It’s been one year. Yes! One year since the second opening of the GRID Hub at the Bradford City Football Club and WHAT a year it has been!!
We’ve now held around 25 different events through the GRID! Increasingly we are known for putting on quality and beneficial events! And have had around 1200 businesses attending them! With 650 businesses walking through our door asking for support or giving their support and buying into our membership tariffs!
Held in the beautiful surroundings of the Dubrovnik Hotel, businesses arrived in style, security was provided by Emirates Security, and what a fantastic service they provided, I was certainly impressed with all the smartly dressed officers! Thank you Jean for hand writing those place cards, they looked stunning!
Emirates Security quickly upon signing them in ushered them into the bar or main banqueting suite, with a glass of wine in hand or a glass of Coca Cola in the other, businesses were left to mingle, meet old acquaintances they hadn’t seen for a while and maybe avoid the people they said they’d ring and never got back to as well!
Fairly soon more or less all businesses had arrived, a proud speech was made by Jenny Pupius (Chief Executive of ABL and Member of the GRID steering group) for the businesses that had stuck it out with the GRID for the past year, officially crowning them as ‘GRID Misters’ followed by our guest speaker Todd Hannula, MD for Camberwell (his reading recommendations for entrepreneurs haven been given earlier in the blog) and finally this was followed by a delicious three course meal.
As always, clever as we are, we carefully planned an exciting seating plan to provide plenty of opportunity for networking and potential business and partnerships to be generated. Some of the comments I’ve received have been really heart warming and no doubt the continued words of encouragement we receive gear us to do better. Here are some of the wonderful comments we received shortly after and who had made the effort of simply..... just letting us know:
‘Hi. Thank you for the meal and the evening was brilliant. I enjoyed it. You did good. Peace.’ (Mohammed Yusuf: JSH Breakdance Aademy)
‘I just wanted to say, and I think I speak on behalf of everyone, what a great night you put on last night. Several people I spoke to said the same, so I think it only right that this should be conveyed to you both. The Dubrovnik was a super venue and you efforts are very much appreciated. Well done and thanks. (Barbara Dinsdale: Health Yourself LTD)
‘Just a quick message to say thank you for inviting me, to perform at the Dubrovnik yesterday. I really enjoyed the evening, it was a great event and I met a lot of new people. (Imani Heikmi: Piano player)
‘Zahra and Arshad, Well Done! It was amazing to see the buzz last night. It was more than just people showing up. Folks were actively connecting and everyone seemed hopeful for the future. A great event. Your hard work is paying dividends.’ (Todd Hannula: Camberwell)
Sadly like all good things, must come to an end. So, if you missed this event and are now kicking yourself over it, then look out for our events guide, which will be out soon. This is for people who don’t always know how beneficial networking can be and tend to put the priority of networking somewhere way down the list of things to do!
Networking is probably going to be the best marketing investment you can make in your business, yes investment, and you will be surrounded by people who are serious about business too. All our events now will be charged, but you can be rest assured that you'll get quality for your money and eventually some return on that investment.
We’re serious about business, are you?
View further pictures on our photo album.
