Rain, at last. It was holiday commitments rather than the weather however the kept many members away leaving us with 14 plus 1, a visit from Tina Walker. The temperature however still warranted the fans being in operation and our small but perfectly formed group accordingly started our meeting at 7:10 AM.
Performance League
Unsurprisingly Paul Corrigan remains way out front on 333 points. Terry Maylin was a brave second on 232 points with Jane Malyon on 130 points.
Education Slot
Scott Griffiths gave an interesting rundown of how EBF developed from BNI and then produced a comparison of our fees with the organisation that spawned us. He ran through the figure work, the bottom line was that we are on an annual basis at least 50% cheaper.
We still provide all of the networking benefits and are a successful networking organisation that promotes the members businesses and has the added benefits of joyous meetings that everyone wants to get up early for. It is important to keep focused on the development of EBF and Scott’s comparison was both useful and an introduction towards what we would like to see as an autumn push towards getting visitors and new members joining us as we run up towards…. dare I say it, Christmas.
It is our intention to produce targeted categories for us all to focus on in the coming months. Watch out for September’s which you will hear all about next week.
60-Second Presentation Round
Steve Chilton stood in for Terry Maylin in dealing with the award of the Oscar. He also had time to point out that there were still lots of deals out there for commercial insurance.
Toby Acton mentioned the C word, or rather C words. Clarity Confidence Capability. These are three things anyone running their own business needs to have in their armoury, but the most important thing is being able to focus on your business with these three characteristics in mind. Toby provides mentoring and support for doing just this. John Hammond was also talking Clarity but in relation to CCTV. Make sure you get properly installed good quality CCTV; there’s a lot of rubbish out there!
Paul Corrigan had his focus on more mundane matters, to wit lime scale. His was the first prop of the round, the top of a hot water cylinder. Only a small hole remained encased in limescale to allow the water to pass.
It is not always a bad thing to lack technical knowledge. Catherine Foley felt that it assisted her when writing content for websites that rely heavily on tech content. The general public who will be reading this content won’t know anything about it either!
Dave Roberts finds that his initial testing is a ‘foot in the door’ to obtaining business. He gave us a rundown of how he dealt with the testing of the electrics in your house and how a referral to do testing was a good introduction.
David Rose referenced an episode of Only Fools and Horses that involved a chandelier. This and other awkward items including pianos were the sort of challenges that were easily met when you employ professional removers such as his organisation.
Scott Griffiths has been spending a lot of time upgrading his servers to deal with our websites. It provided an insight in relation to the number and types of visits there were to his managed websites and there was a notable number of visitors with unhelpful if not to say evil intent. His upgrading will make our sites more secure.
Jane Malyon was in alliterative mood. As well as her famous English Cream Teas she can still produce finger and fork food for folk.
Looking back over the contributions Steve favoured Toby Acton’s reference to the importance of ‘focus’ and the three Cs. A good choice from the many quality presentations despite the low numbers.
10-Minute Presentation by Paul Booth
This week it was Paul Booth produced a quiz that entertained us all. It was inevitably a list of various taxation questions and the answer to every question was a number. It is certainly an acceptable tactic in selling your business to instil a fear factor in your audience that will make them flock to you in order to allay the fears that you have instilled in them. I think Paul successfully did this and we should always avoid DIY and thereby improve our sleep patterns.
And so, after referrals and testimonials most of us adjourned to Jane’s Business to Consumer Synergy Team Meeting although for once sun did not shine into the rear of our venue.
Good meeting today, and a good synergy team that followed.
A great meeting. My appalling performance in the quiz confirmed exactly why Paul is my accountant!
Thank you all for another great meeting. A small but mighty group today
A fab 10 minutes from our accountant, the quiz proved exactly why I have an accountant!
A great meeting, followed by a great synergy meeting. A really engaging subject and some really good views.