Picture this. The BIBA conference, a hundred or more brokers, late at night in a hotel bar, a great atmosphere and sense of goodwill. Not too difficult an image to conjure up?

Add to that a stand brimming full for 2 whole days, a team that felt like it was on top of its game, a new CEO, listening and talking to brokers and business being done all round.

Then the icing on the cake, trade press headlines you are making are only positive ones.

Then just for good measure one of my favourite people pops by, an industry leading figure, one who’s not been shy to share his own views of when he thinks you’ve got it wrong. And as he comes by your brimming full, bustling stand he says ‘what a difference a year makes eh?’

There wasn’t a stand I would have preferred to be on, a team I could have been prouder of, or any better I could have felt about the few days of BIBA 2010.

So maybe I was dreaming, any minute I’d wake up, and maybe my bubble would burst. That said if I was dreaming surely my feet wouldn’t be hurting quite so much.

So is this blog purely me blowing my own trumpet, revelling in a great few days, telling you how good we are? Hopefully lots of you will know me better than that, an old boss once taught me that self praise is no praise and I always remember it.

This blog is about the one thing in those few days that did burst my bubble, just a tiny tiny bit, a really small thing that happened as I left the bar full of brokers to nip to the ladies.

This little incident happened in the ladies loo, when one of our trading managers, Maureen Varlow, known affectionately as Mo, turned to me, gave me a big hug and said 3 little words. Not my favourite 3 words, the ones that I share with brokers all the time. What mo said, the 3 little words shared during the hug were…….”we miss you.”

I said “yeah but…can’t be everywhere…v busy…don’t make me feel bad……. sorry, sorry sorry” and she said “I know all that, and I don’t want to make you feel bad, just wanted to tell you that we miss you.”

And I haven’t been able to shake those 3 little words since.

There is a danger when you become a full time part of an Exec team the internal pull, the number of meetings, the building of a new team takes you away from what’s important. And I’ve been really focussed on making sure that isn’t the case in the external world, that I still spend my time listening too and working with brokers and partners. I can’t afford for that to happen, we don’t have a business without customers.

And maybe between trying hard to keep brokers and partners happy and trying hard with the Exec team and working with my own direct team, I have missed the most important people a bit, the ones who our brokers deal with everyday.

I’m not kidding myself that they won’t survive without me, they will, I just know that I’ll do a better job if I remember those 3 little words.

Lots of love,

Jd