After last weeks busy networking frenzy I was back on the road again, as I attended the Torbay Business Festival, hosted by the Torbay Business Forum, at the English Riveria Centre.
The day’s proceedings were kicked off by Mayor Gordon Oliver, who spoke about the importance of growing businesses in the Bay and also about the future of the Torbay Air Festival and the opening of the South Devon Highway.
44 different organisations held stands at a busy and vibrant networking day, with over 300 people swapping business cards, making contacts and mingling with friends old and new.
There were four separate seminar talks given throughout the day, with the different speakers sharing their personal experiences on a diverse range of business topics.
Manuela Grossmann, from SSG’s Employment Law and HR Team, gave the first talk of the day about the importance of Emotional Intelligence and how leaders can be self aware of their own emotions when trying to influence and motivate their staff in the right way. Being personally very interested in psychology myself, I found this very interesting and I feel the need to read up on the theory now!
Next up was Dr Michael Cash, who shared his experience of working in health and safety across different sectors; he gave some fascinating real-life examples and explained why disasters can happen and how we can learn from them. He also spoke about basic risk reduction strategies and how businesses can apply them to prevent such disasters happening- sage advice!
After lunch we had the pleasure of listening to Rob Holmes, who gave a fascinating talk about his own experiences across a lifetime of entrepreneurship. He shared some humorous anecdotes about his time as a Nightclub owner, and also made some more serious points about staying motivated and gave some practical pointers on how to grow your business.
The final talk of the day was given by Sally Cope from Koru Connections. Sally spoke about ‘The Power of LinkedIn’ and how business owners can use the site to connect with decision makers. Sally gave the audience some excellent tips on how use the site for professional business to business networking and fielded several questions at the end.
More new friends made!
On the back of last weeks networking it was personally great to meet some new people and have some great conversations; learning about new businesses and hearing some interesting tales along the way!
At my first networking event (at Torbay Hour’s 2 year birthday celebration event at White Rock School) I was a bag of nerves to be honest! I actually didn’t move from my table; I was lucky enough that Sam Triffitt came over and had a friendly chat with me and helped me come out of my networking shell!
But I’ve actually decided I quite enjoy networking now! I’ve meet some great people along the way and my confidence has risen. It was also a lovely end to the day as we enjoyed a complementary ale- courtesy of Bays Brewery-cheers to the next time!
YOUR social media assistant-Dan Bull 