Building a Business on Bacon & Eggs Introduction 1 It’s not about bacon and eggs Some people, like Andy Lopata, who is the Managing Director of Business Referral Exchange (BRE) Networking, are employed to run breakfast meetings. Andy has made a business out of helping others to build their business over a plate of bacon and eggs. As a result, he spends his entire working day focused upon and building a community of strong contact breakfast groups, which meet weekly around the UK. Andy is not just focused on ensuring that each of BRE’s groups meets at the designated time and place each week, but also on putting into place a national infrastructure of training, communication and marketing to support every member and help them to achieve their goals from the meetings. Terry O’Halloran, on the other hand, is busy running a Financial Services Practice where he is Senior Partner. Only a fraction of his time is devoted to running the local breakfast club for which he is responsible. It took him three years to get his club started a little less than 18 years ago. Today he runs six breakfast meetings a year on the very successful format he has devised. Time management is the essence of a good organiser. And the exceptional time management skills shared by Terry and his personal assistants during that time (Pam, Louise and Nicki) bear testimony to the fact that once you get the right people involved and the organisation and time management right, then the breakfast club format delivers cost effective benefits for all participants. Building a Business on Bacon & Eggs a successful business events. You can see evidence of this in the comprehensive checklists we have added throughout the this book and as well as at the end of every chapter. Whether running breakfast meetings is your job, you merely wish to learn from the business experiences of other people, or you want to expand your knowledge, the business breakfast club should be, in these three writers’ minds, an essential part of your business strategy. ‘Building a Business on Bacon & Eggs’ is not about eating a cooked breakfast, but it does help us to remember that the pig is committed and the chicken merely contributes. In addition, while bacon and eggs may at first seem to have nothing in common, together, they are both a feast and a catalyst for great ideas. Whether you are a committer, and you take on the running of the operation and organisational side, or you are a contributor (and please don’t just be a taker), you can gain much from what is in this business book from the diverse experience of its three authors. This book must be part of your self-development rather than shelf development programme. The authors have combined to produce a book that shares their collective insights into making the most of networking meetings. Building a Business on Bacon & Eggs 3 Nowhere will you find a more concise pathway to business success than in the pages of this book, encapsulating, as it does, the experience of its authors and the Aladdin’s Cave of the breakfast club itself. Success is a journey and, wherever you are on your particular journey, this book will help take you on to success’s more rewarding levels.