Breakfast club brings home the bacon

OLDHAM is home to one of the fastest growing BNI breakfast clubs in the region.

I visited the Renaissance chapter of the Breakfast Network International group at its home base, Hotel Smokies Park, Bardsley, for a first-hand look at how the members interact and found a group of 20 plus enthusiastic networkers.

Ben Rowlands, an IT guy from Heywood, had issued the invitation and though I wasn’t too happy with the 7am start, which meant an even earlier start from Chez Torr in Delph, the coffee, croissants, pastries and bacon buttie more than made up for my early morning irascibility.

These groups — I have been to many of the past 18 years of compiling this column — work only if the members work, and clearly these guys and gals are up for the challenge.

Ben reckons that a seat around the Renaissance table is worth up to £25,000 a year in business referrals, all of which are traced and tracked.

This group is an amalgam of a couple of BNI clubs which were struggling along on low numbers, hence the membership being drawn from a wide area, including Rochdale, Tameside and Stockport.

The Bardsley hotel offers a central meeting point for the weekly gatherings and they seem well on course for the target membership of 40.

Currently they have 22 signed up — the joining fee is £100 and there is an annual membership of £400 to pay — ranging from a carpet fitter to an accountant, a transport courier to a printer. There is a visitors’ day on Wednesday, July 15 when anyone can pop along and see what happens. No pressure, no high-powered selling.

Email benr@think4itsolutions.com if you would like to give it a go.