Chairman’s blog Thursday 19th September 2024

It was still dark on arrival but no one lost their way and we kicked off with 19 members present.

The Performance League

Nick Cooke has come from nowhere to lead the field on 189 points with me in second place and Paul Corrigan third. Nick looked exhausted from what has been a substantial effort of 6 or so referrals in one week.

Education Presentation

Stuart Smallcombe entertained us with a piece on pricing strategy. If you have a choice between good, cheap, and fast you can only produce a combination of two. Anything else is impossible. To get there he produced useful illustrations and warned against making your product or service too good to be true.

New Member Induction & Existing Member Renewal

It’s always a pleasure to hear from Terry Maylin and he was able to indicate information was with the Membership Committee that would enable him to report to us further next week. Better than ‘a poke in the eye with a wet umbrella’.

The 60 Second Round

Stuart Smallcombe was multitasking. First the education presentation, now the Oscar adjudication following his success last week.

Mike Skinner is looking for drone work of any kind whilst the leaves are still on the trees. I would have thought the leaves on trees might have restricted the view but then leaves are quite nice to look at, particularly if you like green.

Matt Berry was back from his annual stint at Amsterdam for his biggest client. It was therefore timely to remind us that he can add value to any company that is looking  to partake in the general events season that is well underway and he is currently helping Paul Corrigan in this regard.

Nick Cooke followed up his success in the performance league with the Shakespearean inquiry as to where he was, as addressed by Juliet to Romeo. What is the connection you might ask? Well, Juliet is not only a character in a Shakespeare play but she also lends her name to a form of balcony that has got to be safe when included in a construction. That is the sort of thing that Nick can do.

Don’t be afraid of the thought of producing a business plan. It doesn’t have to be big according to Toby Acton; he is very much in favour of one page documents which should be in essential for a business to focus on their immediate goals and how to score them.

The Mayor of Gants Hill Village is always capable of making us feel a bit down when he talks about his order of service product for funerals. They come in all shapes and sizes and he fondly remembered a particularly elaborate one for a Nigerian Queen. In order to immediately cheer us up Chris de la Prida was able to tantalise us with a four nighter in Iceland for £698 per person all included. Now that the holiday season is pretty well over, Chris’ is 60 seconds is often all that is left to raise the spirits of the meeting.

Andy O’Neill Is doing his bit to relieve the pressure currently on the National Health Service. Scalding is often a frequent reason for attendance at A&E. The secret of course is mixing valves rather than straight hot taps. If I asked I will just refer the questioner to Andy.

I had previously indicated that I would not make mention of Blake Hammond’s products if they were linked to the celebration of Christmas. Following Jane Malyon’s appearance on TV, where she was extolling the virtue of every day being a Christmas Day and showing the Christmas tree to prove it, Blake did not this week mention Christmas but as I reported his 60 seconds where he did mention Christmas last week I will make no further mention of him this week. If my reasoning is something that you find hard to understand then you should take comfort in the knowledge that I found it very difficult to express.

It was the other Hammond called John, who won the Oscar however. Stuart was very impressed with his clear explanation of the use of intruder alarms and the importance of good quality ones.

This weeks statistics and points of note

Scott Griffiths maintained the momentum that we are looking to engender in relation to the pursuit of visitors. Following last week’s synergy team meeting he asked us to look out for a spreadsheet containing prospective categories for visitors and the suggestion that we all invite ourselves through the website invitation system so that we know what visitors will receive. Look out for the former, and do the latter. He also could have mentioned the fact that we recorded £29,000 worth of business this week as a considerable improvement on last week.

10-minute presentation by Neil Bellham

It’s not that we do not want to know about Neil’s past history or the intricacies of his business. It is more a question of being far more interested in his cheffy tips for overcoming cooking problems. Bread in water with soaking potatoes to stop them breaking up and with goodies to keep them fresh were two of his opening recommendations. For those who like popping bubble wrap, here’s a new use… Use it for wrapping ice cream to keep it cold. What about using your pizza cutter for chopping herbs and putting cherry tomatoes between two plastic lids so that you can cut them all in half more easily. It’s nice to know there is a use for dental floss…. It is a good substitute for cutting cheese. By the time you pulled the wine out of the bottle and drunk it you will be ready to use it as a makeshift rolling pin. These and many others were both interesting and entertaining suggestions by our master chef. There were even some well-informed questions to follow this presentation.

Most entertaining and arguably useful 10 minutes for a long while.