Chairman’s blog Thursday 14th September 2023

A clear bright morning greeted 16 members. Sadly, it won’t be long before we arrive in the dark but, for the moment, you can shut your eyes and still believe it’s summer.

The Performance League

After one week, Scott Griffiths is out front with 224 points after his referral-fest of last week. Although there were more mundane figures for the rest of us I suggest we chase him down as best we can.

Education Presentation

Scott remained in our thoughts as he tried to educate us. He had two messages; the first one being that we should be aware of social media etiquette when we use e-mail to communicate with one another during the week. Share whenever appropriate but if it is a personal conversation, keep it like that!

The second part of his message was far more entertaining. We all provided Scott with personal information that was largely not known to the group and we then attempted to identify the information pertinent to the relevant member. Highly entertaining but also interesting in that many of the guesses were right, largely because we have already got an insight into each other ‘s foibles. It certainly got the meeting off to a great start.

The 60 Second Round

Blake Hammond was judging the Oscar. The first candidate was Brian Painter whose imminent holiday made him relatively unconcerned about any referrals at this time. We finished up with a joke about a northern lady who was deaf and dumb. It doesn’t bear repeating so I won’t!

James Humphreys was topical. In the midst of World Cups and club competitions in the sporting world, he has a sporting package of insurance for clubs. Neil Bellham had been given a sporting chance buy Ninja at one of their events to make charges per portion. He seemed still to be on a high over this. Talking about high, John Hammond showed us an example of a zoom camera which is normally located high up but it is useless if it is not programmed to turn in the right direction. The tool is only as good as its installer.

Vincent Goode has an ambition to make notepads part of the furniture. He produced several customised examples but none of them looked like a chair to me. They can be very useful however for making notes and keeping your name in front of the noter.

Ben Golding was upbeat. Utility Warehouse have an offer for the rest of the month, if you introduce customers to them you have a chance of winning £1000.

Terry Maylin had an interesting client who left his office happier than when she came in and Stuart Smallcombe left Howard Bullock feeling happier as he combined a shoulder massage with the delivery of his sixty. Jane Malyon certainly tried to make us all feel happy by referring to Christmas hampers and Christmas crackers. I understand that it was an upbeat message and that she has produced a lot of ideas for Christmas but suddenly I felt colder….. Not to be outdone Rosemary Driscoll had an upbeat pitch by referring us to various holiday offers that she had that made us all think of sunnier climes. Howard Bullock had reason to be happy with himself as he had recently mitigated IHT of what would otherwise have been a £2 million tax bill by indulging in a little of what he does best, structuring your retirement with careful IHT planning.

With such an upbeat round Blake was spoiled for choice but if for nothing other than massage technique Stuart Smallcombe won the Oscar… although of course he offers far more than this to his clients.

Meeting Secretaries Report

This had Scott Griffiths, inspired by Vincent Goode dispensing an EBF notepad to Toby Acton who, having removed his arm from his sling just to show that he can, managed… just to stop said pad knocking over his glass of water. Dextrous or what! Nice to see the recovery is going well Toby

Finance Synergy Team Report

I was able to report a successful meeting on Tuesday afternoon at the George and Dragon. Six of us interrogated each other on what sort of referrals we can give each other which proved both useful and entertaining.

10-minute presentation by Blake Hammond

Blake Hammond, our newest recruit, was quick off the mark with the presentation of his products; replica guns passed round the table along with other items including garments that had a more general application. Having watched the Rugby World Cup tussles over the weekend Firing ammunition at each other somehow didn’t seem quite as dangerous. Great start Blake!

Referrals and Testimonials

Despite slightly depleted numbers it was a good solid round and shows we’re still doing good business together