Beyond Heads in Beds: High Point Is Redefines Destination Leadership

What happens when a destination stops measuring success only by hotel stays—and starts measuring community impact?

In this episode of Business Class, Stephen sits down with Melody Burnett, President of Visit High Point, to explore how one North Carolina destination is transforming tourism into a powerful force for inclusion, economic development, and community pride.

From becoming one of the first Certified Autism Destinations in the U.S. to launching bold public art initiatives that draw tens of thousands of visitors, Melody shares how High Point is embracing calculated risk, building unlikely partnerships, and redefining what success looks like in the visitor economy.

This conversation goes far beyond marketing—it’s about leadership, storytelling, and the responsibility destinations have to both visitors and residents.

If you’re still thinking in terms of “heads in beds,” this episode might just change your perspective.

Business Class is brought to you by Learn Tourism, the nonprofit academy - harnessing the power of science, business psychology and adult education to advance the tourism industry and build sustainable economies. Learn how to engage your community, win over stakeholders and get more visitors at learntourism.org. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:29

I'm Melody Burnett. I'm the president of Visit High Point.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

High Point, North Carolina.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

High Point, North Carolina, located in the Piedmont. High Point is located in Guilford County. Our neighboring cities are Greensboro and Whites and Salem.

unknown 0:47

Hi.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Stephen, thank you for being so flexible with me today.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Listen, if I were any more flexible, I'd be doing yoga on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Did I say that your out of office was on from yesterday? Are you doing something fun?

SPEAKER_01 1:03

My out of office is actually on since last Monday. It will not go off until Thursday. Technically back in the office, but today ended up being a birthday. I am a digital network. I travel all over North America. I sold my house, I think, in four and a half years ago. I have my 14-year-old niece who is with me full-time. And she learns online and through experiences that we go out and particularly go. This background that you see is actually the inside of my body coach. So this is not some screensaver. This is like really the inside of my boss. And my uncle, who was a school administrator and teacher by trade, pointed out to me a couple years ago that it was always on his bucket list to visit the national parks that he'd never been west of the Mississippi. So I said, We're gonna be in that area if you want from Altamedia's. Well, he took me up on the offer. So my uncle, my niece, and I are all in Olab, Utah. The two of them are out exploring Arch's National Park today for a whole bunch of stuff. It's just it's a great experience.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Well, I'm interested. I had a 14-year-old in my home. And when I vacation with my husband together as a family, I have my husband that's all about squeezing every single bit of the experience he can out of that investment we've made at that trip. So it's like we're gonna make the itinerary as packed as it can be. My 14-year-old has a different mindset. It's kind of like the joy of missing out, not the fear of missing out. She's got the joy of missing out. Yes. Not so much that she wants to miss out. It's just let's see how we feel today. And that's gonna dictate what we do. Let's go with our mood, not let's go with the itinerary. And I have to dance somewhere in between both. That's so wondering how your experiences are with your 14-year-old on board.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

So it's funny, my my uncle and I are very similar in that we are very driven people, very direct people. We are very passionate about what we do, moved by what we see and experience and the stories that we hear. I don't know if it's it's two things, I think. One is one, it could be too cool to enjoy the stuff that the grown-ups think is interesting. And the other element are three things. The second element, of course, is distraction. We have our iPads, we have our phones. She gets instruction on log drives to put down her phone for an hour just like and the third thing I think is that she's still developing what her interests are. She hasn't can't articulate that she's particularly interested in nature or geology or science or art or architecture or food or culture or music. She hasn't quite figured that part out yet. And when she does, then of course I'm sure we can build a crammed itinerary. And includes those sort of things. But it can't be because the adults enjoy it. Yeah, it's been interesting. And she's a really good traveler, and she and I get along really, really well. She knows, okay, we're gonna start driving today, so you clear off the counters, I'll do this, that, the other thing. We could be rolling in 15 to 20 minutes. So yeah, but it's been a great learning experience, I think, for both of us for all of us.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Well, enjoy the journey. That sounds fantastic, and I love that she's learning on the road.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Yeah, and I'm the kind of traveler, you know, I'll play on the one or two highlights for the day, and the rest I leave loose. So, like you up in the middle.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

You're like, yeah, that's how I rolled that way as well.

unknown 5:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

So, how long have you been with the CBB?

SPEAKER_00 5:08

In High Point for 23 years, and I wouldn't say it was by design, but it is a new challenge, and it just keeps me engaged and interested. And next thing I know, 23 years have passed. But I was with the Greensboro Convention and Visitors Bureau for two years prior. So a total of 25 years, and I read from your bio you've been in the game for 25 years as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

What more at this point?

SPEAKER_00 5:36

We had just the best transportation system in terms of interstates that come through our city. We've got our regional airport, we got the Amtrak station, and really high point was founded from our proximity on the North Carolina Railroad. We are the highest point on the North Carolina Railroad, and back in you know, 1859, we were then incorporated and became a city. So when you think about that, Moniker and being the highest point on the railroad, and of course, we're the land of the hardwoods, and we're the center of commerce and ideas and connectivity. Really, what our brand and our visual touch point have really centered around home furnishings and design. So a lot of folks may know us as the home furnishings capital of the world, and that's our legacy.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

We also noticed that you folks are working diligently to accommodate the needs of guests with all different building.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

That is correct. And we have been on that journey since 2021. And we love it for all kinds of different reasons. Number one, our city went through a brand refresh around that time. It was a little bit maybe after that time. But in the brand refresh, it wasn't so much that we're gonna abandon the legacy brand of being the home furnishings capital, the center of design, any of that. We just wanted to polish it up and make it more relevant for more audiences, specifically to our residents. One of those attributes that we know about ourselves and that visitors recognize within us is that we really are kind of an inclusive. We very much are hospitality-minded. A lot of that has to come from. We also host the world's largest home furnishings trade show here, which is the High Point Market. It's get ready to start on Saturday. 75,000 people, 6.73 billion dollars of economic impact. The equivalent of four Super Bowls is here in High Point, North Carolina. So our population is 118,000. And of course, we just welcome this influx of people. We've been welcoming them into our homes, renting out our homes, making sure they're fed, making sure they're doing business. And so a lot of it's rooted in that way. But also we just have a caring, compassionate spirit, and we wanted to elevate that and be more intentional with that narrative in our brand, too. So we we started that journey in 2021. We had an indoor inclusive playground that just opened right after the pandemic. And this husband and wife team are former NFL husband and wife that have lived in like 12 other cities. And they have a son that's on the spectrum. And so they know what to expect out of communities that they lived in. Like, you know, they're always looking for resources and to see how supportive a community is when they were on their journey historically, living in the 12 other cities. But when they decide to come and make High Point their home again, they built the playground, they did it really, really well. And what they noticed is that they were getting more visitors from outside of a 90-mile radius, then more so than the residents at the time, or in the early days anyway. A county commissioner called me and said, Hey, have you checked out Q's Corner down the street from you? And she said, Well, they might need some of your tools and resources because what was happening is folks were coming to visit, having a great experience there at the playground. And then asking, What can I do while I'm here? And what if I wanted to spend the night or go to a restaurant or what other entertainment and attraction does High Point have to offer? And they weren't really sure about what the other experiences were going to be at the other industry partners. They had their business model buttoned up, but they weren't really sure if they can open up a Rolodex of other referrals. And so we helped them with that. And so we partnered with IBCCES, International Board of Credentialing Education Standards, to see if we could come up with a platform to get some training for our industry partners, and then aligned our brand with a more inclusive brand for autism travel, too. What we learned in our training is that one out of 36 children would be diagnosed before the age of eight. So we knew that this statistic was growing. We knew it would be relevant as more people were looking for livability options, even though we're in the visitor economy space. We had a city manager that was just all on go for it. And so we became a certified autism center. So the inclusive playground, we got 22 other industry partners on board, and they took the training and they also adapted their business models to include autism travel. And the rest is history. We announced in 2023 that we are a certified autism destination, and we are the first on the East Coast and the second in the nation. And that is our real first big tactic that was visible in our community of being a shared community value. I think that was the one that really stuck because I think everyone has an autism connection, whether it's you know a family member or a coworker. And so it's really relevant and we've gotten a lot of good travel stories out of it. Oddly enough, at first, everyone said, Do you think you're gonna get conventions out of this? How are you gonna attract all the visitors that come that are connected with autism travel? But really, it was a deeper KPI than just that. It wasn't necessarily a heads and beds KPI for us, right? And 23 years ago, that might not have been a relevant strategy for us to tackle because back then we were very much beholden to the hotel stakeholder. As long as we make them happy, then we've done our job. Heads and beds rinse and repeat and keep on going. But that's what I've really loved about our work in the destination leadership space is that we can be flexible and that mission doesn't have a specific silo or boundary or technical. These KPIs are vast, and our partners are asking and expecting more of us. When you talk about destination development, that goes way beyond heads and beds. So, what I can tell you since 2023 is that there is an inclusive camp out of Georgia that is going to build their first camp in North Carolina in High Point. They saw our work. There was actually a couple that lives here in High Point that used to live in Georgia and knew about that camp. And because of our branding, because of the intentionality of some of our strategic plans in our city, they did their homework and they said, Oh, I think High Point would be a great fit for us to expand beyond Georgia. So that's a huge win there. And then, of course, we've had three other autism behavioral service businesses that have come to our area too in that term. So those are economic development brand positioning wins that necessarily aren't heads and beds, but folks recognize that and our residents feel that as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

A good place to live is a great place to visit.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

And the same can be true in the opposite. A good place to visit should make you feel like a part of the what is something special that you in your community do to make visitors feel like from a business standpoint.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

They'll say, I've been to so many other destinations and I never feel that above and beyond attitude like I feel here in High Point. It could go as far as you have a headache, let me get you some Tylenol. It's raining here, let me get you an umbrella. Little things that they wouldn't think of because a lot of our meeting planners might have a staff of two or three. It might be a small nonprofit. Because we're in the small meetings market here in High Point. They said that if they go to a bigger destination, they feel lost. But when they come to High Point, they feel like I'm the main attraction. My name is on that marquee at the paint store that says, welcome this group. Who goes above and beyond like that? And I think that what makes it easy for us is sometimes when you're a smaller destination, you can do things like that. Sometimes when you're a larger destination, you might overlook some of those details. But when you're a smaller destination, you just really lean in to your authentic attributes and you can lift those up a little bit more fruitfully and can be distinctive with that. And that's what I love about High Point is that don't get me wrong, we've taken our good fair share of field trips to other destinations to see how they did it. Not necessarily say we're going to rinse and repeat, but we want to be authentically high point. And that's what we love about our job here, where we get to elevate those standards in a way that what used to be the standard 20 years ago is now a new standard here in 2026. Case in point, we have an events development department, which six years ago, when I said, I think we need a strategist here in town, we need an event strategist that can help us with the brand alignment and the implementation of spectator events and festivals here in the community. And it's not necessarily for the heads and beds. Yes, we want to drive the visitor economy. Yes, we want to bring more meeting planners and event planners here, but we wanted the residents to really feel like this is a destination. This is my home that I feel proud about. But now that we've been hard at that for four years, I would say in the first year, our stakeholders recognized it immediately. They said, Melody, you were so right. Oh my goodness. I don't know what you were talking about when you said we need to develop this department, this strategist. Somebody that can make sure that everything's aligned. We're now at the point now that when we're having these events, whether we have recruited them, we are supporting them, we are managing them, or maybe just curating something ourselves, depending on the calendar and the need. We're at the point now we're having to educate our vendors, like food trucks and artisans, any of those folks to say, there's a time and a place for you, and we'd love that you want to sign up for all the events. But we have to be mindful and good stewards of curating the brand experience. And let's pick and choose what makes sense for what experience at what time. So now we're there. And I love that because of the seat that we're in, we get to orchestrate destination development in a really intentional way.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

What has been your best day at work?

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Best day at work. Well, I have to tell you, the biggest project that at this point comes to mind is actually in 2025. And we implemented a public art project in a total of eight months, which was just unheard of. It was an opportunity that we explored that accelerated, and all of a sudden we had to implement it quickly, or we were going to miss out on the opportunity. Number 171, Troll on the Trail of A Thousand Trolls. If you're familiar with his work, we're connected now with his brand, with the world, with these troll hunters. So we had to hurry up, do the homework, see if we can get on his calendar, figured out that some of our neighbors are already on his calendar, raise the funds, get the volunteers, and get it all done in eight months. Where our neighbors had up to four years to plan. And so when it's projects like that take place, it's a reminder that I had the right people on my team, I had the right people on my board, and I have great partner alignment. And that means that we're telling our story, they understand our mission, they understand our value, and that's how we got it done so quickly.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

And they trust that you're making the right choices.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

They are trusting that we're making the right choices. Now, I will tell you that I had some influencers here in town that heard about troll, didn't necessarily ask me direct questions about it because we're moving fast, like lightning speed. Our board knew, city council knew. We had to be pretty conservative with how much information we had to tell publicly. I mean, because at this point, we had to sign contracts, we had to raise funds. We couldn't use full occupancy tax dollars to fund this piece of public art. So the majority of those funds came from a private donor. But there were key influencers in town that admitted to me once our little Sally trail was built, once they saw the 61,000 visitors that we've been bringing to High Point since November 7th, which is about 12,000 visitors a month. And they see the impact that she has made, not only on a community level, but on the visitor economy level, they said, Mel, I have to admit to you, I didn't know what you were talking about when you were talking about bringing this troll to High Point. Maybe I needed to do a better job of communicating the mission and vision of what we had in place. But at that time, there was no time to give a lot of presentations to civic groups and all of my friends over at the chamber. The presentations had to be very succinct with the donor. And luckily, I had a partner around my board table that was a nonprofit. And she and I have been doing business together for at least 20 years, and we've had some public art wins. And she knew the exact donor that we needed to make the ask to. This donor had no reference to me or our mission at Visit High Point. But she's the one that brought the foundation to the table. We got them up to speed on our mission, the purpose of this public art, the impact that it can make on the community. And if you know anything about donor relations, that's a long game strategy. Many, many, many months, maybe even years, before there is a partnership and an ass. And so for us to do that in a matter of a month and say, can you give me$300,000? I really love it if you did that. Oh, you've never funded public art before. Oh, it's okay. Just trust me. Because of the alignment of our partners and how nimble we are on our team to move and pivot quickly, we were able to get there. And the donor loves to hear all the KPIs that are coming out of our partnership.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Impact is it seems like it's almost a buzzword. I had this conversation with the VP of the Hilton Philanthropic Art the other day. The KPIs for impact changed over the last few years. Was it heads and beds? Or is it a small business owner that can afford to set their kids? Which one resonates better with your kids? What is what's the greatest lesson you've learned while leading an organization? Or a lesson that you've learned that you wish you knew when you were in your twenties?

SPEAKER_00 22:22

Probably one of the biggest since I've been in this role is how visible that you need to be as a leader and how visible your mission needs to be, especially in the government relations realm. If you're not there at the table, then you're on the menu. And I feel that that's a lesson for young professionals to learn early. And I have to tell you, this at high point was probably not very visible on a government relations standpoint for at least half of our longevity. We're 43 years old. I don't recall us really being a key player in those discussions in terms of government relations and advocacy. Now I know the importance. Importance of it. And so if somebody's going to invite you to be at the table, then show up, participate, be engaged, and show your value and tell your story as much as you can and as often as you can. Another thing that I'm continuing to learn, especially now that we're having to do so much more with way beyond just our hotel dollars. We raised probably close to 600,000 this year just in private money to do some of these projects that we couldn't necessarily fund just in occupancy dollars. And so that relationship building with those donors is key. And it's really fundraising 101. So, you know, if you think of our 43 years, I have some past chairs that were chairs of our board, you know, back in the 80s and 90s, and they'll be like, oh, you've got it easy. You just sit back and you collect the occupancy tax and you just spend it on some marketing, put heads in beds and call it a day. Oh no. Oh, it's way more than that. We've got the marketing plan. We're helping to influence and build or recruit product, public art, brand alignment, training, servicing is way beyond that. So our staff now is having to learn the fundraising game. And I would say that we've gotten better at it than we have five years ago. And we're probably the newbies to the table. So telling our story in a way to a donor or to an influencer, whether they're a civic group or someone who has a vested interest in the community but may not be familiar with Visit High Point, you have to know how to tell that story. And so I think it was a couple of weeks ago, I was with the Civic group, and their mission is to fund children's initiatives. So I made sure we told our story. I wanted to make sure they knew that 40% of our sales tax in the county comes from outside visitor economy. They need to know that. And now we have the nice diagram that shows our work as a circle. It starts with the visit and then it translates to working here and living here and investing here. I love to lift up investing here because we're in a small community and it's a small pond, and there's a lot of nonprofits. So, how are we going to grab our pond of investors unless we make an introduction to them? And so before we had that nice little diagram, I felt like our mission or they would see our mission as like the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. They got to have the foundational needs of feeling fed and warm and safe. And then if you get to the top and you have actualization, and I felt like they saw our work as all these things are working, then it's okay, we'll spend some money on marketing and the funding gains department. And so I'm glad to have that new diagram because I think it's easier for us to tell our story in that way. And our mayor does a great job of saying over here at Visit High Point, it always starts with the visit first in our economic development game. He gets it wholeheartedly.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

What did I not ask that you wish I did?

SPEAKER_00 27:05

I think we need to talk about destination leadership and how we are transitioning from being more risk-averse to more flexible in the risk that we're taking. And I think that has to do with our business models of being charged with destination development. Because before, I think when we were risk-averse, it was we want a return on what we know is true, and that's heads and beds. And now with all of these heads and beds, here's your budget, here's your occupancy tax, just continue to do that. Don't go off the rails, just stay right here. And so now I think that we're taking more calculated risks. And I think when you get into product development, now you're talking about taking a risk. We did that here in our community. We built a multi-purpose stadium back in 2019. And we did that because we wanted to build a district in town that would be a downtown because we really didn't have a traditional downtown. We had a market district that was the furniture market, and then we had some other activity centers, but it was a huge risk for Visit Highway at the time to lead conversations and destination development to have a district where the visitor economy can go and experience all of our authentic attributes and a place where our community can have a social gathering space. We had city councilmen that were quite comfortable with us being a bedroom community and just catering to market two times a year. But we had business leaders that said, you know what? If we are the world home furnishings capital, if what we make in high point changes the world, where are we comfortable in that? With us in building a stadium, it wasn't about baseball or soccer. We knew that in doing that, it was going to create some real synergy in other products that we can use to sell High Point. And it's really paid off just from 2019 till now. We've got three million people who are coming a year to our downtown and it continues to grow. We have a young downtown, but really the most breathtaking moment was in January of this year. I don't know if you were following the venerable monks that were making their way from Georgia to DC. We were a stop off for them. We weren't supposed to be. They were gonna kind of skirt us, but because we had some key stakeholders, not only on our board, but on city council, so key community leaders, they made the stop at our stadium. We had 13,000 people at our stadium that day. And it was community, it was visitors, it was everybody in between, and that was the day that it really was echoing loud and clear. Wow, this is what the stadium is supposed to do. It does all kinds of other great things throughout the year, but look at this. That was a risk that paid off.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Would you like to ask me?

SPEAKER_00 30:15

Know more about learned tourism.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Sure. So learn tourism, the concept for learned tourism started years ago. Myself and Sheena works other calls, went to a tourism trade show. I'd been to many at that point. It was her first. Went to an education program, walked out, looked at each other, and she says, Are they all this bad? And I said, Oh, just wait till you're subjected to a webinar where you let it play in the background while you build your lawn. And it was around the same time for me personally that I was I was beginning to recognize that my personal passion was not just travel, it was not just art, architecture, food, culture, music, nature. It was the fact that every single one of those things I love to learn. And I had been consulting at the time at destinations to help identify and develop product that fit the off-season aid and helping them bring that to market. So under the realm of my consulting company, we started learning. We started practicing, we started researching technologies, methodologies, the science, the psychology, the motivations behind it learning. And when COVID struck, of course, my destination took out. And I was faced with this opportunity, or a challenge, depending on how you do I put in all the time, energy, and effort to restart my consultant or business research. Or this thing that we've been learning about practically for four years. Do we take that and run with it? And that's how Learn Tour is a best artist environment. Now, what we've identified are three things that most education and industry explore that they need in order to be successful. Transformations, what are people going to be able to do? If you can't tell the story about it, that's not helpful. Engagement. People have to be active participants that they need to learn each other, they need more self-organization. They play a game, all of these different things that make sure that they are actively engaged with their learning experience, even if it's online or it's a webinar, you have to be that person. And the third piece was accessibility. And accessibility to us means two different things. But what, when and where is that person going to learn or learn best? You host a workshop on a Tuesday at two o'clock. The only people who are gonna go have the availability, they have the transportation and have the interest. So you've taken your wide audience and you've really narrowed it down to a small people. And what we have found is that works in many occasions, and that's the right type of training in many occasions. However, if you're looking to train your frontline activity, if you're looking to train your residents, if you're looking to upskill your business partners, they're working the second shift, they're working the night audit, they're working on the weekend, they're a volunteer who's free on Saturdays, they're somebody who works first shift. So in many cases, you have to provide the training to the online and on-demand. And the other form of accessibility that we really focus in on is how people learn. You mentioned your work with accessibility and the autism community. Accessibility to us means how people learn. We know there are at least seven different learning styles. So if everything you're doing is reading from a book or making people watch a video, or having them write an essay, you're missing the point for most of the learners. So when we create education workers, whether they're going to be delivered in person, as a keynote, a workshop, or a half-day seminar, whether it's going to be an on-demand course for tourism ambassadors or for travel and travel planners to teach them about the community, or it's something that we present in a virtual setting, a virtual workshop or a virtual presentation. We make sure to tie in a technique that addresses the needs of all of the different types of learners. So in just a couple of hours, I'll be speaking with an organization about building international tourism. So there's a worksheet. I don't remember the last time I participated a book to follow. I don't think I've ever been a person. A wedding because some people learn by writing the notes. Some people learn by the self-realization. They're gonna ask you this question. Oh, we're giving you the prompt and we're giving you the tool to fill in the blanks. So you're discovered by yourself. So that's what made Learn Tours really special. And as an organization, we offer a few tools to help other organizations. So we do instructional design, custom-built courses. There is no course that we provide that is you have to learn things. It's what do you need your community to do to be built, and then what you create a course to be done. With that comes certification, that balance online learning tools, the technology for online learning, the subject matter experts. So our advisory panelists, psychologists, lawyers, teachers, trainers, marketers, professors, people who are not involved in tourism at all, because there's so much we can learn from other industries.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

With those subject matter experts with the training tools, we needed a certification for some of the cruise lines, for some of the trade associations, for some of the travel associations. So we have this really unique space where we can take the product training, the destination training program, and we can put it in front of tens of thousands of travel agents. Because they already trust us, they're already coming to us, but they've already let us know what they're interested in. So we can use that as a teaching. We collect best practices, master training, training, community engagement training. We know from 60 something destinations what's working. We know how the polka does when a thousand people go through their assets. We know how Reno Tao is teaching destination stewardship so that their frontline workers are educating the consumer so that the consumer is a better visitor. And we're big in the aid, big in the technology space. We are constantly learning. So that's a little bit about us.

SPEAKER_00 36:54

Thank you for that insight. I loved how you have customized ways of reaching your learners in the way that they are accustomed to learning. I'm a note taker, so that workbook would have been right up my alley. You know what I love about the season that we're in right now is that there is no one pathway to get to learning. I'm always telling young professionals, I feel like sometimes they get stuck. And when they get stuck, they think, I'm just gonna go back to school. I'm just gonna get my MBA or whatever my master's might feed. And I always tell them, like, well, I don't feel like you need that. I'm not discouraging you from doing it. I'm just saying there's so many different pathways out there. You can get a certification in something. You can go to this conference and explore another partnership. There's just so many different ways to get that learning, other than going back to school for another two to four years.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

And at our core, we're a learning organization. So our staff gets two days a year where they can go and learn something. I don't care if you're reading a book at the beach or you're participating in a class or you're volunteering, learn something new and bring back with me. So we are all together better than we were yesterday.

SPEAKER_00 38:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

Unlimited professional development for our standards. If there's something you're interested in, you want to learn more about it, sign up for paperwork. So I myself have my certifications in AI governance and ethics from realm, sustainable business and strategic hard, business school, ethical leadership from SF. So I encourage everybody in our team to do that because we share. We build custom GPTs that help us populate course content so it speaks in the voice. We do that kind of stuff because if you're not learning, you're done.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Well, the quote that I have right here above my computer says, Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do. That's my reminder to take my learning, whatever letters I have behind my name, whatever learning that I just took away from at whatever conference. It's one thing to take the notes and say, I win. That's how we're going to apply it and how we're going to do it.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

If folks want to learn more about visiting High Point or get in touch with you or your organization, do so.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

Sure. Visit highpoint.com.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

Anything we forgot.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

When I was in school for four years at UNC Greensboro, learning about recreation parks, tourism, and commercial tourism, therapeutic recreation. They were talking about hotels, they were talking about airlines, they were talking about amusement parks. But in my mind, I kept thinking on a macro level. I was like, there's gotta be some job out there, maybe with the city government that could put together some tourism strategies on behalf of the destinations. My advisor, I said, is there such a job out there that I could just dream up that already exists? Well, she said, Ah, you need to work for a convention and visitors bureau. Let me line you up with some internships. And I did in the rest is history, but they never talked about it in a classroom setting. So the big learning there is to always build great relationships with your advisors because you never knew what they might be withholding from you that you might want to do. So ask the right questions, ask the right questions. And to this day, I'm still trying to explain to my family what I do, but that's okay. It keeps it fun and interesting. You know, my daughter was seven or eight. She thought I just hung out with artists and said, paint this on this wall and do this mural. I mean, that's what she thought. My dad thought it was like the chamber of commerce. He wasn't really sure. And that's okay. And he told me, he said, Do you know how fortunate you are to have a good paying job in that field? He said, because that is a very niche market. I said, not necessarily. I said, think about it. It's destination development work. It could be in the chamber, it can be in an economic development corporation, but this is not niche work that we're doing here. It's a team sport.

SPEAKER_01 41:00

When you tell people tourism influence is 11%, we are not far behind medicine and banking.

SPEAKER_00 41:08

That's so true.

SPEAKER_01 41:09

People don't recognize it unless we teach them. Everything is something. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your story. For your invitation. Who knew in college that they wanted to work at the design development space? The third. The third.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

And 27 years later, I'm still there.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

And you love it.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

And I love it. Young professionals these days, I think aligning their skills with a purpose is the holy grail. That's what they're aspiring to do now. How lucky am I that I found this 27 years ago? I can do this and make an impact on my community in this way strategically and help shape and align it to be a better high point than it was yesterday. That's huge. That's a huge purpose.

SPEAKER_01 42:09

As a digital web mat, you have earned a panel to visit.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Please do.