Hello everyone
First of all I’d like to congratulate our newest member Jason Chetty and partner, Intha for joining our club. It was a pleasure to be able to induct Jason into our club last night in front of members and guests who got to see a small but important ceremony that not many people outside of Rotary get to see. Jason and Intha, I wish you both the best in Rotary and I hope that you both find personal satisfaction and new friends. Congratulations!
Thank you also to everyone who helped out on our first night of the inaugural business event. I believe it was quite a success. I have to thank everyone who made an effort to invite friends, colleagues and guests along and I would ask to continue doing the same for the next couple of meetings as we need more people to come along to the next events. So please let’s keep the momentum going. I’ll be knocking on doors over the weekend and handing flyers out again in my local business area because we simply need more people to come along.
Our guest speaker Bruno Bello was engaging and enlightening. His presentation on key success factors in growing your business really made us all think and looking around the room, he had us riveted. He presented it in such a way that it connected and resonated with all of us in the workforce. For me, I was listening to his presentation and realising that we can treat Rotary like a business too – we need to be able to ‘take stock’ of our club and look at the processes and the systems we have in place and then be open and honest about where we are and how to get to our end point. His comments about marketing and how simple things like paying for marketing, wrong website design and generating irrelevant newsletters that add no value back to the business made me think and reflect of our marketing efforts in the past and how they have fallen flat.
My personal take on last night is that as a club, we don’t have the connections to the local business community simply because many of us don’t live and work in the area. But I don’t see this as a negative, I simply see it that it means that we ALL have to work that little bit harder to make an effort to walk on the footpaths and go and visit the businesses and local factories in our area. Word of mouth in this instance is the winner because only then can we speak face-to-face with business owners to invite them to come along.
A personal connection is best in business – and not rely on email or website marketing as the main medium simply because these people are running businesses and don’t have time to read emails. I don’t know about you, but my best meetings and relationships have been face-to-face and this is why everyone in our club will need to go and have a chat to their local retail or business owners and invite them to come along. Who knows, you may make a new friend in the process or see your local shops in a completely new light.
Unfortunately although our second guest speaker who was going to be a Rotarian in business did not show, I don’t believe we lost the impetus on the night. However, I will ensure this never happens again as the main focus of these events is to have a connection back to Rotary and have a personal story of how a Rotarian has developed professionally and personally with an association to Rotary. Strangely though, in my organisation of these events, the most difficult aspect has not been organising external guest speakers (all who jumped at the chance to speak and be invited to a Rotary club) but our own Rotarians who declined or who were hesitant in speaking about their association with Rotary – even when I said that they can use the the opportunity to promote their own club!
In my experience and observations, it seems that Rotarians can easily speak about their Rotary programs that they are involved with (eg ROMAC, Polio eradication etc), but struggle to talk about themselves and how Rotary has assisted with the business and professional development. This must change if the business events are to be successful. We need to have the personal story back into the meetings so that Rotary is contextualised for the guests and to make it relevant for them too.
I spoke to all of the guests last night and some of the comments that they said was that they were, “inspired” (thanks to Jason’s emotional and heart felt speech) and that “they now know what Rotary is about,” and “they felt welcomed,” “the food was great for the price”, “that Rotary is something they would like to know more about”, one lady said she “liked the spread of ages and experience in the room – everyone had a different story”. We had enquiries and interest about joining Rotary from 4 of the guests but as they live in different areas, this presentation has inspired them to search for clubs in their area.
I also believe that congregating outside at the bar area and introducing and welcoming everyone before we all went into the main room was another good factor as people could relax and chat before the proceedings started. I’d like this to continue and certainly the bar staff appreciated the patronage!
So thank you once again to everyone who helped make this night a success and I would ask of you to do it again twice more.
I will follow up now with the people who have left their business cards to see if they will be attending next week (4 have already expressed that they will come along again next week – so this means I have to change my speech again to keep it ‘fresh’).
I sincerely believe that Rotary has the right formula for success. With a blend of business, community and socialising we do have something that no other service club has around the world. We need to be more open and continue inviting our friends and colleagues along, we also need to lessen the formalities and create a welcoming and friendly atmosphere and a varied calendar of events because this is what attracts people to keep coming every week.
So one down, and two to go! Keep those invitations going…
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