Membership
Ryan Bohlander of Jumpstart Kids Fitness came today as a potential member.  He runs a small kids fitness organization.  The ages of his clients range from 3-5 years old.  His clients are young and inexperienced in life which presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities.   He has been in business 5 years.  He has had his share of growing pains and successes.  He believes he has much to share with members including his gorilla grass roots marketing tactics.  He attended both UofA and ASU.  In a former life he worked in the corporate world helping firms stay in compliance government regulations.  It is a major shift to what he does now.  He enjoys the benefits and challenges of being a small business owner.   

Joe Zingale's brother attended the guest event.  He really liked the group and would like to join.  His only concerned is being able to make the morning meetings.

Leads, Introductions & Acknowledgements

• Dr. Keith Miller presented a sample plate of this mornings breakfast to determine what can cause us to gain weight.  (Hint...EVERYTHING!)

• Dave Crissman presented members with a Trampoline Challenge!

• Sandro Menasci has a new piece of equipment to test battery life.

• Roman will soon share his research/studies on social networking liabilities...Stay tuned.

• Steve Chilton is the new spokesperson for Starbucks.

• Lin Schmelzer has been through three economic downturns.  This one is not like the others.  But she does see light at the end of the tunnel...a year away.   Keep a positive attitude and ignore the media gloom and doom.

• Mark Menasci went out and bought Window 7 yesterday.  It crashed three times on installation.  If you have more than one hard drive, beware.

• Herb Stokes may pop in to your store soon to visit.

• Chris Curran - You can learn a lot of life's lessons playing sports.  Joe Hesch is a bad winner and a bad loser.

• Erin La Grassa got a promising account from Japan.  (The last time we will be typing that last name for her.)

• Janice Jaicks has a new marketing person in her firm and is very excited about the future.  Except for when the outlaws come to town. (meds needed!)

Social Networking Training
We have one more training night coming up.  You can still sign up.  Click here for details. 

MABE Survey
The results are in.  If you would like a hard copy see Dave Lathrop.  We will try to schedule discussion of the results at an upcoming meeting.

Herb originally planned to move back to Alabama but was warned about the lack of work there.  His roommate was moving here so he came too.  He got a job with former MABE members, Portraits by Reg.  In 2006 he branched off and started Southwest Portraits with a partner. 

They do lot of high school senior portraits as well as underclassman and sports.  They have contracts with the schools.  There are many misconceptions about these contracts.  People think they are raking in the dough.  It is not true.  They get no money from school.  They do provide a lot of services to the schools including going out to events and taking photographs.  They just hope that people will buy the pictures.  This also leads to future business taking family photos, weddings, kids, etc. 

Herb would like to do more pet photographs.  Another area they get into is model photography.   His biggest competitor is the neighbor next door with a camera.

His office is located on the southwest corner US60 & Rural next to Embassy Suites.  The outside location is what sold him.  Because of his location, most of the senior portraits are done outside. 

Herb showed slide show giving a brief synopsis of what they can do and finished up answering members' questions.

He also shared tips on taking good photos with your own camera (see attached).  If all else fails, hire a professional photographer.  We know a good one!

For the next two Friday's we will be taking new photographs for the brochure and website.  Herb will be ready to photograph at 6:45am and he will stay 15 minutes after the meeting as well.