 Hey everybody it's Brian Le with DAV still coming to you live from my basement in northern Kentucky. Today I have a very special guest and that's Doug Wells who's a Marine Corps veteran in DAV's National Membership Director. While all of us know it's become way too normal dealing with COVID-19 and the coronavirus and the restrictions and limitations that those bring to the surface in our daily lives. Doug's here today to talk a little bit about from a recruiting aspect membership obviously membership criminal organization. Doug how has COVID-19 made things difficult and tell us a little bit about hot list how those work and how DAV Recurs can use those to hopefully help them kind of maneuver these difficult times. Sure so we've been working for a while as an organization to try to put as many arrows in the quiver of our recruiters as we possibly can and fortunately you know we've been trying to equip them with mechanisms through which to recruit virtually and digitally. One of those tools that we're providing them to recruit with are what we're calling our hot lists. They've been available for a couple of years now and we've been talking about it quite a bit at our national convention and webinars other points of information that you can find at DAV.org and the members only section but essentially what happens is a chapter officer can request a hot list of the most viable prospects for recruitment in their area. So these are folks that may not have ever been solicited by DAV offered the ability to or the opportunity to join our ranks and if they have been received a membership solicitation then they may have only been one or two that they've received over the past year or two if they're on that list. So they're very very fresh viable prospects that we're hopeful our chapter leaders can take charge of and disseminate to their recruiters within their chapter. A great way to use the hot list is to go ahead and use the contact information on there to reach out to these prospective members and just find out hey how you doing you know we're from DAV we just want to check on you is everything good with your claim are you getting to and from your medical appointments we're here for you if we need you and what we've seen is that the chapters that engage in that way with the hot list and with those prospective members they are much more successful in their recruitment efforts because the prospective member understands and realizes the value of being everything that we're bringing to the table so they're much more amenable to you know pulling the trigger on becoming a member with DAV. Now that makes sense their exposure to the organization seems much more robust than maybe another avenue and obviously as you know we feel like we've been discussing this for way too long but with the restrictions in place with the pandemic you know you and I were discussing it earlier this morning and you know each state's different there's all these different guidelines depending upon where you live you know we do ask that wherever you are residing to follow those guidelines and procedures to keep yourself safe and everybody you come across with the safest possible but because of how many people aren't able to maybe leave their home and do their typical interactions at chapter meetings and so forth explain recruiter warrior it is a recruiting tool that is done digitally you can call your needs a computer even an iphone or smartphone tell our viewers Doug a little bit about recruiter warrior how it works and how even especially now it can be so beneficial right so again trying to equip our member recruiters with all the tools that they need to be successful the recruit program was kind of born out of that effort and the concept is simple simple you'll get a personalized link that you can share via social media email you can text it however you want to do it but you get it out there folks can click on that link and join the dev through that link and credit for that recruitment is automatically attributed to that recruiter nice that comes with you know all the benefits of not only extending the the mission of service and hope to our fellow fellow veterans but who allows that recruiter to not have to go through the the process of inputting their own membership number demonstrating that they're the sponsor of that new recruit they get their dv points you know so they can purchase all that great dv swag from the dv store or to participate in any you know promotional type efforts that we might have going on at that time everything from specialized gear swag all the way up to cash prizes for our top recruiters so you know the recruiter warrior link is is just there can't be a more easy way to to bring new folks on board all they got to do put dv.org slash warrior they put in the email address that they used to sign up online with dv if they're not in the system already that's okay the system will let them know that in an email back to them they can easily just give the membership department a call at 888-236-8323 and we'll go ahead and set up their profile these links are always active they're just there doesn't have to be some kind of special promotion going on they're always active and again you know they just go ahead and share that via their social media or you know other mechanisms they're available for facebook twitter email the whole nine and it's it's very once you get your profile set up it's just one click that's all you got to do just one click and send and it makes it really nice the thing i would caution though for our recruiters if you're looking to get personal credit for the recruitment make sure you get your own personalized link if you share somebody else's link when that individual signs up that other recruiter is going to get credit for the the recruitment because of the the automatic attribution so that was something our members were really looking for and we were so pleased to be able to give it to him now awesome um for those of you watching one thank you this is part one of will be a two-part interview series between myself and Doug Doug before we sign off here part one please give that site again one more time for recruiter warrior where you can go to get their personalized link so dv.org slash warrior and again if you're having issues you can just you know shoot the membership department and email or give us a call and we'll get you squared away all right Doug thanks everybody thanks for watching now please keep your eyes peeled from part two coming your way shortly thank you very much thanks everybody