- 20 members present.
- 3 Visitors
- 2 Applications to join
- £20,000.00 worth of business recorded at the meeting
- 35 referrals given
- £135,000 worth of business passed this month.
A well-attended meeting with lots of referrals and business passed, new members on the horizon, what’s not to like!!!
Education Presentation
It was a meeting of slogans and sayings and David Plumley kicked us off. His theme was “change” and how this could be good or bad for a business. Go for the type business that suits your business plan; reject anything that might overstretch or compromise the standard that you can give to your existing customer base. Probably the saying of the day was therefore “…no your niche…”, although in examining the downside of change there was a reference to “…mission creep…”.
The 60 Second Round
Michael Adelizzi kicked us off. The reason he kicked us off was he arrived just before the 60 second round. He then produced a prop, paper faced mosaic, which he passed round. It came in a roll and looked like rather up market but totally useless kitchen roll. It was however colourful.
Brian Painter was not with us this week. He is paddling in the Canaries but his brooding presence could be felt when Nikhil Shah rose to his feet and told us of gum disease. He was luridly descriptive of what he calls “…the silent killer…”. Not only do your teeth drop out but bacteria can get into your blood stream with the inevitable heart attack. He did not mention cancer or how many crashed Jumbo Jets would be sufficient in a year to account for the same numbers as this silent killer. The Spectre of Brian Painter definitely hung over us.
It was therefore positively comforting to hear Jo Jones talk about everybody doing marathons and then knowing whether to apply ice or take a hot bath. Apparently as a rule of thumb, acute strain-ice for 10 minutes and then reapply: chronic back ache- a nice hot bath. Things were spiralling out of control.
Nike Cooke cheered us up with a tale of Kevin’s (Brooks) mums neighbour who started digging and exposed her foundations. The lady did not need a Structural Engineer, more a lingerie department.
Terry Maylin cheered us up as always by explaining how he can still give companies a good kicking even though a new debt protocol will stop him doing it to individuals.
Sadly I have to report that Alan Shaw was so on message, talking of designs on various projects, that I am seriously reviewing all members of staff at the School of Whimsy.
Richard Reed was back with his offers with a particularly interesting 7 nights at Lake Garda with various tours from said Lake at the price of £300.00 per person. If we all took a week off and took him up on his offer we could have an EBF Meeting on a Thursday in one of the many towns that surround Lake Garda. My suggestion would be Salo, the birth place of Mussolini. At least if you needed alternative transport there would be lots of trains running on time.
Kevin Brooks produced a tag line “…we solve all the cock ups we make…” he was totally blown away with the largest TV that he had ever seen and nearly blew the TV away as a result of this. What with his mum’s neighbour exposing here foundations the Brooks family have not had a good week.
Homage to David Plumley and his “know your niche” was paid by Jill Willis who identified her niche as being involved at the beginning with a start-up and being part of the identification of a company’s audience. Paul Booth identified his niche as Web Design and Consultants and declared them a growth area. He threatened but did not tell us about FRS102. We are grownups Paul, we can take it.
Matt Barry metaphorically aligned himself to a swan guiding serenely across the water whilst out of sight paddling with his flippers like b…..y.
The best contributions to Whimsy and therefore potential candidates to staff the current decline in standards in said School was Alan Moller. He declared it “…a funny old week…” We thought we were about to be treated to a diary of the last week but suddenly he exploded into tuition mode explaining how you can recognise in a wall where cabling will be. He kept mentioning 6 inches both vertically and horizontally. I have had an urge to smash a 6 inch nail into one of my walls and now I think I know where I can do it. Pride of place on Whimsy scale was Dean Caldon, something about hair wax and someone taking the mick out of him. His hair looked pretty natural to me but maybe that’s the idea. Anyway he won the Oscar for his troubles. Terry Maylin obviously thought it was a slick presentation.
This weeks statistics and points of note
Lee Scarff and Paul Keagan have both made applications to join so there is a real prospect of our numbers moving to 31. Our other visitor for the first time was John Freeman who described himself as a Handyman. We have had a few in the group in years gone by and they have always done well. He promised to be back and hopefully he will join and further boost our numbers.
£20,000 of new business recorded this week, and 35 new referral opportunities. These great numbers mean that we have recorded just over £135,000 in March which is a great amount of business that we should all be proud of.
10 minute presentation by Kim Redwood-Lee
Kim Redwood-Lee had a screen show for us. Lots of diagrams, lots of arrows and analysis of software packages that actually made members concentrate and ask sensible questions…always frightening when that happens!!! Well done Kim for an interesting presentation that amongst other things stimulated us.
Meeting Summary
Once again with numbers up and visitors present an excellent meeting. Let this be the norm.
See you next week.
Blog shared, make sure you have adequate insurance before you start bangin’ them nails in, nice hair Dean!
well done on a good meeting and great to see three guests all of which are hoping to join! Nice hair Dean!!
Thank you Aidan. I too was perplexed to hear a 60-second presentation from Alan Shaw which was actually related to his business. Well done Alan … but don’t do it again.
Great meeting entertaining as always and great to see more new members
As has already been mentioned “with a good turn out, new member applications AND good referrals and business passed” what’s not to like. Nice hair Dean.
Kim’s 10 minutes was really great. I’ll be looking into a cloud based book keeping package and think Xero sounds like a great bet! Great meeting, see you all Thursday.