Weekly Business Networking Blog 29th April

31 hearty souls turned up, including 2 visitors; Nicky Baker from last week and Nick Wilson for the first time.

The Performance League

Neil Bellham is still out front on 240 points with Mike Rogers not far behind.  The top 5 all were topping 200 points

Education Presentation

It was our Education Officer, Ben Golding who did the heavy lifting this week.  Entitled “I am not a cat” from a recent viral offering of a lawyer in front of a judge via Zoom who could not find the button to turn him from a cat into a human being.  Ben’s warning to us as Zoom Meetings become more and more the currency for business get togethers is to make sure you are properly presenting yourself. His numerous tips were helpful and useful.

New Member Induction & Existing Member Renewal

Terry Maylin reported that there are two membership renewals currently being processed.

The 60 Second Round

Matt Barry was adjudicating the Oscar and advocating digital brochures whilst demonstrating that he must have a separate liquor store at home because the wine rack in shot shows the same wine bottles in occupation as was the case some months back.  This state of affairs is capable of affecting his street cred. Ben Golding’s Ed Slot seemed appropriate.

The use of props was particularly evident this week.  Howard Bullock showed us the tools of his trade; namely his pen, calculator, charts and reports. The low tech theme prevailed as Paul Dulieu produced the main tool of his trade, a dictionary.  He even names some of his most used words.  He did not mention “err” but maybe that is because it did not appear in his dictionary and to err is only human.

Vincent Goode produced a sheet of plain white paper that with the help of various coloured inks is capable of transforming it into all sorts of goodies….speedily!

John Hammond produced a smart lock and even operated it for us. Matt Barry was beaten into submission by all of these prop based presentations and was most impressed by John Hammond. The Oscar was dispatched accordingly.

Colin O’Connor seems to have had the most exciting week so far.  Monday he was on a roof in Daventry, Crewe at a testing facility on Tuesday and Portsmouth on Wednesday.  He looked remarkably chipper under all the circumstances.

From the man who introduced us to Deep Diving as a spectator sport,  the only one in fact that has not been affected by the Covid Lock Down,  we were informed that he mentored and trained ….or was it he trained and mentored.  Anyway, he rattled it off as if he was operating a machine gun.

Nick Cooke is getting out and about more these days which explained why the Lumberjack Jacket now has another garment sharing the same peg and almost covering it.

Sympathy vote of the day was for Neil Bellham.  The good news he had received 37 enquiries; the bad news was that it produced only one order. Still, as we emerge from lockdown, there is definitely a lot going on out there.

This weeks statistics and points of note

The statistics were not available but from his illustration when he reported on the Performance League I saw that we have recorded £39,500 worth of business so far this month.

As of next week, we’re also introducing a new “Sport the hare” challenge which could prove interesting?!

10-minute presentation by Vincent Goode

The Mayor of Gants Hill set up a format whereby he was interrogated by Our Pilgrim.  There has been nothing like it since Nick Cooke and Paul Booth pretended to be 2 old gits sitting in deck chairs shooting the breeze.  It provided amusement, nay hilarity, throughout the Referrals and Testimonials round but more importantly for Vincent it yielded a couple of potential referrals.