How to Build an Extraordinary Club, Part 1 of 3: Meets

The first of a 3-part series, today’s focus is on Club meetings.

Are your meetings creating value? Are you giving your members a good reason to attend? Just as important, are you giving your guests a reason to come back??

These critical questions are top of mind for Lee Goodwin, who led 5-member Mt. Auburn Toastmasters from near collapse to 18 participants on meeting nights – all in less than one year. That was twelve years ago. Since then, the Club has experienced meetings with 20+ guests and one time even had 50+ attendees.

Jealous? Or are you asking, How did he do it?

Lee has a lot to say about how leaders can deliver value to Club members and guests. All on-point, phenomenal advice …

• When you talk to people who fit your guest profile, ask them how they learn about events and clubs. Social media is not a quick fix: It requires an investment of time and energy. I favor Meetup because it worked for my Club. 
• Follow up on inquiries. I’ve had multiple guests tell me that they never heard back from the inquiries they sent through Toastmasters to other Clubs. Email. Text. Phone. Don’t give up until you make contact with them.
• Follow up with guests. Send a thank you email – You can keep it brief but personalize it. You should note anything they say in their visit and work that into your message. If they don’t attend your next meeting, Email. Text. Phone. Make contact. 
• Create opportunities for guests to participate: Start off every meeting with an improv exercise. Have a Round Robin: Guests introduce themselves and everyone has 30 seconds to answer a question. Hugely popular. It has the added benefit that guests have already confronted their fear of embarrassing themselves by speaking in front of a group before the meeting barely begins. They’ve scored a success with the Round Robin. They’ve loosened up with Improv. And now they can enjoy themselves.
• Go undercover. Attend meetings of other groups. Pretend you’ve never been to a Toastmasters meeting and note the entire experience: From the first point of contact to the last. Keep reminding yourself that you are a guest and you are anxious. Convince your other officers to do the same thing.
• Create value. If you don’t have a speech lined up, find one. More than once, when we were trying to get our tiny club off the ground, we begged members of other clubs to deliver speeches. They were astonishingly good. Members and guests loved it.
• Offer high quality evaluations. Eye-opening evaluations hook both members and guests. No two ways about it. People join Toastmasters to better their public speaking and leadership skills. Give them what they came for.

To be a leader, you have to make people want to follow you, and nobody wants to follow someone who doesn’t know where he is going.           — Joe Namath, former New York Jets quarterback