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The Masonic Roundtable - 0566 - 4 Out of 5 Men Want to Join: Here's Why Most Won't · The Masonic Roundtable - Freemasonry Today for Today's Freemasons

• 0:21
  Speaker: Hello and welcome back to the Masonic Roundtable, a weekly
• 0:24
  Speaker: program where Masons from around the world get together to talk
• 0:27
  Speaker: about Masonic news and opinions in a friendly and social manner.
• 0:31
  Speaker: As a reminder, the thoughts and opinions expressed here are
• 0:34
  Speaker: solely the opinions of the participants and do not
• 0:36
  Speaker: represent any Grand Lodge statements or positions.
• 0:39
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• 0:41
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• 0:43
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• 0:45
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• 0:47
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• 0:51
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• 0:53
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• 0:55
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• 0:56
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• 1:00
  Speaker: You know me, John T Ruark, past
• 1:03
  Speaker: master of the Patriot Lodge,
• 1:04
  Speaker: nineteen fifty seven in Fairfax,
• 1:06
  Speaker: Virginia.
• 1:07
  Speaker: We got a full house tonight.
• 1:08
  Speaker: Let's start with Robert Johnson.
• 1:10
  Speaker: Hello and good evening.
• 1:11
  Speaker: How are you?
• 1:12
  Speaker: Hello and good evening.
• 1:13
  Speaker: I'm doing wonderful.
• 1:14
  Speaker: Happy to be here.
• 1:15
  Speaker: Happy we got a full house.
• 1:16
  Speaker: That's going to be awesome.
• 1:17
  Speaker: It's a little homecoming for all of us.
• 1:18
  Speaker: We got the band back together.
• 1:20
  Speaker: Um, all the stuff.
• 1:22
  Speaker: Happy to be here.
• 1:23
  Speaker: Let's go, let's go, let's do it.
• 1:27
  Speaker: And we'll do it live.
• 1:29
  Speaker: The next one is Jason Richards.
• 1:31
  Speaker: Hello and good evening.
• 1:32
  Speaker: Hi. Jason Richards, past master of Acacia Lodge, number sixteen
• 1:36
  Speaker: in Clifton, Virginia.
• 1:38
  Speaker: I'm glad to be here and glad to see you here.
• 1:44
  Speaker: Not view you here.
• 1:46
  Speaker: You know, it's good to be viewed.
• 1:47
  Speaker: Joe Martinez oh, sooner rather than later.
• 1:50
  Speaker: Hi, everybody.
• 1:51
  Speaker: Joe Martinez Um, yeah.
• 1:54
  Speaker: Member of things and stuff and,
• 1:56
  Speaker: uh, as always damn glad to be
• 1:58
  Speaker: here.
• 1:58
  Speaker: Let's do it.
• 1:59
  Speaker: Let's do it.
• 2:00
  Speaker: All right, um, let's jump right in.
• 2:03
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• 2:05
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• 2:06
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• 2:10
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• 2:11
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• 2:12
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• 2:13
  Speaker: Head over to patreon dot com
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• 2:16
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• 2:17
  Speaker: education for many, many years
• 2:19
  Speaker: to come.
• 2:20
  Speaker: Or you guessed it, until twenty forty, whichever comes first.
• 2:25
  Speaker: Are you gonna play that song?
• 2:27
  Speaker: Yes, it's very exciting.
• 2:29
  Speaker: Twenty forty gets a song now.
• 2:31
  Speaker: Twenty forty should get a song.
• 2:33
  Speaker: I feel like I should make a twenty forty song now.
• 2:35
  Speaker: I. Okay I will.
• 2:38
  Speaker: Like a sad trombone.
• 2:41
  Speaker: Yeah, we'll just use that.
• 2:42
  Speaker: They already made it.
• 2:43
  Speaker: It's done.
• 2:44
  Speaker: Boom.
• 2:45
  Speaker: Uh. Another song that comes up that everybody loves is, of
• 2:48
  Speaker: course, the tarot card of the.
• 2:53
  Speaker: Tarot card of the week.
• 3:04
  Speaker: And there you go.
• 3:05
  Speaker: Cool.
• 3:06
  Speaker: Who's doing it?
• 3:08
  Speaker: Hey, you got that one?
• 3:10
  Speaker: I had my eye on that one for a while.
• 3:13
  Speaker: I know you said the same thing
• 3:16
  Speaker: when I pulled it out the first
• 3:17
  Speaker: time.
• 3:19
  Speaker: Oh, this week we have the mystical medley is a vintage
• 3:23
  Speaker: cartoon tarot deck.
• 3:30
  Speaker: And so tonight.
• 3:34
  Speaker: Oh, shit.
• 3:37
  Speaker: Oh!
• 3:38
  Speaker: Oh, fun.
• 3:39
  Speaker: The eight of swords.
• 3:42
  Speaker: Uh, why four out of five men won't join Freemasonry.
• 3:46
  Speaker: Uh. Negative thoughts.
• 3:48
  Speaker: Restrictions.
• 3:49
  Speaker: Victimhood.
• 3:50
  Speaker: Hood.
• 3:51
  Speaker: Yes.
• 3:53
  Speaker: I like how we both said Victimhood.
• 3:55
  Speaker: Anxiety.
• 3:57
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 3:58
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 3:58
  Speaker: Feeling constrained.
• 4:01
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 4:01
  Speaker: But even like, it's weird.
• 4:03
  Speaker: That's one of those cards where
• 4:04
  Speaker: the reverse means almost the
• 4:06
  Speaker: same thing.
• 4:07
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 4:07
  Speaker: Like, like self limiting, you know, that kind of thing.
• 4:12
  Speaker: But what's, what's preventing
• 4:13
  Speaker: you from breaking out of that
• 4:15
  Speaker: cycle?
• 4:15
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 4:16
  Speaker: Ourselves.
• 4:17
  Speaker: That's right.
• 4:18
  Speaker: Boom.
• 4:19
  Speaker: Indeed.
• 4:21
  Speaker: Because the the call was coming
• 4:22
  Speaker: from inside the house the whole
• 4:25
  Speaker: time.
• 4:25
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 4:29
  Speaker: Wow.
• 4:29
  Speaker: I got Robert on that one.
• 4:30
  Speaker: You did?
• 4:31
  Speaker: Thanks.
• 4:31
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 4:32
  Speaker: Choking on Brandy and Mountain Dew.
• 4:34
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 4:36
  Speaker: Cuz you're a classy guy.
• 4:38
  Speaker: Well, they call that a hillbilly
• 4:39
  Speaker: highball, but it's brandy, not
• 4:41
  Speaker: whiskey.
• 4:42
  Speaker: But.
• 4:42
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 4:42
  Speaker: Okay.
• 4:43
  Speaker: All right.
• 4:44
  Speaker: For me, it's like a it's like a step below Red bull and vodka.
• 4:49
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 4:49
  Speaker: I mean, whatever, I'm dirty.
• 4:51
  Speaker: I'm gross.
• 4:52
  Speaker: You'd be at the club.
• 4:54
  Speaker: I would talk to buddy.
• 4:55
  Speaker: Hey, hey, I see that brandy and Mountain Dew.
• 4:58
  Speaker: It's on.
• 4:59
  Speaker: Uh.
• 4:59
  Speaker: Huh.
• 5:00
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 5:00
  Speaker: I'm like, whatever comes in a plastic bottle.
• 5:03
  Speaker: You know me?
• 5:04
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 5:04
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 5:05
  Speaker: Bendy straw.
• 5:06
  Speaker: Well, tonight I wanted to jump
• 5:09
  Speaker: into a topic that got me
• 5:11
  Speaker: excited.
• 5:11
  Speaker: Got me interested.
• 5:13
  Speaker: Um, because it had statistics in there.
• 5:16
  Speaker: Right.
• 5:17
  Speaker: Um, according to tonight's episode's title, four out of
• 5:21
  Speaker: five men won't join Freemasonry.
• 5:25
  Speaker: Tonight, we'll find out why.
• 5:28
  Speaker: And this is based off of some new data that just came out a
• 5:30
  Speaker: couple of years ago.
• 5:31
  Speaker: So to, to kind of set the stage, in case you don't know, we got
• 5:36
  Speaker: this thing approaching us called the dwindling membership, uh,
• 5:41
  Speaker: decline target, whatever you want to call it.
• 5:44
  Speaker: Right.
• 5:44
  Speaker: We're trying to a dwindling membership.
• 5:47
  Speaker: That's that's a, that's a double negative.
• 5:48
  Speaker: So it's what would you say it would be better colleges.
• 5:54
  Speaker: I mean, it's the dwindling
• 5:55
  Speaker: membership, dwindling
• 5:56
  Speaker: membership, slash membership
• 5:59
  Speaker: decline.
• 5:59
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 6:00
  Speaker: There you go.
• 6:01
  Speaker: All right.
• 6:01
  Speaker: So I've been concerned about about that.
• 6:05
  Speaker: And then we also did, um, a
• 6:07
  Speaker: couple episodes ago about the
• 6:10
  Speaker: Masonic factory.
• 6:11
  Speaker: So, uh, if you think of terms of what they call pirate metrics,
• 6:15
  Speaker: where you look at acquisition of, of eyeballs and activation
• 6:19
  Speaker: to get your customers to do something, and then how do you
• 6:21
  Speaker: get them to, um, retain, you know, what's your retention, um,
• 6:27
  Speaker: methods and how do you get them to refer to other new members?
• 6:32
  Speaker: These are all variables that
• 6:34
  Speaker: like any system, whether it's,
• 6:36
  Speaker: um, a nonprofit, a for profit or
• 6:39
  Speaker: even a fraternity has to go to
• 6:41
  Speaker: or go through as they're trying
• 6:42
  Speaker: to build this system of
• 6:45
  Speaker: customers, in our case, members
• 6:48
  Speaker: and Lots and lots and lots of
• 6:52
  Speaker: discussions have been going on
• 6:53
  Speaker: for many years about what are we
• 6:55
  Speaker: going to do to try and increase
• 6:59
  Speaker: membership.
• 7:00
  Speaker: And so the problem is there's lots of different levers you can
• 7:05
  Speaker: pull and which ones, right.
• 7:09
  Speaker: I don't know, because, you know,
• 7:11
  Speaker: it really depends on, you know,
• 7:13
  Speaker: where, uh, you know, what might
• 7:16
  Speaker: work for one jurisdiction or
• 7:17
  Speaker: even one lodge could be
• 7:18
  Speaker: completely different for another
• 7:20
  Speaker: lodge.
• 7:21
  Speaker: So people have flat out ask me, hey, John, you're so smart.
• 7:24
  Speaker: Twenty forty is coming.
• 7:25
  Speaker: What would you do?
• 7:26
  Speaker: Like he's not he's not that smart.
• 7:28
  Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
• 7:29
  Speaker: Let's set that straight right now.
• 7:30
  Speaker: What would I do?
• 7:31
  Speaker: I don't know, but I can tell you where I'd start to look.
• 7:34
  Speaker: Right.
• 7:35
  Speaker: So if you're like, say, hey, Joe, you're a mechanic.
• 7:38
  Speaker: What's wrong with my car?
• 7:39
  Speaker: You'd say, I don't know, but I can start to diagnose it.
• 7:43
  Speaker: I don't, I don't know, but it's
• 7:44
  Speaker: going to cost you eight grand
• 7:45
  Speaker: just for me to take a look at
• 7:46
  Speaker: it.
• 7:46
  Speaker: Exactly.
• 7:47
  Speaker: That's what I would say.
• 7:47
  Speaker: That's a consultant answer, I like it.
• 7:50
  Speaker: Um, and so when you look at this
• 7:53
  Speaker: membership decline, you look at
• 7:54
  Speaker: this, this Masonic factory, now
• 7:57
  Speaker: we've got the conditions right
• 7:59
  Speaker: to figure out what are some of
• 8:01
  Speaker: the variables that we need to
• 8:04
  Speaker: start tweaking, start playing
• 8:06
  Speaker: with.
• 8:07
  Speaker: You have things like one day classes, right?
• 8:09
  Speaker: That was the obvious one that
• 8:10
  Speaker: was tried, you know, in the late
• 8:13
  Speaker: nineties, it started and became
• 8:14
  Speaker: a fad.
• 8:15
  Speaker: It's still a fad, unfortunately,
• 8:16
  Speaker: as we've talked about time and
• 8:17
  Speaker: time again, and putting more
• 8:20
  Speaker: members in doesn't necessarily
• 8:23
  Speaker: ensure the retention of those
• 8:26
  Speaker: members for a lasting period of
• 8:29
  Speaker: time.
• 8:30
  Speaker: Right.
• 8:31
  Speaker: Um, we have that.
• 8:34
  Speaker: Then there's also, okay, let's
• 8:36
  Speaker: not worry so much about the
• 8:37
  Speaker: front door.
• 8:39
  Speaker: How do we stop guys from leaving?
• 8:41
  Speaker: Right.
• 8:42
  Speaker: Do we have a retention problem?
• 8:43
  Speaker: Do we have a non-payment of dues problem?
• 8:46
  Speaker: Right.
• 8:47
  Speaker: Um, we have def that's how we're losing members as well.
• 8:51
  Speaker: We just have older members that
• 8:53
  Speaker: are dying off faster than we're
• 8:54
  Speaker: replacing them.
• 8:55
  Speaker: You gotta, you gotta give them that, uh, that new pill they
• 8:58
  Speaker: just approved for like large breed dogs to give them another
• 9:01
  Speaker: ten to fifteen years.
• 9:03
  Speaker: Just slip that into the green
• 9:04
  Speaker: beans and just put that in the
• 9:05
  Speaker: green beans.
• 9:06
  Speaker: It's gotta, it's gotta do something for us, right?
• 9:08
  Speaker: I mean, guys, green beans guys are gonna live to be three
• 9:11
  Speaker: thousand years old.
• 9:12
  Speaker: I'm just saying, I mean, you could give it to somebody.
• 9:15
  Speaker: I mean, they'll try it.
• 9:16
  Speaker: People were eating horse paste.
• 9:17
  Speaker: So do we want those members to continue being around, though?
• 9:22
  Speaker: Will we have to talk about if they're not.
• 9:26
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 9:27
  Speaker: I mean masonry will be dead at that point.
• 9:30
  Speaker: So so here's here's a visual that I slapped together.
• 9:34
  Speaker: Um, is this that one where the
• 9:36
  Speaker: president gets stuck in the
• 9:37
  Speaker: bathtub?
• 9:38
  Speaker: I've seen that one.
• 9:39
  Speaker: Oh, yeah.
• 9:40
  Speaker: You should do that.
• 9:41
  Speaker: Um, so you got this bathtub, right?
• 9:43
  Speaker: It only holds a certain amount of water, a Taft tub, a Taft
• 9:47
  Speaker: tub, and for every one unit of water that you put in.
• 9:52
  Speaker: If there's no holes in the
• 9:53
  Speaker: bottom, it'll stay in there,
• 9:55
  Speaker: right?
• 9:56
  Speaker: But lo and behold, the bathtub of Masonic membership actually
• 10:00
  Speaker: has three holes in the bottom.
• 10:05
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 10:06
  Speaker: So you can see for every one cup of water you're putting in,
• 10:10
  Speaker: three cups are coming out.
• 10:11
  Speaker: And what are those holes represent?
• 10:13
  Speaker: Three holes, you say.
• 10:15
  Speaker: Those are gaping holes.
• 10:17
  Speaker: MM. So the holes by the way
• 10:20
  Speaker: they're they're the same color
• 10:22
  Speaker: as water.
• 10:23
  Speaker: They.
• 10:24
  Speaker: Yes.
• 10:24
  Speaker: Fortunately in this example
• 10:26
  Speaker: they're the same colors of
• 10:27
  Speaker: water.
• 10:27
  Speaker: Um spend on this.
• 10:29
  Speaker: This is this is great high quality graphics.
• 10:32
  Speaker: We spare spare no expense.
• 10:35
  Speaker: Um so for every, for every um, one member in.
• 10:43
  Speaker: Um so, uh, it's not to be an exclamation point we have.
• 10:48
  Speaker: We're losing one to death.
• 10:49
  Speaker: We're actually losing two to death.
• 10:53
  Speaker: This is statistically across all jurisdictions.
• 10:56
  Speaker: Some jurisdictions are doing better than others.
• 10:58
  Speaker: So even when they say the the old adage, well, you know, you
• 11:02
  Speaker: need to find your replacement in masonry or, or bring another
• 11:06
  Speaker: member to replace you as well.
• 11:08
  Speaker: So you need, you need to invite
• 11:09
  Speaker: two, two people to become
• 11:10
  Speaker: Masons.
• 11:11
  Speaker: That doesn't even break even at this point because we have the
• 11:15
  Speaker: third cup of water leaving, which is non-payment of dues.
• 11:22
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 11:24
  Speaker: So the Masonic population replacement rate is three three
• 11:30
  Speaker: point three, three point something, three point
• 11:34
  Speaker: something, three point one.
• 11:35
  Speaker: That's a good way to think about that.
• 11:37
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 11:37
  Speaker: Pi. We need pi number of Masons to break even.
• 11:41
  Speaker: Right.
• 11:43
  Speaker: Um, so again, this is a visual way to think about, well, how
• 11:49
  Speaker: can we what, what holes can we plug or how much more water can
• 11:53
  Speaker: we put in.
• 11:53
  Speaker: Right.
• 11:54
  Speaker: Well, we can't fix the death ones.
• 11:56
  Speaker: I wish we could, you know, have that magic pill and have
• 11:59
  Speaker: members, uh, living longer.
• 12:01
  Speaker: But the only two variables in this scenario that we can adjust
• 12:05
  Speaker: are adjusting non-payment of dues or the number of members
• 12:08
  Speaker: that we get in.
• 12:11
  Speaker: So let's overlook non-payment of dues for right now.
• 12:15
  Speaker: And let's just focus on how can we recruit without recruiting
• 12:19
  Speaker: more members to come in.
• 12:21
  Speaker: It's a Freemason.
• 12:25
  Speaker: Joe.
• 12:25
  Speaker: I see.
• 12:26
  Speaker: So you're thinking hard about that?
• 12:27
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 12:28
  Speaker: Um, I mean, the the whole thing.
• 12:32
  Speaker: This is killing me.
• 12:33
  Speaker: The visual is just jarring to me.
• 12:35
  Speaker: The size and the colors and stuff.
• 12:38
  Speaker: Um, and why are there two deaths?
• 12:41
  Speaker: Two deaths.
• 12:43
  Speaker: Uh, we're losing twice as many members to death that we get in.
• 12:48
  Speaker: What about Dimmit?
• 12:49
  Speaker: And we got we have almost a one to one Dimmit to new member.
• 12:53
  Speaker: There should be four gaping holes, not three.
• 12:56
  Speaker: Uh, there should be.
• 12:59
  Speaker: That's that's we're losing three to one.
• 13:02
  Speaker: Um, two deaths and a dimmit for every one member coming in.
• 13:07
  Speaker: Well, I mean, I think and I
• 13:09
  Speaker: think this is what we're going
• 13:10
  Speaker: to get into tonight is and I
• 13:11
  Speaker: won't say gaping holes anymore,
• 13:13
  Speaker: I promise.
• 13:13
  Speaker: Um, but I might, um, I think the
• 13:17
  Speaker: problem is we're not, we're not
• 13:19
  Speaker: even at the, we're not even in
• 13:21
  Speaker: the bathroom talking about how
• 13:23
  Speaker: much water needs to go into the
• 13:24
  Speaker: bathtub.
• 13:25
  Speaker: We're talking about, we got all these people who want to take a
• 13:28
  Speaker: shower or a bath, and they're not even being shown where the
• 13:32
  Speaker: bathroom is, which I think is where we're at tonight.
• 13:36
  Speaker: Well, weird analogy.
• 13:38
  Speaker: And we're going to run.
• 13:39
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 13:40
  Speaker: Okay.
• 13:40
  Speaker: So let's, let's just say that we
• 13:45
  Speaker: had a huge multi Grand Lodge
• 13:49
  Speaker: jurisdiction effort to try to
• 13:51
  Speaker: show people where the bathroom
• 13:52
  Speaker: is.
• 13:53
  Speaker: This analogy is not working, but
• 13:54
  Speaker: I'll run with no. Um, I think
• 13:56
  Speaker: that that analogy is in fact, I
• 13:59
  Speaker: think that website is up and
• 14:00
  Speaker: running.
• 14:02
  Speaker: Oh, you mean this one that was
• 14:05
  Speaker: called, uh, b a freemason dot
• 14:08
  Speaker: org.
• 14:09
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 14:10
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 14:11
  Speaker: That's just a man.
• 14:12
  Speaker: Amazing.
• 14:14
  Speaker: It's a catchy, catchy title.
• 14:17
  Speaker: Um, yeah.
• 14:18
  Speaker: All good intentions.
• 14:19
  Speaker: This was, uh, sponsored by, I
• 14:21
  Speaker: believe, uh, Scottish Rite,
• 14:23
  Speaker: northern Masonic jurisdiction
• 14:24
  Speaker: and was, was kind of, um, funded
• 14:30
  Speaker: by the whole conference of Grand
• 14:32
  Speaker: Masters North America as a front
• 14:35
  Speaker: door.
• 14:36
  Speaker: So that way you can have a single front door for
• 14:39
  Speaker: recruitment, and then when you actually click through it, it'll
• 14:43
  Speaker: redirect you to your Grand Lodges official web page.
• 14:47
  Speaker: Yes.
• 14:48
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 14:48
  Speaker: Now, just to chime in there, because I remember when we spoke
• 14:51
  Speaker: about it in, in one of one of the jurisdictions I'm a member
• 14:54
  Speaker: of Grand Lodges had to pay to opt into it.
• 14:57
  Speaker: Like it wasn't, it wasn't just given to you for free.
• 15:00
  Speaker: Like, oh yeah, you really?
• 15:02
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 15:03
  Speaker: You had to pick up some cash.
• 15:04
  Speaker: Ain't nothing free.
• 15:05
  Speaker: So I, I consider myself like pretty informed on this stuff.
• 15:11
  Speaker: I didn't, I've never heard that.
• 15:13
  Speaker: That's wild.
• 15:14
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 15:14
  Speaker: I, I was in the room when they
• 15:16
  Speaker: were discussing the cost and I
• 15:18
  Speaker: was like, oh, you gotta opt in
• 15:21
  Speaker: with money.
• 15:22
  Speaker: Like to me that I get it.
• 15:25
  Speaker: It costs money, but also that I. How, how can you.
• 15:33
  Speaker: My point in saying that was, I don't know if everybody got to
• 15:37
  Speaker: play because you had to.
• 15:38
  Speaker: You had to pay to play kind of thing, you know?
• 15:41
  Speaker: Yeah, I just, I don't, I feel like as a fraternity, there's no
• 15:45
  Speaker: room to charge for this service.
• 15:50
  Speaker: Yeah, I think, I think, I think
• 15:52
  Speaker: whoever creates it has to eat
• 15:54
  Speaker: the cost.
• 15:58
  Speaker: So we have this virtuous but they're not that virtuous.
• 16:03
  Speaker: Virtuous virtuosity doesn't pay for your hosting fees.
• 16:08
  Speaker: You're right.
• 16:08
  Speaker: But let's just say that fifteen
• 16:12
  Speaker: to thirty five has double the
• 16:15
  Speaker: money.
• 16:17
  Speaker: That's true.
• 16:18
  Speaker: Um, well, let's talk about how effective it's been.
• 16:22
  Speaker: This thing launched around twenty twenty time frame.
• 16:26
  Speaker: And so we've had five or six years worth of data to go on.
• 16:30
  Speaker: What are what do the numbers say?
• 16:32
  Speaker: Well, the good news is Let's start with the good news first.
• 16:38
  Speaker: There have been.
• 16:41
  Speaker: Over a million.
• 16:42
  Speaker: About a million site visits since twenty.
• 16:45
  Speaker: Wow.
• 16:46
  Speaker: One million.
• 16:49
  Speaker: One million site visit since twenty twenty.
• 16:54
  Speaker: Not bad.
• 16:54
  Speaker: Not shabby at all.
• 16:55
  Speaker: So ostensibly, you could say
• 16:58
  Speaker: that if every one of those web
• 17:00
  Speaker: contacts had fulfilled and ended
• 17:03
  Speaker: up Mason, we would have doubled
• 17:05
  Speaker: our numbers.
• 17:06
  Speaker: Absolutely.
• 17:06
  Speaker: We. Yeah, we're under a million Masons right now.
• 17:08
  Speaker: So instantly, overnight, if all one hundred percent of them, you
• 17:14
  Speaker: know, found their way to a lodge and joined, we would have double
• 17:17
  Speaker: the double the members in six years, provided they were all
• 17:20
  Speaker: dudes and all eligible and.
• 17:23
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:24
  Speaker: Details, details.
• 17:25
  Speaker: Come on.
• 17:26
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 17:26
  Speaker: All received responses from also.
• 17:29
  Speaker: Well, let's let's also call this
• 17:30
  Speaker: out viable candidates I don't
• 17:34
  Speaker: know about you guys, but I've
• 17:35
  Speaker: received some.
• 17:37
  Speaker: I've received some forwarded emails that came from that
• 17:41
  Speaker: contact system and their comments are wackadoo, bro.
• 17:47
  Speaker: Yeah, obviously we don't want to accept those.
• 17:49
  Speaker: So there's going to be some filtering that's going to happen
• 17:51
  Speaker: as a result of that, right?
• 17:54
  Speaker: Well, the good news is that, um, before it even gets to that,
• 18:00
  Speaker: because you have, you've been on the receiving end for what I
• 18:03
  Speaker: assume to be Illinois.
• 18:04
  Speaker: Right.
• 18:05
  Speaker: Um, out of the million site visits, there have been around
• 18:11
  Speaker: one hundred and twenty thousand.
• 18:17
  Speaker: Nine hundred K of those were Freemasons told to go hit
• 18:21
  Speaker: refresh, hit F5.
• 18:25
  Speaker: Thank you Darren.
• 18:26
  Speaker: That's funny.
• 18:27
  Speaker: That's funny because this, this guy does, uh, metrics.
• 18:30
  Speaker: Um, yes.
• 18:32
  Speaker: of of those million site visits, they're the people that have
• 18:37
  Speaker: actually followed through and filled out the form to go
• 18:38
  Speaker: through to their Grand Lodge, over one hundred thousand leads.
• 18:44
  Speaker: That actually took the time to fill out that form and, and land
• 18:48
  Speaker: in a Grand Lodges inbox.
• 18:50
  Speaker: That's great in marketing numbers.
• 18:52
  Speaker: That's yeah.
• 18:53
  Speaker: That's amazing.
• 18:54
  Speaker: So what's that?
• 18:54
  Speaker: Uh, ten percent, something like that.
• 18:56
  Speaker: Like three percent response rate is amazing for marketing.
• 18:59
  Speaker: It's amazing.
• 19:00
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 19:02
  Speaker: So that's a strong demand signal that they found the website in
• 19:06
  Speaker: the first place.
• 19:08
  Speaker: They filled out the form, right?
• 19:10
  Speaker: Um, they actually did that.
• 19:11
  Speaker: So, you know, in, um, in marketing speak, right.
• 19:16
  Speaker: We've active, uh, acquisition.
• 19:18
  Speaker: They saw it with their eyeballs,
• 19:20
  Speaker: but then they actually did
• 19:21
  Speaker: something like fill out the
• 19:22
  Speaker: form.
• 19:23
  Speaker: The customer actually took some step to give an email or fill
• 19:27
  Speaker: out that form, which they did.
• 19:29
  Speaker: Uh, so that's activation.
• 19:31
  Speaker: Great.
• 19:32
  Speaker: We've got someone who is ready
• 19:33
  Speaker: and willing to start the
• 19:35
  Speaker: process.
• 19:39
  Speaker: But here's the bad news.
• 19:42
  Speaker: According to a recent book, the
• 19:43
  Speaker: bad news is there is a lot of
• 19:46
  Speaker: background noise.
• 19:47
  Speaker: John.
• 19:48
  Speaker: Is it really?
• 19:49
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 19:49
  Speaker: No. Not really.
• 19:50
  Speaker: No, it's just because Jason's got them headphones on.
• 19:53
  Speaker: He hears everything.
• 19:56
  Speaker: Um. I heard him fart 20s ago.
• 20:00
  Speaker: I smelled it.
• 20:03
  Speaker: What's the bad news, John?
• 20:04
  Speaker: Oh. Bad news, bad news.
• 20:07
  Speaker: The bad news is that according to a recent book published by
• 20:11
  Speaker: the Northern Masonic, uh, Scottish Rite jurisdiction, we
• 20:15
  Speaker: have this one called The Path Forward Empowering the Future of
• 20:19
  Speaker: Freemasonry came out.
• 20:20
  Speaker: Uh, what year did come out?
• 20:24
  Speaker: Scroll down.
• 20:25
  Speaker: Ding dong.
• 20:26
  Speaker: There you go.
• 20:26
  Speaker: There you go.
• 20:27
  Speaker: February twenty twenty four.
• 20:29
  Speaker: So the other day I has data and I'm surprised I didn't catch on
• 20:36
  Speaker: to this sooner.
• 20:37
  Speaker: Uh, but I saw a screenshot recently from someone who
• 20:42
  Speaker: screenshot who actually took a physical picture of a page of
• 20:45
  Speaker: the book that alarmed me.
• 20:47
  Speaker: And in this book, uh, the
• 20:49
  Speaker: researchers who actually helped
• 20:50
  Speaker: build the be a Freemason dot org
• 20:52
  Speaker: website actually posted some
• 20:54
  Speaker: results, which I will share
• 20:56
  Speaker: here.
• 20:57
  Speaker: Next, let's zoom in.
• 21:00
  Speaker: Please don't show that bathtub again.
• 21:01
  Speaker: Okay?
• 21:01
  Speaker: Not the bathtub unless Howard Taft is in it.
• 21:05
  Speaker: It's there's more hole.
• 21:07
  Speaker: There's, uh, let's see, here's a here's a screenshot.
• 21:12
  Speaker: What do you got?
• 21:14
  Speaker: Um. The follow up is verifiably terrible here.
• 21:21
  Speaker: I quote, as of writing this,
• 21:22
  Speaker: more than one hundred and twenty
• 21:24
  Speaker: thousand men submitted a form to
• 21:25
  Speaker: their Grand Lodge to inquire
• 21:26
  Speaker: about joining in twenty twenty
• 21:27
  Speaker: one, sixty eight percent of
• 21:30
  Speaker: those men never received a
• 21:32
  Speaker: response.
• 21:33
  Speaker: Zoom can confirm.
• 21:36
  Speaker: Cabin in the middle of Covid, though?
• 21:39
  Speaker: Well, no. So this was crazy.
• 21:41
  Speaker: When the Conference of Grand
• 21:43
  Speaker: Masters happened, I think it was
• 21:44
  Speaker: like twenty twenty, twenty
• 21:45
  Speaker: twenty one.
• 21:46
  Speaker: Um, I think it was gladly, uh, passed Sovereign Grand Commander
• 21:50
  Speaker: who was on the.
• 21:53
  Speaker: Okay.
• 21:53
  Speaker: So first of all, they piped the
• 21:55
  Speaker: conference of Grand Masters,
• 21:56
  Speaker: North America via YouTube
• 21:57
  Speaker: because I think it was like the
• 21:58
  Speaker: Covid time.
• 22:00
  Speaker: And they pulled gladly on.
• 22:02
  Speaker: And I think he delivered the report.
• 22:04
  Speaker: I could be wrong.
• 22:05
  Speaker: Please correct me.
• 22:06
  Speaker: But he said this on air that the falloff was crazy and all I'm
• 22:15
  Speaker: thinking the whole time is just like an audience member
• 22:17
  Speaker: watching, watching this is.
• 22:20
  Speaker: So we want to initiate three hundred dudes in a statewide
• 22:26
  Speaker: event that takes tons of planning, but you can't return
• 22:33
  Speaker: an email, right?
• 22:37
  Speaker: Like what?
• 22:39
  Speaker: And I have to say, uh, Illinois.
• 22:43
  Speaker: Not that I would truly be annoyed, but it's almost
• 22:46
  Speaker: annoying how many times I get a lead from my grand Lodge who is
• 22:50
  Speaker: pushing a candidate to me after they've vetted it?
• 22:53
  Speaker: So kudos to Illinois Grand Lodge for sure.
• 22:58
  Speaker: But I'll tell you what, when
• 23:00
  Speaker: gladly was talking about this, I
• 23:01
  Speaker: was just like in the age where
• 23:05
  Speaker: most of us answer more emails
• 23:07
  Speaker: while we're going to the
• 23:08
  Speaker: bathroom than most people answer
• 23:11
  Speaker: all day.
• 23:13
  Speaker: How is this happening?
• 23:17
  Speaker: Joe?
• 23:18
  Speaker: Yes.
• 23:18
  Speaker: No, I love that we're we're talking about this from the
• 23:21
  Speaker: marketing perspective, right?
• 23:22
  Speaker: So if we're if we're going to use the sales metaphor.
• 23:26
  Speaker: Um, these are not cold leads, right?
• 23:29
  Speaker: These are these are warm, warm to hot, you know what I mean?
• 23:33
  Speaker: Right.
• 23:33
  Speaker: And we need to understand that
• 23:34
  Speaker: these men are not just random
• 23:36
  Speaker: people that we're out there
• 23:37
  Speaker: trying to convince to become
• 23:39
  Speaker: Freemasons.
• 23:40
  Speaker: To your point, John, they took the time to find that site.
• 23:44
  Speaker: They were already curious.
• 23:46
  Speaker: They already took the extra step to your point of filling out a
• 23:49
  Speaker: form, sending an email, or asking for more information.
• 23:52
  Speaker: That's huge.
• 23:53
  Speaker: That is absolutely huge in any, in almost any other
• 23:59
  Speaker: organization, um, and in any sales process whatsoever, that
• 24:03
  Speaker: would be called a highly interested buyer, right?
• 24:06
  Speaker: That is a very, very interested person.
• 24:07
  Speaker: They already raised their hand and they said, I want more
• 24:09
  Speaker: information, but the statistic you showed basically says, we're
• 24:14
  Speaker: treating this inquiry like this really boring administrative
• 24:18
  Speaker: task that someone will eventually get to.
• 24:20
  Speaker: Right, right.
• 24:21
  Speaker: And, and then that's what the takeaway is, right?
• 24:24
  Speaker: It's you have a man who knocked on the door, metaphorically, and
• 24:28
  Speaker: four out of every five times that door stayed shut.
• 24:32
  Speaker: Right.
• 24:32
  Speaker: Because in twenty twenty three, that statistic had grown to
• 24:35
  Speaker: eighty three percent who had never heard back seventeen
• 24:38
  Speaker: percent responding rate.
• 24:42
  Speaker: So yeah, out of a out of one hundred candidates or one
• 24:45
  Speaker: hundred interested people.
• 24:49
  Speaker: So it got worse.
• 24:50
  Speaker: Seventeen.
• 24:51
  Speaker: Yeah, it got worse.
• 24:52
  Speaker: It got worse.
• 24:53
  Speaker: Even though conditions for
• 24:54
  Speaker: person to person contact got
• 24:56
  Speaker: better.
• 24:59
  Speaker: I when when I was in Grand Lodge administration, the rule was my
• 25:07
  Speaker: bosses said, this is a volunteer organization, but when you
• 25:14
  Speaker: volunteer for a job, it's not a volunteer organization that
• 25:17
  Speaker: that's not an excuse anymore.
• 25:19
  Speaker: It's your job now.
• 25:21
  Speaker: you have you have twenty four hours to reply to an email and
• 25:25
  Speaker: you get three strikes.
• 25:26
  Speaker: After that, you're out because people want your job.
• 25:31
  Speaker: Okay.
• 25:32
  Speaker: So it's just appalling that it would grow.
• 25:35
  Speaker: Honestly, uh, you cannot be a grand lodge in any jurisdiction
• 25:40
  Speaker: of the world who's going to sit there and complain about
• 25:43
  Speaker: membership and listen to your membership, say, quality over
• 25:47
  Speaker: quantity, and you're just going to sit there and throw like
• 25:52
  Speaker: you're throwing them away.
• 25:53
  Speaker: You might as well be a never mind.
• 25:55
  Speaker: I won't say that, but yeah.
• 25:58
  Speaker: Well, one thing I just want to I
• 26:01
  Speaker: mean, everybody's hitting on all
• 26:03
  Speaker: these, these topics, which we
• 26:04
  Speaker: could talk about for a very long
• 26:06
  Speaker: time.
• 26:06
  Speaker: But, um, in today's day and age,
• 26:08
  Speaker: I applaud the fact that they
• 26:11
  Speaker: took the time to build this
• 26:12
  Speaker: site, right?
• 26:12
  Speaker: Construct this framework.
• 26:14
  Speaker: Gotta try something.
• 26:15
  Speaker: Yep.
• 26:15
  Speaker: You know, and a fantastic idea.
• 26:18
  Speaker: But In today's day and age,
• 26:22
  Speaker: speed is what matters to gain
• 26:24
  Speaker: people's interest.
• 26:25
  Speaker: You know, we've gone from being able to tolerate a hour long
• 26:28
  Speaker: documentary to a twenty minute Ted talk to 60s is a long time
• 26:33
  Speaker: to watch something on TikTok, right before I get bored and
• 26:35
  Speaker: swipe something else, right?
• 26:36
  Speaker: So interest, especially online, has a shelf life, right?
• 26:40
  Speaker: So if a guy reaches out on a
• 26:41
  Speaker: Monday morning because he's
• 26:43
  Speaker: become interested in masonry,
• 26:45
  Speaker: guess what Monday morning is
• 26:46
  Speaker: when he's the most curious about
• 26:48
  Speaker: it.
• 26:48
  Speaker: And it's never going to be
• 26:49
  Speaker: stronger than that moment,
• 26:50
  Speaker: right?
• 26:51
  Speaker: He may have watched four
• 26:53
  Speaker: handsome dudes on the Masonic
• 26:54
  Speaker: Roundtable.
• 26:54
  Speaker: He may have read something.
• 26:55
  Speaker: He may have met a Freemason.
• 26:57
  Speaker: He may have driven by a lodge.
• 26:59
  Speaker: Whatever caused that, that spark.
• 27:01
  Speaker: He acted upon it that Monday morning and he sent, you know,
• 27:04
  Speaker: his little contact form.
• 27:06
  Speaker: That is the moment you have to engage them, right?
• 27:09
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 27:09
  Speaker: I even think that's their first experience with Freemasonry.
• 27:13
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 27:13
  Speaker: Absolutely.
• 27:14
  Speaker: Right.
• 27:14
  Speaker: And this is not you know, it's
• 27:17
  Speaker: not saying within twenty four
• 27:18
  Speaker: hours.
• 27:18
  Speaker: You have to acknowledge the person, get him a petition, you
• 27:21
  Speaker: know, get them in the door and plan their first degree just
• 27:25
  Speaker: responding to them.
• 27:26
  Speaker: You know, it goes a long way.
• 27:28
  Speaker: And but, you know, I, I can't overstate how important it is.
• 27:31
  Speaker: Like when someone reaches out,
• 27:32
  Speaker: especially on an online contact
• 27:34
  Speaker: form, that is when their
• 27:35
  Speaker: curiosity is always going to be
• 27:37
  Speaker: the most, the most jarring,
• 27:39
  Speaker: right.
• 27:39
  Speaker: And the strongest.
• 27:40
  Speaker: And it's totally down from that.
• 27:42
  Speaker: I'm a web inquiry from two thousand and seven.
• 27:46
  Speaker: In two thousand and seven, I shot an email to the Grand Lodge
• 27:49
  Speaker: of Illinois, and I got an email the next day.
• 27:51
  Speaker: That's right, I forgot that.
• 27:53
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 27:53
  Speaker: From my local lodge secretary.
• 27:56
  Speaker: So that means within twenty four
• 27:58
  Speaker: hours of them receiving my
• 28:00
  Speaker: email, they reached out to my
• 28:02
  Speaker: local lodge secretary, who then
• 28:05
  Speaker: hooked me up with a guy from
• 28:06
  Speaker: work, and then I went to lunch
• 28:09
  Speaker: like it was boom, boom, boom,
• 28:11
  Speaker: boom.
• 28:12
  Speaker: And this was oh seven.
• 28:12
  Speaker: This is before this awesome resource that existed.
• 28:18
  Speaker: so. And and here's another data point.
• 28:21
  Speaker: Um, you're talking about how hot of a lead it is.
• 28:24
  Speaker: They um, the looks like the author who also again
• 28:29
  Speaker: contributed to creating this site via freemason dot org.
• 28:33
  Speaker: Given this drop off rate statistic, went and followed up
• 28:37
  Speaker: with a handful of those who didn't get a response.
• 28:42
  Speaker: They didn't say how many people they surveyed.
• 28:45
  Speaker: But despite the follow up
• 28:46
  Speaker: failure ready for this, ninety
• 28:50
  Speaker: eight percent of those surveyed
• 28:52
  Speaker: were still interested in
• 28:53
  Speaker: becoming a Freemason even after
• 28:55
  Speaker: being ignored, ninety eight
• 28:58
  Speaker: percent.
• 28:59
  Speaker: So basically all of them were still interested.
• 29:04
  Speaker: That is borderline.
• 29:05
  Speaker: That's a burning, flaming hot
• 29:07
  Speaker: lead, not just a warm lead tying
• 29:09
  Speaker: it back.
• 29:10
  Speaker: So tying it back to the title of this episode, which admittedly,
• 29:14
  Speaker: I think I love that we went a little clickbaity here, but
• 29:19
  Speaker: like, here's why they won't.
• 29:23
  Speaker: Well, this is answer number one, maybe.
• 29:25
  Speaker: And number two is no response.
• 29:29
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 29:32
  Speaker: I love though, that ninety eight
• 29:33
  Speaker: percent of these guys were still
• 29:34
  Speaker: invested.
• 29:35
  Speaker: It's just the nature of masonry, right?
• 29:37
  Speaker: I really would be interested in the sample size on that.
• 29:40
  Speaker: You know what I mean?
• 29:42
  Speaker: Um yeah.
• 29:43
  Speaker: Twenty people versus, you know, ten thousand, you know.
• 29:46
  Speaker: Right.
• 29:47
  Speaker: Of course.
• 29:48
  Speaker: Um, one thing that the Northern Masonic jurisdiction needs to do
• 29:53
  Speaker: a little bit better is provide data, the actual source data,
• 29:58
  Speaker: when they throw out numbers.
• 29:59
  Speaker: Um, that was another, an earlier book that they had published.
• 30:02
  Speaker: I, they threw out some jarring statements and didn't have much,
• 30:06
  Speaker: uh, that we could verify.
• 30:08
  Speaker: Viably go back and check.
• 30:10
  Speaker: But that being said, we'll have to take them At their word.
• 30:15
  Speaker: Well, and this is why I'm
• 30:16
  Speaker: harping on this right now,
• 30:17
  Speaker: because one of the things I was
• 30:19
  Speaker: going to talk about, but you
• 30:20
  Speaker: kind of, you know, blew all the
• 30:22
  Speaker: air out of that balloon was, you
• 30:24
  Speaker: know, their first Masonic
• 30:26
  Speaker: experience could very well set
• 30:28
  Speaker: the tone for how they look at
• 30:30
  Speaker: the fraternity.
• 30:30
  Speaker: But based on, you know, which I
• 30:32
  Speaker: would say, hey, you got a warm
• 30:33
  Speaker: lead.
• 30:34
  Speaker: Nobody ever responds.
• 30:35
  Speaker: That person might naturally assume, and I'm being general,
• 30:38
  Speaker: that, hey, if they're not interested or they're a hot
• 30:42
  Speaker: mess, or they're disorganized, or they're not timely with
• 30:45
  Speaker: stuff, but your statistic kind of throws that off to the side,
• 30:49
  Speaker: you know what I mean?
• 30:50
  Speaker: Um, if people are that
• 30:51
  Speaker: interested even after no contact
• 30:53
  Speaker: has been made, you know, so I
• 30:56
  Speaker: have nothing to talk about for
• 30:57
  Speaker: two minutes.
• 30:59
  Speaker: Thanks, John.
• 31:03
  Speaker: I don't want to like just have this particular website be the
• 31:08
  Speaker: focus, but I do want to ask Brian T Maddox, who do like he
• 31:15
  Speaker: he'll be really humble about this dude is a genius.
• 31:19
  Speaker: But he said, talk about net promoter score.
• 31:22
  Speaker: You guys are being generous with online pills.
• 31:25
  Speaker: I don't know what NPS is.
• 31:27
  Speaker: Oh John does yes, yes.
• 31:31
  Speaker: Um, have you ever.
• 31:33
  Speaker: And I get this all the time from Papa John's.
• 31:36
  Speaker: I get an email after I do my online order and it says on a
• 31:40
  Speaker: scale of one to ten, um, how, how likely would you, uh, be to
• 31:46
  Speaker: refer Papa John's to your friends and family?
• 31:50
  Speaker: Right.
• 31:50
  Speaker: With one being wouldn't ten being absolutely highly likely
• 31:55
  Speaker: to, to recommend?
• 31:56
  Speaker: Um, it's not just a sliding scale though.
• 32:00
  Speaker: What they, they do in the, and
• 32:02
  Speaker: the net promoter score, uh,
• 32:03
  Speaker: scoring method is they say
• 32:05
  Speaker: everyone like six and below are
• 32:10
  Speaker: your detractors.
• 32:11
  Speaker: If you don't love it, you hate it.
• 32:13
  Speaker: So they just basically say
• 32:14
  Speaker: everyone six and below is a
• 32:17
  Speaker: detractor is someone who is not
• 32:18
  Speaker: your fan.
• 32:20
  Speaker: Uh, seven and eight.
• 32:22
  Speaker: Are your passives a could give it could take it.
• 32:26
  Speaker: It's a it's nice, but it's not
• 32:27
  Speaker: enough for me to go spread the
• 32:29
  Speaker: gospel and.
• 32:30
  Speaker: But you really want to focus on
• 32:32
  Speaker: those nines and tens, nines and
• 32:34
  Speaker: tens are your extreme fans, your
• 32:37
  Speaker: promoters.
• 32:38
  Speaker: So we're not trying to exclude.
• 32:40
  Speaker: We're actually trying to find.
• 32:41
  Speaker: What's the ratio of your promoters to your detractors.
• 32:46
  Speaker: And that gets you a more
• 32:48
  Speaker: balanced score of the balance of
• 32:51
  Speaker: who loves you versus who hates
• 32:52
  Speaker: you.
• 32:52
  Speaker: Interesting.
• 32:53
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 32:55
  Speaker: And I do like that because they do score everything.
• 32:58
  Speaker: Um, I mean, I, I see NPS all the time.
• 33:00
  Speaker: Um, like you said, if it's,
• 33:02
  Speaker: they're six to, you know, six to
• 33:04
  Speaker: a one, it's a no, it's a no
• 33:06
  Speaker: regardless.
• 33:07
  Speaker: And that also helps to weed out folks that, you know, when they
• 33:10
  Speaker: are rating things.
• 33:12
  Speaker: A lot of people use that middle range.
• 33:14
  Speaker: Five.
• 33:14
  Speaker: Yeah, because they're ambivalent about something, right?
• 33:17
  Speaker: So, you know, anything that or
• 33:18
  Speaker: slightly above counts as a no.
• 33:20
  Speaker: Right.
• 33:20
  Speaker: When do you use NPS?
• 33:21
  Speaker: You're actually using it to, to
• 33:22
  Speaker: actually look for stickiness,
• 33:24
  Speaker: for virality, if I can say it
• 33:26
  Speaker: right.
• 33:26
  Speaker: Virality to see if, um,
• 33:29
  Speaker: something will grow and scale
• 33:31
  Speaker: naturally.
• 33:32
  Speaker: Um, it is different than just user sentiment scores where you
• 33:36
  Speaker: normally say, hey, on a scale of one to five, how much do you
• 33:39
  Speaker: like my product?
• 33:40
  Speaker: Well, five, I love it.
• 33:41
  Speaker: One it's, uh, I could, I could get without it.
• 33:44
  Speaker: Three I'm neutral.
• 33:45
  Speaker: Um, different use case.
• 33:47
  Speaker: Uh, but, but now, I mean, if, if, if they put at the end, you
• 33:52
  Speaker: know, at the end of that contact form on the be a freemason dot
• 33:55
  Speaker: org website, that would be fine.
• 33:56
  Speaker: They put, hey, they sent a
• 33:58
  Speaker: follow up a day or two later via
• 34:00
  Speaker: email and said, hey, how likely
• 34:01
  Speaker: are you to recommend, you know,
• 34:04
  Speaker: not just be a Freemason dot org,
• 34:05
  Speaker: but Freemasonry in general, I
• 34:07
  Speaker: guarantee you that NPS would be
• 34:09
  Speaker: absolute garbage.
• 34:10
  Speaker: You know what I mean?
• 34:10
  Speaker: Just based on the response times.
• 34:12
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 34:14
  Speaker: That is true.
• 34:15
  Speaker: Yep.
• 34:19
  Speaker: Well, um, does it make a difference?
• 34:23
  Speaker: So we know that there's a lot of
• 34:26
  Speaker: interested brothers that are
• 34:27
  Speaker: just falling on the table,
• 34:29
  Speaker: right?
• 34:30
  Speaker: Um, that won't, won't get the
• 34:32
  Speaker: chance, uh, for a variety of
• 34:34
  Speaker: reasons.
• 34:36
  Speaker: So basically, we're just shutting off the faucet at the
• 34:40
  Speaker: top of this proverbial bathtub.
• 34:43
  Speaker: Like it's, it just blows my mind that that is such a high number
• 34:50
  Speaker: that we're, we're just ignoring.
• 34:52
  Speaker: And yet we, you can read, you
• 34:54
  Speaker: can pick up any grand annual
• 34:55
  Speaker: communication and you can say,
• 34:57
  Speaker: oh, here's our membership
• 34:58
  Speaker: problem.
• 34:58
  Speaker: Here's our membership problem.
• 35:00
  Speaker: How many how many people did you write back to this year?
• 35:03
  Speaker: Um, that got routed to you through via a Freemason dot org.
• 35:07
  Speaker: So that was essentially, you
• 35:10
  Speaker: know, thirty minutes of the
• 35:14
  Speaker: leaky faucet.
• 35:15
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 35:18
  Speaker: But like, what about things like dudes just waiting.
• 35:22
  Speaker: Waiting for the tap on the shoulder.
• 35:25
  Speaker: Oh, interesting.
• 35:26
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 35:27
  Speaker: Say more about that.
• 35:29
  Speaker: Well, so we have there's this.
• 35:32
  Speaker: Okay, we like to think that we
• 35:33
  Speaker: do a super job at promoting and
• 35:36
  Speaker: telling people how they can
• 35:37
  Speaker: join.
• 35:37
  Speaker: Right?
• 35:37
  Speaker: To be one, ask one.
• 35:39
  Speaker: Just ask, you know, all this stuff.
• 35:42
  Speaker: Say it, say it, say it, say it.
• 35:45
  Speaker: You don't have to be asked.
• 35:47
  Speaker: Oh, you want me to say, be the change?
• 35:52
  Speaker: Somebody out there is playing TMR bingo.
• 35:54
  Speaker: Just took their fourth shot.
• 35:56
  Speaker: Um, so Non-masons tend to think that masonry works like this
• 36:01
  Speaker: sort of elite club where you have to be invited.
• 36:05
  Speaker: Granted, there are clubs within masonry you have to be invited
• 36:09
  Speaker: to, but to be a Freemason, you need to make the first move.
• 36:16
  Speaker: Dog.
• 36:18
  Speaker: Yep.
• 36:18
  Speaker: Just say it.
• 36:20
  Speaker: Uh, because the fraternity traditionally.
• 36:22
  Speaker: I don't want to say
• 36:23
  Speaker: traditionally, uh, let's say
• 36:25
  Speaker: historically prohibited
• 36:27
  Speaker: solicitations.
• 36:29
  Speaker: Uh, we have millions probably of interested men that are just
• 36:32
  Speaker: sitting around for an invitation that's never going to come.
• 36:35
  Speaker: Really?
• 36:38
  Speaker: So, you know, these people who take a little bit of time to, to
• 36:41
  Speaker: Google anything, they see all this cool elite stuff and maybe
• 36:44
  Speaker: they're watching tonight.
• 36:46
  Speaker: If if you're one of those guys who's waiting for the tap, it's
• 36:49
  Speaker: not going to come, dude.
• 36:51
  Speaker: Like you need to just go to the web form, fill out a thing.
• 36:55
  Speaker: Or better yet, better yet, drive there, right?
• 37:00
  Speaker: Physically knock on the door, look at the schedule.
• 37:03
  Speaker: When do they meet and they show up on a meeting night?
• 37:05
  Speaker: They will be so stoked you came.
• 37:07
  Speaker: So that's that's a really good point though, because now we
• 37:11
  Speaker: have data, unfortunately, that says it's not that effective.
• 37:16
  Speaker: And if you really want to join,
• 37:19
  Speaker: you've got to use another method
• 37:21
  Speaker: than this.
• 37:22
  Speaker: Be a freemason dot org.
• 37:24
  Speaker: Sadly, I hate to say it, but no, I mean, listen, it's a good it's
• 37:27
  Speaker: a good gateway drug, for lack of a better metaphor.
• 37:30
  Speaker: Um, you know what I mean?
• 37:31
  Speaker: It's like, hey, it's out there, I got interest, someone may
• 37:34
  Speaker: reach back out to me.
• 37:35
  Speaker: But, you know, I think one thing we say over and over again,
• 37:39
  Speaker: unfortunately, is that masonry doesn't happen at the Grand
• 37:42
  Speaker: Lodge level, right?
• 37:43
  Speaker: It happens at the lodge level.
• 37:44
  Speaker: So it's really up to individual
• 37:47
  Speaker: lodges to promote the hell out
• 37:50
  Speaker: of themselves, whether it's on
• 37:51
  Speaker: social media or whether it's
• 37:52
  Speaker: through a Sunday flyer, as banal
• 37:55
  Speaker: as that sounds, or being out
• 37:56
  Speaker: there in the community or
• 37:58
  Speaker: showing that, hey, there's stuff
• 37:59
  Speaker: that happens at this building
• 38:01
  Speaker: and here's the things that
• 38:02
  Speaker: happen.
• 38:02
  Speaker: You know, so whatever it is.
• 38:04
  Speaker: You know, Robert talks about it
• 38:05
  Speaker: all the time being a fixture in
• 38:06
  Speaker: the community.
• 38:07
  Speaker: Um, nobody's going to knock on
• 38:09
  Speaker: your door, no matter how many
• 38:09
  Speaker: web contact forms you fill out,
• 38:12
  Speaker: if nobody knows where the hell
• 38:13
  Speaker: you are.
• 38:14
  Speaker: So, I mean, that's, that's one right there.
• 38:16
  Speaker: Like be active, be out there.
• 38:18
  Speaker: And whether it's electronically
• 38:21
  Speaker: or out in the real world, but
• 38:22
  Speaker: let people know where you are
• 38:23
  Speaker: and that stuff goes on there,
• 38:25
  Speaker: you know?
• 38:28
  Speaker: Yeah, there's an interesting thread there that I would love
• 38:32
  Speaker: to get my chairman on eventually for, uh, for the show, but he
• 38:37
  Speaker: talks about the interesting idea that many men join.
• 38:44
  Speaker: Okay, so going back to when was
• 38:46
  Speaker: the last time we had Masonic on
• 38:47
  Speaker: South?
• 38:47
  Speaker: I think, uh, Bradshaw came out and talked from from past Grand
• 38:51
  Speaker: master of North Carolina.
• 38:53
  Speaker: He talked about the diminishing
• 38:54
  Speaker: number and he was talking about
• 38:56
  Speaker: like this twenty forty thing,
• 38:58
  Speaker: which really only calculates
• 39:00
  Speaker: what we would consider regular
• 39:03
  Speaker: Freemasonry.
• 39:04
  Speaker: It doesn't consider irregular
• 39:06
  Speaker: clandestine co-masonic le droit
• 39:09
  Speaker: humain.
• 39:10
  Speaker: All of these other quasi and
• 39:11
  Speaker: Masonic orders that are
• 39:13
  Speaker: essentially very similar or
• 39:15
  Speaker: identical to our own, with some
• 39:18
  Speaker: different joining sort of
• 39:21
  Speaker: stipulations.
• 39:23
  Speaker: And so the number of Masons is much larger than we might think.
• 39:27
  Speaker: It is just like they calculate the world population around
• 39:29
  Speaker: eight billion, but they think realistically it's probably
• 39:32
  Speaker: around ten and a half billion because we have undocumented
• 39:34
  Speaker: numbers of people living all around the world.
• 39:37
  Speaker: So in that same respect, um, we're looking at this.
• 39:47
  Speaker: How do I want to say this?
• 39:52
  Speaker: HMM.
• 39:55
  Speaker: I'll let me think about this before I say it.
• 39:58
  Speaker: I don't want to be judgy, so just.
• 40:01
  Speaker: Just continue.
• 40:01
  Speaker: Sorry.
• 40:02
  Speaker: For once.
• 40:04
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 40:04
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 40:04
  Speaker: For once.
• 40:06
  Speaker: So five hundred and sixty six
• 40:08
  Speaker: episodes in, Robert shows
• 40:10
  Speaker: restraint.
• 40:11
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 40:11
  Speaker: Sorry.
• 40:13
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 40:14
  Speaker: Damn it.
• 40:16
  Speaker: All right.
• 40:16
  Speaker: I want you to chew on that.
• 40:17
  Speaker: Yeah, well, sorry.
• 40:18
  Speaker: Twice.
• 40:18
  Speaker: Twice, because I, um, I wanted to see the what if scenarios.
• 40:22
  Speaker: So the last thing I wanted to show tonight was what does that
• 40:26
  Speaker: funnel look like for marketing?
• 40:29
  Speaker: Right.
• 40:29
  Speaker: We call this thing like a funnel
• 40:31
  Speaker: process because not everyone
• 40:33
  Speaker: will make it to the next stage,
• 40:34
  Speaker: but you want to kind of catch
• 40:36
  Speaker: that customer at the bottom of
• 40:37
  Speaker: the funnel.
• 40:38
  Speaker: So the big net you cast is all your branding marketing via
• 40:41
  Speaker: Freemason dot org.
• 40:42
  Speaker: And then of that, only a certain number will go to the next step,
• 40:45
  Speaker: which we talked about already.
• 40:48
  Speaker: And so what does that process look like?
• 40:51
  Speaker: So Claude and I actually decided
• 40:54
  Speaker: to put together a, a pirate
• 40:56
  Speaker: metrics funnel.
• 40:57
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 40:57
  Speaker: Um, what is a Google account saying about you?
• 41:02
  Speaker: We don't need to tell her.
• 41:04
  Speaker: Um, what would the pirate metrics look like for, uh,
• 41:09
  Speaker: members coming in?
• 41:10
  Speaker: And we're going to use the baseline of the freemason dot
• 41:15
  Speaker: org to start with.
• 41:16
  Speaker: So you see this, this column
• 41:17
  Speaker: here, um, for acquisition total
• 41:20
  Speaker: inquiries, we know that we get,
• 41:23
  Speaker: um, I would say annual, just,
• 41:25
  Speaker: just to date that we had about
• 41:27
  Speaker: one hundred and twenty thousand,
• 41:30
  Speaker: um, people actually fill out the
• 41:32
  Speaker: form, but then the actual
• 41:36
  Speaker: activation that actually had
• 41:37
  Speaker: them.
• 41:38
  Speaker: Um, so technically it's
• 41:39
  Speaker: activation, but it's the second
• 41:40
  Speaker: step of activation actually get
• 41:44
  Speaker: responded to with seventeen
• 41:46
  Speaker: percent.
• 41:50
  Speaker: So automatically just to follow up out of one hundred and twenty
• 41:54
  Speaker: and you get twenty out, twenty zero zero zero.
• 42:00
  Speaker: That's bad.
• 42:01
  Speaker: Um, let's assume the best and
• 42:04
  Speaker: say, okay, do they go on to
• 42:08
  Speaker: become Masons?
• 42:10
  Speaker: So here's this this conversion rate of those twenty thousand
• 42:14
  Speaker: maybe um, they actually talked to someone from the Grand Lodge
• 42:18
  Speaker: or they talked to someone from a local lodge and they say, yes, I
• 42:21
  Speaker: want to join now.
• 42:22
  Speaker: Maybe only nine out of ten of those say, yep, I'm in.
• 42:26
  Speaker: Let's do this thing.
• 42:29
  Speaker: So now you went from twenty thousand to, let's just say
• 42:31
  Speaker: ninety percent of those eighteen thousand people and we're not
• 42:35
  Speaker: even done initiating them yet.
• 42:37
  Speaker: We're just having them say yes.
• 42:39
  Speaker: Right.
• 42:40
  Speaker: Um, and then I'm going to assume
• 42:43
  Speaker: back of the napkin math that
• 42:46
  Speaker: about another nine out of ten
• 42:49
  Speaker: actually go through and become
• 42:51
  Speaker: initiated to at least entered
• 42:53
  Speaker: apprentice.
• 42:56
  Speaker: So now we've gone from one hundred and twenty the top of
• 42:58
  Speaker: the funnel to only sixteen at the bottom of the funnel, one
• 43:02
  Speaker: hundred and twenty thousand at the top, sixteen and a half
• 43:05
  Speaker: thousand at the bottom.
• 43:09
  Speaker: That's wild.
• 43:09
  Speaker: So that's best case scenario for the statistics we have today.
• 43:16
  Speaker: And then any any comments
• 43:18
  Speaker: questions thoughts on that
• 43:20
  Speaker: baseline math.
• 43:24
  Speaker: Math doesn't lie man.
• 43:25
  Speaker: I mean you're averaging it out.
• 43:28
  Speaker: Um in most cases you're even
• 43:31
  Speaker: without even knowing it, you're,
• 43:34
  Speaker: you're making the math better
• 43:36
  Speaker: than it is by overestimating in
• 43:38
  Speaker: most cases.
• 43:39
  Speaker: There's a lot of assumptions there.
• 43:41
  Speaker: Yes.
• 43:41
  Speaker: Because we love to.
• 43:42
  Speaker: Um, yeah, this is it's wild dude.
• 43:46
  Speaker: All right.
• 43:46
  Speaker: So let's go back and do a what if scenario.
• 43:50
  Speaker: Let's assume the same One hundred and twenty thousand.
• 43:53
  Speaker: But now instead of seventeen percent response rate, let's
• 43:57
  Speaker: let's be generous.
• 43:58
  Speaker: Just say fifty percent of those.
• 44:01
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 44:02
  Speaker: If we could just every other one respond with an email.
• 44:06
  Speaker: That's it.
• 44:06
  Speaker: That's all I'm asking.
• 44:07
  Speaker: Every other one.
• 44:08
  Speaker: Just say, got it.
• 44:10
  Speaker: What can I do for you?
• 44:13
  Speaker: We've already tripled the number
• 44:16
  Speaker: of leads from twenty thousand to
• 44:20
  Speaker: sixty thousand just by the grand
• 44:23
  Speaker: lodges.
• 44:25
  Speaker: Local lodges, just doing their job, like you said, and
• 44:28
  Speaker: answering the email, you know, and how much.
• 44:31
  Speaker: Okay, the arm chair dude who builds websites for free on
• 44:40
  Speaker: blogger, you know, for local lodges for free.
• 44:44
  Speaker: Okay, that guy is going to understand that you can set up
• 44:51
  Speaker: an automated reply.
• 44:53
  Speaker: Sure.
• 44:54
  Speaker: And even if even if the script
• 44:56
  Speaker: is like, oh well, I can't auto
• 44:58
  Speaker: reply to emails that are coming
• 44:59
  Speaker: from another system, there's a
• 45:01
  Speaker: lead.
• 45:02
  Speaker: Okay.
• 45:03
  Speaker: Uh, there's a service called FTT, right?
• 45:07
  Speaker: Set it up.
• 45:07
  Speaker: If this, then that.
• 45:08
  Speaker: If you get an email from
• 45:10
  Speaker: ascomycin dot org, send this
• 45:12
  Speaker: email to the email in the
• 45:15
  Speaker: contact form.
• 45:16
  Speaker: Hey, we got your inquiry.
• 45:17
  Speaker: Stand by.
• 45:18
  Speaker: Somebody will contact you soon.
• 45:20
  Speaker: Yep.
• 45:22
  Speaker: And it's just not happening.
• 45:23
  Speaker: It's not that hard.
• 45:23
  Speaker: You could turn into a response
• 45:25
  Speaker: rate automated one hundred
• 45:27
  Speaker: percent.
• 45:28
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 45:28
  Speaker: That's true.
• 45:30
  Speaker: At least they know that's not
• 45:32
  Speaker: even configuring a small set of
• 45:35
  Speaker: AI agents.
• 45:36
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 45:37
  Speaker: Oh, I see you're in this zip code over here.
• 45:39
  Speaker: If you're in this zip code, go there.
• 45:40
  Speaker: Yeah, not hard at all.
• 45:42
  Speaker: Careful.
• 45:43
  Speaker: Hey, let's slow down.
• 45:45
  Speaker: Somebody's gonna yell at you for wanting to build a data center.
• 45:47
  Speaker: It's gonna be your regular if you use AI.
• 45:50
  Speaker: La la la la.
• 45:50
  Speaker: We don't talk about that here.
• 45:52
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 45:52
  Speaker: Okay.
• 45:53
  Speaker: I drink a lot of water.
• 45:55
  Speaker: Me, too.
• 45:56
  Speaker: So assuming the ninety percent, um, you know, that they go on to
• 46:02
  Speaker: get, um, to start the process and another ninety percent
• 46:05
  Speaker: actually go through and finish the EA process.
• 46:08
  Speaker: Again, we've gone from sixteen thousand to forty eight thousand
• 46:12
  Speaker: potential members that we could have had by now.
• 46:17
  Speaker: So numbers don't lie.
• 46:18
  Speaker: Like again, just the simple top of the funnel.
• 46:20
  Speaker: And the worst part is we're cutting it off at the top.
• 46:24
  Speaker: Yeah, it would suck if we cut it off halfway through or somewhere
• 46:27
  Speaker: down the funnel, but this number is just shocking that four out
• 46:34
  Speaker: of five, you know, potential candidates are just not even
• 46:40
  Speaker: aware, don't even go into the funnel at all.
• 46:45
  Speaker: But we have a membership problem.
• 46:47
  Speaker: But we do.
• 46:49
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 46:50
  Speaker: Bring a friend night.
• 46:51
  Speaker: Let's go.
• 46:52
  Speaker: And it requires out the contact form.
• 46:56
  Speaker: You don't have them fill out the form.
• 46:59
  Speaker: What if you.
• 47:00
  Speaker: What if you made.
• 47:02
  Speaker: What if you made the sort of like, uh.
• 47:09
  Speaker: Filling out the contact form and not contacting them?
• 47:16
  Speaker: Uh, how is that like, how is
• 47:20
  Speaker: that not or how is that more
• 47:23
  Speaker: work than organizing a one day
• 47:26
  Speaker: class?
• 47:27
  Speaker: Oh, yeah.
• 47:28
  Speaker: You know what I mean?
• 47:30
  Speaker: Like.
• 47:33
  Speaker: It seems so stupid.
• 47:35
  Speaker: Like as a grand lot like as an administrator of people, you
• 47:39
  Speaker: might want to say, you know, I'm a good administrator.
• 47:43
  Speaker: I know how to work with people, all that stuff.
• 47:46
  Speaker: and you go.
• 47:46
  Speaker: One of the things that we do is
• 47:48
  Speaker: because we know who to contact,
• 47:50
  Speaker: to do the best work and to get
• 47:52
  Speaker: it, get the work, get the
• 47:53
  Speaker: project into the people who do
• 47:54
  Speaker: this best.
• 47:55
  Speaker: You know who does this best?
• 47:56
  Speaker: Lodges.
• 47:59
  Speaker: You know how to get lodges to do the work.
• 48:01
  Speaker: Send them the inquiries.
• 48:03
  Speaker: But instead, what are you doing?
• 48:05
  Speaker: You just stacking them up, waiting?
• 48:06
  Speaker: It's.
• 48:07
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 48:07
  Speaker: And some dudes.
• 48:08
  Speaker: Oh, we'll do a mass thing.
• 48:10
  Speaker: And look, you do what you got to
• 48:13
  Speaker: do in terms of getting a guy in
• 48:14
  Speaker: and and maybe it works out
• 48:15
  Speaker: right.
• 48:16
  Speaker: We we've read the statistics on that.
• 48:18
  Speaker: Sure.
• 48:18
  Speaker: But I'll tell you more often than not, you will ask a Mason
• 48:23
  Speaker: and he will say, I get it.
• 48:26
  Speaker: The guy had um, you know what we might call time poverty.
• 48:31
  Speaker: Okay.
• 48:32
  Speaker: And he needed to do a one day class.
• 48:34
  Speaker: Sure.
• 48:35
  Speaker: But I don't know that you're going to find a majority of
• 48:38
  Speaker: Masons who say he wasn't cheated out of an experience.
• 48:43
  Speaker: Um, Still a brother.
• 48:45
  Speaker: Still a bro.
• 48:46
  Speaker: Absolutely, bro.
• 48:47
  Speaker: And he's probably going to like, you know, actively if he's
• 48:52
  Speaker: active, he's going to raise more dudes and take through all the
• 48:55
  Speaker: degrees and he'll get it.
• 48:57
  Speaker: But I just feel bad that we
• 48:59
  Speaker: couldn't give that to him,
• 49:01
  Speaker: right?
• 49:02
  Speaker: I feel more bad that we couldn't give it.
• 49:05
  Speaker: We couldn't give that mediocre
• 49:06
  Speaker: experience to four out of five
• 49:08
  Speaker: people.
• 49:10
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 49:10
  Speaker: Damn.
• 49:11
  Speaker: When I say that, I say that with all seriousness.
• 49:13
  Speaker: You know what I mean?
• 49:14
  Speaker: Like, we're not even we're not even at the stage where you're
• 49:19
  Speaker: talking about of potential strings of disappointment that
• 49:21
  Speaker: go down the road, right?
• 49:22
  Speaker: Or experience going through the process.
• 49:25
  Speaker: They're not even in the process
• 49:27
  Speaker: and they're probably never going
• 49:28
  Speaker: to be.
• 49:28
  Speaker: And that's the part that sucks.
• 49:34
  Speaker: Absolutely.
• 49:34
  Speaker: So let's go to final thoughts, starting with Jason.
• 49:39
  Speaker: What do you think about the data that I showed tonight?
• 49:44
  Speaker: you one hundred percent of the people you don't respond to.
• 49:52
  Speaker: Right.
• 49:53
  Speaker: It's not that hard.
• 49:57
  Speaker: Well said, plain and simple, I like it.
• 50:02
  Speaker: Uh, how about you, Robert?
• 50:06
  Speaker: Uh, so in terms of attracting membership, let's just call it
• 50:13
  Speaker: the old fashioned way.
• 50:15
  Speaker: And maybe they use the website or not.
• 50:18
  Speaker: Uh, and I talked earlier about wanting to get my chairman on,
• 50:22
  Speaker: and then I kind of bit my lip.
• 50:23
  Speaker: I was like, how do I phrase this appropriately to not like spark
• 50:28
  Speaker: this fire in the case guys take it the wrong way.
• 50:33
  Speaker: So many times when you ask a guy why he joins, he's like, oh, I
• 50:38
  Speaker: wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself.
• 50:41
  Speaker: I wanted to give charitably.
• 50:43
  Speaker: I wanted to be a better part of my community.
• 50:46
  Speaker: Awesome.
• 50:48
  Speaker: And then we say, well, how many times are we actually being a
• 50:50
  Speaker: part of the community?
• 50:52
  Speaker: Well, the largest place that this is happening, and I had a
• 50:57
  Speaker: really long talk with my chairman about this clandestine
• 51:01
  Speaker: and irregular lodges in big cities are, are the first face
• 51:06
  Speaker: of masonry and all of the charitable work they're doing.
• 51:11
  Speaker: We're getting the credit for somehow.
• 51:14
  Speaker: And so it's this idea that that pops in my head, you know, these
• 51:18
  Speaker: clandestine and irregular lodges are very well maybe doing more
• 51:22
  Speaker: for Freemasonry and membership than any regular lodge in the
• 51:26
  Speaker: United States is.
• 51:29
  Speaker: And so thank God for the Phylaxis society and their work.
• 51:34
  Speaker: But until we can start to own
• 51:37
  Speaker: that and truly be a part of
• 51:40
  Speaker: that.
• 51:42
  Speaker: I, you know, those guys might, you know, not be able to find
• 51:46
  Speaker: what they're looking for.
• 51:47
  Speaker: So just a thought, throwing it out there.
• 51:50
  Speaker: Um, but yeah, if we could, I would, if we could just double
• 51:54
  Speaker: two out of the five guys, it would just be incredible.
• 51:59
  Speaker: And uh, one guy said in the chat earlier and I wanted to bring it
• 52:05
  Speaker: up, but we didn't.
• 52:05
  Speaker: And he said, uh, where did he go?
• 52:09
  Speaker: He said that essentially it was like, uh, keeping people coming
• 52:17
  Speaker: every month and just not letting the fancy master Mason.
• 52:21
  Speaker: And a year later they leave.
• 52:23
  Speaker: So this is what we talked about.
• 52:25
  Speaker: And Brian Maddox brought it up a
• 52:27
  Speaker: bunch of times too, is value
• 52:28
  Speaker: proposition.
• 52:29
  Speaker: What keeps them coming back?
• 52:32
  Speaker: Um, so I know that's not about joining and that's more of a
• 52:35
  Speaker: retention issue, which we've talked about a lot, but I think
• 52:37
  Speaker: it does bear, it does bare and, uh, you know, warrants being
• 52:42
  Speaker: brought up in the show in terms of like, because people talk
• 52:47
  Speaker: about what they love.
• 52:49
  Speaker: If the guy walks away from
• 52:50
  Speaker: masonry, he's not going to say
• 52:52
  Speaker: it's great.
• 52:54
  Speaker: So we can think about those things too.
• 52:58
  Speaker: Awesome.
• 53:00
  Speaker: All right.
• 53:01
  Speaker: Jason.
• 53:01
  Speaker: Robert.
• 53:01
  Speaker: Joe.
• 53:03
  Speaker: Yo. Um, yeah, we can probably
• 53:07
  Speaker: talk about this another two or
• 53:08
  Speaker: three times.
• 53:09
  Speaker: Um, because I think there was a
• 53:11
  Speaker: lot of threads we didn't pull,
• 53:12
  Speaker: but, um, you know, I think in
• 53:14
  Speaker: general, we spend a lot of time
• 53:18
  Speaker: talking and crying about how
• 53:21
  Speaker: Freemasonry survives another
• 53:23
  Speaker: generation.
• 53:23
  Speaker: Right?
• 53:24
  Speaker: How do we grow as a fraternity?
• 53:25
  Speaker: How do we attract younger dudes?
• 53:27
  Speaker: How do we make the fraternity relevant?
• 53:29
  Speaker: Um, and these are all worthwhile
• 53:31
  Speaker: questions, but we're overlooking
• 53:34
  Speaker: one of the easiest answers, um,
• 53:35
  Speaker: of letting people in the door
• 53:38
  Speaker: who are standing there out in
• 53:39
  Speaker: the cold while it's raining,
• 53:40
  Speaker: right?
• 53:41
  Speaker: Because these people are
• 53:42
  Speaker: searching online, they're asking
• 53:44
  Speaker: questions.
• 53:45
  Speaker: They're filling out forms.
• 53:46
  Speaker: They're reaching out to our grand lodges.
• 53:48
  Speaker: They're knocking on the door, which is symbolically, I don't
• 53:51
  Speaker: know why all our brains are not exploding right now.
• 53:54
  Speaker: Right.
• 53:54
  Speaker: Because it's literally part of the process.
• 53:57
  Speaker: So maybe we don't need another membership campaign.
• 54:00
  Speaker: Maybe we don't need to redesign how Freemasonry is now.
• 54:04
  Speaker: Maybe we don't need to create shortcuts along the process once
• 54:07
  Speaker: we get them in the door.
• 54:08
  Speaker: Maybe we just need to realize that when someone is curious and
• 54:13
  Speaker: asks the question and knocks on the door, we should do the
• 54:17
  Speaker: respectful thing and open the damn door and say hello and
• 54:21
  Speaker: answer their question.
• 54:22
  Speaker: That's literally what that statistic is talking about.
• 54:25
  Speaker: It's not talking about all the downstream stuff and all the
• 54:28
  Speaker: issues that we have there.
• 54:29
  Speaker: Um, but if we truly believe that
• 54:33
  Speaker: Freemasonry is worth preserving
• 54:35
  Speaker: and worth saving into future
• 54:36
  Speaker: generations.
• 54:38
  Speaker: All we got to do is open the door.
• 54:40
  Speaker: Just open the door and let these folks in.
• 54:42
  Speaker: And say hello to them.
• 54:43
  Speaker: And be the change and be the change.
• 54:46
  Speaker: God, yes.
• 54:49
  Speaker: Having church so true, so true.
• 54:52
  Speaker: Uh. Let's see.
• 54:53
  Speaker: So in conclusion, we haven't
• 54:57
  Speaker: been losing Freemasons to
• 54:58
  Speaker: disinterest.
• 55:00
  Speaker: We've been losing them to silence.
• 55:03
  Speaker: And I really like that metaphor about just letting them stand
• 55:05
  Speaker: out in the cold, in the rain.
• 55:07
  Speaker: It's completely unacceptable.
• 55:09
  Speaker: It really got me fired up.
• 55:11
  Speaker: And when I get a spreadsheet
• 55:13
  Speaker: out, you know, you know, like
• 55:15
  Speaker: I'm really ticked off about
• 55:16
  Speaker: something.
• 55:16
  Speaker: I'm going to go find the answer.
• 55:17
  Speaker: Um, but I will say I was wrong.
• 55:21
  Speaker: I was skeptical about the Freemasons dot org.
• 55:26
  Speaker: I thought it was going to be just some sort of half attempted
• 55:32
  Speaker: effort by the Grand Lodges.
• 55:34
  Speaker: And the data shows that with a million visitors and one hundred
• 55:40
  Speaker: and twenty thousand people actually filling out the form,
• 55:44
  Speaker: it worked to some level.
• 55:47
  Speaker: It worked.
• 55:49
  Speaker: But we dropped the ball.
• 55:51
  Speaker: And that's the part that hurts the most.
• 55:53
  Speaker: Is that so, uh, we're going to stay positive.
• 55:57
  Speaker: We're going to keep on going.
• 55:58
  Speaker: We're gonna fix it.
• 55:59
  Speaker: Um, but you can't fix what you aren't aware of.
• 56:04
  Speaker: So hopefully we'll take this into the world and try to make a
• 56:07
  Speaker: better process the next time.
• 56:09
  Speaker: So with that, I want to thank
• 56:10
  Speaker: you all very much for watching
• 56:12
  Speaker: and keep searching for more
• 56:13
  Speaker: light.
• 56:13
  Speaker: Have a good night.
• 56:14
  Speaker: Wow.
• 56:15
  Speaker: You changed.