Educational Nugget (Bill’s Briefs)

Your BNI membership paid for 52 weeks of commercials and marketing time. One day you may not be able to make it to a meeting. Have you developed your personal substitute list? People you want to promote your business if you were not able to attend a BNI meeting? The time to think about this question is before you need a sub. What is the benefit of having a substitute? 

First, clients, partners, and business associates make great substitutes because they can say great things about you and it’s not bragging. They lend credibility to what you have been telling the group. Additionally, your substitute may benefit by meeting members of the chapter that they may do business with in the future. Your sub will also pass along important chapter information and referrals you receive.   If you are not at the meeting your referrals may not get to you at all or it may be too late by the time you receive them.   Additionally, having a substitute shows your commitment to the group. Your group gets the message that you value your membership and the members of your group. Additionally, if you have a substitute it is not counted as an absence and you can save those for those rare emergencies when you don’t have the time to find a sub.

SPEAKER OF THE WEEK

Costabile & Steffens PC is a full service accounting firm that handles bookkeeping, sales tax returns, quarterly tax returns, tax planning, and is partnered with ADP for payroll services. This week Frank answered questions from the group and provided the group with valuable information pertaining to his accounting services. Along with their accounting services they are a Quickbooks ProAdvisor, and from personal experience I can say are the best in what they do. What I like best about Costabile and Steffens is their proactive effort to stay at the very forefront of the new tax laws as they are changing every day and hour.

To understand  these new tax laws better or learn more about Frank’s services please contact him from the information above. And rememebr at Costabile & Steffens, PC they strive to make your life less taxing.

 In our Education portion of the meeting Bill continued with the second part of his series on the Value of Visitors, and actually showed this value with having a visitor of his own at today’s meeting. Think of it this way, as also a way of growing your group and raising the level of leads exchanged, visitors can also be potential clients. An example of this would be a visitor we had stop be a week ago and the visitor found b visiting that he required the services of a member and ended up meeting with that member after the meeting. So always keep an eye out visitors as both potential members and potential clients.

SPEAKER

Today we heard from Chris Fitzgerald of Brian Properties. Chris started out in the real estate business down in Florida working and buying residential real estate. As the market in Florida started to cool he decided to move back to Illinois and work in the commercial side of the business, and with the exception of the last 2-3 years the real estate trends have gone up every year.

Chis spoke in detail today showing the current market trends and differneces in the larkets in Chicago and in the suburban markets. Looking into the numbers Chris is starting to the light at the end of the tunnel but vacancies and percent of empty square footage is still up above normal levels in all markets. If you or anyone knows of someone looking for space, looking to sell/buy a building keep Chris in mind.

March 5, 2009

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March 26, 2009

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