Find it in Birmingham helps connect local businesses at the Birmingham Hippodrome

Find it in Birmingham helps connect local businesses at the Birmingham Hippodrome

This morning saw us attend the ‘Find it in Birmingham’ event which was held at the Birmingham Hippodrome.

This was the first time we attended a ‘Find it in Birmingham’ morning event and we have to say that we thoroughly enjoyed it, and an even bigger bonus was that it was well attended in excess of 160 -170 people all listening to the speeches, followed by a mass rush to the egg and bacon baps.

The meeting was opened by Stuart Horton who manages ‘Find it in Birmingham’ on behalf of Birmingham Council, whereby he first introduced a last-minute expert speaker, a lady by the name of Toni who advised us all on how best to network.

Stuart then went on to explain how the ‘Find it in Birmingham’ model is changing slightly from being solely council-funded to becoming monetised by offering different levels of membership from FREE to ones which cost £50 for individuals (consumers) and £150 per year for businesses.

He explained that after 12 months things are going really well for ‘Find it in Birmingham’ with a current total of 9,000 members with an average of 400 new members signing up every month.

The new levels of membership mean that to attend their monthly breakfast meetings you have to pay £10 per meeting if you have a FREE level of membership within ‘Find it in Birmingham’ or as a business you can pay £150 for the year and you can attend the breakfast meetings for free.

Stuart also highlighted the fact that ‘Find it in Birmingham’ were now also looking at B2C (Business to Consumers) as well as were they already focused their attention namely on B2B (Business to Business) something which needed to be done – as you already know one of our straplines is “bringing business and consumers together in one place”

It was quite funny at times as Stuart kept mentioning ‘Connect’ and we kept thinking he was talking about us.

During the speeches, Trevor unknowingly was sat next to Damian Stokes from Pickerings Lifts who have a regional office based over in Northfield, although they didn’t have a chance to speak at the time they did have a catch up once the speeches were over and they were in the queue waiting to tuck into the grub.

Damian explained about Pickerings Lifts and likewise, Trevor explained about Connect WM, during the catch-up whilst waiting in the food queue a contact of Damien’s by the name of Jean-Philippe McCoy from SSG Contracts joined in on the conversation also.

Jean-Philippe McCoy from SSG Contracts explained his business, as well as explaining how both he and Damian had met through the opportunities section of ‘Find it in Birmingham’.

In taking note of the talk of ‘How to Network’ by Toni all three of us left our conversation after we’d finished eating, swapping contact details allowing for further follow-ups, and off we went to introduce ourselves to other attendees.

The next person which Trevor came across was Grace Bridgeman from Hotel La Tour, which is a new hotel in Birmingham City Centre not far from Moore Street Station.

Grace was on a gaining awareness mission as the hotel is still in development and is due to be completed and opened by the end of February 2012.

Grace explained what Hotel La Tour target market was, and how it will have its own individual branded restaurant and coffee shop - catering for non-residents also.

Of course, there will be supply and employment opportunities, so if interested you may wish to visit their website and register your interest.

Next Trevor came across Julia Smith of Cre8 Sales Solutions, Julie specialises in sales - telephone marketing to be exact, although Cre8 Sales Solutions has only been going for 8 months Julie explained that she has a wealth of knowledge and experience within the telephone marketing sector.

During Trevor’s conversation with Julie, it was clear to Trevor that she was confident and seemed to be always on the lookout to connect her clients to sales or lead opportunities – Julie also explained that she plans for growth by expanding her business, as quite clearly there is a need for such business as many business owners shy away from doing the sales cold calling things themselves.

Overall the ‘Find it in Birmingham’ meeting was good and well hosted by the Birmingham Hippodrome and its staff - although Trevor was only able to connect to 4 businesses out of the 160 – 170 that were attending it’s about quality and not quantity.

‘Find it in Birmingham’ under their new format are still due to have topical meetings every month so if interested it would pay you to visit their website for further details.