Chairman’s blog Thursday 21st August 2025

Once again, despite being in the middle of the holiday season we managed 23. This included Sally Waters and Harry Walker, returning as guests for the second week. Harry Walker had to leave before the meeting started because of a personal emergency and the numbers were boosted by John Foster turning up after the meeting started because of an emergency call out. Confused…….. So you should be!

The Performance League

This looks like it is going to be a high scoring month, which means we are doing quite a lot of business. Only two weeks in and Stuart Smallcombe is third with 225 points, Terry Maylin second with 303 points and Paul Corrigan remains out front with the very impressive score of 369 points.

Education Presentation

It was the Ben Golding show again this week, and his subject was ‘levelling up on networking skills’. It’s not just a question of showing up for the meeting, although that is the necessary starting point. He had three tips. 1. Make yourself easily referable. This will result from giving more information to fellow members about you and what you want. 2. Be a proactive connector, don’t just pay attention; look for opportunities. 3. Try and build relationships with fellow members outside of the meeting. A 1-2-1 is a good starting point, attend social gatherings. To summarise all three points……. Put yourself about!

New Member Induction & Existing Member Renewal

Good news! Terry Maylin was able to announce that an application had been received from Sally Waters which is being processed and we may well be in a position to induct next week.

The 60 Second Round

Dave Roberts, as last week’s winner, was first up. He had a prop, namely a car charger, which he is happy to fit to enable you to properly deal with your electric car. If size is everything, he was outdone however by Paul Corrigan who produced a large contraption that was a bigger version of the children’s game of ‘operation’ which was going to be part of Solitaires presentation at the upcoming Maldon Car Show. I was about to try and describe it but I would be in danger of losing the will to live. For those that attended, they will remember; For those that didn’t, watch the video.

Toby Action doesn’t like big butts, and it became clear that he was not referring to the one with two ‘t’s. A prefacing statement with a but is a red rag….. He was in some physical discomfort and could therefore be forgiven for opting in favour of a less machine gun like approach to his 60 seconds and choosing something other than the metaphor, to focus on a gentler request for clients.

Mike Skinner was keen to sell his effective use of drone technology but I think it would be perhaps asking a little bit too much of him to ask for a drone presentation of our EBF meeting…… Is it!

Melissa Jackson cast herself in the role of a safety valve, providing support for businesses that are under financial pressure. While Matt Barry, in explaining that the exhibition season was upon us, was very much emphasising his ability to make the most of screen content.

Highlight of the round and Oscar winner was Catherine Foley, who illustrated how social media can make old fogies out of the best of us. I often feel I am leading a non-existent army into battle against acronyms. It therefore gave me some comfort to hear a somewhat disparaging reaction to the Cambridge dictionaries review of new words that are being added to the national vocabulary. Skibidi was the cause of her reaction. Apart from it being a very irritating word it can mean ‘cool, bad, or have no real meaning at all’. She spared us Delulu which apparently means ‘believing in things that are not real’ or as no greater exponent of the English language than the Australian Prime Minister would say….’dululu with no solulu’. Gibberish might well be taking over the English language but not here at EBF. I really think we need to seriously think about redefining Old Fart. Thanks Catherine for brightening up the morning, if not the whole week.

Meeting Secretaires Report

The performance this week in terms of business recorded of in excess over £11,000 with 15 new referrals, came on top of in excess of £100,000 over last month and the first week of this month’s performance. This is all very encouraging. Congratulations everyone.

10-minute presentation by David Moore

It was Dave Moore this week. No television screen for him, just two huge tables, it looked as if he was about to wallpaper the walls. However, he doesn’t do walls, he does floors and of course that’s what the tables were for. For those of us who don’t like acronyms, LVT means luxury vinyl tiles. We were treated to an educational presentation as to the laying of these tiles and the use of HTPSG, for the uninitiated ‘colour high temperature pressure sensitive glue’. A really interesting and very effective presentation which lead to a host of practical questions that normally does not occur to members this early on the Thursday morning. Congratulations Dave…. Oh, and by the way, he’s an international roller hockey player.

Referrals and testimonials

As would be expected from the volume of business passed recently, this was an all action-packed section of the meeting which enabled us to leave with our spirits high in anticipation of next week’s meeting.