Mark Griffith with Higher Logic

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Sandy Springs, Georgia. It’s time for Sandy Springs Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here with Rachel Simon, another episode of Sandy Springs Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor. Connect the dots. Connect the dots. Digital is the place to go when you’re ready to leverage LinkedIn to meet your business goals, go to Connect the Dots Digital to learn more. Rachel, this is going to be a great show. Who do we have today?

Rachel Simon: [00:00:49] Hey Lee, so good to be back here. I’m really excited to welcome Mark Griffith from Higher Logic. He is the vice President of marketing and we’re going to have an awesome conversation. Hi Mark, how are you today?

Mark Griffith: [00:01:02] Hey Rachel, how are you doing?

Rachel Simon: [00:01:04] Great. Can’t believe the holidays are upon us. You know, Mark, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about you and higher logic?

Mark Griffith: [00:01:14] Sure. So I am the vice president of marketing at Higher Logic. As you mentioned, higher logic is a really unique B2B SaaS company is that we are really purpose driven in a lot of what we do to help, specifically associations. That’s how the company was founded 17 years ago. And the idea is about how can we help associations engage their members.

Rachel Simon: [00:01:39] So that’s so interesting because as I’ve learned over the last couple of years, there’s an association for everything, including an association of associations.

Mark Griffith: [00:01:49] Absolutely. And in fact, the association of associations here in the US, the American Society of Association Executives is probably our biggest partner.

Rachel Simon: [00:01:57] Oh, so interesting. So talk a little bit about sort of why associations need to kind of really have this opportunity to connect with their members and how your how your company helps make that happen.

Mark Griffith: [00:02:11] Sure. So like a lot of companies out there, associations are not unique in that they have to deliver value on a day to day basis. A lot of their revenue is based on dues, and those dues are due annually or monthly. If you’re not delivering value, there’s an easy decision for somebody to make to say, I can cut this expense, I can cut this subscription, I don’t need it anymore. I’m not getting my value. So the idea between what higher logic is, is we really try to help associations derive value on a daily basis, whether that be through, how can somebody in an association member advance their career? How can we provide resources for those members to what are events that are coming up that a member can learn from really understanding their member benefits? That’s why it’s so important.

Rachel Simon: [00:02:58] Yeah, I spent some time on the Higher Logic website, and one of the things that jumped out at me was community. So it seems like building community is a real value proposition for the company. You know, what is the how is that unique and different when it comes to associations like the need to build community or the value of building that community?

Mark Griffith: [00:03:20] Sure. And yeah, there’s a lot of great resources on that higher logic. Com website about, you know, what is the path to renewal and how do you engage members and drive members through, almost like an engagement ladder from when they first come in to being a consumer of information, to then start giving back and be a provider of information. A really great example of that is when you come in, do you have a good onboarding process to really understand what your member benefits are? How do you learn about all the great content that’s within that community? Um, how do I learn about people that may be able to help me in career advancement? Become a mentor? How do I learn about volunteer opportunities and then being able to give back, as you, you know, go up that engagement ladder to be possibly becoming a mentor yourself or even contributing into that dialog and that conversation that occurs within the community.

Rachel Simon: [00:04:17] So for associations that are utilizing the platform, like what are some of the tools internally that they get to leverage, are there like. Is it like a slack channel or like how how do how do members communicate with each other to build those connections?

Mark Griffith: [00:04:34] So probably the easiest way is through discussion posts. Um, you see a conversation that’s that’s going on within the community. How can I, you know, engage within that conversation. But, you know, our our platform also has libraries where documents can be, you know, you know, posted and learned about, you know, topics that are really important within that association. Uh, gamification and badges. The more you participate, the more you, you know, the more badges that you can earn. Uh, maybe your, um, your level of contribution increases as you do those things. Um, and there’s other things as well. I mean, we have job boards where, you know, jobs can be posted within that industry that somebody within, you know, that association or that industry may be interested in. Um, so there’s all sorts of ways to, to do that.

Rachel Simon: [00:05:21] So interesting.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:22] Now, um, can you share some maybe advice for the member, like you’re a member of an association? A lot of people, especially in business, they think I got to join all these associations, but some of them think I just pay and then, oh, I’m a member, I’ll get business from that or that’s going to benefit me. How how would you, um, um, advise a member to get the most value out of their association?

Mark Griffith: [00:05:47] Well, I think it really starts with the association having a really solid onboarding process when a new member joins, um, somebody that can help walk through what those member benefits are and understanding how the different, um, engagement opportunities within that community platform exist. Um, so if it starts, if that’s done really well, um, at that point, then the member can start finding what are the areas of this community that are really relevant and important for them, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:06:15] Because you keep talking about the word engagement. And engagement means different things to different people. Some people, some members think I joined, so I’m engaged. Uh, the, the community leader or the association might think engage means they’re volunteering. They’re taking leadership roles, they’re mentoring, they’re being an ambassador for the association. How do you kind of help that process kind of go smoothly so that the member feels like, okay, this is a place I want to be part of, and this is a place that I want to invest my time and energy into helping everybody in the group.

Mark Griffith: [00:06:53] So part of that is measuring and monitoring what that level of engagement is. So somebody that’s relatively new to the organization or new to the association probably can’t expect them to do all those things that you just mentioned. But are they participating in conversations or they’re adding comments? Are they coming back to the community on a regular basis?

Lee Kantor: [00:07:13] And that’s where technology can help, right. Absolutely. And then what are some of the ways like are you leveraging AI? Like how are you kind of helping kind of, um, the member slowly get more and more involved.

Mark Griffith: [00:07:26] So AI is a really, really great topic right now. It’s obviously top of mind for probably every business that’s out there. Um, we’re no different. So our CEO, Rob Wenger has been doing community town halls. He’s been doing, um, presentations at various events that we have all focused on the concept of AI and automation and why it’s so relevant for associations to be. Open to these.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:52] Tools, right? Leaning into them a little, experimenting at the minimum. And, you.

Mark Griffith: [00:07:56] Know, I would imagine that if you saw our product roadmap today, you’d be like, yeah, these folks are really invested 100% on bringing these AI tools to market for the association market.

Rachel Simon: [00:08:06] Specifically, what are some of the, uh, the tools that are looking to kind of utilize in that space? Because, you know, I now we say it and I think we forget that it’s like a spectrum, right? We’re we’re kind of gotten really deep into the generative content AI, but there’s tons of tools that are technically AI that are right.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:26] You’re you’re Alexa, is AI correct? I mean, when you ask them what the weather is and Alexa responds, is artificial intelligence. So.

Mark Griffith: [00:08:35] A lot to come on that I would say the the lowest hanging fruit really is about content generation. Like how can you, you know, put a piece of content out there, seed it in multiple ways, whether it’s social, whether it’s email and really help out your content creators and creating this kind of engagement and these type of marketing tools quickly. Um, there’s more to come on this. We do have a whole suite of marketing communication tools. And how can you incorporate AI into that is probably some low hanging fruit. Um, we had a really interesting exercise company wide, uh, two months ago where we said small groups of people come together, spend X amount of hours on AI in the month of October, and then come together and give a three minute presentation on what you found. And we did it on Halloween, three hours. And it was from marketing to sales to finance to engineers. Everyone coming up with, hey, this is what I did and this is how I used it, and this is what I learned from it. Um, so that got at least everybody in the company saying, I’m going to invest my time and resources into understanding what this technology is and how I can apply it.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:38] So what were some of the the surprising takeaways?

Mark Griffith: [00:09:41] So one interesting one, at least on the marketing side, was. You can’t use necessarily AI for all things, for all purposes. There’s still a need for human interaction and empathy in astro writing and creating content. It definitely has its value. If you’re doing, you know, large scale items and you need thought starters or, hey, I need to get some way to get this idea started, but you just can’t replace verbatim a content writer that knows that business, that knows that customer and that can empathize.

Rachel Simon: [00:10:15] I would concur with that. As I see on LinkedIn, too often, people using AI just to write comments, you can spot them like from a mile away, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:10:26] It’s a blunt instrument. It’s.

Rachel Simon: [00:10:28] Yes, exactly. I actually really like to use it to generate subjects for my email newsletter, so I’ll ask it to give me ten ideas, like ten email subject lines, and then they’re usually boring. And then I say, you know, right.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:44] It’s a first draft or them fun.

Rachel Simon: [00:10:45] Starter or the last one. I was like, give it a holiday theme. And they come. It comes up with some pretty good stuff.

Mark Griffith: [00:10:52] Yeah I agree, um, we have a massive customer conference every year and we were all like heads down writing topic discussions and session descriptions. And I found it really helpful for that. Again, not verbatim, but okay. Yeah, this this makes sense. And I can change this to make it more association specific. But it really helped. It saved a ton of time.

Rachel Simon: [00:11:13] Yeah. It’s interesting how you the skill is in the prompting, um, and understanding what its function and purpose is as opposed to just using it as the end product. Yeah.

Mark Griffith: [00:11:25] It’s like that old adage, right? Like the more you put into it, the better you’re going to get out of it. Exactly.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:29] Well, it’s getting smarter based on all the stuff you’re putting into it, rather than starting fresh each time.

Rachel Simon: [00:11:36] That that too. Yeah, I think it’s great. Also to like generate outlines is so helpful for, you know, especially if you have to write a long piece of content. Just give me a starting roadmap of how I’m writing that content.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:49] Um, now, Mark, I higher logic. Is there a sweet spot for the type of associations you serve, or is it kind of industry agnostic?

Mark Griffith: [00:11:59] I. There are sweet spots and it tends to be around organization size. Um, you know, the greater the need, probably the more that our platform can help out. It’s not to say that we don’t have, you know, organizations on the low end of the spectrum and organizations on the high end.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:14] But so what size is ideal?

Mark Griffith: [00:12:17] You know, I would say, you know, 1 million to 10 million annual revenue is probably a pretty good spot for us.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:22] So it’s not members, the amount of members.

Mark Griffith: [00:12:25] Um, no, because you can have some organizations that have high amounts of revenue with really low staff.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:30] And then when you’re working with an organization, do they need to have a lot of kind of paid, um, association leadership as opposed to more volunteers? Like, is there a sweet spot in that regard?

Mark Griffith: [00:12:44] Not necessarily. No.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:46] So then the association could have a robust, invested, uh, volunteer kind of leadership that can benefit from utilizing your. That certainly.

Mark Griffith: [00:12:55] Helps. Right. Because we do have modules specifically based on volunteers. Um, but not necessarily every organization that we have as a customer utilizes that or has a need for it.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:06] Right?

Rachel Simon: [00:13:07] Yeah. It’s, um, it seems like. Well, probably it makes sense to have that community manager. Right. Who kind of is running is is point center for, for your members. But it seems like even beyond associations, like there’s so many membership organizations out there that are always just working so hard to engage people that, you know, these technology tools are just getting better and better to. Build this digital version of where we can meet in the real world.

Mark Griffith: [00:13:37] If you think about who our target persona is, it really is going to involve either the membership person in charge of membership or the person in charge of marketing. That tends to be the two biggest personas we have. We have other personas as well. Maybe it has an influence, but they’re not necessarily the target buyer.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:54] Now, are you finding that more and more organizations are looking at their clients kind of as members rather than clients, so that that just the concept of an association or an organization that has this common good, that kind of mentality is evolving into just regular businesses, like a retail store can look at their clients as kind of members, like an Rei looks at their clients as members where they’re not an association, but they may be trying to create that environment where the relationship is tighter.

Mark Griffith: [00:14:26] So higher. Logic does have a product that’s geared towards the B2B SaaS marketplace, and it’s called higher logic vanilla, um, that tends to be business for profit. You know, the stuff that I work on is really association based, right? And the events that we go to are association based.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:45] But is there anything that we can all learn from how an association treats its members that a retailer could treat its clients?

Mark Griffith: [00:14:53] So the the corollary that I like to make on this, because a lot of this was my background before coming to higher logic, is the online subscription business, right. Because the the decision that the consumer in an online subscription business, whether it’s Netflix or, you know, I worked at Turner Sports and ran their product organization there for a number of years, and we had a subscription based product. Are you adding value for somebody to then yearly re-up that subscription? Um, a member makes that same determination within an association. So I always thought that that B2C experience lend itself really well in empathizing and thinking about the same challenges that an association has with their members.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:34] So it’s kind of a mindset shift, right? You’re kind of looking at it in a slightly different way, your relationship with your your clients.

Mark Griffith: [00:15:41] Well, at least understanding what their pain points are, right? Yeah.

Rachel Simon: [00:15:45] Right. Because they don’t have to I don’t have to renew my Netflix subscription, right.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:49] Each month. They have to keep putting more content or whatever. The thing I’m, I want in order to.

Rachel Simon: [00:15:55] And even this year, like from with my business, I was a member of a couple or paid communities and I. Realize, like with one great community, great community leader. But I just wasn’t using it enough. So it’s not it doesn’t make sense to keep paying the annual fee where I can try something different and see if and it’s on me because I wasn’t using it, wasn’t anything about the community.

Mark Griffith: [00:16:21] And look like in 2023. Whether you’re a consumer, you’re a business. You’re all looking at costs like probably, you know, with more attention than in years past, right? So, you know, you have to deliver that value on a consistent basis.

Rachel Simon: [00:16:34] Yeah. And it seems like based on the way you’ve described the product from higher logic, if it can keep people coming back to the platform seeing the value, then they’re going to renew their membership when the membership comes up. Right. Whenever that, you know, whatever time of year that might be.

Mark Griffith: [00:16:51] We had this great content piece that our content marketing manager, Kelly Whalen, put together a series called Path to Renewal. And, you know, one of the key takeaways on that was, you know, members may be making that decision of when do I, you know, do I renew or do I not much earlier like the first impressions mean, you know, they know. What’s the expression about first impressions, right. Um.

Rachel Simon: [00:17:14] You only get one chance.

Mark Griffith: [00:17:15] You only get one chance to make a first impression. So if your first impression when you’re going through the onboarding process is I’m not going to use any of this stuff, you know, have you already lost that customer or that member.

Rachel Simon: [00:17:24] Yeah. That’s interesting.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:26] I just read a great book called, uh, Unreasonable Hospitality. I don’t know if either of you have heard of that. It’s, um, the guy who started, uh, 11 Madison Park. It’s a super high end restaurant in New York, and it’s how they’re always pushing that level of service and how they’re constantly thinking of new and better ways to serve that that patron. And I think that every business really has to invest time in that, or else you are going to kind of the status quo isn’t good enough for most consumers. They’re always kind, you know, their eyes are out there. They’re always experimenting with new things. You have to constantly be pushing that value line.

Rachel Simon: [00:18:05] Yeah, absolutely. And I think, um. While keeping kind of to the core of what you’re all about and who you are. Right.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:14] But there’s a real high level of benefit from the surprise and delight moments, these moments where you’ve like, wow, that I, you’re giving your your member or your client something to talk about and a reason to talk about you and and remind them of how great you are.

Rachel Simon: [00:18:33] We love surprise and delight.

Mark Griffith: [00:18:35] Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:36] So do you as part of your platform, is this something that when you’re selling this in the association, are they do they already have a platform and they’re switching to yours, or is this the first time that they’re getting this kind of holistic kind of solution?

Mark Griffith: [00:18:51] It can be either in some cases, yes, we have competitors out there and they may have had, you know, the experience that maybe you just referenced that it wasn’t the greatest experience they make that, hey, are we getting ROI out of this? Is there a better solution? I don’t think there’s probably anybody better positioned than us, because we can put together that community, tie in the insights from that community, create really robust marketing campaigns from that, tie the data together in all one integrated platform. I don’t know anyone who can do that as well as we can. Um, so that’s, you know, a distinct advantage that we have. Um, but there are some that have just sort of put together a community on, you know, very, you know, sort of low budgets. And they’re ready to make that next move. Right.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:35] So then they are they’ve tried something kind of in a rudimentary level. And then yours is kind of just upping the value. They’re getting more uh.

Mark Griffith: [00:19:43] And they’re ready for that for that.

Rachel Simon: [00:19:45] Move. Let’s talk about because I’m curious about what you just mentioned, utilizing the insights and the data. So how does that help these associations, again, to continue to build those relationships and to, to Lee’s point, to build those surprise and delight moments like what is the data? How how are how are we leveraging that information, that data.

Mark Griffith: [00:20:08] So it’s all about sending the right message to the right person at the right time. So you’re just not blanketing, you know, generic messages out that, you know, appeals to 10% of your answer, but you’re sending out to 100%. So how can we take insights from the community discussions that people were involved in, things that they are engaged in, in the community and send a really targeted message through the marketing communications platform?

Rachel Simon: [00:20:29] So I’ve been I’ve been spending a lot of time on this discussion board on, you know, let’s say I’m a new in my career and I’m, you know, just starting things off. So I’m looking for a lot of mentorship. So I would be getting email communication that’s speaking to these issues, challenges, interests.

Mark Griffith: [00:20:50] So you can definitely take that sort of audience, um, engagement metrics that you have within that community and send those targeted, send those targeted messages.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:00] Very cool. Now you’ve mentioned onboarding several times. Is there some do’s and don’ts when it comes to onboarding that you can share?

Mark Griffith: [00:21:09] There’s definitely tips on how to do onboarding well. So somebody comes in make sure you’re sending them a welcome communication. Hey, welcome to our organization. Did you know that these are different things you can do within the community? Um, we always think that, you know, a webinar for new members would be something that would be very valuable. And one of the benefits of that is you can create cohorts within that organization. Hey, Rachel and I joined this association at the same time. We went through the same onboarding process or the same webinar together, same onboarding process together. Now Rachel and I are connected, and that is another way to help with with that engagement level.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:48] Now, is there a story you can share about maybe an organization that you started working with, that you were able to take them to a new level? You don’t have to name the name of the organization, but maybe share what their challenge was and how higher logic was able to kind of help them grow.

Mark Griffith: [00:22:04] There’s definitely those stories. Um, again, I don’t have the, you know, the specific names or organization names, but we do customer stories all the time, or we bring people in and say, you know, let’s do a case study on what your challenge was, how higher logic came together to to help address that. And those are great pieces of content to get the more of those kind of customer stories that we can tell and get that out there, then it’s not only great content for our website, but it’s also really good referral information to give to sales for, you know, prospective conversations that they’re having as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:34] Now, is that an exercise you think that association should be doing for themselves to get the members to share that type of information? Oh, it’s.

Mark Griffith: [00:22:41] A really great question. Um, you know, I always thought that that sort of that mentoring buddy, somebody that can sort of bring a new prospective member along would be a really great opportunity. Some organizations do this, um.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:54] So is like helping build a mentoring program if they’re not doing that or kind of a buddy program. Is that a best practice? Yes.

Mark Griffith: [00:23:03] And we have mentoring modules that exist within our platform.

Rachel Simon: [00:23:07] It seems like even just, you know, like you mentioned earlier, Gamifying like Gamifying the onboarding process, like, okay, here’s all the things you have to do and you’ve completed. You know, you everyone loves checking things off, right? Like, you’ve done this, you’ve created your profile, you’ve made your blah, blah, blah. You’ve watched the webinar like you get whatever number of points like making making it fun to go through the onboarding process as opposed to feeling like a drag.

Mark Griffith: [00:23:33] Yeah. And I would definitely recommend for anyone in the association space listening here wants to learn more about this stuff. Um, we have on higher, higher Logic comm, a series of path to renewal where we talk about onboarding, we talk about events, we talk about volunteers. Um, there’s four different, um, uh, editions of that that are out there that can be consumed today.

Rachel Simon: [00:23:54] What happens when these associations have their annual conferences? So we’re taking from these digital relationships, and then we’re meeting in the real world. Like is there anything that higher logic does to help sort of with that opportunity to meet and face to face.

Mark Griffith: [00:24:11] So there’s there’s two ways I can answer that question. One is events modules within the higher logic platform is a really key part for getting people to show up at an association’s event. Um, you mentioned the beginning of the conversation, these associations of associations, and there are quite a few of them, um, either at the national level or at the state level, and we try to get to some of the higher profile state level, um, conventions as well. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:35] So when you’re, um, moving from digital to a real life, um, is there any best practices you can share? Is there something that you’ve seen, maybe from a tent, attending a conference that you were like, oh, that was a great idea.

Mark Griffith: [00:24:50] Um, you know, live in person events is, I think, still a challenge in 2023. I mean, I hear all, all the time people say, I just want to get back together again, get back in person. But, um, I’m not sure that when it really comes down to it, oh, I’ve got to get on the train. I’ve got to, you know, sit in traffic. I’ve got to get to this place. Um, can we get people to show up? I think for larger events, that’s it’s probably back. But on these micro events, that’s harder. And I don’t know if we’ve solved that problem yet.

Rachel Simon: [00:25:23] Yeah, I think the conferences are seems like conferences are kind of back to, uh, maybe not to quite where they were pre-pandemic times. But I’ve found even just anecdotally, that with some in-person events, like people are just waiting until the last minute to make a decision. And then to your point, oh, it’s raining. I don’t think I’m going to drive down there right at.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:45] The last second they bail. Yeah, that’s one of the challenges. But in the events that I’ve gone to lately, it seems like there’s a hunger of people once a human to human interaction again. Um, so hopefully it’s I would agree with that.

Rachel Simon: [00:25:58] Yeah. I think we’re going to I’m hoping we’re going to see it more and more and more, um, as we just get back into the swing of things. And also more people are, you know, more companies want their people back in offices. So that might kind of get people to be willing to get on the train or fight traffic to go downtown.

Mark Griffith: [00:26:19] Yeah. So maybe higher logic. We’re 100% remote. Yeah. We used to be based out of DC. That’s where we were formed. Um, but since 2000, 20, 20, um, you know, we’re remote. First, we don’t have an office to go to. Yeah. Um, so, you know, our situation is a little different, probably, um, you know, associations from what I’ve seen, some of them are two days, three days a week, um, in the office. But, like, we try to do something in DC, uh, last fall, um, and DC has got traffic issues, understandably. Um, but, you know, try to get folks to come from, you know, the Virginia suburbs into DC, um, for a 530 event challenge. That was a big ask.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:58] Yes. Now, um, if somebody wants to learn more about higher logic, what are kind of the ways they can ease into a relationship with your firm? Um, what type of content that’s out there for them to learn more about your offering and to kind of get on their radar.

Mark Griffith: [00:27:14] So the first step is to go to higher Logic Comm, where you have a ton of resources online that are posted. Um, case studies. Great. You know, ungated pieces of content. And we made the move to do a lot of ungated content over the last two years. So there’s a lot.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:27] So that was a strategic move that you. Yeah, that.

Mark Griffith: [00:27:29] Was a strategic move.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:30] And what was kind of the the cost benefit for going that way.

Mark Griffith: [00:27:35] So one is I think we create just absolutely terrific content. So I want to get that content into as many people’s hands as possible. Um, number two is, you know, we’ve heard all these stories about the number of touches it takes to close a B2B sale. Right? 2530 right. And we do these attribution exercises, which to me seems a little futile because you’re not going to find 25 things to attribute to. But if it’s that many times that you have to interact with someone and get in front of somebody, all of it has an impact. All of it has some kind of influence on making a buying decision. Um, so holding that just to get a lead didn’t seem like that was the right way to go. Let’s get as much of this stuff in front of people as we can, create really good conversations. And when somebody is ready to make a buying decision or somebody is ready to have a conversation, we’ve already got them hooked in because.

Lee Kantor: [00:28:29] You’ve overwhelmed them with generous, valuable content.

Mark Griffith: [00:28:32] Yeah, yeah. And we’re talking about things that matter to them. Um hum. Um, now we still do some gated content. I’m not going to say that we’ve, you know, ungated everything, but to the most part, I think we probably do in terms of content creation, probably 3 to 4 tentpole content pieces that we gate and everything else we create is Ungated.

Lee Kantor: [00:28:50] Well, that’s I mean, the listener should really hear that because a lot of times people think their content is so precious, they don’t want to share it. But you’re you’re saying this culture of generosity, which I’m sure is part of the DNA of the organization, is that you think sharing it and informing and educating your clientele is important? Obviously. Yeah.

Mark Griffith: [00:29:11] You know, as as the leader in the space, we feel that, you know, providing thought leadership is our responsibility as well. Right?

Rachel Simon: [00:29:18] Yeah. I think it builds goodwill generally like versus every there’s some companies where they just gate everything. Right. How many times am I going to have to pay me?

Lee Kantor: [00:29:27] Right. You got to pay me if you want that.

Mark Griffith: [00:29:29] As soon as you put that form in front of somebody, you’ve created a barrier, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:29:33] Created a friction.

Rachel Simon: [00:29:35] Yeah. It’s like save it for something that is a super high value that they cannot resist. And I need this.

Mark Griffith: [00:29:44] So proprietary research is where we still do that. Um, but there’s, there’s. Reasons for that, but for thought leadership. Now we we want to, you know, we want to have that, you know, that position in the marketplace as being thought leaders. Right.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:57] And your role modeling a culture of generosity.

Mark Griffith: [00:30:01] Yeah, absolutely.

Rachel Simon: [00:30:02] I would agree with that.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:04] Now higher is higher logic. Com that’s a website that’s the best place to go.

Mark Griffith: [00:30:08] That’s the best place to go. You can always click the learn more. And we will have somebody talk about your specific needs if you want to learn more. But it’s also a great resource for information.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:17] Good stuff. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work. We appreciate you.

Mark Griffith: [00:30:21] Thank you for having me on.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:22] All right. This is Lee Kantor for Rachel Simon. We’ll see you all next time on Sandy Springs Business Radio.