Susan Repka asked me to write an article for the newsletter on what she called my favorite subject, involvement.  Actually, I think she was just asking me to reduce my ongoing diatribe on the subject to writing.  I didn’t know if I could convey the same passion on paper that I hope I do verbally, but I felt if there was a chance my effort would get more of you involved I was willing to give it a go. 

Let me start by saying my passion around the subject is driven as much by my own self interest as anything else.  I want to meet and work with more WBE’s because I want the opportunity to learn from them.  I’ve been in the business world a long time but I have only owned my own business for a year and a half. 

One would think that in some of my prior roles I would have been exposed to every aspect of a business, IT, HR, accounting, finance, tax and on and on.  Well, yes, that is true but only as it applied to a large company. Working through decisions like how do you attract new employees to a small start up company or what are some of the trade offs in IT capital investments (you know, the penny wise, pound foolish mistakes), and a hundred others are made easier with input from other similarly situated decision makers.  So, I want more members to come out and talk about their companies and their challenges, solutions and lessons learned in the networking time around committee meetings and working groups.

My next selfish reason for wanting more WBEs to get involved in the organization’s efforts is more opportunities for business.  I need goods and services suppliers and I believe my company would be a good supplier for many WBE businesses.  In my experience, one of the best ways to find out if I wanted to work with a vendor was through personal interaction.  In keeping with my goal of doing as much of my business as possible with WBEs  in some cases the only way I found out there was a WBE that provided a service I needed was through a committee meeting introduction or networking session.

One of the top benefits of getting more members involved is the more ideas and input we get in our WBEA committees the better the organization will get to be.  We all pay dues, we should be sure we get the most out of those dollars just as we do with our other expenditures so a better organization means greater value. 

And then, of course, there is a nobler reason to participate, giving back.  There is entirely too much done by too few people in the WBEA.  We all have businesses to run so breaking the heavy lifting down into small bits makes it easier for people commit the time, but it takes more people participating to get it to smaller bits (I’m sure you all get the point here).  The WBEA staff and committee chairs also make every effort to make the meetings efficient and productive so your time commitments are kept to manageable levels.  In my view there are no good excuses not to get involved and I try hard to hold myself to the same standard.
 

See you at an upcoming committee meeting.