Jeff Curwen With Washington State Chiropractic Association

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: [00:00:19] Lee Kantor here another episode of Association Leadership Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Jeff Curwen and he is with the Washington State Chiropractic Association. Welcome, Jeff.

Jeff Curwen: [00:00:33] Hi, Lee. Thanks for having.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Me. I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about the Washington State Chiropractic Association. How are you serving, folks?

Jeff Curwen: [00:00:41] Yeah, well, the Washington State Chiropractic Association represents all chiropractors in the state of Washington, whether there are dues paying members or not, because our work benefits them either way. What we do is we advocate for the profession, both in Olympia with the legislators and on the national level policy wise. Additionally, we provide all kinds of continuing education opportunities for them, as well as business networking opportunities.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:08] Now, how did you get into this line of work? Were you always involved in association work?

Jeff Curwen: [00:01:14] No, I think just like anybody else in the association world, I kind of fell into it. I, I went to law school with the intention of becoming a lawyer and realized that that was just definitely not the life that I wanted to have. And so I left. And then I found a job working initially in education for an association, just doing continuing professional education. And after a few years, I kind of showed that I had a knack for it and moved into different areas of association management, finance, executive management, marketing, all of those things, and just worked my way through a number of different associations. And finally, I’m here.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:55] Now having kind of been involved in other organizations. Is it do they have similar challenges? Like do you have the same kind of member engagement or member service challenges that you have with this group that you had with previous groups?

Jeff Curwen: [00:02:10] Yeah, actually, the one thing I would say is the same, no matter what association you’re talking about is you’re going to have your small core group of members that are totally 1,000% engaged and they are they’re living the association just as much as the staff do. But then that’s maybe 2% of your of your association. The rest are people who definitely see the value in the association. But they’ve got other things going on. They’ve they want you to demonstrate how constantly how the association is doing something for them. And that’s good because that’s what we’re here for. But yeah, it’s there’s varying levels, but mostly it’s, it’s all people who are going to rely on the staff and those that small core group to to run the day to day.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:02] Now when you have kind of that small super fan group, how do you make sure that they’re getting served to the level they need to be served, but also not just kind of succumb to that squeaky wheel gets the grease thing and miss out on other areas where you can be serving a larger amount of the members or potential members.

Jeff Curwen: [00:03:23] Well, that’s a good question. I would say that my answer to that is you provide the same service that you do to them, that you do to everybody. You just provide excellent service. And you know what? What they come to expect is rank and file members is what they get as that core hyper involved group of members. And maybe you just speak with them on a personal level a little bit more often. But other than that, you just got to give them the same great membership experience and make them feel like being a part of the association is just a part of their professional practice.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:00] And then how do you kind of push that value curve in terms of, you know, you’re doing a lot of advocacy with policy and things like that that might be kind of in some ways invisible to the typical member. And they have pressing needs of I need another customer, you know, I need to figure out more ways to create different revenue streams. You know, they have more maybe practical challenges. How do you kind of have that balance of the advocacy as well as that kind of best practices on how to run a successful chiropractic practice?

Jeff Curwen: [00:04:35] Yeah, I would say that this is this is an area where the pandemic really gave us an opportunity to shine, whether we wanted it or not. It was that when when the lockdowns hit and when everything was was shutting down and it was, you know, two weeks to flatten the curve, initially everybody was like, well, yeah, okay, we’ll just get through this two weeks. This is going to be low business. But then, of course, that that didn’t turn out and businesses just started shutting down left and right. And because chiropractic is in health care, we we are. A service that cannot be shut down. But as we see from some of the other health care professions during that time, at least in my state, for instance, dentistry, they got shut down completely. You could not see your dentist ever, period during the lockdown. Chiropractic, a lot of people think, well, that’s kind of a luxury service. It’s not something that I really need. No, chiropractic is an essential service because one thing that we saw was at the height of the pandemic, a lot of other providers were turning away non-covid patients just saying, sorry, we’re up to our up to our limit with COVID. I’m sorry you got the common cold, whatever, or you got back pain or whatever, you got to go elsewhere. And that’s one one area where chiropractors really shined, at least in Washington, was being able to provide that alternate source for diagnosis and referral, because if another doctor wasn’t going to take you in just because you weren’t complaining of COVID symptoms, how are they ever going to find out if there was something else wrong with you? Somebody who is trained to diagnose had to actually examine you.

Jeff Curwen: [00:06:23] And that’s one area where chiropractic is really able to shine. Now, what we provided for them throughout that time was constant monitoring of the almost daily changes in guidance and mandates from the state, determining who could be open, who could be open when, how many people could be in your office, what what compliance issues the state was going to require for you in order to remain open. And really, it presented an administrative burden that no business owner really had the time to to sift through and to analyze every single day to make sure that they were still in compliance. And that’s really where the association stepped in and pick things up for a period there. I was working seven days a week, probably 20 hours a day, and most of most of what I was doing in that time was reviewing orders from the governor’s office or from the secretary of state and analyzing them and determining what exactly you had to do to stay open and then communicating to the membership what they needed to do, how they needed to do it in order to stay in compliance, but still be able to serve their patients.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:40] Now, having done something that monumental during that chaotic time, was that something that the members were like finally kind of, Oh, I get it now, this is why I pay my dues. This is why this is important. I mean, because that becomes a life or death of the survival of that business. If they didn’t know this information in the in the real time manner that you were delivering it in.

Jeff Curwen: [00:08:06] Yeah, definitely. I think they really saw the benefit of that. And I think that kind of bore out in our our membership numbers because for a period there and I would say the second half of 2021, we maintained our membership numbers throughout the pandemic, but really right around mid 2021 we saw like a 25% jump in membership. And I think it was really just the message got out. People understood that, hey, the reason you’re open right now is because you’ve got you’ve got the WCA staff on your side and we’re running interference for the state. We’re giving you the tools that you need to stay open. And I think I think enough of those really hyper involved members saw that and started having those conversations with their colleagues saying, hey, you know, you need to you need to contribute, you need to get involved because this organization is here and your livelihood depends on them being open.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:10] So now, now that we move past the pandemic, is your efforts helping in regard to more chiropractic friendly health care policy from maybe the state and nationally?

Jeff Curwen: [00:09:27] I would say definitely, yes. We we were able to forge some new relationships with other provider types throughout the pandemic. And we’ve really seen referrals greatly increase in the last year, year and a half. And really just those conversations about collaborating on various policy objectives, those conversations that maybe didn’t happen in the past just because either other providers didn’t really understand chiropractic or they didn’t they didn’t know how we could work well together. They saw the messaging that we were putting out to our membership and they saw that, hey, every single chiropractic office I walk past, they’re not they’re not closed down, so they must be doing something right. And so that kind of opened them up to having new conversations with the association and new opportunities for us to collaborate on policy objectives and legislation and hoping that that just kind of stays alive and and continues after the pandemic is completely over. But I guess time will tell.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:37] And can you talk about your affinity programs? How how is that working?

Jeff Curwen: [00:10:45] Yeah, we we have worked closely with a number of our corporate members to just kind of determine what products are our members need that their patients are are going to buy and and large numbers and we we work out ways of doing revenue shares that help support the association so that we can kind of defer payment from from members who are maybe struggling or or starting out in practice and can’t necessarily afford to be active dues paying members, but want to have that that connection. And they want to they want to support the association in any way they can, where they can do so through our our preferred vendors who have affinity programs with us.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:34] Now, is that something that’s just part of your partnership agreements, that there has to be some form of an affinity program, or is that just the level of partnership that includes affinity programs?

Jeff Curwen: [00:11:45] No, it’s entirely on the corporate members and whether or not they are they’re willing to do something. And if that’s if that’s something that they find value in. And we’ve been lucky enough to to have a lot of corporate members who have who have wanted to step up and say, hey, I need to find a new way that I can support the association because I’m seeing my business soar because of what your your members are doing. And if they’re not if they’re not paying it back to the association, I want to make sure that that we can do that on their behalf. And we’ve had some some really great corporate partners that that have done that.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:23] And that’s a pretty creative solution to create that win win for everybody.

Jeff Curwen: [00:12:29] Yeah. And actually we the one that we we had are probably our our most active affinity program where there’s a company called my Triad Air. And that’s actually their tagline is it’s a win win win. It’s a win for you, it’s a win for your patients and it’s a win for the association as well. So we’re in the middle of our conference season right now and our our corporate partners all getting an opportunity to to go up and address the audience at various points. And that’s the tagline which my triad areas, they get up there in front of the audience and say, Hey, it’s win, win, win, why aren’t you doing it right?

Lee Kantor: [00:13:06] And that’s a pretty compelling argument, I think. How has how do you feel your association is doing when it comes to continuing education and professional development? I know that’s an area that a lot of associations want to kind of do a really good job. And then it’s an important kind of pillar of the reason that they’re there.

Jeff Curwen: [00:13:29] Yeah, it’s it’s always been a foundation of what the association does. Chiropractic is a little bit unique in that much of our continuing ed has to be hands on just because of the, the nature of chiropractic. It’s, it’s a hands on profession. And so these last couple of years we’ve had to transition primarily to to virtual learning just like everybody else has. And thankfully, we’re we’re on the way back to going back to how we were pre-pandemic. But we’ve had to find new ways of delivering education to our members. And that virtual format and new ways of being able to do that, that hands on type of thing. And I mean, it works out to being, hey, if you’re going to watch this program, you need to have you need to have your your practice patient. To you so that you can you can do your hands on step by step as we’re we’re doing this in the program. But yeah, it’s just been a learning learning experience. And we have we have found new ways of reaching out to members who don’t necessarily make it out to our conferences and making sure that they’re getting the same type of education that we offer to all of those other members as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:56] So do you have any advice for other leaders of associations to engage their members and maybe, you know, maybe something you’ve learned when it comes to getting a member to join and to stick around?

Jeff Curwen: [00:15:13] Yeah. Experiment. Don’t be afraid to experiment. There’s we all have these crazy ideas floating around in our heads of what’s going to be the next biggest thing, what’s what’s going to work best. And you’re never going to know unless you actually try it and understand that more than half the time, you’re going to fail. Just be be willing to fail, you know, try out the new things. And because you never know which one is going to be the next revolutionary one.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:43] Yeah, I was just. It was funny you bringing that up because I was just talking to my team about that is we’re trying to reframe, failing to learning and using experimenting as a kind of bridge to that where you’re not, you know, trying and failing this early, you’re just experimenting. And that experiment told you not to do that. And it’s just you have you have to build in knowing that not every experiment is going to be a winner. But you have to experiment because there are going to be winners somewhere along the line.

Jeff Curwen: [00:16:14] Exactly. Exactly.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:16] But that’s a mindset shift. I mean, a lot of people are so afraid of failing that they don’t try anything new. They just keep doing whatever was done before.

Jeff Curwen: [00:16:25] Exactly. I mean, I think we have a in the association world, we’re we’re so very calendar driven and we know what we do this time of year. Last year, what we did this time two years ago and it’s conference season so this is what we’re supposed to be doing right now is conferences and we can kind of set these other things to the side because historically that’s what we’ve always done. Well, you know, you just need to you need to kind of get out of that pattern and accept that change happens. It’s always happening. You need to embrace that and do things differently. You can’t do things the same way you did them 20 years ago. That just doesn’t work anymore. So try out the new things because you never know what one is going to stick.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:11] Now what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Jeff Curwen: [00:17:15] Well, like anybody in the association world, I need more members that we always need more members. I won’t rest until I have 100% of of eligible member prospects on my rolls. But really just getting the word out about the importance of all the different health care disciplines, particularly during times of emergency like we’ve had for these last two years, and understand that there are there are resources out there to help you and it’s not always going to be your your primary care physician, but there’s always somebody out there who can help you think outside of the box and take control of your health.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:58] So if somebody wants to learn more about the association, what’s the website best way to connect with you or somebody on your team?

Jeff Curwen: [00:18:05] They can contact us by going to our website Chiro Health dot org and they can contact us directly by email WCA at Chiro Health dot org.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:17] Well, Jeff, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Jeff Curwen: [00:18:21] Thank you, Lee. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:24] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Association Leadership Radio.