Aphrodite Circle

Asking for an introduction

There is no membership form and no fee. There is one question, answered by a person, and then a wait for a table with room for what you do.

The room, as the register describes it

Here is the room described from the register rather than with adjectives. Of the 114 operating businesses within a few kilometres of Aphrodite Hills:

  1. Trade, construction and retail41%
  2. Technology, marketing, professional services and finance21%
  3. Hospitality, tourism and events18%
  4. Property and real estate8%
  5. Health, energy, education and other12%

A table drawn from that spread is mixed, which is how Franklin's Junto was put together: twelve members, twelve trades. A builder, a software founder, a hotelier and an accountant have more to tell each other over an evening than four software founders do.

Who qualifies

Owners, founders and senior executives of an operating company connected to Aphrodite Hills or the wider Paphos district. Nothing else is asked. You can live anywhere, own property here or rent one, and be around all year or for three months of it.

There is no revenue threshold and no headcount minimum. A two-person business that trades has more to say at this table than the local representative of a large company who cannot decide anything.

What happens after you ask

There are two decisions, and they are not the same one. The first is whether you belong in the group at all, which turns on a single question. The second is which evening you are at, which is a question of who else is at that table.

  1. It gets read by one person, who is the same person who hosts the dinners.
  2. A conversation, before any invitation. Inviting someone to a table of twelve without having spoken to them properly is how you end up with a bad table.
  3. The table is asked. If people have already sat down together, they are told who is being considered and given the chance to object. Anyone who has had a bad commercial experience with you can say so, quietly, and that ends it.
  4. One dinner as a guest. Nobody is a regular on their first evening, in either direction: you are deciding about this at least as much as it is deciding about you.

Getting into the group is the part above. Getting to a particular dinner is scheduling: each table is put together from people who have not been recently and whose trades are not already represented, so a seat can be a few months away even once you are in.

What does not qualify

Three things that come up often and do not count:

  • Owning property here. Plenty of people own a villa and have no business reason to be at this table. The residents association is the room for that.
  • Living here, and membership of the residents association, which is a separate organisation this has no connection to.
  • Wanting the guest list. Anyone whose interest is in who is at the table rather than in the conversation will find the evening dull and will make it duller for the rest. A firm that wants to reach this room should look at sponsorship instead.
On how the tables are built: Franklin's rule was twelve members of twelve different trades, and you cannot hit twelve trades from a standing group of twelve. Each dinner is composed from a wider group, which is why the register at the back of this site matters: it is the list of trades a table can be drawn from.

A table seats twelve and there are only a few dinners a year, so the usual answer is not no, it is later. People wait, and some wait a long time, and where the wait is long it is generally because the table already has somebody doing what you do.

The form

Six fields, and the last one is optional. If you have not read what happens at a dinner, start there: it carries the four rules and the eight questions.

The landscape data sets out who is already operating around here. It is the same material the host opens each dinner with.