Experimenting With Local Chapters - podcast episode cover

Experimenting With Local Chapters

Jun 20, 202514 minSeason 1Ep. 279
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Episode description

For Shop Talk, we explore the idea of potentially experimenting with a few local chapters of the Army this year. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1

Everybody. It's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks. Welcome to Shop Talk number fifty seven. Welcome into the shop. Hey Alex Ada, I'm doing great. Bill. You're looking at anything particular, just hanging around taking up space.

Speaker 2

I need to buy some cigars before I go on a two week trip.

Speaker 1

I thought that that that's a good call. Yeah, that's a good call. They're back in the humidor. You can pick about in a minute today, Everyboddy, we're Shop Talk number fifty seven. We're going to talk about experimenting with local chapters, and we hope to inspire and encourage some of you guys to get involved. So Alex and I are going to have a little chat in front of you guys with talking about experimenting with local chapters, an idea that I think some of you might be interested in.

We'll do that right after these brief messages from our general sponsors. Everybody, Welcome back to the Shop number fifty seven, experimenting with local chapters. As everybody knows that listens to regularly, Alex Cortez, our producer, is a wonderful guy and he does a beautiful job preparing me for all the interviews and doing all the work and getting all the guests into a studio here Memphis and all that we do. But he's also kind of nuts, and you are your

little nut. And he has come up with an idea that seems to be getting some traction with a lot of listeners, and so we're going to toss it out there for some of you to consider as well. So shop Talk number fifty seven, Alex experimenting with local chapters. What in God's green earth that's going between your ears?

Speaker 2

I hate these kind of episodes where I have to talk a lot, but oh, bless your here we go, you know, not everyone's wont an oscar and is you know, a paid speaker and like does yeah?

Speaker 1

But I keep getting these emails about how people feel sorry for you because I pick on you too much. So now's your redemption time? Oh man?

Speaker 2

All right? So, as you guys know, most of our impact to date, it's been by people listening to the podcast, consuming the content on social media, our email list, and then deciding to take action on your own. But what if we can do more than that too? And so the idea is to launch local chapters where Army members can get together in a community and take action together. And if some folks are probably familiar with, there's been a huge decline of civic clubs like this in the country.

I mean, I was going to.

Speaker 1

Say, it almost feels like the Optimist Club or the Moose Club or something. Yeah.

Speaker 2

I made Rotary, Lions Club, Lions all these yeah, yeah, I mean, we're not trying to do exactly what everybody else has done, So that's not you know, the point of it too, and bigger picture in the country. Some people probably know about Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone. Have you ever actually read it? Bill, No, you need to, though it very much relates to I know, I know you got a lot on your play right now.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Yeah, we can't talk about that on the air.

Speaker 1

Don't care, but go ahead mister Putnham's book.

Speaker 2

His idea was, we used to be in all these bowling leagues together, and now we are not. We bowl alone, and the decline of associations in America like Alexis to Tulkville, you know, talked about a democracy in America, So having these local chapters can reinvigorate that. But what I think would be really cool is, you know, imagine like here in Memphis is take an example, and you have all these army members here, what if we got together and did stuff together once a month, once a month.

Speaker 1

And maybe it maybe chose like a story of one of our guests that we highlight and once a month their body meets and then they get together and do one of those things.

Speaker 2

So I got a whole plan here. Now you're just riffing off the cuff and I'm on huge. I know you're right though. Yeah, that's good? Is that right? Yeah? I mean I'll give you a fun example. So two months ago Ben and Jess Owen we featured on the podcast. They are taking this huge abandoned building and if you've heard about this, and they're making a new recovery center. No, it's like a for.

Speaker 1

Everybody listening if you hadn't heard the episode. These guys were addicts and they have now started buying the very trap houses that they were doing drugs in and all nefarious kind of activities, and they're turning them into hope houses.

Speaker 2

Hope from dope houses to hope houses.

Speaker 1

So what you're saying now, they bought a whole building.

Speaker 2

Yeah, So it's it's basically and they're being given it, and they still got to raise money and stuff. But it's like a huge medical complex. It's been abandoned for like ten years in Memphis, in South Memphis, no kid, Yeah, it's really cool. And so they had a clean up day because it's been abandoned for ten years, and I went and there was like one hundred and fifty people

there on a Saturday cleaning it up. And honestly, the energy you felt doing that with all these people who feel like part of the Actually Ben calls it the Owen Army. He's got his own, you know, army of normal folks going on. Now.

Speaker 1

I hope you're listening. Come up with your own stuff. It's ridiculous.

Speaker 2

But anyway, the energy you felt there was amazing. I mean, and so what if we could do that in communities across the country. So we're actually thinking about calling that type of thing army activations. So you have these army activation days that maybe you'd start with with once an order and once a month.

Speaker 1

Yeah, and then maybe every week when you do something you go to boot camp.

Speaker 2

Yeah yeah, all right, I don't know, maybe not, but maybe not.

Speaker 1

I don't know.

Speaker 2

Most of us be a horrible idea most of us have jobs's yeah, that's sure. Yeah, all right. So the second thing we're especially excited about is giving circles. So do you remember the with Wendy Steele's episode with an Impact one hundred? So the way I put it is, say you give ten dollars to something, Say you give one hundred dollars to something. So you give a thousand dollars or something, even ten thousand dollars to something, you probably really aren't making that much of an impact. You

have no idea where the money's going. You're basically just giving it to their existing stuff. You don't really get any reporting back. But if you can make one hundred thousand dollars gifts, you can actually do something pretty transformative,

you know, with it. And so what if there was a whole army of normal folks who got together and each gave ten dollars a month and collectively can make one hundred thousand dollars gifts in their community, And you basically would have all the nonprofits get together and pitch their ideas on what to do with one hundred thousand dollars, and then.

Speaker 1

Each donor gets to vote on where the money goes.

Speaker 2

Exactly, and some people can still give a thousand dollars in the giving circle or ten thousand dollars, but setting an even lower threshold of ten dollars a month and really building this grassroots.

Speaker 1

Army, that's kind of interesting.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I think it's pretty exciting.

Speaker 1

As being giver, you get a vote on the proxy of what that pool of money raised goes to do. Yeah, and you can choose from any of our guests things or come up with something else.

Speaker 2

And as normal folks, you get to do something really transformational in your community too.

Speaker 1

It's cool.

Speaker 2

Yeah, So we especially see that as a big area given you know, so the models out there in the country, there's people doing this. But if you go on the street and I've tested this out, like ninety percent of people have never heard of giving circles.

Speaker 1

I've never heard of them.

Speaker 2

Yeah, well you mean you did do an episode on a note.

Speaker 1

Before we steel, and I'd never heard or even considered or fathomed those things. Yeah.

Speaker 2

And I love Wendy's model too, But also it's you know, it's only for you know, women only, so we're thinking here is you know, obviously you know, including men too, and setting an even lower threshold rather than the thousand dollars. You know, people can joined at ten dollars a month, so you too too.

Speaker 1

By having local chapters, you hopefully inspire a giving circle inside each chapter, or maybe all of the chapters cumulative are a giving circle.

Speaker 2

Each chapter will have their own giving circle.

Speaker 1

Okay, each chapter has on giving circle. And then each chapter meets once a month like the Optimist Club or whatever. And their meeting is engaging in the community once a month, and it's not the same thing every month. It's a different thing that they pick. And obviously they've got a lot of episodes of an army and normal vote to come up with that, dissipate from or come up with their own.

Speaker 2

So another part of it that we're thinking about too, is called we're calling imitation and innovation. So think about all these models that we featured that are still not in most cities. So back on my feet. The Homeless Running Clubs is still not in Memphis. In Heavenly Piece is still not in Memphis. I mean Axe Housing that you're excited about the episode is actually not out yet,

still not in Memphis. And so there's all these models that are out there that are still missing from most of our communities, and what if we can come together as local army members and figure out how can we bring these models here in these local chapters exactly.

Speaker 1

That's really cool, I do.

Speaker 2

And we were thinking about potlucks too, as we've recently talked about in shot Lucks.

Speaker 1

Potlucks just have to be part of every chapter, I know, because it's awesome. Yeah, referring back to an earlier shot deal. Yeah.

Speaker 2

Mentorship matching is something else we're thinking about too, So trying to set a cultural norm that each of us should be mentoring at least one other person you know out there, and we can help facilitate that through a lot of our local partners.

Speaker 1

So do you envision like these chapters to have like a president and a secretary and a treasurer and it's like a club, but it's an army and normal folks club and specifically getting together to do these four or five initiatives you've talked about.

Speaker 2

That's right, Bill. We really what you really need, though, to do any of these things is one strong leader. I mean, there needs to be somebody who really owns it in a community and drives it right. I mean, your Memphis you're running you know, big business. You know, I'm in Oxford, Like, it can't be us from a distance

really running this. There needs to be someone in a community who's really going to I mean you know this from coaching too, right, I mean you need somebody who's going to lead the thing, you know at the end of the day.

Speaker 1

And do the work and recruit and grow it. Yeah, but you can see how if you got it off the ground and grow it and you got fifty hundred people together from each community. You're on a hundred and fifty people with each community, then you actually could do some really good stuff and you're investing basically a day.

Speaker 2

And you can start you know small and scale it over time. Right, So you start with the giving you know circle, And what's cool about that too, is uh, you know, so many people are busy, but everybody can get ten dollars a month, right, So you could make this impact even just doing that. So even if you just started the giving circle and did you know an army activation once a quarter, I mean, start small and then you can build in you know, more of these things over time.

Speaker 1

Can the local chapter identification cards that everybody's gonna have to carry you have my picture on.

Speaker 2

It, and that seems a little arrogant, but no, we.

Speaker 1

Would destroy it before it ever started. Who was to carry out a card with my bug on it?

Speaker 2

Yeah, you're fat, redheaded. So anyway, we have four people already who are interested in doing this in their communities, but we love to hear from more folks. If you're interested and I'd love to connect on it. We're probably going to start with three you know this years, will have to choose that, but hopefully it's ten next year, and then hopefully it just keeps scaling to one point, there's hundreds of these chapters around the country.

Speaker 1

It's literally growing the army, and each chapter is a little platoon of the army. And you know, I could I could see this eventually growing into having an annual convention where aybody from the chapters come and they share best practices and ideas and how this bottom up service works.

Speaker 2

And yeah, it makes service more fun too. I mean, you feel like family doing this together, like part of something I'm sure as you felt, you know, coaching and part of Sigma Nu fraternity, right, I mean, those bonds are there's nothing like it.

Speaker 1

No, they're they're that's awesome. So shot talk number fifty seven. Everybody, We're going to start experimenting with local chapters. And if that sounds interesting to you, I e. You want to start and lead one or just join one.

Speaker 2

Email Alex right Army at normal Folks dot us.

Speaker 1

Why is it not Alex at normal Folks on us.

Speaker 2

I don't know. I've had other email addresses from you know, my day jobs.

Speaker 1

But you can email me and I'll send it to them, or just email Army and normal Folks dot us and you can carbon copy me or leave me out of it whatever. But these these local chapters or sound like something Alex is pretty pretty intent on creating.

Speaker 2

And it makes a lot of sense, makes Bill, that's nice here to say, Yeah, it really does.

Speaker 1

And look at all the talking you did. And I didn't even make fun of you once.

Speaker 2

I think you did, did I? Yeah, you said I was weird at the beginning.

Speaker 1

Weird, but I'm weird too, weird and goofy and all those things actually are in terms of endearment.

Speaker 2

I actually like to say we're all messed up in our own way. There's a more vulgar version of that that I say too.

Speaker 1

A bit. I'm going through. I'm messed up as a soup sandwich, so nobody gets it over on me. So i'd said, everybody, shop Talk number fifty seven. We're going to experiment with local chapters and listen, feels like something you might want to be a part of, something you might want to lead, something. You've got a group of friends that you could get together and start one email

Alex at Army at normal folks dot us. Share this information with friends, and let's see if we can't turn this little podcast, this little movement we got into tangible gatherings of people making impacts in their community. That's shop Talk number fifty seven. Everybody, let's think about joining on local chapters and actually moving the needle and having impact anything else.

Speaker 2

That's it. Let's wrap this baby up, all right.

Speaker 1

We'll see y'all next week.

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