CEO Blog: R3 Symposium

I was blown away by the depth of discussions on mentoring. Those talks reinforced something I’ve written about from a personal perspective, but they went so much deeper. Several organizations have realized big wins with their creative mentoring programs. Therefore, instead of starting from scratch with our own bowhunting mentor program, we intend to leverage those successes and partnerships to take our ideas even higher.

As with everything we do, it’ll be critical to measure our mentoring success. But such measurements were another hot topic at the symposium. How will we know if we moved the needle? How much return on investment will we achieve? Many organizations struggle to identify those returns, and the R3 community recognizes that big hurdle. As we identify new ways to engage bowhunters, we must identify new ways to ensure we’re achieving our commitment to support our members by making it easier for you to do business.

Finally, I was impressed by the marketing concepts I saw and learned. While “millennials” is a term often spoken like a curse word, we must not fear or sneer at this generation. This year millennials will wield the most spending power of any generation. They’re also more likely to share personal information with brands they trust. Experts have also learned that millennials don’t value celebrity endorsements as much as other generations do. Reaching them means sharing experiences they’ll enjoy when bowhunting or shooting archery, using our members’ products, and shopping in our members’ stores. This next generation is smart, they pay attention, and they’re our industry’s future in every way.

All those experiences sent me home confident that we have a positive future. It won’t look like it has the past 30 years – or even the previous five – but if we collaborate and break from our comfort zones, we’ll have much to celebrate down the road.

What do you think about when you think of R3? We’d love to hear from you.