Mary's Business Dinner Club Stories - a gathering with a twist

This Saturday saw the inauguration of something new and exciting: Mary’s Business Dinners. So much networking and exchanging of business cards had been happening each Saturday that I decided ‘this needs to be organized differently’. The idea was encouraged by my lovely next door neighbor Mike Flett from Gnaftis & Co. Ltd www.gnaftis.com who proposed to sponsor a dinner.

Then I got an offer by Florentina Panayi from BRILL events www.brill-events.com to take care of decorations. Then speaker, coach trainer Arthur Magoulianiti www.arthurmagoulianiti.com agreed to do a short presentation on goal setting. Then… things just took care of themselves - more people were suggested, more people contacted me, more people came to mind…. All I did was coordinate everything. And yes, provide the food.

Since I knew everyone would be busy mingling, talking, meeting…. I decided on finger food so we could move about. The menu was easily put together: I just went through all my (43) dinner menus so far and picked my favorites: savory, fluffy cheese puffs, bite-sized, hot garlic buns, canapés with French liver pâté, with Cypriot smoked cheese, Austrian potato spread, Indian curry-lentil spread, a ‘secret recipe’ fresh chive spread, a newly created caper leave dip….. and for something a bit more ‘substantial’ there were chicken and vegetable skewers. All accompanied by homemade pita chips and Indian Naan bread.

The casual setup allowed people to ‘talk business’ while eating, but somehow they all ended up talking about the food on their plates - for a while at least. And yes, I was flattered. The food was actually well-deserved, as intros had been prepared in advance and had to be given based on a set one-minute format and more ‘work’ was on the agenda.

After the culinary treats we went on to an ‘intellectual treat’ with a presentation on goal setting by Arthur Magoulianiti involving lots of ‘thinking exercises’. Quite amazing what a difference little things can make in the achievement of your goals! Guests were also interested to hear more about kayaking at the Famagusta Nautical Club. Coach Djordje had joined us to tell us more about the sport and the teams there. Guests are now looking forward to attending the Grand Yacht Event on Sunday, July 7th http://www.facebook.com/events/372744899446183/ organized by BRILL events to raise money for kayaks for the kids competing for championships.

The rest of the evening, which went on till ‘well beyond bed time’, was spent networking - at its finest - with energetic, innovative, really inspiring people like Lydia Kyriakidou and Audrey Modestou, both working in social media at Attraction Marketing Strategies www.socialmedia4success.com, Rosemary Barnes form Green Cyprus www.greencyprus.net, holistic therapist Angela Egwim www.theholisticage.com, Audrey Dugdale, Marketing Manager at www.issuu.com/sacynews and www.stilgizni.com, Djordje Pavlovic Coach at the Cyprus Canoe Federation and representatives from www.perpetrogroup.com and www.pcrepairs.com.

The atmosphere was simply fantastic - very lively, buzzing with ideas and suggestions and yet relaxed and fun. We even had a professional event photographer capture the evening in pictures for us. Thank you Jim Turney - what an honor to have had you there for this special evening!

The next business dinner, from now on called ‘Mary’s Business Gatherings’, is scheduled for Friday, July 6th and already has a list of interested participants! The idea is to bring together like-minded people, pool our ideas, talents, contacts… As Lydia Kyriakidou put it so beautifully ‘Let’s open new avenues of communication and motivate, inspire and help each other to sustain and grow our businesses in these financially challenging times.’

As Al Pacino said in Every Given Sunday "Either we are going to heal as a team...or we are going to die as individuals". I look forward to welcoming many new people in our ‘team’ at future events. As always you can contact me via facebook www.facebook.com/marys.dinnerclubslimassol or at 96 58 90 22 or maryanglbe@hotmail.com

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