table of recommendations, referrals and thanks and left into the aforementioned sunshine to continue our day
A great meeting – well done. So good indeed that we have a new member application to process as a result.
Yey!
It was another great meeting and nice seeing two visitors, let’s hope they both join. Great 10 minutes Blake and I hope you are feeling better, well done Ben on your ed slot.
Great meeting. I hope Viki and Joshua joint the group they will be a great asset.
I already asked Viki for help with H&S policy.
Thank you all for another great meeting!
Great news regarding Joshua, lets hope he sails through the process!
Not many business meetings where you get to handle guns! Great presentation by Blake who also does outdoor clothing and equipment!
Good to see our visitors and hopefully future members 👍
Great, fun, lively meeting this week. Thanks all, see you next week.
I didn’t realise that Blake was feeling ill. He hid it well. Good job!
An excellent blog Toby, and a fine meeting. It’s always a buzz when we have guests, see you next week
I’ve watched the video to catch up and was sorry to miss such a lively meeting with visitors too. Well done Ben and Blake! See you next week xx
What a corker of a meeting! Numerous guests, guns everywhere and a packed room.
Well done Blake on powering through and great video and q&a. Big fan of ammo hive for my outdoor gear needs!
Another great meeting. In all the networking meetings I have attended, they have never had 6 guns in the room (airsoft guns). A really great presentation from Ammohive. It all sounds so much fun, but painful. I’ll play if I can shoot people and not get shot myself 😀
Thank you for the ed slot, Ben. Another informative talk. Lovely to see two visitors this week. I hope the guns didn’t put you off! 🙂
@ammohive I didn’t realise you were ill – you hid it well. Hope you are on the mend.