Steps to Starting An Investment Club

STEP 5  Determine the Frequency of Your Meetings

Whether it’s in a chat room or someone’s living room, your club is going to have meetings. Determining how often your little gang of gung-ho investors is going to hold those meetings is a key ingredient to your club’s success. This single decision is what will ultimately strike that delicate balance between member boredom and burnout. You want your club to land right in the middle and be fun, fun, fun. Granted, its never going to be the same as kicking up your heels with your favorite girlfriends on a Friday night, but you know what? We Chicks have come pretty darn close! I’m going to propose monthly meetings and proceed to tell you why -- and what you can do in between to keep things interesting.

Other than the pooling of resources, both monetary and mental, the main reason to join a club is for accountability, right? I mean, we’ve all made promises to invest regularly, but until you’re paying those dues to your club treasurer at the beginning of every month (or whenever you decide), it’s a tough commitment to keep. The same goes for research. Have you ever noticed how much better your work is when you know its going to be read by your peers? If I can let my own experience be your guide, I need homework and I need a deadline! One month gives you the perfect time frame. Don’t worry -- I don’t mean to suggest that your workload should be that huge! I just need some built-in procrastination time. We are busy women with full lives. Four weeks gives us adequate time to get the assignment done.

Meeting monthly is also easy to remember. As Chick Karin stressed in her previous articles, we Chicks believe in keeping things simple! For example, the Chicks meet the first Sunday evening of every month. Done deal. There’s no hauling out datebooks, picking random times throughout the year, while trying to balance 10 members’ busy schedules. This way, no one can say they didn’t know the date and if you do happen to miss a meeting, you have the "Rotten Egg Patrol" to deal with (see Chick Megan!!). On occasion, especially after a "buy" meeting (which is usually preceded by a flurry of flying feathers), we may choose to skip the following month’s meeting… just for a breather. My point here is that you have the freedom. Once you have the schedule set in stone, feel free to do a little sculpting if you need to!

As discussed in last week’s Format Schmormat article (how can I say that with a straight face?), there are many ways to have a meeting. Getting together face to face, at some point, is essential. In our case, we had to start that way, just so we could put a name with a face. We happened to like each other so much, we added two face-to-face meetings per year to our schedule. If your nest isn’t quite as spread out as ours, you may want to meet face to face more often. I know my mom just loves her monthly luncheons with the ladies followed by a couple of hours of stock talk. The type of meeting you’re going to have is up to you and your club’s individual needs. I’m just going to push you to have those meetings on a monthly basis.

Now, what can you do in between? Visit our website, of course! The beauty of this website is that it’s simply here, free to you. It’s here for your monthly meeting (chat room capabilities soon to come!) and it’s here for you all the days in between. Yes, you must have meetings and they can be fun, but don’t sell short all those other days. Many times, it’s my between-meetings visits to our message board that bring me the most laughs, the most tears, and the greatest opportunity for learning. Best of all, its on my own time! If you want to check out the action, please feel free to peruse the Chicks Laying Nest Eggs Club Message Board. We welcome you!!

Face it, once a month works because it’s hard to stay motivated if you let too much time pass between meetings, even with our website. Okay, maybe that’s the reasoning you tell your husbands, and what you really need is time away from your kids once a month to stretch those brain cells that shrank in childbirth! Conversely, meeting too often can become too hard to maintain. Why set yourselves up to fail? Just remember, women, some things that come once a month can be pleasurable! (hee-hee!)