Thursday July 15th Update

"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations" - Charles R. Swindoll

With the two week mark rapidly approaching, as promised by the JTC grads, everything is starting to fall into place.

It makes me really happy to see that all of the hard work has paid off, and to see how incredible this learning experience has been in retrospect. I know that it will play a huge role in how I am able to market myself in the future.

As Mr. Swindoll says, there were times that I felt I wanted to sit down and stop fundraising. I think having the perseverance to keep pushing little by little is what keeps us on the Less Travelled Road.

I want to once again that all of my friends and family for your support over the past couple of months. Each of you were a vital part of this incredible experience, and I will always be grateful to you for that.

So what am I sitting at right now?

1. Sylvite's sponsorship is still filtering through the system and should be received within the next few days

2. I got in touch with Leslie Cornelius at the London Economic Development Corporation. She both arranged to have my cheque prepared (which we had been waiting on for a while) and got me in touch with a number of the larger organizations in town.

3. I had a meeting with Catherine Madden at 3M and gave her all of the Global Vision information. There seemed to be some interest there in forming a long term partnership with Global Vision, but we will have to wait and see what the results are from that. The head of her department is on vacation until the 19th, so I will find out whether they will be sponsoring me shortly after that.

4. Mr. Mike Potters (Youth Ambassador from Komoka, Ontario) and I joined forces to tackle Diamond Aircraft and Trojan Technologies (a UV water purification company).

Diamond Aircraft seems like an unlikely sponsor, apparently they were hit fairly hard by the economic downturn but I'll follow up with my contact there today and find out for sure.

Our meeting with Trojan went pretty well. It was interesting to see how we could play off each other’s strengths during the meeting. Mr. Martensson has been away on business but hopefully we'll hear a positive response by the middle of next week.

5. I had a meeting with Barry Cleaver and his associate Jacquie McWatt at Siskinds Law firm. They have a large affiliate office in China, so I thought there might be some potential there. Mr. Ed Holder (MP London-West) was kind enough to help me set up the meeting, however Siskinds' sponsorship session ended over 6 months ago so that negated any possibility for support from them.

6. I was in Toronto this past Tuesday (July 13th) to both get my Chinese Visa (check) and obtain sponsorship from a Ginseng exporting company, Sun Ming Hong (cheque :P).

7. I will be returning to Toronto next Tuesday to meet with Steve Rodgers, President, Auto Parts Manufacturers Association who was sympathetic to the mission and has also agreed to sponsor me.

8. Finally I just got out of a meeting with Dr. David Wardlaw, the Dean of Science at Western. He confirmed Science's interest in sponsoring me and is going to speak with the VP Internationalization (Dr. Ted Hewitt) on my behalf. Though I have already met with Dr. Hewitt (and been rejected) hopefully Dr. Wardlaw can garner some support through a joint venture.

9. I dropped a letter off for Dr. Chakma the President of UWO in order to voice my concerns regarding the lack of support that Western has had for this mission. It was surprising to me because our affiliate College (Kings) has contributed significantly on numerous occasions.

10. I have received a lot of sponsorship support in the form of personal donations. To those friends and family members who contributed I cannot say how much it was appreciated.

On my to do list remains:

A) Finalizing all remaining partners, including getting the cheques from them
B) Arranging my medical insurance
C) Going after two or three more potential sponsors
D) Packing :D... Beijing here I come!

Sunday July 4th 2010 update

Good morning everyone!

First of all I want to thank you for all of your support, I had a rough week fundraising last week, but I'm back on the ball now and looking forward to getting really active again.

1. This past Friday I gained the sponsorship of the Sylvite Group of Companies (http://www.sylvite.ca/). Mr. Bob McNaughton has been a long time supporter of Global Vision, his son Jason, who I also met, has been on 2 missions in the past so it was great to meet another grad.

2. One of my MPs Mr. Ed Holder was extremely helpful and gave me some good advice for gaining sponsorship and also made a personal donation which I was very pleased about. He also helped me to get a meeting with one of the partners at Siskinds which will be taking place on Friday, so I am looking forward to that as well - hopefully I can convince him to sponsor me too!

3. I got in touch with the President of the Auto Parts Manufacturing Association, which is a huge industry in China, so he gave me some good insight into the opportunities for local businesses, and encouraged me to go after one company in particular, which i'll be working on in the days to come.

4. One of the Ginseng exporting companies that I had approached showed interest in the mission but I had some trouble getting him on the phone last week to provide him with a list of exactly who I wanted to meet with and what I wanted to discuss with them. I'll try again this week to finalize that partnership.

5. Fanshawe and some of the other faculties at Western have been a problem to get in touch with, but when I met with MPP Deb Matthews she said I might want to look into Career Colleges (which are often for profit, private institutions so they might have some more money to sponsor me)

6. I will be meeting with Andrew Schiestel from tbkcreative on Monday. I noticed that he is very good at marketing himself and what he does, so I'm hoping to be able to pick his brain about some of that stuff which could be very helpful when meeting people in the future.

7. I've teamed up with Mike Potters (Komoka) to go after some of the larger companies here in town - 3M, Trudell Medical etc.

8. On an unrelated note, I also did all of my course selection for next year - cant wait until september to get back to school!

Take Care!

Robert

June 20th 2010 Update

Hi everyone!

So lots has happened since I last updated you, here's where I stand:

1. On top of the $1000 deposit I had to put down, I've receieved funding from the London Economic Development Corporation and a very generous private donar bringing my grand total up to $2500. Thats the good news, I'm secure for the next deposit due date on July 10th.

2. Still not having any luck with the Rotary/Lions clubs, but I'm going to follow up on the rest of them tomorrow and double check what the situation is.

3. The Chamber of Commerce in London has been quite helpful by promising to send out some information on behalf of the London Ambassadors to their 2200 members, so that should be great for getting our name out there to different businesses, and hopefully we will get some phone calls from them (FINGERS CROSSED!)

4. I made a couple good contacts at a Networking event that was held by the Chamber, and will be meeting with a partner from a local firm that specilizes in "branding". My thoughts are that this should give me a leg up in terms of securing some business partners which I havent been having much success with. I'll be having lunch with him in a couple of weeks

5. The Faculty of Science at Western has agreed to help support the mission, though he seems like one of the few members of the University that sees the benefit in this mission for the education sector - unfortunatly. I'm still trying to follow up with Fanshawe College and a local private highschool but my recent experiences with education tell me that I shouldnt hold my breath.

6. Im focusing right now on three major areas of business: Ginseng, Icewine and Scrap Metal Export. I've sent the information out and am now just trying to follow up with them.

7. An article was published in the Londoner this week about the me and the JTC mission, so that was great to see - still trying to get my hands on a copy, but here's the link!! http://www.thelondoner.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2625735

Thats about it for now, I've got a lot of work to do so I must get down to it!

Take Care,
Robert

Monday June 7th 2010 - Efforts begin to pay off!

Hi Everyone!

I'm so happy to see people commenting on my blogs its great to know that people are actually reading it!

So, I know it's been a while since I posted my last update but here's what is new:

1. Most important things first: I've achieved sponsorship - yay!!! The London Economic Development Corporation as well as the Duchess of Kent Legion here in London have agreed to sponsor me! All totalled I'm getting towards 1/5th of my goal. The process started slowly but I'm confident that it will be picking up steam from here (i hope :D).

2. I got shut down by a few more potential sponsors and felt the strangely familiar sting of rejection haha, it's a feeling that I think I'll never get used to but I remain optimistic.

3. I've followed up/contacted most of my preliminary education partners (institutions that I would have to execute deliverables for while in China) and am now just going to wait for a couple of days in order to follow them up.

4. The Rotary that I've been having trouble with has still yielded nothing and the Executive Assistant there is, if nothing else, very good at her job. :(. But I am persistant - as JF suggested, you have to be "that bugger" ahha.

5. My aim for tomorrow night is to get all the information out to the Lion's clubs and Legions that I am targetting and hopefully be able to set up some more meetings in the next couple weeks. Its amazing how time flies - its been a month already since the National Youth Caucus - WOW! Thinking about that right now is starting to freak me out :S China really will be here before we know it!

6. I found out the student opportunities fund for UWO is closed during the summer so unless they accept applications after the fact (unlikely) that wont be an option for me.

7. On the bright side there are still so many options I dont think i'd be able to exhaust them all even if I didnt work! Unfortunatly that makes time an issue, i need to make sure i'm being super efficient. I work again tomorrow and wednesday so i wont be able to make any business calls but still, I will be able to prepare things at night so it's not all lost.

Thats all for now, I'm going to make a couple more calls and then go to bed. Thanks for reading!

Robert

Tuesday June 1st update

Hi Everyone!

First of all, let’s give it up for my two followers on Blogger! Alright!!!!

Now down to business. Sunday night I finished most of my preparation in terms of finding contact information for the Media and community organizations.

Monday March 31st I worked all day, and came home to greet the pent up frustration of my laptop that has been running slow lately - talk about timing right, but I still managed to finalize most of my sponsorship package and get a little bit of practice on my marketing speech.

Tuesday June 1st. Today was a big day for me, I booked the entire day off and this is what I accomplished:

1. Note to self: I didn’t end up speaking to an actual human being until around 8:30-8:45. No one was in their offices at 8, so I don’t think I’ll start making calls until that time in the future.

2. The Media contacts went fairly well, most people were at least interested enough to tell me to email them a Press Release and the rest of the information on the mission.

List of contacted media: London Free Press, Chorus Entertainment Co (AM 980, FM 96 etc), A Channel News, The Londoner, Lakeshore Advance, InteroBang (Fanshawe Paper), Astro Radio Group ( 97.5, AM 1290 etc), Grand Bend Strip, Western News

3. One big event today was attained through 'The Londoner' which is distributed on a weekly basis and generally targets the 38-50 age range, and families. The reporter I talked to was interested enough to set up an interview this afternoon! At 2pm I went in and had a good 1/2 hour interview with him. Everything went really well and he said that, assuming it passes through the editors, it should be in next week’s edition! So that was huge for me. It felt good to see that I could get people excited about what GV does, and what we're going to be doing in China.

4. I Called my MPP's (MLA's outside of Ontario), Mayor's, University President's and Faculty Dean's office - All requested Press Releases etc, but at least now I've made contact they can't ignore me :)

5. Contacted the London Legion, Rotary Club, Local Lion's Clubs, HKCBA, Ministry of Trade and Development, Canadian Youth Business Foundation, Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Agency

6. Out of all the positive work that came out of today, I should have expected that it couldn't all go well. Around 4 PM, my contact from the Canadian Youth Business Foundation called me back and though he was interested in Global Vision and JTC he said that due to government cut backs and the fact that they are a not for profit organization, they could not help sponsor the mission - which is unfortunate.

I realized something though, which was reiterated by friends; we have all come this far on the Less Travelled Road because we WILL NOT let bumps in the road stop us from reaching our goals. This won’t be the last rejection I get from potential sponsors, not by a long shot, so I choose to look at this as a learning experience and hopefully it will help me next time.

7. So what are my plans now? Now it’s time to switch gears and focus more on finding individual businesses who may act as corporate partners.

First things first though, I need to send out several copies of my sponsorship package and follow up and the messages that I've left for people.

That’s all for now!

Robert

29/5/10 First Full Weekend of Fundraising Preparation

Good Morning Readers!

The aim for this weekend was to complete my preparation phase so that I can start making phone calls on Monday. What that means specifically is gathering all the information I need to include in my sponsorship package (what I will hand over to businesses/organizations during our meeting). I also gathered a lot more contact information so that it is quickly and easily accessible when I want to start making those phone calls. So what exactly did I do yesterday?

Friday night and Saturday:
1. I talked to a number of different Junior Team Canada (JTC) grads to get some advice as to how I would go about delivering my marketing speech. I was also chatting throughout the day to get more information on different industry sectors, and for more advice on how to structure my sponsorship package.

2. I started drafting a new version of my Resume and got some input on it. I’m just trying to cut it down to one page now which is difficult as I’m sure you all know.

3. I prepared a brief on Global Vision so that sponsors will get a better idea of what they do, and what their mission etc.

4. I worked on a document containing some points I want to be sure I touch on, both in phone conversations (with Executive Assistants, and with the sponsors) and in person.

5. I finished reading the partnership manual (prepared by the GV team – thank you to everyone involved with that) which also helped me focus my efforts

5. I did a little bit more research on some of the industries I’m interested in, however since I won’t be approaching corporate sponsors until a little later in the game; this wasn’t a huge part of my weekend.

6. Gathered all the contact information for media outlets in London so I’ll be making those phone calls on Monday. The media is the first audience I’m targeting because I would also like to include any articles about my mission in my sponsorship package.

7. I spent a lot of time researching community organizations and contacts within these organizations, for example Lions Club, Rotary Club etc.

8. Read up on the blog posted on My Global Vision (MGV) that provided an intro to Chinese business etiquette – Thanks Jackie Cook for starting that thread.

9. I called two people with regards to reference letters (also for the sponsorship package)

All in all, not too bad for my first day or so of focused preparation. I did have to get outside a few times, after going to Staples to order business cards. It was too nice outside to remain locked in my office the whole day – so I went for a run.

I’ll keep you all updated on my productivity Sunday, I’m aiming to completely finish preparing my marketing speech guidelines so that whoever I talk to gets as passionate about this mission as I am.

Till next time!

Robert

– Many thanks to Adam Dewar, Victoria Bentley, Philip Chow, Jeremie Poirier, and Terry Clifford for their help.

About Me

Hi Everyone! A little about me first: I was born in Queensville, ON and moved to Saudi Arabia when I was two since my dad got a job offer there. We ended up staying for 12 years and while there had some amazing travel opportunities and learning experiences. I finished up my high school education at Rothesay Netherwood School in New Brunswick and then chose to attend the University of Western Ontario to pursue an Honours degree in Physiology and Pharmacology. I first learnt about Global Vision when Terry Clifford (Founder and President) gave a talk at the Student Transitional Education Program (STEP) at UWO. I immediately knew it was something I wanted to look into more. After attending the Global Leaders Centre (GLC) in London in early March and seeing what an amazing opportunity for leadership development it was I decided to immediately sign up for the Toronto GLC too. As I had hoped it proved to be a very different and equally rewarding experience for meeting other motivated youth with a passion for creating positive global change. Just attending the GLC and listening to the sort of experiences you can have while working with Global Vision really left me no choice but to dramatically change my life goals and aspirations. I started doing everything in my power to get involved and promote leadership development, both in myself and in other Canadian youth.

Shortly afterwards, I was selected (along with around 100 other delegates) from among thousands of applicants to attend the National Youth Caucus (NYC) in Ottawa. While there we were given the opportunity to network with leaders in government, business and academia. Additionally, we received education in the tactics governing multilateral negotiations, and listened to multiple guest speakers from a wide range of specialties. Additionally, we took part in an “Amazing Race” around Ottawa, toured the National Art Gallery, and met with Prime Minister Harper and Senator Mike Duffy during a one hour interview session that was broadcasted live by well over 20 news stations (by my count). The NYC was an incredible experience for me, and as with each of my exposures to Global Vision and its programs, I don’t have a choice, I feel I have to continue down this path of adventure: though I have no idea where it will end!

Now the next step in my journey has begun. I recently received my acceptance letter to join Global Vision on their International Trade and Development Mission in China and Malaysia this August. I’m starting this blog so all of my friends, family and business associates can follow me from beginning to end.

So what is my goal now? Each year, Junior Team Canada (JTC) delegates are challenged with raising at least half of the funds required to fund their mission. As such, I have a little under two months to raise $5500. Let the games begin…