President JR Molina's Induction Speech

In Albuquerque at the NOMMA convention, I delivered a speech to the attendees.  I told how I had practice giving my speech at home to my daughter.  As I recited the lines, her eyes crossed and she eventually asked me to stop.  “Daddy that's the most boring speech I've ever heard,” she said.  In that version of my speech, I listed NOMMA’s accomplishments and history and named all the people I wanted to thank.  Those are all important, but with my daughter’s comments in mind, I decided that I wanted to convey something different.  I scrapped that speech and developed a new speech that would hopefully convey my feelings and the meaningfulness of NOMMA to me and my company.

In my newly crafted speech, I talked about three things.  First, I discussed my family, second my work and lastly NOMMA membership.  Following is the speech that I delivered:


So let’s start with my family.  Dotti is my wife and we've been married for 17 years.  Together we have three daughters--Tabitha, Kylie and Holli.  Like most families, we have our ups and we have our downs.  We have good days and we have bad days.  Keeping my family in mind, I think about everything NOMMA has been through in the last five years.  I see NOMMA as a family.  And like every family, NOMMA has had good days and NOMMA has had bad days.

Just like everyone at METALFAB this week, we all have our own families and our own businesses.  We have been through great days and not so great days.  However, we survived the hard times by being a family and by coming together as a team and helping each other when help was needed.  Employees helped when you needed them and NOMMA members helped when you need outside support.

With my family, I always know my girls are there when I really need them.  This reminds me of NOMMA’s list serve.  Everyday members post questions or issues with the hope of finding help or guidance.  Within minutes a NOMMA brother or sister is there to help.  At NOMMA’s conventions each year, we get to spend time with each other networking, recounting our horror stories and our success stories of the past year.

The conventions remind me of a family reunion.  Family reunions and families in general can be a little dysfunction, but whose family is not.  So family at home, family at work and family in this association are not much different.  Through the good, the bad and the ugly, we are all there to help each other.

This leads me to the second topic, which is my work.  As I mentioned earlier, we all have our businesses that we run.  We all work six days a week, ten plus hours a day--or seven days a week and 12 hours a day if you work for Curt Witter.  As we know, the last 5 years have not been easy.  The economy hit us hard, all of us, even this association.  When I first got involved with NOMMA 12 years ago, NOMMA had just under 1000 members.  Now we have fewer than 600.  This decline illustrates the good and the bad times I mentioned earlier.  Like Phil Hoppman, Big D’s president, says, “The lower the lows the higher the highs.”  Whoever survives these stressful times is going to prosper when things come back around.  That is no different for any one of us who has survived this economy.  It is not any different for NOMMA as an association.  Things are going to come back around.  They always do.  Like I discussed earlier, being a family, working together and being a team are what we need to focus on right now.

This brings me to my third and final part, which is NOMMA membership.  The board has recently completed a strategic plan review.  We have chosen an aggressive goal and we are building our strategic plan around that goal.  Our focus is on membership.  For those who do not know in order for NOMMA to sustain its self, NOMMA must bring in 12 new members each month or 3 new members per week.  Our growth goal is 5% net annual growth.  To reach this goal, we must annually grow by 20% because we typically lose 15% of our membership through normal attrition.  Now, I ask the question, “How important is membership?”   Membership dues provide the funds that NOMMA needs to support our building code advocacy work and various programs that serve the membership.  Also, large membership gives NOMMA credibility with the code bodies during code hearings.  These are just a couple of reasons why membership is important.

In an effort to increase membership this year, NOMMA telemarketers and Industrial Coverage insurance have helped attract new members.  However, the most effective way to grow membership (and Mark O'Malley can attest to this) is by members sponsoring members.  Since late November, NOMMA has enjoyed a surge in membership.  We have hit monthly membership targets for the last three months.  I know most everyone understands the value of being a member of this association and just like on list serve, I am posting a request for help from each and every one of you tonight.  NOMMA needs more members.  If everyone can give to NOMMA, like NOMMA has given to each and every one of us, together, like a team or like a family, we can make this association grow and succeed again!