Amy Hager With Association Rockstars

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Association Leadership Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:20] Lee Kantor here another episode of Association Leadership Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Amy Hager with Association Rock Stars. Welcome, Amy.

Amy Hager: [00:00:31] Hey, thanks for having me, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] I’m like, so I’m so excited to learn what you got going on. Tell us a little bit about association rock stars. How are you serving folks?

Amy Hager: [00:00:39] Yep. So Association Rock Stars is a online community where we’re really focused on singing the praises of those unsung heroes. There’s a lot of association professionals out there who are CEOs and working in different communities for different movements and missions. And we really think they all have a unique and different story to tell. And so we’ve brought them together and created a interview series that we do every single month, and we really just try to find these unique stories in the different communities of which we all live in.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:14] And then what drew you to associations? Why did you decide to focus in on that group?

Amy Hager: [00:01:19] Yeah. So my personal story of my association journey, because I feel like, again, they’re all so different, is I actually used to work for a publishing company as their PR director, and my main job was to belong to all of our local chambers and our local associations like Kitchen and Bath Association and everything along those lines. And so when I made the move out to Washington DC back in 2008 with my husband for a job change, I was moving to the Mecca of the association world. Everybody is in DC who’s an association. And so I started to work in the marketing and membership and events areas, and as I continued to grow my career and move into the executive director role, I was one of those executive directors that was out there just working so hard for my members and for my industry and didn’t really get a chance to connect with other executive directors who were working super hard for their industries. And so when I was presented with the opportunity to kind of create association rock stars with our co founder, Lowell Applebaum, it was just, again, this this chance to bring people together who are really champions for their association, because sometimes it is that alone feeling. You feel like you’re the only executive director of the organization and you’re going through a lot. So opening up the conversation so that they can collaborate and come up with solutions together because being a CEO sometimes is very, very lonely.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:53] Yeah. And I think that in today’s day and age, it’s much better to be investing in community than it is audience necessarily, which is kind of a slight departure for folks in in kind of marketing and the marketing world to invest in building a community where people can work together and collaborate and help each other. It’s it’s refreshing.

Amy Hager: [00:03:17] Well, and I think when you get a community of like minded professionals together, it is refreshing. You have the person to cheer you on when you need to be cheered on or to cheer with when you’re celebrating something. And I do think that through conversation, we become a lot more clear on what we should be communicating or how we could be communicating, or where we could be communicating a message. So I totally appreciate you nailing that on the. Headlee It is a different way that we think about marketing than what the traditional was communicating to an audience and broadcasting your message everywhere and instead focusing on building that collaboration, who’s really behind a movement. And sometimes the movement is the individual right. But a lot of times it really is that larger movement where we’re trying to better the lives of of the industry that we’re representing.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:14] Now on this show, we are talking to association leaders and we’re trying to share with them some best practices and maybe some tips and tricks that other association leaders have gleaned over the years. One of my I don’t want to say concerns, but it’s something that I’m trying to keep an eye on, is the attracting of young people into the association world. I think a lot of young people are cynical and aren’t embracing and leaning into associations and really taking advantage of the opportunities that they offer a young person, especially in a career. Do you have any advice for leaders of associations that want to kind of open the doors to younger people because they become the pipeline of of leaders, of future leaders, of the association? And if you ignore them for too long, you’re going to have a problem at some point.

Amy Hager: [00:05:07] Yeah, no, I think one thing that I’ve really honed in on as a leader of an association and as a leader of a team and staff and those. New generations coming in to the workforce. You know, I really feel that as an association leader, I have been asked to be a jack of all trades all the time. I need to be good at writing. I need to be good at speaking. I need to be good at video. You know, I need to be good at graphic design and putting together events and all the things. And I think what we’ve really unfortunately done by becoming a jack of all trades and trying to be really good at all these things is we’re spreading ourselves just way too thin. And so as this new generation is coming in and what I think current leaders need to really look at is what is the strength of that individual that’s sitting in front of you? What do they what do they bring to the table? Because a lot of young people are bringing amazing experiences, great new thought leadership to the table, but they’re just not being asked, what is your strength? Where do you rock at? What do you rock at? How do you want to create content? Do you want to create an audio file or a video, or do you want to write or do you want to do graphic design? And so instead of having these job requirements where they’re so spread thin with every single task, doing all the things, if we can micro task and we do this with our volunteers, a lot of times now I don’t know why we haven’t thought to really implement this one with our staff, especially newer staff. But I do think that that’s really a different approach to look at bringing on the newer generation is allowing them to thrive in their strengths and not telling them to be the jack of all trades that we were forced to be in.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:00] So what is your superpower? What is it that you bring to the table that really can help another organization get to a new level?

Amy Hager: [00:07:09] I would definitely say that the approach that I’ve been focusing on to help organizations market to the community and the like, I didn’t know you were going to mention how strong and how important communities are in marketing, but really to be able to attract those who can get behind a vision and a mission and actually repel the ones who aren’t the right ones, who aren’t going to be on that mission or vision with you. And once we really look at the attraction and the repel type marketing, tapping into your team and allowing them to especially market an organization market and sell an organization based off of their strengths and really shifting that narrative. That’s where I’m seeing the most success with the associations that I’ve been working with in adjusting their marketing implementation strategy. When you look at your staff and what you’re actually trying to achieve.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:09] And when you do get clarity of a true north or what the ideal person looks like, it is easier to say no to things and to recognize when you’re kind of stretching in areas, maybe you shouldn’t be stretching and you’re kind of compromising in places you maybe you shouldn’t be. I think that’s a key point to know not only what the person looks like, but also what they don’t look like and to to avoid those people.

Amy Hager: [00:08:37] Well, and I think, too, that there is an association for literally everything out there. Right? There’s a nonprofit association for everything. And so if that person sitting in front of you isn’t the right member for you, they will find support somewhere else. There’s plenty of people out there who need to belong to a community of like mindedness and who need to belong to a mission and a vision of how we’re going to move forward and whatever the industry is. Right. And so I think as leaders, again, we tried to not only ourselves be jack of all trades, but a lot of times the associations started to become the jack of all trades. And so if we really focus our niche on what our organization does really, really well and how we make that positive impact on the member’s lives, and we focus on the thing we do well and we help those who need that thing. That is your ideal member right there. And that’s who you need to be marketing to.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:35] Right. And those are the people that you have to be investing in and leaning into rather than trying to to fix somebody or to, you know, kind of force a square peg into a round hole.

Amy Hager: [00:09:47] Yeah, most definitely.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:49] Now, in your career, I’m sure there’s been ups and downs. Do you mind kind of sharing a challenge that you went through or maybe a mistake that you made that you were able to overcome and maybe got you going in the direction that you are now?

Amy Hager: [00:10:02] So I would say one of the mistakes that I made is when I was at an association where I was the only staff member and really did a great job of talking to. The members and talking to prospective members and figuring out their biggest pain point in their need because the association was spread way too thin. We are doing lobbying, we are focusing on marketing, we’re doing inspections and making sure that there were these industry standards that were being held. And when it really boiled down to what the actual member wanted, they really wanted help marketing. They really wanted help getting foot traffic into their businesses. And so when we switched the organization to focus on that, it was a great micro niche. I think the mistake that was made and this was a mistake on my part and by the board is we really structured the offer and the benefit of being a member based off of the benefit of my marketing strengths. And so when I left the organization and they couldn’t find a marketer who was a like minded marketer that I was, it really left the organization into a pinch of do they hire that square peg to fit in this round hole and try to make this person be what the organization needs them to be? Or does the organization have to shift and go back to spreading itself then being in all these different places? And so the one thing that really turned my perspective is making sure that we do have other professionals in, I guess, entering the workforce who see this new way of creating a association and making it sustainable by niching down.

Amy Hager: [00:11:52] Who agreed to that? Because it’s kind of hard to come across, but I think it’s slowly making a shift and I’m seeing this a lot better. And this was back in 2015, 2016. So we’re quite a few years away from there and also have experienced a lot different experiences. But it really did show me that we’ve got to make sure that we’re starting to get a shift of the leadership, either thinking differently of how to run the organizations who are currently in those positions or attracting future leadership who see it that way as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:27] Now, in your career and where you’re at today, when you made the shift to this community oriented marketing style, when did you start seeing kind of the breadcrumbs of, Hey, we might be on to something here? This is starting to resonate. This is I feel better about it. The people we’re serving feel better about it. When did you kind of get the hint that you were on to something?

Amy Hager: [00:12:51] I would say. Pretty instantly with the current members, with those really active ones who are going to tell you what they think no matter if it’s good or bad. It was very instant with them, with the potentials and with the people who have left the organization. It took about a year. It was an overnight success, and it took a lot of breaking down barriers that were not that old organization that was doing too much and trying to do too many things, and that we’re really focused on helping this piece. So I would say instantly with the members who were super involved, but it did take about a year and it did take a lot of one on one meetings for them to really gain the trust of the organization again, because they felt that they had been burned or they felt that the organization didn’t meet what they needed. And so building that one on one trust and building then those champions within the organization to help spread that message was super key. Because if I tried to do it again as the staff of one all on my own, we would have never achieved it. So it really was making sure that those who truly believed in the mission really saw the vision, were also equipped with the tools to then talk about that and really enroll other people into this new vision, into this new movement, into this new way of thinking, and get them to join onto that movement with us in when we built the movement, of course we had their input before, so it was kind of easy because that’s what they said they wanted. But it was getting them focused on that one pain point within business that an organization or an association can really help them do.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:45] Now, can you share a story? Obviously don’t know the name, but maybe share the challenge that the association you were working with had and then how you were able to help them get to a new level.

Amy Hager: [00:14:58] So I think again, when it comes to recruiting members and getting members behind that movement, if if it’s too widespread, it’s it’s too hard for everyone to buy on. And so when I’m working with organizations now, we really want to hone in on, on, on that process and on the results that you’re going to get from interacting with us. And a lot of times we focus too much on the oh, we have a conference. Oh, you can come network. Oh, you can come do this. You can do that. If we really scale back on the I call it the boat. So we’re selling the boat like the peanuts of the boat, the captain at the boat, the music that we’re going to listen to on the boat. And if we really talk about the results from being in the organization, the results from working within community, the results of how we’re moving this mission or this vision forward when we’re able to really have those higher level conversations and get out of the weeds of the how to and get into the result conversation, that’s where you really see the turn of the members who want to be there because they’re on that vision with you. They’re not there because they want to go to networking events or they’re not there because they want to have that trip to Orlando to your national conference.

Amy Hager: [00:16:24] Right. You see the turn in your membership becoming quality and more invested in investing more of their time and their business into the organization because of that overall movement. And so how I’ve seen this work out, organizations now, again, it’s a different way of thinking. You really have to reprogram the conversation and you have to reprogram the person who is sitting in front of you of how they see the organization. And it’s it’s definitely, I would say, like an educational type campaign, right? Letting them kind of build that like love and trust factor with the organization and and see that their business is going to benefit or their individual professional development or whatever the certification might be, will benefit from being in that organization. But I think shifting the conversations leave from instead of all the little the little cool, fun things that you get with membership and you know, you have a three page long list of all of these things. If we talk about the results you get by being involved in this community, being involved as a member and being a part of this organization, you will see the up level of that membership.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:42] Yeah, I think it’s funny that a lot of associations, they forget to ask what the outcome that the member desires is and they’re adding all these features in and what they. Membership perks, and they’re not really having conversations with the members to see what they’re really trying to get out of this.

Amy Hager: [00:18:02] Exactly. Very true.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:05] Now for you, what is the ideal association for you to work with? What what’s the profile of a good fit client for you?

Amy Hager: [00:18:14] I would say really the organizations who are working on serving their business, usually business based organizations. Even though I’m a certified association executive SCA and I also hold my IOM Institute of Organizational Management designation, and I believe that those trainings and those professional, professional development opportunities have really helped me in my career. I know that my strength lies within organizations who are really supporting businesses. So I really love working with local chambers, working with travel and tourism industry businesses and hospitality organizations, and really helping them connect that larger business community of how do they help those members? How do they help the members grow with foot traffic? How do they build the the economic developments that need to be built within a community to support business? So that’s really kind of where I thrive.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:19] Now, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, what is the coordinates website, LinkedIn, things like that.

Amy Hager: [00:19:27] Yeah. So if you literally just look up Amy Hager it’s a y, h, a g e are either on LinkedIn, Facebook or if you Google. I do have a website. Amy Hager Solutions to get to the Association Rockstars. You’re definitely going to find us on Facebook. That’s where our major group lives. And then we also have association rock stars dot com, which you can read about our rock stars. You can listen to our interviews on our podcast. So if you got iTunes or Google Play, we’re there. And then also on YouTube, we’ve got all the interviews housed there as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:05] Well, Amy, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Amy Hager: [00:20:10] Thanks for having me, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:12] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on the Association Leadership Radio.