Toastmasters Hsinchu: from ashes to phoenix part V

The move
My term as the president finally came to an end in June of 2002. Even though I was able to hand over the club to Paul Chang, he accepted the post of the presidency reluctantly. Fortunately, the reluctance was short lived. Paul’s first decision was to move the club out of the Science Park. We found a small conference room in the Empire Building with capacity of 14 and with a little push, we could cramp 20. The move put us in deficit of $3,000 a month. If nothing improved, we would run out money in less than 2 years.

The venue was clean and well lit. It had a big U shaped table where members could see each other during the meeting. The new location attracted a variety of people from all works of life. We started to see participation from students, teachers, insurance agents, business people, salespersons, and homemakers. Before we knew it, we started to run into space problem. We quickly moved to a bigger place on the 6th floor with a meeting capacity of 60. But the venue cost us $5,000 a month. This time, if nothing improved, we would run out of money in about 14 months

The breakeven analysis
The formula was simple; we needed 36 members to break even, which meant any extra cost would have to come out of the club treasury; we needed extra source of income. After a heated debate, we came up with the following ideas
1. Increase the annual membership fees from $1800 to $2400 paid in full and none refundable
2. Charge a fee at $100 per guest
3. Sign a longer lease and bargain for a discount
The fee increase cost us 8 members, but the newer members didn’t seem to mind. Guests were happy to pay the fees. We got a 10% discount by committing our club on an annual lease. The combined effects reduced our breakeven point down to 30.

The Business News Weekly
The president of ChungLi Chinese Toastmasters club which I helped to sponsor was a personal friend of the formal vice president Annette Lu. It was through her connection, the district office was able to invite Ms. Lu as a guest speaker in the Spring Convention 2002. As a result, Toastmaster was written as a featured article in the Business News Weekly along with interviews on several prominent Toastmasters.

eMarketing finally paid off
If you were to use “Toastmasters” as a keyword to search for the district website in Google or Yahoo! at that time, Toastmasters Hsinchu would come up at the top 3 listings. Needless to say, we were flooded with inquiries and from that day on we never had a meeting without guests. Membership stood at steady 35+. Monetary problem was no longer a treat but the thing of the past.

If you were to attend a Hsinchu club meeting today, you never would have guessed that the club had gone through so much hardship in the past. But much of its success came from all the successive presidents, each brought with them a brand of leadership that made what it is today. After all, Toastmasters is where leaders are made.

Toastmasters Hsinchu: from ashes to phoenix part IV

With a healthy member size and steady influx of guests at every meeting, it was time for me to work on the attitude of the officers and the club as a whole.

The Officer Handbook and Expense Subsidies
Toastmasters Headquarters provided handbook for each officer. They were wordy and applicable mostly to clubs in North America. I broke the lengthy documents into bullet points and modified the duties to suit Hsinchu Club. Off site trainings were then conducted over dinner or lunch with all expenses paid from the club treasury. We also decided to entice the officers to attend Area level officer’s trainings by providing travel and meal subsidies.

The Distinguished Club Program
For a club to be successful, the accomplishment must be measurable. The Toastmasters Organization, in its infinite wisdoms, devised 10 achievements to measure a club’s success in leadership, teamwork, education, recruitment, and paperwork. An achievement of 5 out 10 is considered as successful. My goal was to attain that goal. Paperwork, recruitment, and teamwork (officer training) were easy, but getting members to complete their education program was tough. I had to push a C6 member to complete 4 more speeches and a C8 member to come up with 2. Funny it may sound; it was the C8 member who gave me the hardest time. He waited until the very last meeting of my presidency to complete his C10 speech. Nevertheless, the club got its Distinguished Club Award.

The Christmas Party
President sets the tone of the club. I liked to see our club as place where people can mingle, network, and at same time, pick up their communication and language skills. I wanted the words to get out, not through the website or fax, but through the month of every member. Christmas celebration seemed like a good starting point for members to invite their friends. The main attraction of the party was a raffle with first prize of NT$3,000 in cash! The cash was encased in a block of ice to symbolize the “Cold Hard Cash”. Winners had to break the ice to get to the prize. The party was a success; I got 2 more members out of it.

The District Involvement
For the past 5 years, Hsinchu club never participated in any speech contests; we couldn’t even get members to agree on a club level competition. We never sponsored any officer trainings; our officers always had to travel to another city, which was one of reasons attendance was so poor. So I volunteered to sponsor an officer training in Hsinchu even though I knew I could be the only person putting the show together. Fortunately, Bruce was kind enough to help. Despite the home court advantage, we only had 4 officers in attendance whereas Taoyuan club had 7 plus 3 more tag along members. ChungLi Club only had 3.

I guess my attitude must have moved the heart of officers and members, I started to see more attendance and more enthusiasm but when I told them Hsinchu was going to sponsor the Area Speech Contest, I quickly realized my optimism was premature; no one in the club would participate but the officers agreed to prepare the venue under the condition that I represent Hsinchu as the contestant. The contest went well; I won the area contest. A month after, I also won the 2nd place in the Division contest, which meant I was one of the finalists in the District Contest also. Yes, we only had 4 divisions at that time; each division needed 2 contestants for the District contest. Although I didn’t get anywhere in the District contest, but I made lasting impression with district officers. From that day on, Hsinchu club was no longer anonymous; we finally emerged from our shell.

Toastmasters Hsinchu: from ashes to phoenix part III

It appears from the SWOT that the root of the problem is lack of members. Members bring varieties and energy to the club which in turn attracts more members. Large membership means more qualified officers can be elected to manage the club. Our goal was therefore to put together a membership drive to improve our membership stand.

The key to promote anything is marketing. Marketing is expensive. But cyberspace marketing is relatively low cost. Public Relation (PR) doesn’t necessarily cost money. One just has to find ways to publicize Hsinchu Toastmasters without putting a dant on the club treasury.

The Toastmaster Hsinchu Website
In the September 2000, Hsinchu Toastmasters website was officially launched. A string of keywords was embedded in the HTML code, mostly to do with English learning even though in my heart I knew Toastmasters mission is to do with communication and leadership. I even put Hess English School, Jordon English School, KOJEN English Language School as keywords to attract would be English students. The same set of keywords was repeated in Chinese. The idea was that whenever a person search for anything related to English learning, our website will appear first. I also indexed our site with all the major search engines at the time such as Yahoo!, Google, Openfind, Yam, Lycos, AltaVista, and Excite.

The WinFax marketing
In my search for no cost marketing, I came to learn that there was a certain Mr. Lin, a past VP of Public Relation 3 terms before who demonstrated overwhelming success with fax marketing. Having met with him for few hours, we put togethered a plan to periodically fax to all the companies in the Science Park and all the schoools in the Hsinchu district. The act of faxing was easy, but entering fax numbers and updating them in the WinFax database was a real chore; it took me an entire week. (But this was nothing compare with the time I spent putting the website together).

The Grand Science Park Magazine
The Grand Science Park Magazine is the most the popular magazine in Hsinchu. It is distributed free at all companies in the Science Park, major resident estates, and restaurants. I contacted the chief editor to publish an article on Toastmasters but was turned down because an article on Toastmasters was published only a year prior. (Good job former President Chris Chang). But instead she allowed Toastmasters to appear at “What’s New” column.

For a month or so, nothing! then it happened. I began to receive phone calls and enquiries, mostly from fax initially and then the website. By November 2000, we added 8 new members. Andrew Budai and Paul Chang were among them.

Toastmasters Hsinchu: from ashes to phoenix part II

A little voice told me that running a club is no different from running a company. Since I ran a somewhat successful business in the past, I decided to put my experience to work. The SWOT analysis is a simple diagnostic tool that I used a lot at work.

Strength
1. Free venue, we can continue indefinitely without incur extra cost
2. Located in the heart of the Science Park with potential member pool of 20,000 highly educated people
3. A president with past experience managing Toastmasters club in the USA
4. A president who will not quit
5. $80,000 cash flow in the club treasury

Weakness
1. Lack of membership variety; most members are engineers
2. Lack of passion to volunteer as club officers
3. Other than the treasurer, all other officers are either inactive or quit
4. Location of venue is hard to find, and in bad shape
5. Officers have no idea what their duties are
6. Lack of enthusiasm to participate in the area, division, and district functions
7. Lack of focus, mission, and goals

Opportunity
1. Learning English is becoming a popular activity in Taiwan among adults
2. Toastmasters program works better than conventional English classes
3. President’s specialty is eMarketing
4. National universities in Hsinchu and employee at the Science Park account for large online population

Threat
1. It takes a village to save a club, not just a person
2. Club is under the threat of probation
3. Toastmasters is largely unknown to the general population as a whole
4. Traffic of the Science Park serves as a deterrent for people who works outside of the park

The SWOT gave me a snapshot of the health of the club. What need to be done next is to set goals, device a plan, and execute.

Toastmasters Hsinchu: from ashes to phoenix part I

When I arrive in Taiwan back in 1999, the first thing I did was to check whether there is Toastmaster club in Hsinchu. To my delight, there was a club in the Science Park. The club was lead by Mr. Chang, an engineer from Windbond. The club had about 24 members; mostly engineers from the Science Park.

As I became more and more familiar with the club I realized that Hsinchu members, with the exception of the president, have never participated in any Area, Division, or District events. The Distinguished Club program was largely ignored. One of the members quoted: "We are happy as we are, we couldn't be bothered with other clubs in our Area, let along the Division or the District". As far as the District was concerned Hsinchu club was just a name; a number in the District roster.

As President Chang’s term came to an end, I was asked to assume the role of president for the term from July 2000 to June 2001, largely because of my experience as the past president of Sensational Salesman club in Tustin, CA. On the day of my inauguration, 11 members decided to quit. I was left without a complete officer team and dwindling attendance. Looking in retrospect, my term of presidency coincided with the biggest Hi-tech down turn and our members (largely engineers) simply were not in the position or the mood to participate in the Toastmasters activities.

Lack of memberships meant no revenue for the club. Fortunately, we were able to get the venue for free at First Conference Room in the Science Park Administration building. The venue was in a really bad shape. Chairs were stained and hinges needed repair. Sound system did not work, and worst of all, the entire room were filled with mosquitoes and other critters I care not to mention.

For a while an attendance of 10 was considered good, 7 was the norm. Guest of 1 or 2 every other meeting was a blessing. The major complaints I had from our guests were bad traffic and the notorious Science Park Street signs; they simply do not have street number on the buildings.

To make matter worse, VP of education got relocated to Linkou and had to quit. VP of membership got laid off, he had to quit. Sergeant at Arm, well his story was a positive one, he got promoted to the deputy Director of the Science Park, he had to quit also. Suddenly I found myself taking the responsibility of all the officers. I was all alone and the job of the president turned into a nightmare.

The worst finally came, our memberships got so low that it had fallen below the minimum required by the Headquarters. The provisional District 67 wanted to send a “specialist” to fix the Hsinchu club (which I flat out refused). It looked like the club was on its way to an inevitable death and I was to go down in history as the president who killed it.