Weekly meeting review from Stuart Smallcombe

Our first arrival this week signed in at 6:01am Paul Booth is clearly an early bird! Most of the rest of us arrived through a dark but surprisingly mild morning at a far more reasonable 6.15-6.30am. Visitors often ask, how do you get up so early? In reality, its probably only an hour earlier than I get up any weekday morning…but a better question, is Why?  Why do we all get up an hour early once a week? Really the answer is twofold, People and Business and in that order. We meet weekly with people we like and everyone is likely to do more business with people we’ve grown to like and trust.

With our illustrious leader Aiden Squire away on a well-deserved holiday, I had been asked to Chair this weeks meeting, last time that happened I had my entourage with me but clearly the leadership team thought better of that…probably for the best! So I necked a couple of superb latte’s and it was time to get this show on the road! New faces at a meeting always bring some added buzz to the meeting so it was great we were able to welcome Neil McAllister a Podiatrist from Brentwood based Kinetic and to welcome back a more familiar face of Stacey from Humble Violets florist in Brentwood, Saj was away, so got an upgrade!

Onto the meeting itself, it was a lively affair despite a few regular members being absent. David Plumley kicked things off with a good education slot which was all about covering off the basics, like being prepared.. at least I think that what he said… I’d forgotten my pen.

Moving on to the 60 second round, Dean Caldon was last weeks Oscar winner (we really will give it to anyone!) so he had the job of awarding it this week. There were some notable contributions from the usual suspects, Anna Marie Cooper always delivers excellent 60 seconds and this week was no exception with her exhibiting photographs of her grandfather “grumpy” during the Second World War, turning all our thoughts to Remembrance Sunday this weekend. Similarly strong contributions from Mike Rogers warning of the pitfalls of “Loyalty” Mortgages which imply suburb rates, but rarely deliver. Or Terry Maylin warning on the importance of getting you customers details right on your invoicing if you’re hoping to get paid. Jill Wills warned us of the dangers of Single-Use marketing and Dean Caldon of pitfalls of On-line estate agencies…. I consider myself forewarned and forearmed! Dean awarded the Oscar to Stacey, our Humble Violet.

Our 10 minute presenter this week was “Don’t Be In The Dark Call A Spark” Alan Moller. Now, I’ve sat through quite a few of Alan’s 10 minute presentations and he clearly he knows his stuff but, to be frank, he’s lost me few times with all the techy stuff, but not this time! Boom! Alan delivered an electrifying presentation, full of sparks! He actually had devised an electrical quiz with 10 Sparky based questions, I love a quiz… I was “ex-static”. How hard can it be, turns out, I was in for a “shock”… (I could go on…) Anyway a good fun presentation from Alan, which came down to a tie-breaker in the end which Terry Maylin won, although I’m not sure “watt” he won (sorry).

We rounded off another excellent meeting with the referral and testimonial round, showing genuine business being passed between members. All in all another excellent meeting. If you’re looking to build your business and you can handle getting up an hour early, once a week, come along and see us next week, the coffee really is very good.