Minutes of lunch 3/12
President Shelly kicked off the meeting at 12:14 with a large crowd, including nearly 50 guests of our speaker, Dean Wegner.
To welcome the extended crowd, we had Michael jon Pease, Susan Schuster, Jason DeKeuster, and John Chandler. Special shout out to Susan Rostkoski, Carolyn Will, and Amanda for assisting everyone with lunch payments and parking validations. It takes a village! Matt and Andrew coordinate the technology for the day. Bob Cardinal provided multiple quotes on the definition and value of love in our lives, followed by the 4-Way Test.
To allow time for our speaker, Shelly asked any visiting Rotarians to stand, both of whom were guests to hear Dean; additionally, she had all guests stand to be recognized and welcomed. She shared a quick introduction to Rotary with a thank you for District Governor Nominee Michael jon for his slides. She highlighted that our District, 5960 has just over 2,200 members in 57 Clubs; we donate $761,000, and impacted more than a million lives last year. Explaining that we are 120 year old organization in over 220 countries that has over 1.4M members, 46,000 Clubs; we have donated $357Million to improving lives, and have impacted over 2.5Billion lives with our Polio outreach. She invited all the guests to take information from the table and come back to join us for another meeting.
Our speaker, Dean Wegner is a Veteran and entrepreneur who once lived in Stillwater and now runs Authentically American living in Nashville. Being from Minnesota, hockey had an important part in his story, including his time at West Point. Dean shared how his experience in the Army along with the book, the Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann, helped set his path and created a desire to do for others. This included adopting a fourth child. His corporate experience at P&G and Mars helped him take a leap to create a manufacturing company to produce high quality clothing that is all made in America. Bringing in many of the audience guests in his story, he clearly illustrated the value of connections and friends in his world, and in the success of his work. He highlighted that he has a discounted price with lower profit for charitable organizations and a goal of replacing China for much of the clothing industry in the US. Due to a glitch in technology, the sound was not working in his presentation, so Shelly will be sending out the PowerPoint to guests, and will include in an email to Club members if you are interested.
Our first 5:01 at the Pool & Yacht Club will be Tuesday, and upcoming volunteer opportunities we highlighted as the clock showed we were running long. Shelly reminded us all that as Rotarians, we take action together to create change in our world and our community.