Stress balls at the ready
Steve Morris of Nottinghamshire Fit For Work Service made one thing clear at the start of his amusing and interesting pitch to Newark Business Club’s 7am March meeting:
“I’m not trying to sell you gym memberships,” he said. “That would be an insult from someone my size.”
Arguably the earliest of all the early birds out to catch worms that morning, Steve rose at 4.30am to drive from the other side of Derby carrying an unfeasibly large cargo of stress balls.
He may be no more stressed than the rest of us but he had a box of balls and pens to give away to publicise the Government-funded service, which is free and which helps staff who are on sick leave to get back to work.
His serious point was that UK business lost £15b to sickness absences last year, and the biggest impact is felt by SMEs – small and medium enterprises.
But the Fit For Work service is not an employee-bashing outfit pushing the sick back to work before they’re ready. With 75 per cent (!) of absences related to mental health issues such as stress or depression, it’s also about giving employees coping mechanisms to get back to work, as most of them really want to do.
Or as Steve put it: “Watching Jeremy Kyle all day is not ideal is it? That would make me more ill.”
As for the stress balls, Adrian Walker, MD of thriving boilermaker Hoval left with an armful. Clearly it’s tough at the top.

Mansfield promotes Newark
Mark Mansfield that is, of NG23 Tender Support, who is aiding Newark’s bid for money from the Mary Portas pilot initiative designed to reverse the decline of High Streets and keep them viable in the face of increasing internet competition.
“Mark is an expert at putting bids together and has offered to do that on behalf of the Business Club,” said chairman James Fountain, who also praised the work of Stephanie Bilton in gathering support from local retailers and Steve Watson, who has been out and about filming the vox pop video which will form part of Newark’s bid.

You need Hans
“Hands up – who’s been to Emmendingen?” quizzed Jo Small of Optima Training brightly. A pregnant pause followed. Then a wag calls out ‘Where?’
But of course we all really know that it’s Newark’s Black Forest twin town, and local businesses have the chance of a free stand and free accommodation at a massive trade exhibition that takes over the town on June 16-17.
The successful applicant can promote their own business as well as representing Newark Business Club, and the club is giving £100 towards flight costs.
Not keen on Kyle
Rick Allen of the Nottinghamshire Fire Service talked about their 12-week Prince’s Trust programme to help young unemployed and often unqualified people become employable. He was as keen as Steve Morris (see above) to stop people watching Jeremy Kyle all day (quite right too).
Rick is looking for do-able community projects that can be completed as part of the programme, so if you know of a scout hut that needs painting or anything remotely similar he’d like to know. “But it has to be achievable – because that might be the only thing these young people have achieved in their lives.” He’s looking for two-week work placements too.

Rainbows and Rotary
Caroline Rossin made a powerful plea on behalf of Rainbows Children’s and Young Person’s Hospice, which offers invaluable support to “life limited” children and their families across five counties. Their Walk A Mile, Gain A Smile fund-raiser staged by the Newark, Newark Castle and Vale of Belvoir Rotary Clubs takes place at Newark’s Riverside Park on May 6. You could hardly find a more worthy cause to support.

Sensible stuff

If there’s one business name that few people would take issue with it must be Making Money Makes Sense, whose Martin Chapman was sponsor of Newark Business Club’s first meeting of 2012.

Martin made the startling statement that the child has already been born who will live to 150. Fortunately no children were present to start worrying about financing 80-odd years of retirement, but with state pensions as low as they are it was a timely reminder to maximise pension pots and take the tax breaks while we may.

May days

Talking of May, when the microphone toured the room for attendees to give their name and business, Peter Duncan got a crafty quick plug in for this year’s Jazz et Vin event, to be held again in May after its very successful debut last year. Something to look forward to as the chill winds howl.

Brand Newark

Action Committee chair Tim Shaw introduced an exercise to get every table to contribute data to ‘Brand Newark’, the campaign to promote Newark’s attractions to companies who may bring in new investment and jobs.

Tim had just heard Grantham MP Nicholas Boles on local radio saying Grantham needed to be more go-ahead, like Newark, and Action Group members on every table asked attendees what made them choose to locate here.

Funnily enough, 20 years ago I was looking to re-locate from St. Albans before narrowing the destination down to Grantham or Newark. We did admittedly view Grantham on a soggy, rain-lashed Sunday, but I’ve never doubted that we made the right choice.

Roaming Panther

Not sure how big a territory panthers usually patrol but Rachel Panther of Oxford Innovation came from Northampton to tell the meeting of a coming Business Plan Competition with meaty prizes for anyone with a bright idea for a new business and the drive to prepare a plan for it.

Rachel’s East Midlands territory includes the three Nottinghamshire Business Innovation centres managed by Oxford Innovation, including Newark Beacon.

She was hunting down potential sponsors, judges and competitors for the competition as well as publicising it. Top prize will include a year’s free office space, four days of business coaching and a year’s free accounting.

A media launch for the contest comes in March followed by a planning workshop in April, shortlisting in May and a Dragon’s Den-style final selection plus an awards evening in June.

Holiday hot spot?

The attractions of Newark Showground are many but as a place to spend your holiday, especially at 7am on a wind-blasted January morning, it’s perhaps not top of your list.

Nevertheless that’s where Tom Rawsterne of Notts County Council spent some of his hols as Tom interrupted them to tell the assembly about Invest In Nottingham, a Nottingham City initiative now broadened to include the whole county and aimed, like Brand Newark, at attracting inward investment.

If you look at www.investinnottingham.com you may find it hard to spot any mention of Newark, but Tom assures us this is changing, with a ‘Focus On Newark’ section due soon, pointing up the development opportunities that will come with Newark’s projected growth.

Rural raids

Rural crime was high on MP Patrick Mercer’s agenda when he delivered the meeting’s finale. It seems rural crime raises the blood pressure of local farmers more than anything else.

One possible solution to much of it would be legislation to regulate the scrap industry, said Patrick. That can’t come soon enough – metal theft has become a massive problem, for churches and industry as well as for farmers.

• Next meeting – February 17, 7am Newark Showground.

Graham Keal - Newark Business Club Press Officer

Action Man Tim

Newark Business Club Action Group Chairman Tim Shaw gave himself a new title for this month’s meeting – car park attendant.

Tim hadn’t given up the day job, indeed he and colleague Shelley Bakewell of Hogdson Elkington had sponsored the meeting to tell members about their residential lettings service.

But the club had to meet in the Stuart Goodwin Pavilion at Newark Showground, around the corner from our Cedric Ford Pavilion home, and Tim got the short straw for standing outside from 6.30am on a windswept December morning to re-direct members.

Later on Tim introduced “Shelley and the bump” (a happy event is due in the not-too-distant…) to point up Hodgson Elkington’s impressive record of maintaining high occupancy rates for lettings and generating vital feedback from landlords and tenants to ensure high-quality service.

Tim’s skills as a crowd marshal are an unexpected bonus.

Small wonders

Business people are much like policemen, they keep getting younger, or so it seems, but it’s rare for the club to be addressed by 12 and 13-year-olds.

This happened however with a presentation by a team of four Grove School pupils – Rhoda Roberts, 13, Rebecca Beeching, 12, Beth Walls, 12, and Jade Leo, 13 – addressing the need for better language skills.

They were the winners of this year’s Optima Training Language Project after responding to the challenge to create a presentation aimed at convincing primary school children of the importance of learning foreign languages.

Before introducing them, Jo Small of Optima training produced statistics showing that 61 per cent of companies are not satisfied with the international cultural awareness of school leavers, and 76% are unhappy with school leavers’ language skills.

In today’s global economy, language skills are increasingly important, so anything Jo and Co. can do to reverse the decline in language studies has to be good news for the UK economy as well as for education in general.

Beeching cut

Newark Embroidery’s Steve Beeching cut a dash, of sorts, at the meeting, dressed in impossibly loud black and white check “leisure trousers” topped by a canary yellow sweatshirt with bright red trim. Santa Claus would have looked dowdy by comparison.

By turning up in this attire on his 65^th birthday, Steve won a bet with David Rogerson of Chattertons Solicitors to the value of a bacon butty. Since Chattertons also supplied free mince pies to the assembly, David was metaphorically feeding the 5,000. Or more than 100 at any rate.

Awards applause

Newark Advertiser Commercial Director Rachel Mosedale prompted a well-deserved round of applause for all the winners of the Newark Business Awards. Rachel won’t be resting on her laurels though – next year’s event will be on November 27, 2012, so the countdown has already started.

Website reborn

Jon Finegold announced that the club’s completely revamped website was “almost live”, which more or less summed up how I felt when I staggered out of the front door at 6.45am. But it’s good to know that the new website is virtually complete.

Robin Hood beware

MP Patrick Mercer congratulated the Grove pupils and their teachers on their linguistic achievements and went on to talk about plans to introduce elections next year to select the Police and Crime Commissioner for Nottinghamshire. Such elections will take place around the country but as Patrick noted, ours is the only one who will inevitably be dubbed The Sheriff of Nottingham.

Startling stats are always a good way to get an audience’s attention, even at 7am on a wet Friday morning. That’s why Simon Heath got off to a strong start for Newark Business Club’s November sponsors Icon Business Solutions (IBS).

The statistic that grabbed me was that 68 per cent of customers who defect to a competitor do so because of perceived indifference – in other words, they don’t think you care whether they stay or go, so they vamoose.

Simon’s other points about the importance of keeping close tabs on monthly profit and loss figures, increasing your prices to account for inflation and methods for stemming “profit leakage” in these straitened times all made great good sense too.

Simon and colleague Heather Hobden, who had travelled from Cheshire to attend the meeting, made a powerful case for establishing a proper business plan to clarify objectives and devise the tactics to reach them.

It certainly sounded better than just muddling through, as so many small independent businesses tend to do.

Not going loco

Business Club transport expert Bob Poynter’s usually amiable demeanor was somewhat clouded when he addressed the meeting as part of Tim Shaw’s Action Group report.

Bob was angry. The club was instrumental in setting up the Nottingham-Lincoln Stakeholder Board to improve train services between Nottingham, Newark and Lincoln, but Bob felt it might be time for the club to leave it.

Trains are slow and infrequent, falling below national and regional benchmarks, but there were signs that the Department of Transport was taking note of the business case for improving the service.

But while the D of T has acknowledged the merit of the case they recently allocated the only available diesel trains to another franchise, so no improvements are now likely until at least 2016.

Bob wondered why the Government now thinks such a poor service is acceptable. Good point, Mr. Poynter.

Market music

It was great to hear Cllr. Bruce Laughton and Newark and Sherwood Business Manager Ian Harrison addressing the club on the importance of the vitality of Newark Market and acknowledging its role in keeping the town vibrant.

In fact it was music to my ears. Back in the late 1990s I was a town and (very briefly) district councillor myself and felt like a lone voice espousing the cause of the market and urging that market traders should be encouraged.

But both speakers were all in favour of sweeping away petty restrictions that deter traders, looking at strategies to improve the market, devising attractions to increase footfall and maybe even bringing buses back into or next to the Market Square. Bravo to both.

Christmas cracker

June Rowlands, Rachel Mosedale and Stephanie Bilton added pre-Christmas cheer to the proceedings with a Christmas Countdown which asked us to guess at the significance of certain numbers, starting with 73,020. That turned out to be the minutes left before Christmas.

The next number, 40,000, was not – as one wag suggested – the number of disgruntled ex-girlfriends of a certain business club member. It was in fact the number of leaflets produced to promote Christmas In Newark, with the Business Club bringing together all the elements including the Palace panto, the lights switch-on, the Christmas Tree Festival, the shoppers’ competition and the Market Place Carol Concert.

Popular Patrick

Piling on the irony, MP Patrick Mercer told the meeting that he would be “even more popular with the Government” after voting against it on the question of whether we should have a referendum on Europe.

Patrick’s popularity with constituents may be another matter however – he has received nearly 1000 letters on the subject, and “the overwhelming majority” were against further integration.

Graham Keal, Newark Business Club Press Officer