Welcome to Revenue Speaks, where communication becomes growth. I'm Sheila Johnston, founder and CEO of Luminari Partners. This show is produced in partnership with Page Design Group, where together we align strategy, brand, and digital to drive growth, Revenue speaks explores how strategic communication aligns leadership and drives measurable revenue. Because communication is an overhead, it's infrastructure, and in the end, revenue speaks. 

Hi, Jim.

Hi, Sheila.

Thank you so much for being a guest on the Revenue Speaks podcast today.

Oh, my gosh, it's my pleasure.

For our guests that don't know who you are, who are you? What do you do? Oh, my name is Jim Anderson. I'm the president, CEO for Associations West. So we are a member-based association, and our members are the professional staff of many of the associations within California, Oregon, and Washington.

Now, how long have you been CEO of Associations West?

Just over 22 years.

22 years.

Yes.

I recently met one of the board members that actually helped appoint you to CEO of Associations West. Are you going back?

I am going back. There was a lot of compliments for you that she had, specifically as it relates to how you've helped Associations West grow over the 22 years. But before we talk about Associations West, I want to talk about your tenure and why associations have been your sweet spot.

Well, it's such a wonderful job, because it's a great combination of many things, but mostly it's being able to serve people. That's been pretty much my whole career is in the nonprofit space, and trying to support individuals and communities in getting better, and so with associations, I think there's two things. Number one, association professionals in general have a service mentality, so they bring that to the culture, and so that for me it makes a very vibrant culture, and so it's just trying to tap into naturally where the people are, and then our industry partners are also amazing, so they're very supportive of the association space, and so the combination of that, it really makes for a really healthy community. People often say, like, well, wouldn't it be intimidating to work for an association where everybody does what you do? Don't people tell you what to do, right? And that's really not the case, you know, in fact, I often say my board members come pre-trained because they know where the line is between management and governance, right? And they really don't cross it, or if they do, they say, "Well, Jim, I just have this little suggestion, do you mind if I give it to you? Right? So they're very, very polite that way and respectful.

What is an association? Because most people don't know what it is, now I know what it is because of my experience with associations. How does it differ from a nonprofit, for instance?

Yeah, within the nonprofit space, they are nonprofits, but they're not the same as a charitable nonprofit, which are tax deductible. Associations are member-based organizations, technically they're called mutual benefit organizations, and so our whole reason for existence is to support our members and helping them advance their careers and their organizations they work for, and that's true of any association. They do that a lot of different ways, primarily it's through education and bringing people together.

Now, when you say members, you're talking about a unifier amongst the professionals that are a part of an association.

Yes, members pay dues, and from those dues they expect benefits, right? And so that the benefits are the ways that we're trying to help support them through knowledge, information, career services, all those kind of things.

Now, prior to becoming CEO of Associations West, you were also a nonprofit executive, correct?

Right.

And who did you work for?

I worked for the United Way California Capital Region.

For how long?

16 years. I was there. So I don't move around the world.

That's a testament to how much passion you have for doing community-based work. What was your time at United Way like? What were you most proud of there?

I was a political science major, and so my third job there, I was in charge of what's called the state employees campaign.

Okay.

And so my job was to raise money, but do it in concert with the state employees. They had a great structure there, where the chair of the campaign every year was a member of the governor's cabinet, so I was a poli sci major. It was almost like a dream world, and that individual could get me introduced to anybody really within state government, and so that was a huge pleasure to be able to do that for five or six years, and I worked on a campaign. Inside, that's what we call for the fundraising, ultimately being in charge of the entire campaign, so we raised around $13 million every year for the community as the career expanded in the operational roles. I was a COO for a while, and then ultimately as the executive vice president, I also got to oversee the distribution of the community funds that would help, and so all the funds that United Way's raised stay local, and so you really get to know the services and the community and the nonprofit agencies that are delivering those services. So you can imagine a huge amount of pleasure in being able to see the money at work and where it's benefiting people.

So 16 years at United Way, 22 years and counting at Associations West. Now you know the purpose of this podcast is really to talk about the success that an executive like yourself can have in leading an organization based on the type of communications that they implement throughout the organization that they represent or serve, so going from United Way to Associations West, what did you learn about the power of communications?

So, when I put the whole package together, really, the communications is really trying to represent who you are as an organization and the product that you put together, so I think of marketing, you know, and that's sort of the umbrella of which all the strategic thinking goes, and understanding your members, what they need, the programs that you can put together that will serve them, and then ultimately how you communicate that. So the communication is kind of a subset of all that, but if you can't get through to people, then you're not going to get very far, and as we know, the challenges of communicating have gotten extraordinarily difficult, you know, trying to break through the clutter, because especially with email communications or social media, it's very hard to get people's attention, that's been a big, big piece of the challenges for many executives, you know, not just for us,

I agree. Noise is abundant, and it really comes down to how effective your message is, or what it is you're trying to say. Now, one thing I've noticed with Associations West is that no matter who you speak to, either a board member, an industry partner, a sponsor, or even someone, an employee of an association, they all tend to say the same thing about Associations West. That's

good. I know that's good.

Everyone is on the same page about the mission of Associations West. Now that doesn't happen overnight. I truly believe that it's a reflection of the effectiveness of your communications culture. So, what are some of the strategies that you have implemented to make the Association's West community feel welcome and feel included and be bought in to the mission?

Well, I mean, it's a combination, I think of things right, so the communications is one arm, and how the culture that you're trying to communicate or reflect with people. Another form of communications in my mind is, you know, we track like net promoter scores, for example, and so how are your members talking about you? Because within the association space, people tend to be in this industry a very long time, so your reputation and the word of mouth is also a huge piece of that. So we get referrals from our members, you know, regularly, so they're a huge part of that communication, if you will. So it's not just the email and the social media and that kind of thing, it's also how your members are helping bring you along and bring other people to the to the party, so to speak.

You mentioned infrastructure, and you mentioned communications, and I truly believe that's likely something you build over time, right? So, how have you embedded these communication expectations within your team and the departments that you've created?

Well, my attitude toward communications, I should say, has evolved in what way. Well, it used to be if you build it, they will come, and that's true to degree, right? But if you can't get the message out there through a lot of different channels, then you're not going to get as many people to come. So, over time, one of the things I've realized is the talent on your team. We have a very talented director of marketing and strategy, which again goes to the concept of understanding the whole picture when you get in that strategic level. So, the staff is definitely a key piece of it, and then there's a lot of different aspects to communicating with your members as well. I would go back to what are the expectations of how we interact with our members, because every impression makes a big difference. It's hard for me to emphasize that enough. The average member for us has been in this industry for 18 years, so it's truly a career for many people, and so the impact that you have on this. People, good or bad, makes a very big long term difference. They're so intertwined it's hard to separate one from the other.

Well, I like that you have that viewpoint, that it is not easy to separate because communications is so intertwined in day to day operations. How have you changed the way you look at one critical piece of an association's operations, and that is the strategic plan. Have you changed how you weigh your strategic plan, or how you adopt when, or what your strategic plan might look like?

You know, it's been kind of an evolution for us post Covid. We had to trim back a little bit on the team, but the folks that we've hired since that time, I've just been really thrilled with them and the ownership that they have in something like the strategic plan, so they ended up pushing me in a lot of different directions, asking pointed questions, but in the best way possible, and so then that also comes up to the board, so there's a vigor of ownership within the team right now, and that's something that we try to build within our culture, and that I try to communicate as well. So, it's kind of, kind of goes both ways, but the team members you hire, and how you cultivate them, and giving them that ownership, and their and clarity on lanes, and you know, those kind of good management practices, I think really allows them to flourish.

Was there something about your prior strategic plan, and how you were identifying metrics that perhaps wasn't producing the right buy-in from your stakeholders or even your team?

Yeah, so it was probably around 2017, that my board chair at the time looked at our strategic plan, he says, Jim, we've got in this plan we got 20-two different measures, there's so many, it doesn't feel like we're really using them to make decisions, and I agreed with him, and he goes, "Well, what do you think about if we go through this process with the board to really hone in on what are the most important metrics that are going to guide the success of this organization? is a very dynamic, in-depth conversation that we have, and so over a course of a year, and we came up with the top 10, and at the same time we also had been listening to our members, and maybe we'll get into this a little bit, but we changed our membership model, and so that clarity of that new prioritized strategic plan, and the metrics, and I will say those metrics were also tied directly to my evaluation brought great clarity, and they were right, and it brought the success to the organization. So we started growing both in membership and by leaps and bounds in revenue. I mean, we're getting close to doubling our budget since pre-COVID, right, not COVID, but pre-COVID, and that has allowed me to bring on and really reward the team that we have in place right now, so all those things were kind of coming together, but it was because of Nathan's leadership at the time as the board chair that brought that clarity, because I think before that you're trying to be all things to all people, exactly, and that really split you apart and didn't allow us to be as successful as we could have been.

Well, kudos to you. I am a firm believer in the fact that communications is leadership, communications is infrastructure, communications is listening to your team, which you have just said so beautifully that you listen right, and it's brought some really great rewards to the organization that we see now. Now you mentioned about the membership model. What's the story there? What wasn't working, and what changed when you and your board saw that there was an opportunity?

This is purely just a marketing tactic. I don't want to oversimplify it, but one of the things that we had in place at the time is if the first member joins, they join for x rate. Let's just say it's $300 Then, if the next member that joins after that got a discounted rate, 50% that was a verbal thing that we said in marketing, like first person is this, second person is, or any additional gets that discount. We did something very simple, which was create an organizational membership model where the discounts were very similar, but we put it in a visual, so you could see the first person was this, the second person to join, and you would see these discounted percentages going up to 60% if you, the higher you went, that thing sold itself, we gained 45% more members over three years just by doing that alone.

That's incredible. Now I was on the flip side when I was working in an association when the invoices came in, and I remember a CEO saying, I need all of you to join because I get a discount, really. really, yes, that's what I'm saying.

Exactly, you got into the mindset of what association executives, the choices they have to make, right, as it relates to their bottom line, but there's also a value and membership that they could sell, and executives want. To develop their people, they really do. I mean, sometimes it's very challenging because they might not have the funds, and there's all different kinds of choices they have to make, but if you make it easier for them to see how the rest of their team can be involved, that definitely had an impact.

Speaking of the value that associations bring to their staff, How do you gauge what members might need. How do you implement listening of the membership?

Yeah, that's a great question. So many different ways. So we do a comprehensive member needs assessment every other year, because it's pretty intense. So that's a big one that guides a lot of what we do, and there's there's a combination of numeric questions, you know, evaluative factors, as well as qualitative, open-ended kinds of questions, and AI has definitely been helpful in dissecting some of that. So that's one way we measure everything we do. So every conference, every activity, those all get measured, and we get open feedback from that, and those also, like we have ownership groups, so it's not just Jamie, it's Jamie, the communications team, it's Denise and the membership committee looking over things, it's Lindsay and the seasonal committee doing a three page evaluation at the end of that big event, so we take all that feedback and try to get improvements every year, but it's also just directly listening to the members throughout, you just never know what good idea is going to come from.

It's true.

I'd say those were probably the main ways. I would agree with you that your team does a great job of soliciting that feedback. Recently, at Elevate Associations West Spring Conference, at the end of the day, there was a survey in your inbox right away.

Absolutely, your team definitely values the feedback on a timely basis. I know of some associations that maybe get a membership survey or a conference survey out, not as quickly, but maybe three to six months after.

Okay, I always want to say right away would be a lot better, yeah. Where it's fresh in people's minds, and they know, like, the classes that they went to, or the things that they did, exactly. Yeah, absolutely.

Now, was the culture always that way, or do you feel like it's been a work in progress, to, you know, I think that would be part of the evolution. So, this is going way back for me, very early on in my career with Associations West, or was Calla say at the time, and there was a series of board retreats, one of which we had a board member from ASAE that was a California, she was also a member of ours, and ASAE had just launched a book called The Seven Measures of Success, and so it was a very provocative book, and really helped guide where associations could concentrate, and so, for example, one of the seven themes was being a data-driven organization.

Okay, one of the things I did know is if you're going to change your culture, you really have to focus on it for a long time, right? So, for an entire year, every one of our committees and regional councils, the whole organization went through this and saying, what can you measure, how can you use it to make your decisions, and then how do we report that information back? So we went through that cycle, and so now it's just, it's just part of the ether in what we do. So that was one example of being a data driven organization.

It truly has become a well-oiled machine as a board member. The board meetings are run so efficiently, board members are prepared for each board meeting. I feel like even the questions and the discussions that the board members have with you and your team are at the 30,000 foot level. You really allow the organization's volunteers to coast at a level where the feedback that's needed is helpful and timely. How did that philosophy change over time?

I also like to get a lot of feedback, and sometimes I will take the board to a tactical level, kind of getting a little bit granular, maybe too granular, and so the board actually understanding their role, and they know what this is, they're saying, well, let's write our level a little bit. I would say they're self-regulating, so if we have a couple of board members are starting to go down a rabbit hole, other board members will say, is this something for the committee to worry about, or should the board be worrying about this? So I have a very built-in advantage, and the board members that I have, and our volunteers, kind of understanding what strategy means, what tactics mean, where management is, where governance is. So, I think I think it's kind of baked into the culture, and as much as I like to say it's my leadership, if I didn't know what I was doing, I guess I wouldn't be here very long, that would probably become apparent. So, it took me a while to really not be too intimidated by the board members, and do I really know what I'm doing with this group? Because that was my first executive job as well, but I guess all as well.

So, let's talk about some of the benefits of that mindset shift from the board members from you, because I'm sure it's been a give and take over. Time, yeah.

What I've noticed from my position, not involved fully like you as an executive within the organization, is that innovation is really a common theme throughout the Association's West culture.

Yeah, now there's a couple of key examples I want to talk about, and we'll talk about them one at a time.

The rebrand, you weren't always Associations West.

No, no, we weren't.

What were you before Associations West?

California Society of Association Executives, or the acronym CALSAE.

Why the shift?

Just give you a little bit of history. Cal SAE was formed based on the merger of three local independent societies within California, there was one in Southern California, there's one in San Diego, there's one in Sacramento, which is the capital, and about 25 years ago those three groups decided to band together. There was another group in the Bay Area, they didn't join immediately, but over time they also came into the fold. I was about five or six years after that, and that's when I was here. Then, in 21 the Oregon Society of Association Management approached us and said, you know, this was just after Covid, and they were struggling, and so they approached us to say, hey, we can collaborate or partner, and that led to a merger, so we merged with OSAM, and in 2022 began serving their members, and so that was a pivotal point. And then the board said, before we rush into this too much, let's make sure that partnership is successful, get our focus there, and after a year or two, we decided we now need to change our name. We were obviously sensitive to Oregon, California. Cal, SAE doesn't quite match. So then we kicked off our branding process to say, okay, how have we evolved as an organization? So we asked these key questions of our members and what their perceptions of us were. And so it's interesting, it wasn't just the geography that drove the name change, a lot of younger folks like say they were at a management level or something, but they weren't like a VP or a COO or something like that. They did not see themselves executives, so for them it was a little bit disassociating, and we got a lot of feedback that way. So those two things in combination drove the name Associations West, so we dropped the executive, made it more inclusive, both geographically and regardless of where someone is within an organizational structure.

The new name Associations West is now almost a year old. What has been the feedback you've received since becoming a more brand inclusive organization. Yeah

I mean, it's.. I think it's like a 9010 kind of thing. I think the vast majority of our members were super supportive, but they're always apologizing because they slip into calls at you sometimes, even even a year later. I'm like, "Please forgive me. It was a well thought of brand, you know, up to that point. But I'd say people are, have been very, very supportive, and they get the inclusivity, and this merger, and maybe we'll talk about Washington a second with Oregon. It kind of brought a new vibrancy, as well as this kind of another layer on top of everything else we were doing. People were excited to be able to expand their network and bring in more executives, you know, across the nation. I know you're involved with a larger association that work outside of the West, but has there been any feedback as to the new brand for associations West?

Oh, nationally, you mean? Yeah, yeah, with my colleagues, you know, they might tease me a little bit. Oh, Jim, you're taking over the world. I think a lot of people would be okay with that. They're approaching us. We have not approached anybody else. So let me just be clear about that. So, it's nice to be invited. We are getting more attention in little things, like at Elevate, for example. We had three companies from Australia, one from New Zealand, two from Canada, right? So, it's got a little bit more international in that sense.

Did you anticipate that reaction? You know, it's funny, because I'm like, I had one of my members point that out, like, oh yeah, that's true.

That goes back to your thoughtfulness with the rebrand. It wasn't just a logo, right? You and your team and the board thought about a brand intertwined with your messaging, with your marketing, with the talking points that you share, how intentional was that process?

You don't mind if we talk about your role on that as being part of that brand task force. So, again, we're tapping into the talent our members have, and so the members of that task force, we started off, it was a very, let's say, large group of people, maybe 15 or 20, and we tried to have as many perspectives on that group initially, and talking about who we are and where we wanted to go, so that's the quality feedback that we got, along with the survey we did with our members, and pulling those two things together, and then that progress, and some of the recommendations were made by that group were very well. Received for the board, so then we started getting down to the nitty gritty, and that's where we tighten the committee to five people that really had a lot of marketing experience. They were still outside of the organization, or they were in different areas with the organization, and so you were able to get some really tight feedback in making some decisions on color and brand and those kind of things, and so you get that much good advice, you know. Things worked out well. I'll just do a little Associations West brag here for a second, but when we launched the brand with the video that we had at Elevate last year, it felt electric in the room. I'm like, people were just applauding. You could hear little comments as the video was running, so they were really excited about it.

I mean, people put tattoos on them. Do you remember that Jamie had tattoos made? John put the

Association's best brand on the shoulder. Yeah, it was very cute. But you're right. I will say kudos to you and the team. As a member of the brand task force for Associations West, from the start, you started at Elevate two years ago you brought in a group of very talented professionals, members of the association, and you heard life feedback, you pivoted, you didn't continue down a road that you originally thought you would go down to where we ended up almost a year later was so beautiful, in fact it kind of made me even more of a brand snob, and I will tell you a story. A colleague of mine here in Sacramento was going through a rebrand at his company. I was texting with him at a baseball game, and he broke the news to me, "Oh, we're getting rid of this one element of our brand. I said, "That's not acceptable. Now, granted, I'm not an employee of the company, no stake in their logo game, but I said I was having a bad reaction to what they were about to do. He started a focus group just because of the way I was feeling, and his company brought in a group of the public to allow them to be heard on how a brand affected them or would affect them, and the result was incredible. But brands matter. They are a representation of your culture, of your company, and I attribute serving on the brand task force for getting behind how I feel.

Yeah, brands are how powerful brands. Well, that's a perfect example. As you never know where an idea is going to come from, or when you're going in the wrong direction, based on what one person tells you. Yeah, I mean, that has definitely happened before. Yeah, that you changed the course.

So, I would attribute the association's Wes brand to being very innovative, but innovation, again, is a central theme of the Associations West culture. I want to ask if you can talk a little bit about how Associations West funds innovation within its infrastructure

from a long-term perspective. You know, I talked about being data driven before, and obviously, if you're not using the results, there's no point in getting the surveys and the information back from people, so we're always using that to try to get better, but then at a retreat with the board a couple of years ago we really elevated innovation to be more of a strategic priority, so we developed it as one of our four core priorities moving forward, as a part of that one of the things that the board had asked for was to include an innovation fund, that in its for us it's small, it's $10,000 but still for a small organization that can be a lot of money,

100% This last year we used that to work with a consultant to develop an innovation framework, right? So something process might be too strong of a word, but where's something that you can look at, and that will guide our thinking when we feel we really need to concentrate on making something better, and to be innovative about that. We're meeting as a team next week to go over some of the ideas that we have. There were 20 different projects that we had listed. We've narrowed that to 11. That still feels like a little too much. A retreat next week, we're going to try to prioritize them, and then bring them to the board in a meeting in a couple of weeks.

Twenty-two years ago, would you have expected this was a type of conversation you would be having with your team?

I would say yes and no. Let's define innovation for a second. Sure, what does that mean? It can be an intimidating word to a lot of people, you know, where he thinks they have to be Steve Jobs and Apple or something like that. To me, it's just, are you doing something differently that improves value for the members or the organization? And hopefully both. Very simple, so it can be doing something different, making a change, and you can use simpler words for people that don't have to be innovative, but the team is all about it, so I don't have to make that case.

You just show up, show up, and listen, and yeah, there's a lot of back and forth. It really is.

So, I love that we have spoken a lot about innovation, but I want to go back to marketing and communications. What has been a key. Pivot that you've made to allow marketing and communications to really drive the success of associations west.

Yeah, I mean, especially in the last five years, I would say, because it was also a mind shift for me. I don't think I fully valued what communications can bring to the organization, and going back to that saying, if you build it, they will come. Well, that works in a movie, but I don't know how much it works in real life. And the reason I say that is prior to that, pre-COVID, we had a communications consultant that was working with our marketing coordinator, and the marketing coordinator was creating a lot of the communications in consultation with the consultant, and that was fine, but then Covid hit, and she decided, like a lot of people did, to make a left turn and do something completely different in her life. After Covid, I was able to hire somebody that was a marketing professional, and that was the first time we'd had somebody on staff like that. She was relatively new to the industry, but definitely had that marketing background and that marketing training and understanding the full picture of your members and all that, but she was also great at developing very, very good communications, very tight, very concise, visually appealing. I was getting independent comments from our members consistently. I go to an event, like, "Man, your communications is really ramped up. I mean, they're telling me this, you know, a year later we start setting attendance records at our events, and I'm like, well, why would that be? We did, we changed the event that much, where we're now setting records. So I definitely attribute, at least in part, the enhanced communications talent that we were able to bring on board.

I know you're Jamie. Shout out. Yes, I was gonna say, I know Jamie very well. She is incredible. How have you seen her intertwine the stories and the strategic storytelling?

That's probably something else that I'm also undervaluing, because I hear people telling stories and that's what they really relate to. So, I think Jamie brings that angle, but she can do it in such a way that it's not verbose, right? It's very tight, and people can get a sense of not just the culture, which is a big part of it, but it breaks through the clutter too. It gets people's attention, you know. The open rates on our emails, for example, which is the primary method communications for most associations, all those all went up as well. And so being able to cut through the clutter and get that message out there is really critical.

I'm glad you mentioned emails, because I open every email from Associations West, and when I don't get one for a while, I go back to my emails to see if I missed one, which you've trained me very, very well.

Okay, good to enjoy the communications I receive. Your team is phenomenal. Jamie is phenomenal. She listens, she has fun with her communications as well. It really shows, and I've seen that ripple effect happen amongst the rest of the team as well.

Right? I think the visual aspects are very important, like just featuring our members and who they are, like the actual faces, right? That communicates a whole bunch, you don't need a lot of message with that, but it's also got to be relevant to whatever you're trying to communicate as well.

Now, does Jamie also help draft the surveys? Because I noticed when Associations West is obtaining member feedback, that there is such a nice human element to the questions that are being asked, there is a consultant I've worked with on our overall member survey, like the large one, and the team is very involved with the strategic plan itself, take a lot of ownership. The same thing, I share the survey with them, and yeah, they definitely slice and dice it and give feedback on that as well to make it a better product. I mean, it really does, it really shows it? I mean, they're never too long. The questions are easy. It's a 360 degree thought process, at least from a customer perspective. From what I experience, I think one of the biggest challenges as an exec is asking good questions. I mean, it's really hard to get in deep with somebody and what they're thinking about to get a quality answer from them, and so, how you phrase those questions, whether it's in person or in a survey, I think are really, really important.

Thank you, Jim. I completely agree with you, and I know that every association I would hope aspires to be like Associations West, and some have challenges in terms of budget or funding, but what do you advise executives or even boards as to how to replicate some of what you have done at Associations West? Where do you advise them to start shifting either perspectives or infrastructure associations like people? There's a spectrum of folks that are trying to be innovative and creative, and those that really just depend on what they've been doing, and kind of repetition making change can be very difficult. It can be very challenging. It's hard to bring an entire team along, let alone a whole group of volunteers. So, kind of diving into how you make those changes can be very challenging. So, that would probably be my biggest piece of advice. Is really got to lean into the change, the level of change that's going on in society right now. It is hard for folks to keep up. There's also a lot of budget pressures from different reasons that are going on, like with meetings and events, for example. This got way more expensive, so it's become tighter. But you know how you think about something and changing it doesn't cost money, right? It's the investment of the time and the effort to be able to do that.

And when should an executive start with that strategic thought shift?

When? Yes, all of the above can start off with little things. Do you have a decision-making grid, and does it say, well, what would the impact of this change bring, but how much time and effort is going to be? So, what's the ROI of the effort compared to what outcome we're going to be getting for something like that? So, for the team, there's a lot of stuff that we're changing we never bring to the board. I mean, it's just, you know, but so it's when we mean to make those big decisions and bring the board along. The other thing I would say is, how do you help your board make those shifts? Because there's a lot of board members that are very emotionally tied to certain programs, for example, that might not want to let go. We used to have a golf tournament. I definitely took some flack when we got rid of it, but we tried to go through a very inclusive process, but some people were not going to do it, so sometimes innovation also brings a lot of aggravation to the exec, so that so how you bring your volunteers along with that, especially at the leadership level, can be super important.

Is there anything you wished you would have done these last 22 years that you plan to do in the next 22 years?

Yeah. anything I haven't done, I'm going to do.

Yes, thinking of the future, you know, we haven't really talked about the Washington merger, which is another thing that we went through just this last year. Merger became official March one with the Washington Society for Association Excellence, so we've got the whole West Coast now. I would never have dreamed of that when I first started this job. So, right now I think it's just getting our arms around and letting that settle in, but I think we're kind of in a position to see other opportunities come our way. But we don't want to get too far ahead of that right now.

No, of course, keep an open mind and go with the flow, right.

Be open to right both those groups approached us and would definitely be open to looking at it.

Last question for you, Jim, what is the one piece of advice you always give young association professionals as they are building their legacy similar to you?

Oh, this sounds boring, but no, the money.

Why is that?

There's two main reasons I see execs being let go. One is they don't manage the money well, and so there's a lot of folks that that might be a marketing person, or there might be a membership person, or they came from that industry. They're not necessarily trained in finance, and it's very easy to slip up on finances and get too far ahead of yourself, and so I've definitely seen some they haven't managed the money well, and then things go sideways, and then they get a let go. The other reason is not really being able to manage the feedback that they get, so sometimes the ego gets in the way. It can slow down decision making, I will say that, and that can be frustrating at times, but if you're really not in tune and listening to what people are telling you and able to show them how you've listened, not necessarily do something, but they feel listened to, and then having a conversation with them right every year, and I will tell my board, if you have an idea or you're wondering about something, ask a question, because a question invites a dialog, right, as opposed to telling them what I need to do, right? So opening a conversation with the board is very important. People can't do that, they just won't last long in this industry.

Sounds like you're saying it all comes down to communications.

Touche, that's exactly right.

Well done. Thank you for being on the Revenue Speaks podcast, Jim. I'm a huge fan. I always have been. You have personally helped me in my career to see what my potential is, what my leadership capital is, and how I can apply my skill set to this environment of association professionals, so thank you for believing in me and for creating educational content that allowed me to be inspired.

Oh gosh, I hope I'm not blushing, but you're one of the reasons why it's such a pleasure to have this job, Sheila. Truly, I mean the joy that you bring everywhere you go, it's wonderful.

Thank you, Jim. Thanks for listening. We invite you to subscribe to this podcast and take our revenue alignment assessment, a short strategic diagnostic for mission-driven executives. You will find everything you need at Revenue speaks.com Because communication isn't overhead, it's infrastructure. And in the end revenue speaks.