Sometimes it's the things outside the convention that stay with you
There's a bench beside the canal outside Birmingham's ICC.
It's not particularly remarkable. Thousands of people must have walked past it without giving it a second thought, and until a few years ago I probably would have done exactly the same. But that bench has somehow become part of my Entrepreneurs Circle story.
In 2022, my good friend and fellow EC member Andrew Upton sat there on day two of the National Entrepreneurs Convention and made a decision about his future. That decision ultimately led to him starting Beacon Advice, and us working together since then.
Two years later, in 2024, I found myself sitting on the same bench with Andrew, and he asked me what my big takeaway was from what we had seen and heard so far – one word had stuck with me.
Persistence.
That word became something of a theme for me. You will have seen it many times in the last two years! I started writing every week, became more consistent with my marketing and stopped worrying quite so much about whether everything was perfect. Instead, I concentrated on keeping going. Two years later, I'm still doing it.
So when I returned to the ICC for the 2026 Convention, I went back to the bench.
This time it felt different.
Andrew wasn't at the Convention. He's dealing with something considerably more important than business at the moment, and suddenly an ordinary bench beside a canal carried rather more weight than it had before. I sat there with David Sekules and we talked about the EC and life and sent a video message to Andrew. It was an emotional moment. It made me think about what I've actually gained from all these years of attending the EC Convention.
There have been some excellent speakers. I've made notes, picked up ideas, changed things in my business and occasionally even done what Nigel told me to do. OK he had told everyone... over and over again!! But when I think back over the years, increasingly it's the people I've met and engaged with that I remember.
From a monthly meeting to the Portsmouth Posse
David Sekules and I run the EC Portsmouth Local Event every month and I've written about those meetings quite a lot over the past year.
They're deliberately informal. If you know me it could not be any other way! We have a workbook and a subject to discuss, but some of the best bits inevitably come from conversations that weren't in the workbook at all. Someone mentions something they've tried, somebody else has had the same problem, another person has an idea, and off we go. That's probably why it works so well.
These are people actually running businesses, so there isn't much point pretending everything is wonderful. We talk about what's working, what's not, the things we've cocked up and the occasional idea that the rest of the room politely – or sometimes not particularly politely (you know who you are) – suggests might need a little more thought.
We also choose an Entrepreneur of the Month, and I've featured quite a few of them in my posts. But what I enjoy about it isn't really presenting somebody with a certificate and taking a photograph. It's hearing what they've actually done to earn it and watching a room full of other business owners recognise their progress and genuinely celebrate their success. It's one of the things I like most about the group – people want to see each other do well.
At our September meeting we went around the room sharing recent successes too. There were plenty of them, big and small, and it struck me afterwards that this is probably the bit that's difficult to explain to somebody who hasn't been part of a group like this. You start by going to a monthly business meeting. Then, gradually, you realise you know what's happening in everybody else's businesses. You know what they've been struggling with, what they've been trying to achieve and what they've been working towards. When something finally comes off, you're genuinely pleased for them because you've seen some of what happened before the success appeared.
Somewhere along the way, the people sitting around the table stopped simply being a collection of local EC members. We became the Portsmouth Posse.
How did we end up dressed as cowboys?
This year's National Convention had a Wild West theme and David and I may have embraced that slightly more enthusiastically than strictly necessary.
Sheriff Wilson and Deputy Dave appeared – OK because I was messing with AI. There were wanted posters, badges and assorted cowboy nonsense, and by the time we arrived in Birmingham the Portsmouth Posse wasn't simply a stupid name we'd invented for a Facebook post. A good number of the Portsmouth group had travelled to the Convention and we spent a lot of the time together. And that changed the experience.
Of course, we were there for the speakers and the ideas. Geoff Ramm made us think about customer experience and the difference between doing something 80% and doing it properly. Helena Langdon reminded us that marketing doesn't have to take itself too seriously to be taken seriously. Cameron Botterill gave us his Golden Nuggets, some of which I've already started using, and John Volanthen's extraordinary story of the Thai cave rescue put perseverance into a rather different perspective and got a standing ovation that didn't feel like it would end.
There were awards too. One of the Portsmouth group, Jess from Advance SRM Therapies Ltd won Best Local Business – and her husband is called John-Wayne (you can't make this sh*t up!!), David and I had already been named EC Ambassadors of the Year, and I was there as a finalist for Best Business Enabler. I didn't win.
I'd obviously have loved to, but it bothered me far less than I might once have expected because the award wasn't what I came home talking about.
I came home talking about the things I'd learned, the things that made me laugh and the conversations we'd had. I came home with photographs of a group of people I'd got to know through those monthly meetings, now wandering around Birmingham embracing the Wild West theme and having a bloody good time together.
I've written before that my measure of a Convention is pretty simple: if I remember it when I get home, it's gold.
I'm beginning to think the same applies to the people you meet there.
One final mission
Next year's Entrepreneurs Circle National Convention will be the last one.
After all these years, 2027 is being billed as One Final Mission, which presents the Portsmouth Posse with something of a wardrobe problem.
Apparently we're going into space!
The sheriff badges will presumably be retired in favour of spacesuits and, judging by the pre-booked tickets, I suspect quite a few of the Portsmouth Posse will be making that final trip together. That's why the idea makes me smile, because the Convention itself is still nearly a year away and there's a lot that's going to happen before we get anywhere near Birmingham.
We'll meet every month. There'll be more Entrepreneurs of the Month and more successes to celebrate. Somebody will arrive with a problem another person has already encountered. There'll be good ideas, bad ideas and probably several conversations that disappear completely off-piste but turn out to be more useful than whatever David and I had planned.
Businesses will change during that year, and so will the people running them. Then, eventually, we'll arrive at the final Convention, probably dressed like idiots again. And at some point on the second day, I'll go back outside to that bench beside the canal with David...
A lot can happen in a year.
