Message from our NSA-NT President, Elizabeth McCormick CSP, August 2022

Welcome to the August 16, 2022 President update. For those of you who don't know me I'm Elizabeth McCormick, a CSP, full time professional motivational keynote speaker have been speaking professionally for about 13 years and I am your NSA North Texas President for 2022 2023.

Okay enough about me let's talk about what just happened, so this past Saturday we had our first kickoff monthly meeting. The monthly meeting kicks off all of our programming for the NSA North Texas year, which runs from July 1 to June 30 of each year is our NSA year and we had a fantastic,  I mean, we could not have had a better opener for our year with Mike Ganino.  

He was fantastic talking about how to be a certified original and taking your audience through what he calls a "transformational narrative." 

If you're an "All Access Pass Holder", you have access right now to the August meeting recording and with that recording comes a workbook!  If you're not an "All Access Pass Holder" don't worry, you can still purchase access to this meeting or to all the meetings by upgrading to the "All Access Pass". To upgrade to an all access pass and start getting all the recordings throughout this coming year (last year there was over 50 trainings recorded).  To upgrade or purchase this recording-  send an email to Member Services at [email protected] 

Reach out or reply to one of our newsletters and say, "I want to upgrade" and we'll get you the link and credit you for what is already been paid-  we even have payment plans for you! 

You might have noticed something different in the room.  Did anybody notice anything different? We have this gorgeous new backdrop! I'm so excited I can't even tell you how excited I am for this upgrade.  I've known about this and have been planning for this for a while and we've debuted this 15 foot long 10 foot tall wall at the meeting on Saturday and isn't it gorgeous?

It's great for pictures, it's great when you walk in, and you can see here what it looks like as you walk in it was a full House on Saturday to kick off our Year. It was great to see our existing Members coming back, as well as some new North Texas guests. And so you can see, the wall and how that Wall would just kind of fills in that space between the two screens almost perfectly there.

Okay, so so a couple of new things in this president's update:

Last month I asked you to do a survey and to do a really quick answer noon or 12:30 should we end the meeting? We could do 12:30 and add some new programming or we could end at noon and kind of keep things tight and it was a it was two to one ratio for every two votes to one that that you want it to go to 1230 we're already there let's go let's go a little bit longer and we're going to add in.

 A couple new things now so what's coming up is what we're going to call a "Member Moment". So we're going to give highlight different member and have them actually do what they do on stage so present as if they were on a bigger stage and and show us what they can do so we're calling it a member moment so we'll be doing 9 or 10 of these throughout the year. The first one will be in September. We will start the meeting off right at the beginning after the welcome with a member moment and feature and highlight a member and at each meeting you will be able to recommend who would you who would you like to see for next month, who would you like to see next time or coming up so we're going to start factoring that in so you actually have a say at the end of each meeting who might be at a future meeting.

Now that's going to add 10 minutes, and we had lots of requests to have the the 10 minute break a little longer so we're looking at making that a 15 minute break and that only adds 15 minutes. Our plan is to still end around 12:15  to 12: 20 because that last 10 minutes is for you. 

I want you to take that last 10 minutes and have the meeting after the meeting, who do you need to meet with who do you need to talk to who can who do you need to connect with because one of our three values is, of course, is to is to connect and create time and connection points for you to connect with other Members.

Member moment longer break and more connection time-  What do you think? Does this sound good?

Now, one of the other things we're doing that's new in the in the meetings at the beginning of the meetings is we're recognizing our new members, and We've got some new Members here to recognize I'm going to recognize these monthly. As well as we're recognizing them if they can attend in person there'll be recognized in person at the meetings when they attend, for the first time after joining.

And if they're virtual, we will be recognizing them as well! When we know they're on the virtual stream on that hybrid meeting. In the hybrid monthly meeting,  some of the recognition I'm just going to recognize some of our new members somewhere there some are not some will be recognized at a future meeting:

WELCOME NEW MEMBERS: 

Look at that we have a whole bunch what is that NINE new Members (or former Members returning) some we welcomed at the meeting on Saturday and some will be recognized at a future meeting. What about you, if you're watching this and you're not a Member, yet you can join for only $19 a month, as a member or obviously all access passes nine payments of $48 for virtual nine payments of 68 for face to face and attending everything, I hope you'll join if you haven't already!

I would love to recognize you and hopefully say your name right in one of these future videos.

Now we can go to the recognizing our existing members, we were recognizing new members and again this is part of that promotion piece of one of our our three main vision points. And in recognizing our existing members there will be opportunities throughout the year for existing members. As YOU get involved to be recognized as well!

August 8th Member of the Week is Arlene Gale was our member of the week, last week, she is currently our chapter Secretary, and let me tell you, she has spent a huge amount of time this summer going through our policies and we are updating our policies, and it is a thankless task and I just want to give her a personal shout out for all the hard work she's doing with a policy, if you see Arlene if you see her online make sure you tell her Thank you and how much we appreciate her as a chapter.

Next this coming week this week, August 15th is Scott Cooksey. He was actually Member the week starting yesterday, I wanted to do this, video today because if you don't know today was my birthday, and I wanted to set share my birthday, with all of YOU!  Scott congratulations he's our director of technology, right now, on the board of directors and his main goal that I have given him to work on, is to continuously improve the virtual hybrid experience for our Saturday monthly meetings. He has been working on that and equipment we've got some new equipment that just came in and we're going to continue to up level up level that to really make it a seamless and positive experience for everyone, whether you're in the room you're watching virtually or you're watching the recording so great job Scott.

All right, as I said before, our mission and our mission and vision is to educate, promote and connect speakers. And with that in mind, we have a great calendar of events coming up so. Right now, if you're watching this I want you to hold us up to here for a minute I want you to pull out your phone and snap this qr code now if you miss it really quick don't worry, you can pause the video you also i'm going to have this backup at the end as well.

This puts all the upcoming events to your calendar and if it doesn't work close up you might have to back it out a little bit. But it puts everything we've got coming up all the events on your calendar. And it does automatically the subscription to that calendar is pre this isn't like a paid subscription and just gets everything over onto your calendar it works Apple Google or Outlook. It works and it pulls everything over and as new events come in, they get updated as we update it and include registration codes, as they get added as well, sometimes we have a date and an event scheduled, but we may not have the registration code up right away, and that will get added to that calendar as those are updated as well.

On August 18 Thursday from 5:30 to 7pm we are having a common go happy hour so come and go anytime between 5:30 and 7pm.  Kelly Vrla our social event coordinator is organizing and as planned in Irving, at the Toyota music city in that area it's going to be a great time so come and go pop in say hello.  And you know, have one not have wine, whichever you prefer on you, it is the wine and food is on your own pockets as everybody pays for their own. And we're just going to have a great time getting to know each other better and we're going to be doing these social events in person and some virtual ones throughout the year so that we can get to know each other and connect more.

You might recognize this person, so no it's not always going to be promoting me I promise you i'm not like that in fact if you'll notice instead of the President emceeing the meetings, we're having other people MC and getting other people to be featured other than me this is, this is not the Elizabeth show! I'm here for all of you so. But I do have some skills, when it comes to eSpeakers as i've been doing some work with eSpeakers for a little over a year. And with that knowledge in mind i'm going to help all of you, with your profile so whether you're brand new speakers, because all NSA North Texas Members get a free basic profile with a eSpeakers! And you're sitting there thinking what is eSpeakers well if you go to www.speaker.org our chapter website and in the top right corner you click on the find a speaker button in that top right corner that goes to our directory that directory is powered by eSpeakers, in order for you to get in that directory you've got to set up a profile. You're going to receive your link to set up your profile and then i'm going to talk you through some key things to look for and then also going to do in this particular call on Sunday August 21. I'm going to do profile reviews so i'm going to open up the line if you want someone to look at your profile and help make it better.

If you're able to be on that call great it will be recorded and that will be in our new Member Resources portal that you all have access to, and you will receive you'll see the recording in there, as well as some other recordings on how to set up your eSpeakers profile. You're going to have access to all of that to help you because we don't actually get to get booked and get paid.

All right, what else do we have coming? Yoram Solomon, he's our actually our labs coordinator is doing the first lab of the year now, this is one that was supposed to be last year and was has been pushed back a couple times. He is actually going to teach you about self publishing your book on KDP- Kindle Direct Publishing now.  You're not just going to tell us how to do it he's actually going to publish a book live on the call so you're going to see, step by step by step, how to publish your own book on kindle, which is, of course, if you don't know kindle is owned by Amazon so it's how you get your book on Amazon as a paperback hardcover and kindle as well. This is not to be missed one if you haven't done your book yet because you'll learn a lot here.

Then we have what's called the CPA P spotlight now if you're new and you're thinking what is a CPAE? The a CPAE is a National award and stands for the Council of Peers Award of Excellence, a fancy long word for hall of fame. This is our national level, not our chapter, our national level hall of fame and Nikki McCuistion as an Emmy award winning producer with the TV show with PBS And Nikki we're so fortunate to have her as a member of our chapter has been doing the spotlight interviews for the last year, she had 22 of them last year. And now, is starting off this year we're continuing the series we're trying to get them all we're trying to get them all 22 a year, at a time! Let me tell you they are insightful and soulful and heartfelt and it because it's not just about their business it's about their life and what they've accomplished, and what it means to them, and this has just been a wonderful. It's a wonderful series and we've had some of these that we've interviewed and have since passed away so these, this is a very special series for our chapter to facilitate and host.

And for Nikki to facilitate for us so Jim Calloway, CPAE on August 30th and Bill Cates on September 1st are the first two and both are exceptional role models in our industry and you'll see it when you watch these hour long interviews.

We're also added something called local legends those will kick off later in September and local legends is someone that's been important to our chapter, a past President and/or award recipient. From our chapter that can talk about a little bit more about the chapter level and things and we're going to create those are free for all Members. Whether you're an all access pass holder or not it's a member benefit to receive access to those recordings and those will go in the Member resources portal that we all all Members have access to.

All right, wait there's more! Next month's meeting is Crystal Washington. I am so excited about having Crystal here. She's going to talk about tools for business as she is a futurist and a big strategist. She's going to talk business strategy and she is talking my language, I cannot wait for Crystal to be here, and if you haven't met Crystal is like she's like not much taller than like five foot she is a dynamo in a small package. 

I hope you register to attend either in person or or virtual, and so we can see you there and have a great showing for our second meeting of the year.

In fact, the lineup for the entire year is fantastic:

GET SOCIAL with US!

We want you to get social and stay connected with us so if you're not connecting with NSA North Texas on everything Facebook, Instagram Twitter, Linkedin, or whatever you're comfortable being on-  please be there because we're going to be posting about these events and other updates and pictures and announcements on our social media and we want to make sure that we're that you're there with us, so no matter what you're on we're there (except for tick tock) just search for NSA North Texas, yes we're on YouTube as well.

And our hashtags are hashtag #NSANT and our hashtag #NSANorthTexas,

One of your Member benefits is that when we have requests come in for speakers those requests come in and go out to our Members, FIRST.

we had recently had an event for the Texas Society of Association Executives ask for a speaker, and so we ended up getting three speakers each did little a 10 minute showcase spotlight:

Represented NSA-NT well and our President-Elect Darren Ford was there to talk about NSA North Texas, and our find a speaker directory and everyone there could find future speakers on our website www.speaker.org.

Exciting to have this opportunity and congratulations to them for being highlighted!

We're only like a few days after after the kickoff event the first the first meeting I am thrilled at the turnout,  I'm thrilled with the new Members that have joined, and we have had many guests who are also hopefully joining us soon. 

And we are really thankful to have you as a Member, have you attend as a guest, have you involved in our Community and it's a thrill and honor for me to be your President, this year, and to lead, so thank you so much, and I'll see YOU at the next event.