Club E's Greatest Resource

I've said it many times and it's worth saying again, the greatest resource that Club Entrepreneur has is its membership. My renewed one-on-one sessions, in which I've had the pleasure of meeting around 200 individual members since March 17th, has been nothing less than life changing...for each side of the equation. Getting to know someone on a focused meeting together for even as short a time as an hour is both entertaining and revealing with many opportunities that come to light. Introductions offered on both sides of the table have resulted in extraordinary new opportunities for all parties and true kindred friendships can often times evolve.

Our process for one-on-one meetings is quite simple. First, an interested member or a referral from one of our members contacts our colleague, Sonia Graham (sgraham@clubeoffice.com) to set up an hour long meeting with me. We're usually booked out two weeks in advance but people's schedules change, so there are often openings before then. At the session, we get to know each other and I try to drill down specifically on what is needed by the member, jotting down notes to myself. Both sides explore the possibilities and at the session's end, I ask them to refer others that might benefit from a session and/or participating in Club Entrepreneur.

At the close of the day, often after having met 6-8 new individuals, Sonia takes down info I've given her on the action steps promised to help our members. These are entered into a spreadsheet and the tasks for execution are spread between our core staff to make happen. It's turned into a pretty streamlined process that has helped a lot of people so far.

At the end of each week, I invite around a dozen of the past one-on-one participants to meet each other at an informal one hour session around my board room table. We go around the room introducing ourselves and sharing a little about each of our businesses. Then I reach out to the group asking, "What can we as a group, help you with today...right now?" Someone always jumps in first and the group spends the rest of the session offering comments, help and introductions to that individual. It's a powerful and awe-inspiring moment of "open source entrepreneurship" at work.

We had a special treat from this last Friday's session when one of our attendees, a banker by day and caterer by night, took it upon herself to bring home-baked deserts and coffee for the group. It was delicious. The diversity and talent of this particular session's gathering was quite extraordinary and listening to each person as they shared what they did made me feel like a proud father of sorts.

I truly love what we do at Club Entrepreneur. We are making a difference in people's lives every day and the cumulative effect of what we are doing here in Phoenix, multiplied in new chapters across the country...just may be exactly what America needs to turn her around!