Chairman’s blog Thursday 19th January 2023

Ice on the windscreen, ice on the road but warmth at venue where 18 members braved the aforementioned ice together with visitor Rosemarie Driscoll, a travel counsellor. Bacon and sausage sarnies together with toast and marmalade were tucked into with gusto. With the usual bonhomie and mouths full the meeting started.

The Performance League

After two weeks Paul Booth is out front followed by Stuart Smallcombe and Scott Griffiths.

Education Presentation

In his last week before going into isolation to prepare for his upcoming operation, Ben Golding was in the driving seat. His theme was the importance of setting goals going forward, whether this is to acquire new skills, embark upon training or some other plan for your business. Make sure the goals are precise and clear and most importantly realistic. To achieve success Ben considered that you needed planning and organisational skills, self-motivation, good time management, flexibility and self-regulation. It’s fair to say that if you have all of these qualities you’ve probably been setting yourselves very effective goals already. It certainly illustrates that you need a multi skilled approach to running a successful business. As far as success is concerned however, all the members are more concerned the Ben has a successful operation and a speedy recovery.

The 60 Second Round

Toby Acton was this week’s adjudicator for the Oscar therefore gave himself licence to pun his way through an ABBA show that he had recently attended. It would have been a much shorter presentation if he had simply indicated that his business was not only about Money, Money, Money but it was central to it.

He was followed by James Humphreys whose subject was once again car’s, or more importantly the in the insurance thereof.

If we thought Toby had taken a long time Brian Painter was only looking to cut down his last week’s 2 minutes 30 seconds to 2 minutes. He was however illustrating that an App that wrote scripts for you could not stick to the 60 second requirement. The other thing that was not as much fun was that there were not the usual number of side effects referred to the Brian normally delights in regaling us with. There was mention of lung cancer, heart attacks and then emphysema but no artificial intelligence was able to complete the normal gruesome list provided by our Pilgrim. Remember, ‘he is not a robot’.

Ben Golding was all alliteration with his Bill Busting Boosts. What was impressive was the saving to a previous Octopus customer of £400  per month on her electricity bill.

In these straightened times Terry Maylin has just received quite a few instructions from companies who are owed money and they are looking to recover it. This is likely to become an increasing trend and should be a fertile source of referral.

Both Stuart Smallcombe and John Hammond were extolling the virtues of VoIP and electronic security respectively but were followed by Vincent Goode, who’s been in business since 1983 and is still looking to produce traditional items such as orders of service for funerals and memorial cards. Oh death where is the sting a ling a ling. Mike Hickson was also advocating the low tech method of getting clients, namely customer referral and good retention.

Jane Malyon was back with a pictorial representation of the ‘scon/scone’ and ‘cream first or second’ controversy.

A good round finally won by Matt Barry who’s deep dive into Mike Skinner’s business produced a successful rebranding and the story of their collaboration won him the Oscar.

Our visitor, Rosemarie Driscoll gave us 60 seconds and regaled us with not only the prospect of a holiday but the fact that she will organise it for you. She looks like a worthy successor to Richard Reed and we hope she will join us.

Meeting Secretaries Report

Scott Griffiths urged us all to get our entries up to date. £7,000.00 worth of business was recorded together with good referrals. Toby Acton then introduced the groups new “Wordle League” where members are playing the daily word game against one another.

10-minute presentation

This was hijacked by Scott and myself who explained the board’s suggestions for moving forward with a regime that will hopefully attract visitors on a regular basis. We are forming teams, and providing the tools to enable an ongoing search to increase our membership. Watch out for more information coming to you this week. Hopefully, the teams will make contact and be ready to go forward after next week’s meeting.

Referrals and Testimonials

A good-humoured and positive round that finished the meeting off nicely.