September / October

I thought we had an excellent meeting in September to kick off our new year. Steve Brandes gave a fantastic presentation on the Wisconsin Herd, and I was happy to see a lot of familiar faces, as well as some new members and guests who joined us. Over the past couple of weeks since the meeting, I have also noticed some positive comments and engagement on social media regarding the meeting, which has been really encouraging given our recent efforts to increase our following on LinkedIn.

As we look at some of the numbers related to our membership, we are currently at 489 followers on LinkedIn. I am going to go out on a limb here and promise everyone reading this that the number of followers will be above 500 before I send out my next membership update. I would not-so-secretly like to see that number reach 1,000 before the end of this fiscal year, which I think is very attainable.

Another number is 194. We started the year with 194 members. We were above 250 prior to COVID. The following years were a tough time for every professional organization that relied on in-person meetings, but I feel like we are heading in a positive direction. I think we handled COVID and the years that followed extremely well, and I am optimistic that we can get our membership back above 200 by the end of the year.

There is a quote that says, “If you have a goal, write it down. If you do not write it down, you do not have a goal; you have a wish.” I’ve written down a couple of my goals for the year above and created a “little bit” of accountability by sharing them with the entire membership. Now, I would ask (beg) generously for your help on both of these items.

Remember, when we have guests join us, it is almost always because they have been invited by a member or strategic partner. If you know someone who you think would enjoy and benefit from becoming a part of our FEI chapter, please extend an invitation or share the program schedule with them. Of course, while you are doing that, you should also ask them to “Like” our LinkedIn page to give them an opportunity to learn more about our chapter and its upcoming events.

If anyone has any additional thoughts or ideas about things that would benefit our membership and the growth of our chapter, please feel free to reach out. I’m always open to hearing about new ideas.

Otherwise, I hope to see everyone at our meeting coming up on October 14th and/or at the October 8th New Member Networking Event.

Thanks,

Bob Faulds
FEI Member Experience Chair
Bob.Faulds@truitypartners.com