Meeting Notes
March 2, 2021
President Paul welcomed everyone to today’s Mountain View Rotary Meeting. The Rotary International theme for this year is “Rotary Opens Opportunities.” Our Club theme is “We Open Opportunities For Everyone in the Community.”
Mandy is our Rotary Foundation Chair and the goal for the Club is to have 100% participation in this year’s contributions to the Foundation. You can send your donation for The Rotary Foundation to Mandy Andrei at 2934 Vivian Lane, San Jose, CA 95124. If you prefer, you can also make your donation to The Rotary Foundation on line at https://my.rotary.org/en/donate. If you make an on line donation, please send a message to Mandy to let her know. Feel free to give Mandy a call if you have any questions at 650-281-4356 or email her at mandyandrai@gmail.com.
For anyone who would like to join the President’s Club, please make your checks out for $150 to the Mountain View Rotary Club and send them to Mountain View Rotary President’s Club, PO Box 390280, Mountain View, California 94041.
From Heather: We are still in need of speakers for our meetings in April and May. If you have speaker ideas, please sign up for a week(s) or month via this spreadsheet or contact me by email (hsten@me.com) or phone: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yWN7DTtzVo5i8Zk8lAeZFM8f6fZ0D5-b/view?usp=sharing.
President Paul has asked that all members consider donating whatever they would have spent on tickets to the Crab Feed. The funds will be used for the Club’s charitable grants for the year. So far, we have received about $9,000 from Members of the Club. Members may make their checks out to “Mountain View Rotary Endowment” and send them to Mountain View Rotary Endowment, PO Box 390280, Mountain View, California 94041. Please note, if you want to use the envelope that was provided with the letter you received, the Post Office Box number is wrong and it will need to be corrected to 390280. All donations to the Mountain View Rotary Endowment are fully tax deductible. And thanks to Tori’s incredible kindness, for every $60 donated, you will get a chance to win a weekend stay (three days and two nights) at Tori’s property in Half Moon Bay with the drawing to be held in March.
Anita announced that the Club will begin accepting Community Grant requests. This year’s theme is Education and Literacy. The link for the grant application form is: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1SULhpIHO_nylhiIuv8qjcz6Pux84fPoPAg0zsaDEvBc/prefill
President Elect Heather is in the process of forming her Board for the next Rotary year. If anyone is interested in a most exciting position on the Board, please contact either Heather or Past President Tom. If we are short of volunteers, Tom has indicated that he will shift into draft mode.
Everyone in the Club was excited to greet our newest Member Prospect, Dr. Nellie Meyer, Superintendent of the Mountain View Los Altos High School District. Sanjay introduced Nellie to the Club. She was originally from the San Diego area and received her EdD at San Diego State University. She is married to Marty and has two adult children who live in San Diego. She also has two very lovable Labrador Retrievers. President Paul conducted the induction ceremony for Nellie and everyone welcomed her as the newest member of our club. Following her induction, Nellie thanked everyone and said she was looking forward to her membership.
Hal shared with us that his Son Brent and Daughter-In-Law Natalie welcomed a baby girl named Leora. All are doing well and Hal is very happy to be a Grandfather.
Tom informed us that Hart’s Mother passed away last night. President Paul expressed condolences on behalf of the Club.
Sanjay gave us a brief update on the Speech Contest and said that he will present the videos of the contestants at our next meeting.
If anyone knows of any of our members in distress or that need anything, please let President Paul or one of the Board Members know. We want to make sure everyone knows that we are here to take care of each other.
Program
Heather introduced our speaker, Lisa Schader. She is a woman of many talents – financial coach, photographer, blogger, and Mother of three active boys. Her talk is about the business of blogging and how blogging can help with any business
Lisa told us she was fairly new to blogging. Her blog is called MoneyFitMoms with a focus on assisting women and their families with financial management. Her blog has been active for more than a year and she is continuing to learn and improve the blog. During the first year, she actually lost money on the blog, but she is now starting to see a monthly profit.
Lisa gave us an example of one of her colleague’s blog called HouseOfNashEats. This blog was started in 2016 and currently has more than 750,000 views per month. She works about twenty hours per week and her estimated income in 2021 is over $400,000.
Some factors of a successful blog include the length of time it has existed, content, number of posts per week, the amount of traffic on the blog, and secondary topics on the blog. Some ways to generate traffic for the blog are (5) referrals from other websites, (4) social media, (3) email list, (2) search engines, (1) and most of all from Pintrest!!! Blogs make money from ads, sponsored posts, affiliates like Amazon and other larger networks, and creating personal products and services such as coaching, courses, etc.
There are several steps to build a successful blog. First, it is a good idea to take a blogging course. Then build the blog itself. There is software to assist with this such as Wix, Square Space, etc. Next comes writing posts and making them visible to search engines. Add images and pins. Get the blog out on social media. Schedule time to work on it regularly. With the goal being to produce passive income – when the blog works harder than you do.
The top tips include: 1) Start with your WHY; 2) Build your EMAIL LIST; 3) Look for AFFILIATES; 4) Add VIDEO; 5) Enjoy the journey and celebrate wins.
For questions or more information, you can contact Lisa at lisa2MoneyFitMoms.com.
Next Meeting
Tuesday, March 16, 2021, via Zoom. Social time will start at 12:00 pm with the meeting beginning at 12:15 pm.