Don Kremer Brings Rotary to Senior Living Communities

speaker-0 (00:03.694)
Hey folks, thanks for joining us again today. We have today Don Kramer from the Rotary Clubs. I’m going to let Don explain a little bit more about who he is, what he’s doing. But I wanted to really make sure everybody’s aware. We’ve set up a relationship with the Rotary organization that Don’s part of. And I’d like you to take a look at

what they’re doing because I think it’s really useful for our audience. Dawn, thanks for joining me. It always sounds better coming from the person I’m talking to. So if you could tell me a bit about who you are and what you’re doing.

speaker-1 (00:48.108)
Well, again, I’m Don Kramer. I live in Pacific Grove, California. I’ll give you a short background. I was in the Navy for four years and I went into IBM for 25 years. And then I created a consulting practice for accelerating change in large organizations. And after I retired from IBM, my wife and I moved to the West Coast. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t know anyone when we moved.

And one day I ran into a guy when I was walking my dog and he says, you ought to come to this meeting I go to every Tuesday morning. Well, little did I know, but that was a Rotary meeting. And I enjoyed it so much, they invited me back. so my sort of my fourth career, if you will, is Rotary. so I’ve transitioned a lot of times in my life and now I’m settled down in Rotary. I’m doing a lot of good work with them. One of the things I’m doing right now, just for your interest, we are on a committee.

where we’re trying to move rotary into existing organizations. Normally people gather and they make a rotary club. There’s no reason why we can’t take it to existing organizations. My part of that is creating rotary clubs in active adult communities. And that can be 55 plus senior living, what’s called CCRCs. There’s a lot of communities and I’m sure we’ll get into it, but there’s good reason to do that.

So that’s a bit about what I’m doing now and what I’ve done in the past.

speaker-0 (02:20.608)
Are you specifically focused on the area that you’re in or are you doing a larger area?

speaker-1 (02:29.238)
Right now we’re introducing it in what was called the West Coast zones in the United States, which is most of the West. And eventually as it moves forward, we’ll be doing it internationally. Or I should say nationally, I don’t know about internationally. There’s, as an example, some 3,000, 55 plus communities in the United States. And there’s only a few of them that I can find that have

service clubs like Rotary. So it’s a wide open potential for getting purpose. The whole thing is about getting purpose in people’s lives after they resign or get to the age where they’re active adults. That’s what I’ve done all my life and it’s made me very happy and I think it’s a right path for almost anyone that’s retiring and moving into that stage of their life.

speaker-0 (03:23.79)
So, I know quite a bit about rotary, but for those that don’t, give people a sense of what rotary is all about.

speaker-1 (03:33.966)
Sure, Rotary is a worldwide international service organization. We’re in some 200 countries around the world and 1.4 million members, but we’re all divided down into Rotary clubs. There’s like 35,000 Rotary clubs in the world. And most of our service is in local communities and sometimes internationally. So Rotarians can get involved about any level they want.

So the Rotary Club is the home for Rotarians. As an example, I joined mine this time that I met this fellow was in 1991 and I joined in 91 and I’m still in the same Rotary Club, but I’ve done a lot of things other than the club. worked in the clubs are organizing districts. And so I worked in the district and I was a district governor and then districts are organized in zones.

And I was a rotary coordinator for the zone, which helps support the district governors in that level. And so now I’m on this, as I mentioned, this committee where we’re trying to move rotary into existing organizations. the service avenues can do everything from little projects in your, in your club, around your community to water wells in Africa. And my club has a project, they do wheelchairs for

actually, pediatric wheelchairs. Most of time it’s in Mexico or South, but they’ve been in Asia as well. And these are chairs that you fit to children that have abnormal conditions, usually skeletal kinds of things where you have to fit the chairs. So it’s an exciting kind of program and very, very rewarding for the people that do it.

It goes all the from, at one time I had a project called the WAPI project, water pasteurization indicator. People sometimes don’t know it. They think if you want to get clean water, you have to boil it. No, you just have to pasteurize it. That’s 149 degrees Fahrenheit. So this little device for people in the bush who gather wood for their fires would indicate when water had reached 150 degrees. So that could tell the mom that that

speaker-1 (05:58.348)
That water is clean to drink. Even though it might look a little dirty, you can still drink it. And that device, it cooled off and you could use it forever over and over and they cost like 40 cents. So it was a neat project for me personally. And there’s 110,000 WAPIs out there somewhere. Hopefully they’re being used. It’s a great event, a great project for me.

speaker-0 (06:23.544)
So you start off with clubs within districts, districts within zones, zones within the national, and you can work in whatever level that you want to be involved in, whether it’s just at the club. You also have e-clubs as well. So it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to go to a physical location.

speaker-1 (06:44.238)
That’s right. have electronics or E-clubs and that’s really kind of a Zoom based club and the members can be all over the world. And usually it’s before a particular passion that they’re interested in, whether it be global health or the clean economy or clean environment. It’s a lot of different passions that these clubs have, but then they connect people that are interested in that particular passion and they can be located anywhere in the world.

and usually they meet through a zoom or there’s other other ways of meeting as well.

speaker-0 (07:19.32)
So if you’re limited with how you can travel or anything like that, you don’t necessarily have to be limited to what is local to you.

speaker-1 (07:28.96)
No, it’s true. This whole internet thing has really expanded that capability. During the COVID time, interestingly enough, my club, my little club in here in Monterey, we met using Zoom. But interestingly enough, we were able to bring speakers in from almost anywhere in the world. And that’s continuing on now because people have seen that opportunity. Most club meetings have a speaker of some kind, either local.

or some other project. So isn’t it interesting that you could bring someone from the West Coast as an example, or East Coast from the West Coast as an example, that’s interested in this passion or whatever needs to speak to the club. And it held our club together because we got really good speakers. And matter of fact, we even gained members during COVID, which was of interesting.

speaker-0 (08:19.936)
Interesting, interesting. So average age for a rotary club or rotary as in general is roughly what? Do you have an idea? Yeah.

speaker-1 (08:31.412)
Rotarians. The average age, even though we’re trying to make ourselves younger, is probably, I think it’s around 64. Okay. For men, a little younger than that for women. Okay. I think it’s around 58 for women. don’t, that’s a, don’t hold me to exact numbers, but that’s close. Right. So you see, we’re already in the active adult community.

When I joined Rotary I was, let’s see, 52. And I’m now 87, I’m still very active.

speaker-0 (09:06.22)
You’re sorry. Okay. Sorry. I didn’t think you were that old.

speaker-1 (09:12.032)
Well, thank you, I guess.

speaker-0 (09:16.578)
Okay, so you have basically an older demographic that’s already involved in rotary, even though you are trying to get younger.

speaker-1 (09:25.678)
And we have other ways of getting younger members,

speaker-0 (09:29.176)
But right now your specific activity is trying to extend into the adult communities.

speaker-1 (09:38.242)
That’s right. Into active adult communities. Okay. You see, because they already exist. They are their own community. And when I go to say a 55 plus, by the way, my wife and I own a home in a 55 plus community in Nevada that we treat as a getaway. I don’t live there permanently, but I can tell you when I went to what’s called a community manager who manages the day to day operations and told her about road issues, very excited about.

So there’s no doubt in my mind that soon we’ll have a rotary club in that, in that community. So, yeah, that’s, you’re exactly right though. Rotarians, a lot of them are already active adults. Right. So they found purpose. Some of them are still employed, of course, but have found purpose. what we do when it’s interesting, cause there are ways to look at especially 55 plus communities. And when you look at the activities.

They’re all to keep people busy. There’s nothing in there that’s purpose driven. And that’s where Rotary fits. And most people, don’t know, Neil, you’ve probably seen it when they retire, they go for a couple of years on the golf course and doing all kinds of stuff before long. they say, wait a minute, what am I going to do with the rest of my life here? Who am I going to contribute? They have the skills built up over years of all kinds of things. And when you bring Rotarians together that are

60 and 70 years old, have a portfolio of skills that they can bring to a project. And that’s what makes it fun. That’s what makes it interesting. And you develop really lifelong friends as well as service partners. It’s a terrific, terrific organization.

speaker-0 (11:25.462)
Yeah, no, one of the things I continuously hear in interview after interview is being purpose driven. Having a purpose. Yes. Even after you retire will make you happier and extend your life. The thing that I like and the reason why I’m partnering with Rotary is it’s not one specific thing. There’s a variety of different things going on.

speaker-1 (11:56.14)
Yeah, the, you know, you make a lot of friends. Number one, I have international friends that are Rotarians. That happened mainly because when I was district governor, you get to know governors around the world. And then I worked on the zone institute or zone level. I got to know executives really, and really, this is all volunteer organization, by the way. We do have paid members at our headquarters and all that, but their staff.

But even the Rotary International President for a year is a volunteer. Now his expenses, his or her expenses get covered, but they’re volunteering their time. There’s no salary to it. And that’s all the way down the line. There’s no, the only way, sometimes clubs will hire an administrator person, administrative person just to help with the books and all that in the club. But normally it’s all done by club members. So it’s all volunteer.

And it’s just an interesting concept.

speaker-0 (12:58.008)
So you yourself right now, and this group that you’re working with right now are very specifically trying to get into the adult communities. Are there specific things that you’re doing to get into those areas? Aside from talking with me.

speaker-1 (13:13.848)
Well…

speaker-1 (13:17.324)
Yeah. Yes, we have a very active committee and it has other other we’re looking at professional organizations and small corporations and schools and there’s other things. My particular one is the A and we call it the cons is active adult communities. So what are we doing? I put together a guide for rotarians to identify prospective adult communities, active adult communities that might be

potential in their particular district. And I helped them with that. And so far, we’re starting to make grounds. think we have three or four clubs now that are forming in our areas. And I’ve discovered as an example, Walnut Creek, Rossmore is a large active adult community that’s had a Rotary Club in it since 1962 in that organization. See, and I didn’t know that until I got into this.

researching this a bit. And there’s one in, I found one now in Colorado and there’s a couple, they’re not identified. you look at Rotary Clubs, they have a name, but it doesn’t say active adult community. It just gives a name. So it’s not like they’re all identified and I can look in a database and find them. So we’re having to search them out. So what do we do? Usually, a lot of times we’ll find there are rotarians or past rotarians that are already in that active adult.

Often they’re past rotarians because people travel to the active adult community, the 55 plus community, because they want to get into a more desirable location and they make friends right away. So often they’re there and they’ve left Rotary behind, but when they find out there’s a potential of creating a Rotary club in their community, they’re getting excited about Rotary again because it’s right there. so that’s

Usually how we go about it, if we can find a rotarian that’s already in, or especially a rotarian that’s already in that community, then they have direct access to the community manager. And then we can go to the community manager and they have access to email systems and newsletters and all that that goes to their residents. And once you get 30 or 40 people together and talk about Rory, it’s almost always very interesting and they’re interested in continuing.

speaker-1 (15:42.028)
with that process. It’s fun. It’s fun for me, at least. I know that.

speaker-0 (15:48.667)
Well, it sounds like when you got into rotary because you went from one location to another.

speaker-1 (15:55.906)
Yes.

speaker-0 (15:57.824)
I would suggest that the people that used to be Rotarians, they probably changed locations, they don’t know about the Rotary Club in that location.

speaker-1 (16:08.654)
Well, they’ll know about standard rotary clubs, but when they get into an active adult community, there’s so much they can do, active things to do to keep themselves busy that it takes a while before they finally say the same thing. What am I doing? What purpose do I have in life now? Now they could probably find a rotary club in their outside of the community somewhere in that city, but it might be across the town, 15 miles or whatever.

And often they do join that. There’s a matter of fact, the place we own in Nevada, there’s several people there that belong to rotary clubs in Reno, Nevada. But it’s interesting when you can, you bring it to the facility. How about I can walk to the rotary club or drive a couple of blocks. Right. Because it’s right there and that, makes it more accessible. The other thing I want to mention is we are, we do things for youth.

We have what’s called Rotorack Clubs, which are college-aged, I think up to 32 years. And so Rotorack Club is sponsored by a normal Rotary Club, and that’s for younger people. We also have Interact Clubs, which are at the high school level. So you’ll find a lot of kids that belong to Interact Clubs. They learn how to serve their community from the time they go into high school.

and they’re very exciting. I’ve been involved with some interact clubs and it makes me a lot younger. I’m telling you, what happens is fun. So there’s a whole string. Hopefully we have interactors that go to Rotoract and then to Rotary. That’s what it’s about.

speaker-0 (17:50.062)
It’s an interesting night. I was talking earlier today with somebody in Europe. And what they’re actively trying to do is be involved with younger generations, creating an intergenerational linkage so that it’s not just isolated into specific groups. There’s different pros and cons from the different various different ages. Like I’m not very active anymore.

speaker-1 (18:18.072)
But you seem to be pretty active with what you do.

speaker-0 (18:21.23)
My butt is glued to this chair. Whereas my sons who are in the mid-20s are a lot more physically active, outgoing, that sort of thing. So you take the knowledge of our age and the physical energy of somebody younger and something really dynamic happens.

speaker-1 (18:44.206)
Well, and different things attract younger people, the 35 and under. They’ve been part of the internet generation forever. Social media is their life. And fellows like me, know, I saw the internet coming in the 90s when I was doing consulting, but I can’t say I was a big part of it. Now they live with it. So when you approach them for these kinds of clubs, it’s not like if you say, oh, we meet every Tuesday, that turns them off. They want to know is what am I going to do?

They’re already purpose driven. Where do I show up to do these things? And I don’t really want to meet meat to eat. I want to meet to do things. And so that you’re a lot more active oriented than even I was as a young person. it’s, but we are growing the Rotorack base. Matter of fact, it’s interesting. So that’s where the youth, we’re hoping the youth will move forward into Rotary as they progress in their life.

speaker-0 (19:43.38)
At one of our previous meetings, I remember talking with one of the gentlemen, indicating that he got closer working with his grandkids. Yes. Simply because that’s the nature of the Rotary Clubs. It doesn’t just stay with the person, it goes throughout the entire family.

speaker-1 (20:03.692)
Well, we have another program that’s quite popular, Youth Exchange. So we have a youth in our district that we sponsored by sponsoring, we interview and all that stuff and their parents are involved, but they’ll go away for one year as a junior in high school to some foreign country. And they live there for an entire, that entire year. And it’s amazing what comes back. They come, they go away kids and they come back very seasoned.

people, they understand how to handle problems. They’ve addressed things that most of us have never addressed because they’re living in houses, at least at first, is they don’t understand the language. Schools are different. They have a heart that’s a different way of making friends. They come back very seasoned and the parents say, don’t even reckon this person is now close to an adult and they’re only 18 years old.

It’s exhort and Rotarians who host these kids, some of really get into it. have some friends that over time have hosted 10 and 12 kids from other countries all around the world. And they still maintain that relationship. Yeah. In fact, you will see, well, I’m traveling to Spain today because Mario is getting married. So that’s their, their, their road, their road exchange child.

They’re going to see the child get married. It’s amazing. So we are very involved in youth. A lot of the service projects you find from rural clubs are oriented toward youth to make sure they get a good start in life.

speaker-0 (21:47.328)
One of the people that I have coming on to TTN as a regular host is Rick Moody, formerly with the AARP. And I had a conversation with him just after the No Kings marches. He’s in your neck of the woods. And he said it was amazing. volume, number of people at the march were predominantly seniors, older people. It’s not…

speaker-1 (22:14.062)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (22:17.902)
We’ve come to the agreement that we think what happened was back the people that were marching back in the 60s They kept marching in the 70s 80s 90s and now that they’re seniors. They’re still marching. They’re still being actively involved They found a purpose different purposes But they’re still active Yeah, so you want to Get into the adult communities

speaker-1 (22:32.45)
They found a purpose.

speaker-1 (22:36.446)
Yes, exactly.

speaker-0 (22:47.726)
If there isn’t something in an adult community right now, what do people need to do?

speaker-1 (22:54.254)
Well, normally, like I say, we approach them through the local roadie clothes, but I can put up some phone numbers or whatever, you never, people watching your programs, I suspect there’s a bunch that live in active adult communities. And if they say, hmm, that sounds like a good idea, I’d be happy to give my contact information so they can contact and I can work with them to see what we can do.

what the prospects are and can it happen and almost all cases it can happen.

speaker-0 (23:26.574)
For anybody that’s watching this video, I will put Don’s contact information in the description of the video so that you’ll be able to access as well as any links and that sort of thing. Is it very onerous to start up a club?

speaker-1 (23:38.05)
Very good.

speaker-1 (23:44.59)
Uh, not really. I mean, as a district governor, I chartered three clubs in my district and that happens. Uh, those are standard kind of clubs though. That’s way before we started looking at E-clubs and what have you. So it’s not really that difficult. Once, uh, a group is interested in, and there’s a rotaring with them, there’s a process that rotaring will take them through to get them into a club. It’s not difficult, um, at all.

tell you the The process is fairly simple. We even have groups that assist people in farming clubs if they need it.

speaker-0 (24:23.958)
Yeah, that’s one of the things people will want to do things, but from what I can tell, you guys have done this so many times, you’ve got it down to an art form.

speaker-1 (24:35.234)
Yeah. Well, as I mentioned, I think 35,000 Rotary Clubs in the world. Yeah. They’ve all been formed at one time. Exactly. So there’s a process you go through and when you form a Rotary Club, you become an official Rotary Club at Rotary International and you get all the privileges and the things that comes with Rotary International. We have a huge website that can take people through what it’s about. And I’ll just say it right now.

anyone is really interested in in rotary go to rotary.org and you as a guest, you can pull down the pull down menus and you’ll see all the things that rotary is involved in. it’s just rotary.org.

speaker-0 (25:18.274)
dot org sorry I put them dot com

speaker-1 (25:20.928)
And once I’m a member, you have a member section, you can log in and now you can get deeper, but that’s because you’re a member of Rotary. But as someone that’s interested in roti.org, just get the pull down menus and you’ll get, you’ll be able to spend hours actually looking at all the things Rotary’s involved in. We have a huge foundation. That’s why how a lot of our projects are sponsored or funded is because the Rotary clubs and the districts gather money.

then they send it up. If it’s a good project, then the Rotary Foundation will match that money. And then that builds the amount of funds you need for fairly extensive projects matter of fact.

speaker-0 (26:06.206)
specific like every club has a different focus that sort of thing but does Rotary International as a large body have specific focus areas on an annual basis?

speaker-1 (26:19.67)
Yes, we do. There’s nine areas of focus. can’t tell you, I can remember off the top of my head, but one is maternal health, maternal service and health. One is the economic development, this is especially true in third world countries where we’re involved in helping them with economic development issues. There’s one in education, there’s one in, I don’t know,

I can’t remember all the time here, but what you would think would be with a service organization. One of the things that’s interesting, and I don’t know whether you’re old enough or not, but I’m old enough to remember polio. Polio was rampant in my neighborhood in Southern Indiana when I was a young kid. In fact, every year we thought, now who’s going to get polio this year? It was that rampant. In 1979, Rory

foundation sponsored a project in the Philippines to eliminate polio in the Philippine islands. And the Philippine islands at that time was heavy polio-oriented or impacted. And I think in two years they were down to like 10 % and now they’re polio-free and have been for a long time. So in 1985, Rory took polio on to eliminate polio from the world. That’s a big task.

Right. And we’re still at it. However, I’m happy to tell you that when we started in 1985, there were 365,000 cases of polio every year in the world. And much of the world was already polio free, including the United States. Right. There’s now, I think this year, 32 cases and they’re all in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And so we’re in the process and toward the end of eliminating the polio scourge from the world.

And there’s some six to seven million people right now walking around because polio, they received polio vaccination when they were young. That they would have been crippled by now. That’s kind of the realm of it. So that’s another big project that we’ve been sponsoring for a long time.

speaker-0 (28:37.442)
have a former Prime Minister of Canada, Jean Chrétien, who had polio as a kid. And when you see him, understand he’s partially paralyzed on one side of his face because of that. But it’s something that the awareness of polio is, it’s like tuberculosis. There are things that we don’t, aren’t even thinking about anymore simply because of the act.

activities of organization like

speaker-1 (29:08.778)
Working on, Rory’s heavily involved now in vaccine for where I’m looking for. Starts at the end.

Another big disease. I’m sorry, let’s skip my mic. I’m 87, know, so. Every now and then it sneaks up.

speaker-0 (29:27.34)
That’s fine.

speaker-0 (29:34.304)
I was interviewed earlier.

speaker-1 (29:36.76)
Malaria, Malaria,

speaker-0 (29:40.942)
Sorry, that just reminded me of a joke, which I’m not going to repeat here. It’s interesting. I interviewed Alison Bo from Active Retirement Ireland last week, and their big push right now is getting a shingles vaccine out to everybody that’s in the seniors age. So there are so many good areas that can be worked on.

speaker-1 (29:44.514)
Okay.

speaker-0 (30:09.122)
by various different people. It all depends on what they’re interested in. And that’s the nice thing about having such a large organization like Rotary is that it doesn’t matter what your area of interest.

speaker-1 (30:19.307)
Well, I should mention also that after we started the polio, we call it polio plus, which is in the plus stands for other stuff kids get other than just the polio vaccine. There’s other things that boost their health. Bill Gates organization foundation got involved. And in fact, they furnish about one third of the monies now that Rory spends trying to eliminate in the process of eliminating.

So, the United Health, a lot of partners came in after we started. At first they said it’s impossible. And then when Rody showed it wasn’t impossible, it was possible. Then we started getting a lot of people on board with us.

speaker-0 (31:08.098)
Well, Don, we’re getting towards the end of the interview. So, what I always ask my guests is one question. If you had one piece of advice that you would give to the people that are listening, what would you recommend?

speaker-1 (31:11.512)
Okay.

speaker-1 (31:26.894)
You know, I think it’s personal experience. I’ve tried to keep my mind active from the very beginning. When we talk about purpose driven, it almost always involves keeping your brain alert and studying things and learning new things. And even at 87, I’m learning something new every day. So I would say the most important thing I would talk about is keeping your mind active. That’s part of what eases or

growth into age, I think, and makes our life more productive. And also, I mean, my second one is friends. When you go into Rotary, you’re going to make friends, there’s no doubt about it. That’s what happens when you go into Rotary clubs. You develop a family of friends that grows. So those are the two things I would say.

speaker-0 (32:22.36)
Question.

I’ve learned doing this podcast that the vast majority of people, men when they retire, they lose their social network. Right? Because their social network was all tied to work. Women tend to not lose that social network nearly as much. In the rotary, are there more men or are there more women? Or is it still balanced?

speaker-1 (32:52.076)
If you look across the United States, I don’t know the numbers in every country. United States, it’s about two thirds men and a third women.

speaker-0 (32:59.01)
Really interesting.

speaker-1 (33:01.406)
And women really didn’t come into Rotary formally, I think until 1989. And it was a big Supreme Court case, matter of fact, that did that. And to tell you the truth, I’ve been around Rotary long enough to know that, thank God that they’re in Rotary because they’re very active. They want to get things done. They have a different mindset than us men and almost always better, tell you the truth.

And we have a lot of women leaders now. We have now had two Rotary International presidents that were women. So we’re growing and a lot of our district governors are women now. The other thing that’s interesting because Rotary provides an opportunity for leadership.

You can go in as a club member and you don’t have to do a lot except get involved in projects and that’s what you’re there for. But if you decide that you’d like to step up, there’s all kinds of areas for leadership. In addition to that, that leadership can help you in your outside skills. You know, I have a friend of mine, I don’t want to mention the name, but he’s part of a family and has a lot of restaurants and hotels. And he was a president of a club. said,

You know, Don, I learned leadership skill being the president of the Rotary Club. And now he’s president of Restored Associations and he’s all over the country in Washington, DC, lobbying and everything else because, and he believes that being part of the Rotary Club and becoming the president of that club, he learned skills that allowed him to use them in his personal life.

speaker-0 (34:50.702)
It’s interesting. One of my first guests ever was Dr. Riley Moines, who had written a book called The Four Phases of Retirement. That first phase is that vacation phase, like you were saying, where you’re off golfing and then after six months to two years, people go, is that it? What’s left? What’s now? And the second phase is what he terms as loss, where people realize they lost their social network.

They lost their purpose. They lost one of the big things and it goes to what you were just talking about. They lost for those that were more senior, their leadership, their, executive capabilities, leading things, which they miss. Two weeks ago, two weeks, I interviewed Jerry, Settler who wrote don’t retire rewire. Yes. And she said the same sort of thing.

that people realize they’ve lost their attaboys, know, the pat on the backs from doing things and doing things well. So yes, you’ve lost your social network, which is something that Rotary can deal with. But you also, because like you were just talking about the leadership capability, you can get those attaboys back. You can get the leadership aspect back.

speaker-1 (36:14.062)
You know, one of things that happened in my life and I see it in other people, I worked for IBM for 25 years and I worked with various organizations. And one good thing about IBM, my customers were all over the place, insurance, oil companies, all kinds of stuff. And when I went into the consulting business, because I a, I got some other education on my part of accelerating change. What I found was I knew more than I thought I knew. Yeah. Okay.

That happens in rotary. People come in, they’ve been retired for a while, they get into rotary and suddenly they get involved in something and you can tell they light up because they’re starting to use skills that they hadn’t used in a long time. And not only that, they find out they can, they know things they didn’t really know that they, and it comes out. And so that’s the other purpose thing driven is that you keep to maintain the skills you’ve had and you’d be surprised when you have the opportunity.

that Rotary provides, it’ll bring out skills you didn’t know you had on projects and what have you. Or leadership. lot of Rotarians have had a lot of leadership skills when they join Rotary and they back off from that for a while and all of a sudden they kick in and say, okay, I can see how I can be a leader here. That’s one of the things that happened to me.

speaker-0 (37:34.958)
Yeah, I have a new host that’s joined TTN, Andrea Mays, who’s in Florida. And she’s a retirement coach. And one of the things she helps people do is identify what’s that core thing that you’re going to miss when you retire, regardless of what it is. And if you know what that core thing is, then you can go off and find that. And then all of a sudden you’re feeling more fulfilled moving forward as well.

speaker-1 (38:05.58)
Well, I mean, I think if to be an active adult, I think you have to use the skills you’ve had and the energy that you have acquired. And you’ll be happy that way. It just makes sense. You need friends and acquaintances. There’s no doubt about that. You need to be able to use your brain and then show something that has purpose. And with those three things, you’re well on your way to being a very happy adult.

speaker-0 (38:39.33)
number of things that I keep hearing consistently from everybody. These are these stories that come together.

speaker-1 (38:46.008)
Well, and people are paying more attention to it now because our population is getting older. And it’s extraordinary. mean, I know one Rotary Club that’s in a, what we call a CCR, Continuing Care Retirement Community. That’s where they have medical and all that stuff. He’s 84 and he’s running a Rotary Club and his average age of the members are in over in the eighties, early nineties. And they do all kinds of stuff. Yeah.

for their community and this is fairly large community so they have internal projects they work on as well.

It can be done.

speaker-0 (39:26.028)
Yeah, well done. Thank you very much. For everybody watching this video, like I said earlier, I will put Don’s contact information in the description. Don’t spam him, please. As well as links that he would like to make sure you guys are aware of. I highly recommend that you take a look at the Rotary organization.

You’re going to get a lot of the things that you’re going to lose when you go into retirement. And when you’re in your senior years, you’re going to be able to build things back up. And it’s a great opportunity to help expand your senior years. Remember, you’re talking like half your life is going to be spent in these years. Don’t need to diminish them. You can expand them, keep them full.

speaker-1 (40:18.392)
That’s right. That’s right. Absolutely. I thank you very much, Neil, for being on your program. Thank you very much. thanks you too. Bye.

speaker-0 (40:23.246)
It’s really been a pleasure.