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Pretty pricey-- five figures, so it hurts to do all in a whomp. Normally I use the incremental payment plan, but this year our budget and income made the annual payment a better option.
And I get a LOT for my dues. I get:
Recreation facilities: FABULOUS parks with some of the most amazing scenery and natural features you can imagine. Access to incredible wilderness areas, forests, all kinds of thing. Oh, and some of the world's greatest collections of art, manuscripts, historical artifacts, music, cultural and scientific material. And a great zoo.
Health and Safety facilities: With my membership, I get the assurance that that my risk of getting sick from disease organisms in what I eat and drink is pretty minimal, really. I get a major, world-class facility coordinating all kinds of health research, setting standards for how the medicines and health interventions I might have to use will be tested so they are safe, creating all kinds of health education materials for me and resources for all the different kinds of medical professionals I use. The level of risk I'm exposed to from badly-designed, poorly-manufactured consumer products is greatly reduced, too. And there's a bunch of club employees tasked with making sure that me and other club members aren't ripped off by interstate frauds and scams, and going after criminals who do try to victimize us. The club also makes sure that it's safe for me to fly when I have to, and although I think they've gone a little overboard on that lately, I'm still pleased to know that the chance of my aircraft trying to land on an already-occupied runway is so close to zero that I don't have to think about it. A lot of other safety assurances, too. Good to know the club has my back.
Business Concierge services:
I seriously could not operate my business without the club. The club makes sure I have ways to transport my products, both physical delivery and by ensuring that there's a whole giant infrastructure of communications services-- delivery of packages and documents as well various types of electronic communications media, that I can access for reasonably modest fees, and-- get this --the network is so vast I can literally reach anywhere in the world from where I am. I can say with confidence that I'll get it to a customer, and not worry about whether it will be hijacked by bandits. I understand that's a common occurrence in some parts of the world, but it's not a concern for me since I'm a member of the club. Like I say, I couldn't do business without it.
And the club also makes sure that when I order a pound of materials to make my products, what arrives weighs one pound on my scale as well as on the scale of the source I ordered it from. And if it doesn't, the club gives me a way of getting that made right. I'm trying to imagine doing business without THAT confidence. Dang. On a related note, by the way, the club maintains a network of arbitration services, contract policing services, and standards compliance services that make sure that myself, my suppliers and workers, and my customers all have a good, shared understanding of how we do business together. Without that? I'd be totally hosed.
Other business concierge services include a HUGE amount of information on almost any subject I can imagine, all of it available for free and all of it the straight, reliable skinny on the hows and whys of almost every aspect of doing business. There's even forms, tools, and all kinds of other resources I can download for free over the Internet! And speaking of the Internet, the club actually provided the money and the research nudge to make that happen. It wouldn't exist without the club, but you don't even have to be a club member to use it. You're welcome, everyone else. And there's an awful lot of other cool gadgets out there that wouldn't exist except that the club at some point thought they needed a particular tool for a particular job, and funded the creation of that tool. And then let everyone use it to make more tools. The club is nice that way.
Oh, yeah, and another thing I couldn't do business without-- the club makes sure that if I design the greatest training package EVAH, and put it on the web for people to download at $20 a pop, no one else can download it, file off my company's name, and put their own on and sell it for $15 a pop. At least not in the Club's membership area. And they've done a decent job of cutting deals with other clubs to protect me in other places, too, though some of them are a little iffy on co-operation.
There's a bunch of other ways the club makes it possible for me to be in business, but I don't want to bore you.
Sweet Deals and Saving Money:
The club has made it possible for me to buy a new refrigerator that costs LESS THAN HALF of what it cost to run my old one. And I actually paid less for it than the old one, too. My suppliers take advantage of some amazing subsidies, and that keeps the costs of a lot of stuff I buy way down. The club actually subsidizes the insurance on my bank account, so in spite of the dicey economic times I don't have to worry that suddenly my savings account will go "poof!" That peace of mind is worth a bunch, believe you me. And if I'm really worried about the safety of my money, the club provides rock-solid investment vehicles for me-- they aren't high-yield, but they're totally reliable.
Oh, yeah, other sweet deals-- the club insures my retirement savings and even supplements them. And gives me a pretty reasonably-priced health insurance pool to buy into once I retire.
This list could be five or six or ten times as long of the benefits I get for being a club member.
Mind you, it's not all gravy and I don't agree with everything the club management does. I'm a little annoyed with them at the moment about the amount they're spending on the club's security enforcement program with regards to a stupid fight they picked-- that I warned them about, too. But fortunately that manager is gone, and, while I don't see eye-to-eye with the new manager on everything, and he's really pissing me off with the whole security enforcement entanglement mess, for the most part I see things moving (too slowly, but still moving) in the right direction. And like every other member, I have a vote --one vote per member-- to help determine management staff and leadership representation. I could even run for the board if I wanted, but I don't need the headache.
I'm a little worried about how some members have been trying to augment the power of their single vote with cash bribes, but I've been communicating with the board on the subject and I think we'll see some turnaround there eventually. It's really slow-- a club with nearly three hundred million members has some trouble turning on a dime, as it were, especially since there's a lot of factions and disagreements about management policy among the membership.
Still, I look at what I'm getting for my dues, and I think "OK, I wish I had this amount of money to spend on other stuff, too. But there's no WAY I want to go without what my club membership buys."
So, I signed the check, and sent it off. Things will be a little tight for a while, but thanks to my many, many club benefits I know I'll be able to do better in my business this year, and probably even better next year.
Oh, hey, one last thing-- my dues are based on my ability to pay, which I think is pretty cool. There's some shenanigans going on at the top end of the sliding dues scale, and I still think that people who are really hurtin' are paying too much in the way of dues, but the cool thing about it is that the scale makes it possible for EVERYONE to be a club member, whether they're at the top end or even at the very bottom, where the dues are actually subsidized.
Cool club, huh?
I can't figure out why some people are so hot to get their dues refunded and get out.
bemusedly,
Bright
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