My BNI Experience
I am currently at Studio44 for a week as part of work experience, upon arriving at Tunbridge Wells Golf Club I signed in and was given a name badge, just before meeting the president of Tunbridge Wells BNI, Michael Gadsden, who owns Grovewood Wealth Management. He made me feel welcome and encouraged me to think of a few short sentences about myself and why I was there to the rest of the group later on.
Between arriving at 6.05am and 6.45am, when breakfast would be ready, I met several business men and women, all of whom made a very good impression, welcoming me, shaking my hand, smiling and taking an interest in what I do. While Larry introduced me to the majority of people I mainly spoke to Jeremy Tomkinson, KHS Heating and Plumbing Ltd, Amal Uddin, AU Consultancy, and Neil Simmons, TN Recruits Ltd, all of who engaged with me, asking me how my week was going at work experience and then explained to me what it was that their businesses do.
At 6.45 Michael announced that breakfast was ready, catered by Purple Pumpkin, which consited of a quality breakfast buffet including bacon, hashbrowns, beans, sausages and more, while there was also the option of ripe fruit or cereal. Even though it was fairly early in the morning I had to opt for the cooked breakfast, feasting on fried eggs and orange juice. There was a very professional atmosphere, even though the members were so social and friendly, there was order about the meeting as, at 7.00am on the dot, Michael gathered everyone's attention and then began the weekly presentations.
For this, every member had to stand up and was given 60 seconds to tell everyone about who they are, the name of their company, what they do, what makes them different and this week they were encouraged to have a tag line, whether that be compelling or sophisticated, whatever suited their business best. After everyone completed, it was then my turn to stand up. I told them my name, that I was there as part of work experience with Studio44 and that over the past two days I had been researching the marketing side of his business.
Following this activity Nick Bryant, from Social Media First, gave a 10 minute presentation about his business and the story behind how he came to get to the job he is in now and the stages and different jobs he went through to get there. I thoroughly enjoyed this part of the BNI meeting as days prior to this, at the Studio44 office, I had written an article about how important social media is for businesses and how it can increase your search ranking so it was very exciting to learn that his sole job was controlling business' social media pages. He provided evidence that showed us people finding websites through the social media links he had posted on sites such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, proving that his job does make a difference to traffic.
To conclude the meeting, was the contribution round which consited of the group either sharing referrals within the past week or presenting a testimony to another member. Nick then shared with us that being a part of BNI has increased his turnover by 40% within the past year. Lastly I stood up and shared with them what I enjoyed most about being at the meeting which was getting to know so many different business men and women who all do entirely different jobs and I enjoyed Nick's presentation very much.
Hopefully from this article you are informed as to how friendly and welcome you are to attend any BNI meeting, but also how professional the whole event is. If you are interested in attending a Tunbridge Wells BNI meeting then please contact Studio44!
