Minutes September 16, 2009

Posted by Jantine Stam 
 
"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader". John Quincy Adams

Our guest speaker this evening was Reg Cousineau, Certified Coach Practitioner from Guelph. You can read more about him below.

Wim did a great job as Sergeant at Arms

Announcements:

Youth Exchange Weekend at Pittock – 40 youth are coming this weekend to camp out over night at Pittock Park.

Wine and Cheese – we are having a special Wine and Cheese evening Wednesday September 30th here at the Quality Inn at 6:30pm. Lori from Pelee Island Winery and Tom Hemsworth from Springbank Cheese will be pairing wine with cheese and. This will be a fun social evening and we only have a limit of 50 people who can attend. Please let Jantine Stam know ASAP if you plan on attending.

Terry Fox Run – this was a successful event chaired by Norm and Helen Narancsik. They had 47 participants and were raised a nice sum of money for the Terry Fox Foundation. Thank you to all who volunteered that day.

Curling Invitation – speak to Norm if you are interested in seeing the curling National Championship in Guelph from January 6-10

Guest Speaker: Reg Cousineau is not a stranger to Woodstock. He lived here from '82-'88.

 
He worked with the Children's Aid, Hospital and then started his own business. He used to be a Rotarian in 3 different clubs, one of them being Tom Hemsworth club in Calgary, so he is very familiar with Rotary. He has worked at district conferences and socials, and also did PETS training. Reg has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology and Business and a College Diploma in Counselling. He believes that people's human potential is a largely untapped resource. Reg has have the pleasure and privilege of teaching and training adults in areas of Sales, Customer Service, Leadership and Communication Skills, Goal Setting and Business Growth.

We asked Reg to motivate us for our membership drive. Our club would love to get new members out, with Reg's pointers we hope to succeed. One interesting quote he said was "knowledge is potential power". We know we have to do something with it, but we don't do it. Also "who you know is not important, who knows you is".

Here are some ideas given to us to increase our club's membership

~ Before launching any new member campaign, improve the quality of your meetings. Getting visitors is easy. Impressing guests enough so that they come back...now that's the challenge!

~ Ask you Sergeant-at-Arms to arrive 30 minutes before each meeting. Guests typically show up 15-20 mins early. If no one is there, they might think the meeting is cancelled

~ Ask your Sergeant-at-Arms(and other members) to always be on the lookout for visitors and that they should always be prepared to drop everything to greet a guest

~ Educate the club members on how important it is that everyone shake hands with the guest before the meeting. Have a designated greeter

~ Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. Use hard copy newsletters. Mail them to homes to spouses/partners can read them. People love to see their birthdays, anniversaries and other information listed. Don't rely only on ClubRunner

"If you want to keep getting what you are getting, keep doing what you are doing". Anonymous

Thanks for coming out Reg. You are an inspiring speaker and we hope to use all the information you provided us. For those of you who are curious what Rotary is all about, we'd love to have you as a guest at our meetings. We meet every Wednesday at the Quality Hotel and Suites in Woodstock at 6:30p.m. We start with dinner, and end with an interesting guest speaker. Meetings are done by 8p.m.