New Page 1

I expressed to Gail in the foundation office about some of your interests and ambitions. And you should stop and see her at some point. She’s up there where Liz’s office is. Just introduce yourself and tell her that you want to be involved, and that would be cool.

I was locked out of my office for a few minutes, but now I have my keys, so we’re good to go. Yeah, the maintenance guy made me lock it again. They are real worried about security these days, because some stuff has disappeared. And in relationship to security, I am supposed to tell you not to have anything in your cars…there have been a couple of cars broken into. So make sure that if you have anything of any value to put them in your trunk or that it stays at home. It’s because people have been cruising the parking lots and they peep into the cars, and if they see anything of value, they will… The police are patrolling the lots a little bit more, because of that. And, hopefully, we’ll catch those suckers, and that will be a done deal.

My car was broken into once; they broke the window. And I had my dog in the car. I think that thief was pretty frightened for a few seconds. But they did manage to take a bunch of jackets. That’s how I got that really nice Columbia ski jacket, thanks to the insurance company. There were four jackets that were stolen, so those four became one. I was headed up north; I had the car loaded with snow shoes and all my stuff to go up to the lake place. So it looked like there was a lot of stuff was in there. And some of it looked valuable, and the jackets didn’t have any money or credit cards in them, but I think that’s what they wanted. They just smashed out the window. I had to drive home in three below zero in the cold with no window, and I was so pissed. I went to maintenance and said they had to stop this and put cameras up in the parking lots. They never did get the cameras in the parking lot, although, at some point that will happen. I think there will be more cameras on campus.

Well, they do have a policeman who will escort you to your car at night, and you’re supposed to buddy up with your classes at night. And we have done better lighting at night…but it’s an ongoing issue. The guy who broke into my car, they did catch later on, which I felt really good about. And when they went to his apartment, he had a bunch of stuff that had been claimed lost or stolen from Inver Hills, so we knew he had been doing it for some time. But it sounds like he’s out of jail and working it again or else is doing it.

I don’t think so, I don’t think he had a connection to Inver Hills, if I remember the detail. But, I mean, you could come from downtown St. Paul in seven minutes, on the freeway, and be here. And you’ve got the high school lot and this lot, and you know… So, anyway, you want to make sure you don’t leave stuff in your car. The other thing is that we’ve asked the police to patrol our lots, so, hopefully, we’ll see them more. But if you don’t have up to date license tabs, you will get nailed, because that’s how they justify their time cruising through our lots. And so, they are looking to catch a thief, but they are also looking for license tabs. I got nailed this fall…it was duty day, I mean, we hadn’t even started school. The only cars that were in the Fine Arts lot were faculty and administrators, maintenance people and staff. But they nailed three of us that day. The three of wanted to go over there and punch some people out…

Fortunately for me, I had a good excuse. I had been out of town the time they came, and I got out of it. I pleaded with the judge, I used my best sales skills. But be aware of those things. And be aware of things. And don’t hesitate; if you are here at night or even if you’re uncomfortable at anytime, have a buddy walk you to your car. Safety and security is a pretty important issue.

Test Packet

Tests 1 – 5 with Scantron sheets

Ok, these are your tests; and you want to make sure that you have a test for chapters 1 through 5, and that you have a Scantron for each of these, so you should have 5 Scantrons each.

Turn them in as you get them done. You can thank my secretary, Michele, for putting together these little packets; she did a nice job. And do all of you have a syllabus? Ok, I’ll get those passed out too.

Well, this is the 9:30, but we’re going to start talking about Business Club stuff at 10:30.

{I got a photographer who wants show how busy we are. Can we use your classroom?}

Oh, absolutely, because today is the perfect day, because normally we’d be testing… This is good, I was just handing out some test packets, and…

That’s my man! That’s the director of marketing, Charley! I’ll do anything he asks. Of course, that’s because he’s been a guest speaker for me when I was in a pinch and I needed some help. He showed up Johnny-on-the-spot. Perfect, they are going to take pictures of a marketing class. You are all going to have to smile like models, and look good. No, no, no, look serious. Ok, girls you can go take some time to freshen up.

We need to make sure that there is at least a desk for the Business & Networking Club, and an office.

Have you seen the Student Activities Room that they got, and then the Student Senate has that rinky-dinky little office downstairs.

[Now, are you talking about in the Activities Building? The one that’s just to the right as you walk in the front door?]

{The Activities Office…they’re getting their own office, now. It’s going to be in Conference Room B.

The Activities Room in the Activities Building is what we’re currently using to hold all the meetings. That’s what it’s for, but it’s not really big enough to hold a meeting; it really isn’t.}

[I’ve been collecting some garbage around the campus, and there’s a really nice library table that they were going throw away. So I put dibs on that table. Do you think you could fit another table in that room? ]

{This is a photographer from the Pioneer Press, who will be taking a couple of shots, so just do what you normally do. And I’m sure Rusty will ______}

Oh, absolutely, absolutely…. Yeah, we’re actually going to be talking a little bit about marketing today, and then we’re going to be talking about club stuff, the golf tournament, and the president’s breakfast meetings. So there’s a lot going on. So we just handed out their tests for this semester. And so you guys can be busy looking over your tests… Charley thought that sounded pretty good. And we’ve got handouts for the Business & Networking Club, which we’ll hand out later on. So how long is this going to take? About ten or fifteen minutes, or… How many pictures do you need?

You won’t be here that long…ok. This morning…what time did we agree upon, 10:30? And Liz gave me the message that I got last night, by the way.

Ok, Amy as well… They will be coming and they’ll be talking about how you can earn extra credit via the Networking Club, and helping out the Foundation and the Alumni Association. So they’re going to take a few minutes of our time, and they’re going to share with us the challenges that they have in front of them, the accomplishments that need to happen in order to make these two events go. What you need to understand before they come is that last year, via our President’s Breakfast Meetings and our Ask Event, we raised a little over $40,000. So that was really good. I was really very pleased. And that’s been a big part of my focus for this last year.

Well, first they come to the President’s Breakfast, and then they come to the Ask Event. So if you get people to come to the President’s Breakfast…two of my earlier students have earned extra credit for bringing a guest. And both of those guests, later on, wrote checks to the college, which I was thrilled about. I don’t know how much they wrote those checks for, but when you added up all those checks, it totaled $40,000. And we still have money coming in, yet, from that, and some in kind gifts as well.

Golf Tournament

Monday, May 17^th 2004

The golf tournament is May 17^th, and we’ll make sure that that is on the board. And that’s a Monday. And this year, we’re doing something a little differently. We’re going to be having students that collect and get silent and live auction items, but we’re not only looking for golfers, we’re looking for dinner participants. So last year, when we had the golf outing…where they really make the money is the silent and live auction afterwards. They make some money from the golf, but that just basically pays for itself, right. There was a Wild game, if you remember, the Wild were in the championships. So many of those golfers had tickets to go…and these are big spenders, ok? They were going to the golf thing in the morning and the game in the afternoon. So we lost a number of people and we could have made more money. So, this year, we’re going to have separate tickets and encourage people to come just for the dinner. So if anyone leaves, we make up for that and still have a full room. And I think that’s going to work out real well. So you can earn extra credit by soliciting guests to come for dinner, you can earn extra credit by getting golfers to come. And that can be one, two, three, four…it could be six. It could be two sets of foursome golfers or whatever, and then getting silent and live auction items. And we’ll work out how that extra credit plays out either today or the next meeting. But the last time, I think it was 25 points that you could earn by participating. And, I think, with the silent auction, if you brought in like $50 worth of stuff, you got like 5 points, and if you brought in $100 worth of stuff, you got like 10 points. And, we’ll see how that plays out. But, so, you’ve got plenty of ways to earn extra credit.

And it’s really not about the extra credit that is so important. What it’s really about being able to say in your resume and in your portfolio that you’ve been a community service person, and that you’ve volunteered. You’ve gotten involved on campus, right? How many of you want to go to the Carlson School? If you want to go to the Carlson School, you will not get in unless you do community service work and that you can prove that. You also have to have a really good GPA, and a recommendation from some faculty and some other people on campus and someone in the community. So there’s a payoff for getting involved in a number of ways. And Liz will talk about that more and you’ll learn more detail today and get some handouts. But that’s what we’re going to do from 10:30 to 10:45. And then we’ll flip over and do the Intro to Business class. When you’re done, we’ll hand out tests, and we’ll go from there.

Satisfaction

Exchanges

Products the fulfill needs

All right, what we want to talk about today is the continuation of the marketing cycle. Recall, we had that up on the board the other day, the marketing concept, where we talked about McCarthy and the four Ps, and how producers make decisions and decide on products that meet consumers’ needs; and that it is an exchange process, and that’s what marketing is all about. So when you look at the definition of marketing, we’re talking about satisfaction. That’s what customers want, right? They want satisfaction. And the Pioneer Press knows very well that if you exceed expectations, you’ll grow right? You guys have been doing pretty good work; I love your Sunday business stuff. And when I first started teaching, the Pioneer Press has been getting better and better and better. Now, has their competitor gotten better too? Yeah, their competitor, The Star And Tribune has grown. But, you know, if you deliver that satisfaction, and if people are pleased with the product, you’ll do well, you’ll have repeat sales, and you’ll move forward.

Satisfaction

Exchanges

Needs Assessment:

Products that fulfill:

Needs, wants, and desires

So that’s a key word in this marketing concept, that satisfaction thing. Producers organize the resources, land, labor, and capital to deliver products that they are pretty sure are going meet the needs, the wants, and the desires of the those potential customers. And, at first, it’s a guess; I mean, we’re hoping that this will work out. Hopefully, it is an educated guess backed up by some market research. So, hopefully, we’ve talked to these consumers and we know what they want, and they know what color they want; and we know how big they want it; and is it disposable, and do we know what they want to pay for it. Those producers, if you will, will offer products.

Well, in order to do that, they have to do a needs assessment. And that’s an integral part of a marketing plan. And next week, you’re going to get a handout on how to do a marketing plan, you’ll see samples of marketing plans and, hopefully, you will have read the chapter in the book about what goes into a marketing plan, and then we’ll put an outline on the board about what the elements of a marketing plan are. But one of the critical things that makes that marketing plan work is that needs assessment. What is it that customers want? So I always use Inver Hills as an example… You are our customers, right? And we know, we have a consumer profile developed about traditional students, PSCO students, Senior Citizens, housewives who have raised their children and are coming back to school and are coming back… We have a special program for them and it’s called the ALIS Grant. We have traditional students, which most of you fit that category who are 18, 19, 20, and 21 years old and came out of high school fairly recently. But then we have our adult students, what we call our nontraditional students, who are in the workplace. And we custom created special programs, or little niches, for those people. And my program was one of those, the small business management. At the time, we looked at a smaller declining number, or population, of high school graduates. So in order to keep the campus busy, and have maximum utilization of our facility, we needed to bring in adult programs. So we created two-year and one-year vocational certificate programs just for them. They are things like: real estate, fashion merchandising, retail operations, small business management, aviation, paralegal, medical secretary, legal secretary, executive secretary… I mean, we had a whole bunch of those.

Now, many of those have been funneled into transfer programs, because now you guys want to transfer. So our marketing offerings had to change. Our product, if you will, had to change based on your needs that have changed. It’s because, now, when we talk to young people, what do they say? They say they don’t just want a two-year degree, I want a four-year degree. They’re talking about there transferring to another institution from day one.

By the way, you need to talk to our councilors about that and work closely with them. Really, I’m serious about this. You don’t want to have any screw-ups. Then you need to work very closely with the receiving institution and their councilors, so that their councilors and our councilors are teamed together to make this flawless and seamless, and you will be thrilled that you did that. I wish my step-son would have listened to me, but he didn’t. It’s kind of like the minister’s kid…it is they who are sometimes the bad ones, or the police chief’s kid is sometimes the bad one…. When I was growing up, the Burnsville Chief of Police’s kid went to my high school. He’s the one who bought us all of our liquor. He looked like he was older and he had full, straggly, beard. But Ben, of course, discounted what I had to say and did it on his own and struggled. He’ll get out of here, but he would have gotten out cleaner if he had done what I had recommended.

Absolutely. So a number of people came to us from a number of businesses and said we need packaging technologists. So we launched a packaging technology program. Unfortunately, there weren’t very many young people who saw that as a career, so it died. We didn’t have enough bodies to fill that classroom. But, yeah, we work hand in hand with those employers. And one of the things that is interesting is that when we talk about who are our customers and what are their needs, you’re only 1/3 of the picture. Did you know that? You are only 1/3 of the picture. So, who are the other players? The transfer institutions and the State of Minnesota is big, right? It’s because the state is paying a part of your tuition. And it’s also the employers. So when it really comes down to it, you’re the one who sits in the class; it’s your buts who are in my seats, and you have to weight in our lines, and deal with our book store, and hopefully our system works well for you, when you register online, etc. But it’s actually more important that those employers are satisfied with our product, right. So we work very hard at finding out what it is they want, what do they need, and making them happy.

When we had this discussion in my night class, last night at West, one of my students raised their hand and said, “Why don’t you do more to promote PSCO students?” And I said, “That’s very good, I’m glad you brought that up.” Think about it from a marketing perspective. So the whole class thought for a minute. And nobody came up with the answer, which I didn’t expect them to, but we don’t hard-sell PSCO, because that would tic-off the high school teachers. We’re taking away from them potential students in their classrooms. [a local brain drain?] So we don’t want to make a big deal about that. We depend upon those same teachers to send us students to say go to see Rusty Mitchell over at Inver Hills. He has a good marketing class. We need all of those recruiters out there, right. So we’re very careful not to upset that relationship. So we sell that via word of mouth, and we encourage that via word of mouth. We tell people who are having a good PSCO experience to share their experience with others in their high school who they think could benefit from it. And we tell the parents the same thing. But we don’t go in an put posters up all over the school or place big adds in the school newspaper, because that, then, would become counter productive for us.

It’s kind of like Levis who had an opportunity to meet customers’ needs in an incredibly powerful way. They were what were called servo-sewers, and they can manufacture a pair of jeans for him, and him, and her. All of you have a different body type with specific needs. Levi’s can custom make, if you give them your dimensions, one pair of jeans for you; and you get to choose the fabric. Like the washed out look, the not washed out look, thicker or heavier, or with more reinforcement. And they can program into this computer how to make your jeans custom.

And every time you reorder, it goes back to the file and it makes another pair for you.

Well, they had a problem with how they were going to sell them. If they run ads all over the country, and they actually wanted to do this globally, because you can get on the computer, now, and order from their factories, which were having trouble. They were slowing down, because of a lot of competition. We could make this global. Well, they ran into a marketing decision dilemma, where those producers had to make a decision. And the decision was, if we do this, what will our retailers think? They depend upon a whole series of long-term customers who are retailers. So what will happen to the Levi’s order from Kohl’s if all of a sudden Levi’s is selling direct and undercutting them? What will the buyers at Kohl’s say? Screw you! You guys are jerks! You’re cutting us out and competing directly with us! You have a long-standing relationship with us; you can’t do that. Well, instead of doing that, they took it a little differently and signed an exclusive with Walmart and I think Kmart, who had never been clients. So they’re trying to get in, now, with the mass merchandisers in a little different way. And that, they thought, was risky enough. But their brand and product, it’s not the exact same product that you’ll get at Kohl’s, which is the Levi’s brand. It’s slightly different. But it’s like Sears with their Kenmore line. Sears had their own brand. Well, who makes Kenmore?

It’s made by Whirlpool. So the Whirlpool is the bigger and better one with all the new stuff. The Sears is kind of like last year’s model. It’s still a really good machine. But that’s what Levi’s is doing. The next step for them might be, and I’m sure they’re booking at when and how they’ll launch this, is to sell direct. But in the meantime, they don’t want to lose all of this traditional business that they have.

Right, and so they can say to Kohl’s, well, it really isn’t the same product; the people who want the true Levi’s product with it’s good brand name are going to come to you, people are willing to pay more or have the Target name on it…. By the way, Target has introduced a new name called Linden Hills, my neighborhood where I grew up, where my grade school is. I can’t wait for that to become global. Maybe that house that I owned back then will be worth more and I’ll buy it back and fix it up.

But, yeah, that’s exactly what they are thinking. And the custom paints, by the way, would have been a lot more, wouldn’t they? They would not have been cheap. You would have gotten pants that actually fit your body, but you would have been willing to pay for that. And anytime you wear that one pair of pants that you loved and that you wear everyday out, you just get online and order another pair; and UPS delivers it to your door. It’s brilliant. They’ve been fiddling, by the way, they’ve had this servo-sewer system for twenty years. Now they have it to the point where they could launch this very easily, but they are still sitting on it.

By the way, when you buy Levi’s jeans, they are made by robots, more and more and more.

[And their not even made by Levi’s factories anymore, they’re all subcontracted now.]

Well, some of them are subbed. Levi’s still has some of their original factories.

[I thought that most of the product was manufactured in China, and Levi’s is just pretty much a brand name now.]

Not all of it, but the majority. And especially the foreign sales stuff is made abroad, made in China. But they actually built some factories that they own that are not sweatshops that are not sweat labor. I mean, they don’t pay very much, but they also subcontract. So Levi’s has had a number of decisions to make, and it’s been interesting.

Satisfaction Consumer’s

Exchanges wants needs

Needs Assessment:

Products that fulfill:

Needs, wants, and desires

Well, Inver Hills has had those same decisions to make. And it’s based on what are those customer’s needs, what are their wants, and what are their desires. What’s the difference between a want and a need?

{A need is something you actually ________, and a want is something that you _______________}

Ok…this is something I have to have, and this is something that would be nice to have.

Yeah…what is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs talk about? And we’ll look at that model another day.

Physiological needs in the base are water, sex, shelter, warmth, food. So is General Mills in the business of providing a basic need that we have to have? Yeah, I reversed these, so I’m sorry about that. I should have written it the other way around.

Satisfaction Consumer’s

Exchanges wants needs

Needs Assessment: psychology of those decisions

Products that fulfill:

Needs, wants, and desires

But these are things that physiologists have said are critical for life. I mean, this…. You can’t exist today without transportation. So, transportation is often, now, listed in that bottom tier of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a basic need that we all have to have. And the wants are the things that we could do without. For example, I would like a Corvette. Yeah, it’s something that my wife thinks is absolutely foolish, but it’s not quite as foolish as she thinks, you know. I need to maintain my psyche; and as I lose my hair and gain weight, and I look in the mirror and go, “Who the hell is that old man?” Out of my eyes, I still see college freshmen. It’s a nice job. I never age; I’m always dealing with 19, 20, and 21 year olds. But when I look back, it’s like, “Oh, my gosh, that guy has saggy eyes and he’s wrinkled and he’s lost his hair—who is that old man?” Well, if I buy a Corvette, does that make me feel good? What do we call that? There’s a lot of cars in my neighborhood. I’ve got two neighbors with brand new porches and three with brand new Corvettes.

They are facing a midlife crisis…well, that’s what my wife thinks. And it’s pretty common. And, so a lot of guys figure, “Well, if I can go out and get myself that sports car, which, when I was young, I couldn’t afford. Now, I have plenty of money… I mean, now it’s not a problem. I could pay cash for this sucker. When you’re young, you have the quick reflexes to drive it, right? When you’re old, you don’t have those quick reflexes anymore, so it’s kind of scary to see an old man driving a car that goes 240 mile per hour. The Corvette that I test-drove, would go 240 miles per hour. I mean, it’s purely a racecar.

It could have gone through the whole market, swung around, done a couple wheelies, come back and take on the other half. I tried to get my mom to buy the Corvette, because she has more money than I have. And I thought, here she is, the “little old lady from Pasadena,” her neighbor is the vice president of General Mills, we could get her on a racetrack; it would make for good PR. She’d have a car…because what I wanted to buy was the fifty year edition, the 2003 50-year edition Corvette. So it would appreciate in value if you didn’t put very many miles on it. Well, my mom is 80 something, right. So she can feel good about having this nice pretty car and all that stuff. But, you know, she wouldn’t drive it much; it would be in a garage. And her neighbor, down there, would help her take care of it and get a good deal on it. He offered all the people in their project a 15% discount, because he was just made vice president of General Motors, so he was passing on his employee discount to all of his neighbors. And, actually, it wasn’t that great of a deal. A dealer could give you the same discount, if he chose to. He was just trying to generate more business for General Motors when they needed some sales, right, because the economy had slowed down.

But she looked at that car and went, “Na, it’s too low…” Did it meet her needs? No. It met my needs for the old-fart syndrome, but she wasn’t going to pop for that. My sister thought it would be a really good investment. So my sister writes the checks for my mom’s account. She was willing to write the check! She said, “Yeah I think we should do it.” My mom said, “Na, na, it would cost too much to insure…” And that was a good point. I would have had to rent garage space, and… Although, they were building carports down there, so I thought we could put a cover on it. But, then, her other thing was, “Rusty, if we put it in a carport, it will probably get stolen.” Which was probably true. So we ended up not doing that.

But, boy, I had a fun day testing driving it, didn’t I. I went to the dealer, and told him that tomorrow was my wife’s birthday; I want to take this car home overnight and surprise my wife by putting it in the garage with a bow… Just to kind of get her goat, kind of, more than anything. “Honey, happy birthday!” She always teases me about my buying her stuff that I want for her presents. This would be like the best of the best. But do you think they would let me have that car overnight? Almost any other car, you can have overnight. They want you to take cars. Corvettes, they clock the miles. They don’t want you going over 3 miles on a test drive, because ever mile driven is dollars off the value of that car. We were gone for about 48 minutes, and eighteen of those were spent talking to a highway patrolman. I asked the salesman, I said, “Now, this is a beautiful bright, red, Corvette; is this a cop magnet? Am I going to get tickets?” And he goes, “No, no, no, it’s not a problem…” But we didn’t get 3 blocks away from the dealership and I see the lights and hear the siren coming up behind us. And I’m going, “Oh, my God…” And it’s got the “heads-up” display, so I’m really doing a good job of staying within the speed limit, and I know I made all of my turn signals. But he pulls me over and says, “Sir, you’re ok, you don’t need to worry; you did everything right.” And I said, “Well, good, because this has “heads-up” display…” And he goes, “I know, sir… you weren’t doing anything wrong. But I don’t see any dealer plates; and when I don’t see dealer plates… The dealers have asked us across the state, to pull those cars over, because it’s probably stolen. I need to see the ownership papers on this car.” And then he looked at the salesman and said, “Buddy, you’re in trouble.” And the salesman almost got a ticket, and he could have gotten fired. As it turns out, you know, he did have the dealer plate in his brief case, he just didn’t put it on. He, kind of, forgot all about it. He had grabbed it on the way out, but I had him so screwed up, because I was telling him all this stuff, and as it turns out, he was a former teacher and taught vocational college in this system, and then he sold boats. Well, I love boats… And so I had him going; I had him all jazzed up, and he just kind of lost track of where he was.

By the way, are Corvettes cop magnets? Oh, absolutely. I had a poppy-red Mustang, a gorgeous car, with black roof, black convertible. The cops would be 3 blocks down a side street and see me go by; they’d speed up and come to the street that I was on, and follow me…. Do I need a Corvette? No. I want one, however; I dream of about one, I desire about one; I sing Beech Boys songs about Corvettes. I used to go to the drag strip and dream when I was seventeen about owning a Corvette. Will I ever have one? Maybe… If my Signs For Sale business does well, and I’m making tons of money, my wife won’t have anything to say about it, right? It’s a company car! I have to have this to impress the young people, you know.

Satisfaction Consumer’s

Exchanges wants needs

Needs Assessment: psychology of those decisions

Products that fulfill:

Needs, wants, and desires

So, you have to distinguish this; and there’s a lot of psychology involved in those decisions. What’s a need, what’s a want… And in your marketing plan, you want to clearly state that this product is a necessity or that it has a strong place in the food-based category of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. By the way, my dad sold… his primary base of accounts was always in what industry? Agricultural, Cenex was his biggest account. And he sold to Lutheran Brotherhood Insurance. Now, I don’t have to have insurance. But if I have kids, I’m probably going to buy insurance. But he sold to all the insurance companies, he sold to Deluxe Check, but checks are almost a need, aren’t they. I mean, you have to be able to do transactions. By the way, Deluxe had a chart about how many marketing exchanges there would be for each of the next years through 2025. My dad photocopied that and brought it home, and they had made a prediction as to how many of those would be check related transactions. And he could see that Deluxe was going to become a huge company. And he helped them become a huge firm with some of his advertising and marketing ideas. But he zeroed in on Cenex and General Mills and Pillsbury, and Multi Foods, and people that are in the ag business, because the economy goes up and the economy goes down, I might not need a new car, but I have to eat don’t I. And so that was a critical part of his marketing plan and his customer base… And I started to work on Super Value and County Seat. You have to wear clothes, don’t you. And you want to wear clothes that are cool. So County Seat had Levi’s and that’s cool.

Satisfaction Consumer’s

Exchanges wants needs

Needs Assessment: psychology of those decisions

Products that fulfill:

Needs, wants, and desires

So figuring all of this out is pretty important. I probably misspelled this, but ‘products that fulfill needs…’ and so these producers will offer products based on a needs assessment that fulfill these needs. And so you want to be really clear about that. What is your need? Why are you hear?

…yeah. And young people have been getting this message since when? Since the first and second grade. You will go to college. By the time you graduate from high school a high school diploma will mean considerably less, you need a college degree. And by the way, a college degree. Many of the ads, many of the jobs, don’t specifically say a four-year degree required. But, then, some do. My daughter wants to be an O.T., and if she wants to be an O.T., she’s going to need a master’s degree. But a two-year degree isn’t going to do it. Now, if she wants to be a nurse, she can get a two-year nursing degree and be a nurse, right? So sometimes you have to know what those are. But for many business jobs, especially sales and many marketing jobs, the ad says ‘a college degree required.’ Does a two-year degree from a community college count then? Absolutely. What they’re more interested in is that, yes, you have the two-year degree, but you have some work experience. The way that we’re set up, do we allow and encourage… actually, almost all of our students work, don’t they?

When I went to Mankato, only a few students worked. They had more than enough labor for the job market in Mankato. I mean it was hard to find a job in Mankato. You had to have gone there in the summer and have that job lined up, before all of the others. And the idiots would show up ten days after school had started and go, “I think I’m going to be able to handle a part-time job…” And then they would start looking for a job, but they were all taken. But most of my peers went to school full-time. Well, in a community college, you work and you go to school. And you work, and you go to school. What you learn in the class, does that help you on the job? Do you get better at your jobs and do your employers see that? That’s why they’re willing to do tuition reimbursement, because they see a benefit to themselves. You see a benefit. So you grow.

Well, employers want you to have that degree, but they also want you to have work experience, they want you to have real-world experience. So if you leave Inver Hills and you’ve done an internship, and if you’ve established a mentorship, and you’ve done some things like community service work, and if you’ve got some projects under your belt, in your portfolio you can show them, here’s my intro to business paper. Here’s my marketing plan; here’s my small business plan; here’s my business operations plan, or my procedures manual. These are some things that I’ve actually done at school. Here’s what I learned on the job, in my internship; here’s what I learned at this part-time job.

Satisfaction Consumer’s

skills Exchanges wants needs

Needs Assessment: psychology of those decisions

Products that fulfill:

Needs, wants, and desires

Now, do you have the skills required? Yeah, you have something to offer that employer. And, basically, what you are doing, here, in our environment is you are packing your product. You’re packing benefits…features, advantages and benefits [Oh, that’s the FAB I missed earlier. (I think this is a subset to the term product.)] into your resume, your portfolio of what you are. And that’s why you get out of college what you put into it, right. If you have this portfolio and you screw around for four years, and you don’t put much in it, or what you put in it isn’t much to brag about, you’ve wasted four years. If there’s some really good stuff in there that you are proud of, and it shows that you’ve learned something, wow, that’s powerful stuff.

So do our students do well when they leave here? Do they get jobs? Do they make money? Yeah. And when you transfer to four-year schools, the other part of our clientele is those four-year institutions. And guess what? Our students do better than those who started at that school. We had the statistics to prove that. So let’s say that you’re going to transfer to Mankato, according to the statistics you’re going to do better than your peers who started there. Is that a powerful endorsement for the quality of our education? I think so. By the way, my brother-in-law is very proud. At Normandale, he created the first business department at Minneapolis Community College, and he created the business department at Normandale Community College…he encouraged me to come create this business department. He’s very proud of the fact that he started that first statistical base analysis, and that the record has not changed [We should exhibit those stats in our promos.] since he started to gather the information at Minneapolis Community College. That’s a pretty strong endorsement. And the employers understand that and respect that.

By the way, if you leave here, and you don’t get a degree, do you get our stamp of approval? I can buy eggs, but are they grade A inspected eggs? Maybe, maybe not… If they’ve been through the inspection process and have gotten the stamp of approval, you know, I have the government’s say so about these eggs. I’m not going to get Salmonella; I’m not going to die by eating these eggs, although, I can’t prove that 100%... like we can’t 100% prove that you are a good employee. [This can help a great deal with credibility issues.] But I always tell employers, anyone can go to Inver Hills. We have open enrollment, we want everyone; we want access for everyone. I believe that’s a part of democracy; we want you to come. But only our graduates have our 100% stamp of approval. Only students that have endorsements from faculty or will get letters of recommendation from faculty or department heads, or whatever have our 100% approval.

So, I tell employers, don’t judge someone on the quality of what we turn out, just because someone said, “I went to Inver Hills.” And they show you a transcript with some courses. And, by the way, as I’m talking to alumni, and I’m doing the phone calling campaign, every one of our alumni that doesn’t have a degree, we want them to come back and complete that degree, even if it was thirty years ago that they were here. We want people to get the degree, because we need to show, as a department, completers. We also, by the way, will survey you when you leave Inver Hills. So be sure you fill out that survey if it finds you. And if it doesn’t find you, come to the college and say, “Mitchell said to fill-out this survey.” It’s because we want to know where do you work; how much money do you make; so we can say to the new students that this has been the result of our past business students, and this is what you can hopefully expect.

{Liz Evensen actually graduated last year, she’s _________. She, now, works for the foundation. She’s Gales assistant…}

She’s Gale’s assistant in the foundation, and she’s in charge of the Alumni Association.

{She did really well, though. She came back last year, and… she was actually an inspiration for me, when she came back to school after many years, from raising a family. And she went out to really excel. You know her, she was the President of the Honors Society, at one point. And then she also became a U.S.A Academic _________ and ranked in the 13^th. And that’s very impressive. Out of all the students who were nominated, she actually made the third tier. And that’s pretty impressive.}

Cheryl Frank, our president, loves to brag about her, and rightly so. Liz was a student in my marketing class through the CBE program. She didn’t have to sit in on the classes. She could have just opted out of it, because she was a marketing manager. And that’s what that Competency Based…or Credit for prior learning program is designed for. But she wanted to get some of the material from the class to help her grow. Well, I respected her for that. The minute she said, “Can I sit in on your classes?” I said, “As long as there’s a chair, of course.”

Then she applies for the job, and asks me for a letter of recommendation. Well, I’d gotten to know her at this point; and, of course, I’m going to write her a letter of recommendation. If you want to see something fun, and see what a professor can do for you, ask to see her letter. She’s got it; she’ll show it to you. It’s one of the best letters I’ve ever written. I was so proud of myself… And, essentially, I ended it by saying, “I think this girl could be the next president of the college!” Wow! Could she? Well, she’s got to get her master’s degree and she’s got to get her PhD and she’s got to do some good work, here, in the meantime, but of course she could. [I could work through my master’s and PhD with my own project and interdisciplinary studies and major.] And wouldn’t that be cool? Another one of my former students…what a success story. One of the things that you have, here, however, is opportunity. And Jeremy has availed himself via the Networking Club of opportunities. Kevin’s doing it now. Liz got involved in the German Club, Phi Beta Kappa, the Networking Club. She came to our first Business & Networking Club meeting, which Cheryl really wanted to have happen. And while we were having the meeting, she was doing a job interview with one of my favorite success stories, who was Mrs. Minnesota, and now Kelly Joyner-Burn is a marketing director for Choice Hotels. I mean, she’s just gang busters; she has her own cable TV show, she’s just a dynamo. She’s just a dynamic person.

So, here I am having my first Networking Club meeting, and here’s Liz doing an interview in the middle of it. So, anyway, Liz will be here in a minute.

But, Jeremy, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself, and we’ll get started.

All right, I’m Jeremy Jones, and I just started about a year ago in the fall, here at Inver Hills. And I had got into Rusty’s classes, and found out about the Networking Club. And I just became involved. We were doing a corn roast at the time…

And they wanted to know who can pick up the corn? And I’m like, “Well, I can…” And they all looked at me, “Who is this kid?” And I’m like, “Who is he? Who is he?” So I volunteered to go out there and pick it up. And everything worked out really slick that day.

Actually, we had a 3M employee, who was an adult student, volunteer his relative’s corn roasting machine. But we need the corn. Well, my secretary, Michel, her family owns Berry Land. And so they agreed to get us the corn at a really good price so we could pass that on. It wasn’t done as a fund raiser, it was just to connect people and have a fun event. But we needed somebody to go and pick it up. Well, somebody had to have a pickup truck to get how many bags? Well, we had to get bunches of corn. So I didn’t know Jeremy, and he was in my class, and he said that he would do it. So as a club advisor, I have to ask people to do things. It’s like diving blind; I have to close my eyes and pray. I double cross my fingers and go, “God, I hope Jeremy is going to follow through with this…” And it turns out that he got the corn. Did he prove himself? Yeah, now has he given me a story to brag about? Yeah. That’s what mentorship and sponsorship is all about. So he got the corn; and pretty soon, he’s doing more and more and more. Then, later on, he said, “Yeah, I’ll be president.” And when he’s done…he just got a new full-time job. But he’ll step down, and then somebody else will get to be president. Via this club, you can make your title. You can get involved and create your own title and get involved, and away it goes.

So, these guys are kind of like the executive board, at the moment. There are members that are in business and industry, there are members who are former students, but they can’t come. It’s hard to get working adults who have kids and families, like Jeff Adams, to come to meetings. Jeff really apologized, by the way, he really wanted to make it to that last meeting. But he had to be in a surgery. He sells medical implants. So when his job calls, what are you going to do? Go to the Network meeting or surgery? Well, he had to go to surgery. But you need to know that you’re not alone in this. There’s quite a group of alumni that are involved. And part of what we’re hoping will happen, is that there will be more events and more activities that you guys will plan, run, and organize, where you interface.

Are those people who can hire you? Yeah, I’ve got a guy right now who called me up a week ago who is going to start a restaurant called Purple People Eaters, did I tell you about this? He’s a former student, and I hope he makes it. If he does, is he going to need employees? Yeah. Right now, he’s looking for investors. Hopefully, this will come together, and he will be at the February 17^th Breakfast with the President.

Well, I knew we had a fund raising thing where we have to start another breakfast, but…

[For the most part, yes. Firstly, we had the introduction about who we are. And that’s pretty much been covered. What Amy and I have been doing is a table promotion these last few days, Monday, Wednesday, and Tuesday, where we met a lot of people that stopped by, and we got a chance to tell them who we are. And we are the Inver Hills Business & Networking Club…]

[I don’t think so. But this might be a good time to pass out some brochures. And Amy is in charge of promotion, so she can pass those out. We’ve also worked very hard to bring in some people to today’s meeting, our first regular meeting, by the way.

And at the table, we basically told those who were interested that this is a great opportunity to become involved with the foundation and the alumni and to help with these upcoming events and the fundraising.

Now, presently, there are 3 fund raising events: The Breakfast with the President, which we encourage everyone to contribute to that, as well as the golf outing, which will entail getting players as well as silent auction items. And then the next fund raiser is the calling campaign. And that’s for alums. But the ask event has to do with the Breakfast with the President.]

Yeah, the calling campaign really isn’t a fundraiser. It’s just a chance to connect and let students know what’s going on. We can make sure that they are getting our alumni newsletter, and then invite them to come to the golf outing or the President’s Breakfast Meeting, or any of the other events that we might have scheduled.

[And I try to stress as much as possible, and Rusty has already touched on this, and he couldn’t make it any more clear than I can now, but when it comes down to campus organizations and becoming a part of those, maybe I’m biased, but I think that this is an organization that can really take you places. I mean if you can become involved at all, you can actually say that you were a part of raising funds for the college, that you had leadership experience, and that goes a long way. Because that’s what people are looking. I mean, it’s like Rusty said, a nice GPA and a degree, those mean a lot. But when you get a letter of recommendation from the school president or a department head, it goes a long way, because that’s what an employer is looking for. And this is a great opportunity for you to become involved. The beautiful part about this is that you can contribute as much as you want. I mean, we need all of your skills. What we’re trying to do is accumulate a knowledge or skills base. If you know anything about software, like Front Page, for example, I run into problems with Front Page sometimes. By the way, my responsibility is IT. I try to keep the Web site up and running, I try to keep the minutes of the meetings posted and all of that. But I’ve run into glitches sometimes with the school network. For example, if anyone knows any thing about Front Page or software or computers, if you could just make yourself available from time to time and just for a couple of minutes. So, if you know anything about computers, if you have good telephone skills, if you have good speaking skills—anything at all. You don’t have to specialize in anything, so much, but your input is really important.]

The IT thing is really critical, because I can’t continue to keep calling all the people that I know, my success stories, and inviting them to stuff. I mean, that’s just too much work. So we have to get to the point where that’s all being done electronically. And you all know that I’m not computer savvy. That’s not my realm. If I get into my own business, I’m going to have to move into that direction. So Kevin has volunteered to move this forward. And, hopefully, we’ll get to the point where it’s all electronic, and you guys will be able to, via that site, interface with all of our alum. Any alumni who has given us an email address. They’ll begin to look for that.

The Web site is not on the brochure. I am so sorry about that. But I will write down here on the board. For our table promo we made up some bookmarkers and you can find the Web address there. But when is up and running, and it’s been tweaked, we’ll have the activities down, we’ll have the minutes of the meetings, and we’ll have all the information that you’ll need. As far as the meeting dates, we already have a separate page set up for that. But as far as the opportunities, I thought I would turn that over to Liz, because she knows exactly how to zero in on the fund raising activities. And I’ll just write this down on the board.]

Hi, I’m Liz Evensen. Not only am I an alum here at Inver Hills, but I just graduated from here last May myself, and I was sitting in the same place you’re sitting a year ago today in Rusty’s class. And I have a business degree, and I am currently pursuing my next business degree at St. Mary’s University. Aside from that, I also work for Inver Hills now. I coordinate their alumni association, which is really a partner with what you’re doing right now. This club, The Business & Networking Club, is a collaborative effort with the Inver Hills Community College Foundation’s Alumni Association. What we want to do is get all of you working with this organization, this part of your business education. It’s a real good supplement to what you’re getting, and it connects very well with the alumni association. And you can apply a lot of what you’re learning to the activities of the club.

Now, here’s the situation. We have opportunities coming up this semester for you to get extra credit from this class. One of them is the calling campaign. Have you heard anything about the calling campaign yet? It’s the last two weeks of March. It’s the two weeks immediately following spring break. And we are going to hold for 8 nights, Monday through Thursday for those two weeks after spring break. We’re holding a calling campaign where we’re calling previous graduates of Inver Hills Community College, and we’re going to ask them a few questions, we’re going to ask them, hey, where did you go after you left Inver Hills, and tell us about your experience here at Inver Hills, and take little notes and write things down. We want to tell them about the upcoming events, we’ve got a golf outing fundraiser coming up, we’ve got theater events, we’ve got the Fear Conference coming up in April, you let them know what’s going on, and then there’s a whole little sheet that you follow along as you are on the phone with them. It’s pretty simple; you volunteer to come in; we order pizza, so you have something to eat while you’re there. And it’s a lot of fun. And you get extra credit for doing this. And the whole time that you’re on the phone, you are building connections and building relationships with our alums. A lot of that information that comes out of your conversations with them is really very valuable to the college. And it’s a good experience for you as well. So that’s going to be an opportunity for you. We would like each one of you to donate a couple of nights, maybe, two Mondays or a Monday and a Wednesday, or whatever, but I would like to challenge each one of you to donate a few hours or a couple of hours on two nights. So, that’s coming up, and you’ll get extra credit for that.

The other thing that we really wanted to talk to you about, today, is real special opportunity, and I came up with this idea last year in Rusty Mitchell’s professional sales class, as one of his students… Every year, we hold one fundraiser at the college. And it’s called the Forrest Glewwe Golf Outing. Now, this golf outing is named after one of our board of directors for our foundation who was a big supporter of Inver Hills for many years. And when he passed away, we started calling a golf outing in his name, and it became a fundraiser for the college. This year is our eighth annual Forest Glewwe golf outing. It’s going to be taking place right after the end of this semester, it’s on May 17^th. It’s on a Monday morning. And there are several ways for you to get extra credit, and to volunteer for this. But there’s some ways specifically that can not only give you a good experience, and go along with your business education, but it can really help the college and you can get some valuable experience from this.

Now, Kevin is handing out a brochure from last year’s event. We currently have the current year’s event brochures in print. But this tells you a little about the event. We normally have about 135 people golf. We can’t take any more than 144, that would be full. And what happens at this golf event is people come and golf, and this costs $175.00 dollars for them to come and play golf. And most of that is what it costs us to have them have their golf, have their cart, their green fees, their lunch and their dinner fees. The college makes about $40 profit on that $175.00 cost. So it’s not a lot of money that the college makes on that. But, that, then, is the tax deductible portion of their fee, the $40. The big place that we make our money is through a silent and a live auction and through sponsorships for this event. Last year we made $31,444 on the golf outing as a fundraiser. Where does this money go, from the fundraiser? It goes to scholarships. How many of you know about Inver Hills Community College scholarships for current students of Inver Hills. Who is the scholarship director at Inver Hills Community College? That would be me; you can also talk to me about that. We have a lot of internal scholarships. How many of read the Inver Hills Student Bulletin? When you see those, folks, you have to pick them up. And it tells about the upcoming scholarships, if any of you are interested in a scholarship, our next deadline is April 2^nd of this year. And it’s good till next fall, so if you’re still going to be here next fall, you should be applying for these scholarships. We have them for full-time students, for part-time students, for students who are in math; we have them for students with higher GPAs, and we have them for student’s with a 2.5. You have to have a 2.5 GPA. And I’m sure that all of you are at least that.

So, anyway, there are applications that are going to be coming out. But I do encourage you to apply. The money that you’re earning, and the money that this golf outing earns, goes toward scholarships for people like you, for any student, for traditional as well as nontraditional students. So that’s why this is a good cause. You’re raising money for scholarships for students for the college, and it’s an easy sell when you go to other organizations to ask for support for our college. It’s not hard to ask for support for scholarships for students.

So, here’s the situation with the golf outing. We want to focus your efforts, if you want extra credit, we want you to solicit items for the silent and live auction and/or sponsorships. Now, if you look at your brochure, on the inside of the brochure, right here, there’s a list that says, “Sponsorships.” Companies, businesses, or even individuals, can be sponsors. And it’s a good thing for them to do, because it gets your name out there in the community. The people who come and golf…those are usually business owners. And they are people who are going to be paying attention to who the sponsors are. So here are the different levels of sponsorship. Take a look at those on your own time; we don’t want to take the time to look through them right now. That’s one thing that you can solicit for extra credit. So you can find a sponsor for the golf outing at any one of these levels.

The other thing, and the thing that most of the students were interested in is soliciting items for the silent auction. How many of you have ever been to a silent auction or really know what one is? Ok, let me give you a little bit of detail. Organizations or individuals donate items. And it could be a condo for a week in Florida, which I just heard today. We got a donation from a company for a condo for a week near Disney World. Or it could be a gift basket filled with something. Maybe it’s for a golfer; or maybe it’s for a mom’s day off; maybe it’s for a romantic evening basket. We have a whole lot of different opportunities for baskets that we could make if someone wants to donate money also. So an organization, business, or individual donates this item. We will have these items sitting on table at the golf outing. After the golf is played everyone comes in for a social hour. And all the auction items, at the country club where we’re having dinner, will be lining the walls. So all of these items are sitting out. There’s a bid sheet sitting in front of them. If you’re interested in making a bid, the bid sheet usually states the item, the value, and then the minimum bid. So if it’s a $50 dollar item, we might start the minimum bid at, maybe, $25. And then it also tells what the bid increments will be. Maybe each increment will be $2, or something. So every time you would sign that bid sheet, your bid will bump up by that amount. So as people walk by, if they have an interest in something, they sign their name. And at the very end, when the clock strikes at a certain time, they quickly gather all the sheets. And the last person to make the bid is the one who actually gets to purchase that item. Sometimes you can get items at a huge discount; sometimes there were certificates. Like last year, there were gas certificates from Holiday Gas Station, and they went for their actual value. People thought, hey, I’m going to buy gas anyway, I’ll pay $25 dollars for that $25 gas certificate. So sometimes the golfer may pay more for than it’s actual value. But every penny goes to the Inver Hills Foundation.

Well, what we want to do is equip you and train you, so that if you are interested in doing this extra credit option, you are prepared, you know how to do it, and you’ve got the materials that you need to go out and ask businesses for donations. And for this, you will receive extra credit from Rusty. Now, I am in the process of putting together a packet for those of you who are interested in doing this. The packet contains: a letter from the Foundation that explains, “hey, we’re having a golf outing; we’re looking for sponsors and for donations for the action. And I’m the tournament director for this project, which is part of the reason why I am speaking with you. But it gives my phone number [Set up this material with poster at Emerald Greens as well as at the locations of big sponsors’ businesses.] and if they have any questions they can call me directly. So it’s a legitimate letter that will gain you instant credibility. The packet also contains a bunch of donation worksheets; so as you get the donations, you record all of the information. And we make sure you get the extra credit for bringing those in. We will also have a bunch of postcards, here, that we can get to each of you, so that you can hand them out to promote to others to say the day that they want to golf, because not only are you going to ask them to donate, but you’re going to say, hey, we would love for you to come and play golf with us too, here’s a brochure for the golf, and here’s the postcard that states the date so you don’t forget. We will also give you what we call our road piece, which is basically our Inver Hills brochure that tells about what programs we offer, here, at the college. And it’s just a real nice piece to share. We have our Alumni News Letter that you can also have. And, also, some of my business cards would be included also, so you can hand those out if these people should have any questions, or if they are wondering, “Why should I give student this item? Are they just going to take the item and run? Is it legitimate?” So, I’ll give you some of my cards, so they can call me also and request more information if they want it. So you’ll have a packet of materials. On top of that, Rusty has agreed that if there are many of you interested in doing this, or if the majority of you are interested in this, I’ll come in and give you a little training [Cassidy should train this to his students as a project.] [Also, get the acrylic free standing displays from that used display place in Bloomington, off of Penn Avenue somewhere. Charge it to the Business & Networking Club.] And explain to you exactly how this works and maybe one little role model exchange about if you did walk into a business what you would say to them. And it really is simple. When people understand that the money raised for this… Number one, the money raised is going to scholarships and to help support the college. It’s a very good cause. And number two, you are a student here, and a business student. Now, if you go into any business and tell them you’re a business student, they’re going to appreciate that about you. They are going to appreciate the fact that you are in college and that you’re trying to get an education, and that this is one of the projects that you’ve taken on, and that you’re volunteering to do this. It’s not required in your course, you are volunteering to do this, knowing that you’re gaining some valuable education out of it within your business education and in your future career.

So, that’s what I wanted to tell you about. If you are interested, I would like to know. And you’re passing out a sheet.

[We’re recording names, email, and phone number. So if we have a list of who in this group wants to initially be a part of this.]

So if your interested… and with a show of hands, how many of you might be interested in participating in this extra credit opportunity. Put your hands up high so I can see. Well, that looks like the majority of the class.

Now, honestly, last year when we did this, it was wildly successful. I cannot tell you the impact of just that one class, this size, made… We would never had had that many silent auction items collected. And, last year, we expected to make a lot less money for this fundraiser. But, because of the classes efforts, we made a lot more. We had a third more items in our auction than we had anticipated, because of the business classes participation. Now, one other thing that I need to tell you is that what we’re looking for for donations…we’re not looking for $5 gift certificates to Baker’s Square. If you go in, and that’s what they offer you, we don’t want you to turn it down. But, really, your looking at items that twenty-five dollars or more in value. And more is better.

[And so what you tell people is that we were hoping for a twenty-five dollar value. If they offer something less, that’s fine, because we can package some lesser valued things together. ]

We can, but the truth is that we don’t want to tell them it’s a twenty-five dollar item. I think we should start a little bigger and say, and I’ll get into this when I train you, since, obviously, so many of you are interested. But we have a basket program. And what we do is that we have one person who is on the staff, here, at the college, and she has volunteered to go out and shop for baskets. We had a list of baskets, so if somebody wanted to donate $50 dollars, we’ll put together a basket with a theme. Like an evening out basket, or “it’s a boy” or “it’s a girl basket” I mean we have 100 different themes for baskets.

The romantic bath basket, what ever… A basketball basket, a go back to school basket, there’s a million different ideas.

The baskets go well, because you have this huge gift there, in a basket, and they are all wrapped up pretty fancy, you can see everything that’s in it. People love to donate toward one of those, and they can usually come in at… If the value is $50 dollars, a lot of times they’ll go over $60 dollars. So that’s going to be another option. And that makes it easy because if you go into a furnace company, and they say, “well, I can’t donate a furnace.” You could say, well, you could donate $50 dollars toward a basket, and then we’ll have the basket with you as a sponsor, there, and you’ll get some good PR promotion out of it.

who comes to this is really kind of the who’s who, and who really cares about education in our whole service area. So it’s a pretty influential audience that’s there. The other thing, when you’re thinking about this, wherever you trade, or wherever you do business with, if you have a place that you like to frequent… for tanning, you can ask them for certificates. If you have a favorite restaurant you can ask them. My wife has a place where she goes and they give each other gift certificates for massages. So I’ll go ask those people. Last year I think they gave a $50 thing for massages. So there’s a lot of ways that people can do that. Car dealers, if you go in to have service work, I was at the Nissan the other day, and I didn’t do it. I should have, but…]

[They can donate a certificate for service work. I went to Grossman one time, and I think they donated $25 free car washes. Well, if you live by Grossman Chevrolet in Burnsville, and if that’s convenient for you, that are a really nice thing to bid on.]

Anyway, thank you. And because you’re interested, I will come back and I’ll have packets of information for you for the next couple of weeks. And did everyone get a chance to sign this sheet?