SBC JANUARY 2006 CLUB MEETING
	Our January meeting was held in the Sheerwater Community Centre near Woking. The evening began with a networking session hosted by Paul Cawthorne who took as his theme the 'four R's of networking - Relationships, Referrals, References and Reputation. Members not attending the early session were able to relax in the Centre's bar while waiting for the buffet, which was not considered too much of a hardship!
After the buffet we enjoyed a ten-minute slot from new Club member Jan Ledger, outlining her Travel Counsellors service This award-winning nationwide network of over 500 counsellors is backed up by a team of 100 travel professionals in the company's head office. Jan offers friendly personal advice and highly competitive prices for all your business and leisure travel arrangements and holidays, and welcomes comparison with high street chains and the internet. For more details visit Jan on the web at www.travelcounsellors.com/jan.ledger
Our guest presenter for the evening was professional speaker and business mentor Alex McMillan, founder of ClubEntrepreneur (www.clubentrepreneur.co.uk ). Alex set out the six principal routes to wealth available to the aspiring millionaire entrepreneur, and gave us a brief analysis of the advantages and drawbacks of each.
	The most common option is setting up as a self-employed specialist in your chosen field - a familiar scenario among the audience, and possibly the least appealing for Alex. It involves years of effort and long hours to build your business (tell us about it!) and after all that it often pays you less well than a job working for somebody else. This doesn't make it a good bet if wealth is your goal.
After a brief overview of the other business models: Creative Innovation, Group Start-up, Network Marketing, and Franchising, Alex went into some detail on the most often overlooked route to business wealth: Buying and Selling Businesses. He explained you don't have to be Richard Branson to profit substantially from this method. Many of the principals are similar to buying and selling property, with which we are all relatively familiar, and Alex talked us through it in some detail, explaining just how it all works, and what the rewards can be.
Alex also spent some time helping us to assess our own business style profile, to discover whether we are motivated by Systems, Money, Innovation, Lifestyle Goals or Empire-Building (the Bill Gates gambit!) - for most people it's usually a mix of more than one of these. All in all, Alex delivered a stimulating and enlightening look at the world of the business owner, demonstrating he certainly knows his stuff, and invited us to contact him with any further questions via his website. Many of the tips and techniques revealed raised a few eyebrows, as the penny (or should that be the million pound note?) dropped that we may all be missing a trick or two if we want to retire wealthy! Naturally, there was much discussion of these and other topics, when the Beverage Circle adjourned to the Centre's spacious bar, where a jovial darts match was in progress. Unfortunately, we left before it ended so we can't tell you who won!

Click on these thumbnails in this gallery of photographs taken by club photographer and member Peter Searight of The Remarkable Studio.
Peter can provide prints from high-resolution originals if anyone would like them - contact Peter on 01428 725520 or via his website, www.theremarkablestudio.com.