Ep. 1 | Debra BenAvram: What New CEOs Get Wrong in Their First 90 Days

Episode 1: Built to Connect | Debra BenAvram, CEO of AABB

What does it take to transform a global association from the inside out? In our inaugural episode, Jackson sits down with Debra BenAvram, CEO of AABB (Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies), to explore how she's redefining what it means to lead a $20M nonprofit in a rapidly evolving industry.

Debra shares the leadership philosophy behind dropping staff turnover from 45% to 6%, why she spent her first 90 days doing one-on-ones with all 60 employees, and how AABB successfully rebranded — during COVID — without losing its identity. She also opens up about the gut-wrenching decision to cancel their 6,000-person annual meeting with 48 hours' notice when Hurricane Ian struck, and what it taught her about revenue diversification and member connection.

The conversation closes with a provocation every association leader needs to hear: "Associations worry too much about making every single person happy and not enough about finding the best opportunities that deliver both business results and mission results."

Topics covered:

• Building culture as a new CEO with no institutional equity
• Launching AABB's first biotherapy certification (CABP)
• Navigating a legacy rebrand without alienating members
• Crisis planning and business continuity
• Rethinking the annual meeting as the sole connection point

Transcript

0:02

Associations worry too much about making every single person happy and not enough about finding the best opportunities that deliver both business results and mission results. Associations are a business. We just have a unique business model. And I think if we leverage that model, we can actually really deliver what's something that we can do to, to actually rethink that, not only from a revenue model, but from a connection model. What, what would this look like if we were connecting people all throughout the year and not just at a single point in time? Hello and welcome to Built To Connect. This is a monthly podcast where we interview enterprising leaders from across the association industry to understand how they are changing their business model. And today we are delighted to welcome our inaugural guest, Debra BenAvram, who is the CEO of AABB, the Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies.

Jackson Boyar 1:15

Debra became a CEO very early in her career. And is now in her second CEO role leading a global association. She talks a lot about building culture, team collaboration, and changing the business model in unprecedented times at AABB. We hope you enjoy this episode. So, Debra, you were the CEO of two associations. Your first CEO role started when you were very young, relative to the average CEO that was at Aspen, where you add. Very high staff turnover when you started and were able to make really notable improvements over the course of your tenure. Today you're at AABB, which has gone through a massive rebrand, which is transforming its business model, and along the way you've won a ton of awards. So we're really excited to talk to you today. But tell us in your first CEO role, early in your career what it was like to inherit I staff turnover and try to create cultural change.

Debra 2:15

It was a lot of fun because culture's what, to me is the biggest differentiator of success. And I did my graduate work in organizational culture. It's sort of what I live and breathe. I was already at ASPEN for several years before I became CEO there, so I actually think the, maybe a more interesting story is a turnover rate drop at my current organization where we dropped from about 45% to 6%, five or 6%, and thinking about what. I did, and I'll, I can tie some of of those things to what I did at ASPEN, but I already had brand equity at ASPEN, right? So that, that really helps when people already knew me and some of the people that were already, the champions were bought into what we may have seen that we. Needed to change. Coming in fresh to a BB was a completely different ball game. No one knew me. I'm not from the blood banking or Biotherapies world at all, so I need to come into this organization and completely evolve the culture, evolve the portfolio. And quickly that's, you know, that's a big ask. So when I think about some of the things that I did it certainly didn't, first of all, it certainly didn't happen overnight. But how I did that, the first thing, and, and it was the same thing that I did at ASPEN first, is really setting my own North Stars. One of the things that I was able to do in my first CEO role. Was get to know myself as a leader and what was important to me. What are my north stars? What are the things I'm gonna be able to communicate consistently and effectively? So for example, one of those is this little mantra, my three E's, high engagement, high empowerment, and high expectations. So I sort of came in. To my AABB role. Able to communicate what am I expecting, what am I all about, and then being really consistent with that and finding opportunities for that to. Show up for people to see that, that, it was for real. I had to build a lot of trust and, and do that through transparency. There was definitely a transparency challenge that I was surprised about. And I was glad that staff were really open so. Some of it was really little things like sharing board materials being available for people to talk to, and some of it was bigger. In fact, one of the early days that I was here, maybe two months in, I actually came in to the office on the weekend and took down the translucent film off of every single glass office wall because it. For me, it sort of symbolized fake transparency and it was really bothering me. And, you know, everybody came back in on Monday morning, was like, oh, this is, this woman is talking about something really, really different. I met with every member of the team and I did this at, at ASPEN too. But again, they knew me. I met with everyone. On the staff, it was about maybe just under 60 people at the time and asked them to bring a picture, a drawing, a graphical representation of they thought a great culture would look like. I had my own, and it prompted lots of discussion. It helped me learn a lot about the individuals, how they think, and it also helped me understand what their culture was and where it came from. So. Every membership type, you know, every profession has its own culture. So while I came in here with my own thoughts, also needed to understand and listen to what was important to them. Process quality excellence, not making errors. Exactly what you want in blood banking how did I marry that? It can't just come in and be like, okay, everybody, no more silos. That's it, you know, really had to, to work to listen, but I still have somewhere in here I've got all the old, old pictures and that everyone drew and somewhere actually quite impressive and have sparked great conversations early days and over the years.

Jackson Boyar 6:32

So you said 60 FTEs and you had a one-on-one meeting with everybody at the company.

Debra 6:38

I did.

Jackson Boyar 6:39

That's, that's a lot of time that I think most CEOs might not invest into culture. You might talk to your board or your leadership team. What do you think you were able to do differently because you met with the junior members of the team, those who aren't in the room with the executives?

Debra 6:56

I think I was able to move it is, first of all, it is a lot of time. It's an investment. It's an investment in really understanding. The programs, the people, I mean, at the end of the day, our people are our biggest assets with really understanding what, what is the portfolio of, resources, the time, talent, and treasure that I have to work with. Talking to people who are doing the work, I think is really important. Especially at a new organization where I'm not from the field, coming in without an insight into, the day-to-day in a blood, testing lab. Really understanding what are the things that are getting in their way. And what are the things that they see as wins? What are their skills? I it, for me, it really helped me just build in those first 90 days, build a comprehensive assessment. I think the other thing I'll say is by nature, I think a lot of CEOs are problem solvers. We like to come in and we're not really good at holding our tongues and waiting to, you know, just. Let, let me come in like a surgeon and fix it. I think that time investment also kept me from making some quick decisions. I was able to stand by my, my word that I was going to listen and learn. And not make a lot of decisions in the first 90 days, and that investment of time was well worth it and helped me stick to that because I wasn't sitting in a room by myself dreaming of everything that needed to change. And that's also not fair. To the team. I mean, they are doing a lot of really incredible work to be where they are. And yes, the culture needs to evolve. Yes, the organization needs to evolve, but it doesn't mean everything is bad. So that listening tour to me is, essential.

Jackson Boyar 8:48

So as you tenure at a B, B, I imagine you start having. Leadership conversations about the nature of the business model where you want to take the association over time, maybe one year, three or five year. It's not a small association. It's about a $20 million operating budget. It's global. Where do you want AABB to be five years from now? When you think about the business model, is it markedly different from today? Is it a little bit better across the board? What does that look like?

Debra 9:21

Oh, it's such a it's such a hard question and maybe an easy question at the same time. The broad answer, the non, the non quantitative answer is, you know, we, I, I wanna maximize abbs impact. I mean, ultimately we impact patient care every single day. And the more we can do that and bring our expertise to healthcare as it changes and evolves, people whose loved ones are positively impacted. That's for today and tomorrow. Like right now, we're we, well, we always have this in place, but if there's a storm happening, we are coordinating where blood is moving all around the country. So every day we're able to really connect with the impact of that mission. For me, I want that to be more all the time. How do we quantify that? it's hard to say. But in numbers we talk with the board about, you know, what would it look like? What would it take for us to double in size? Because it's something that feels lofty, right? For 20 many organizations do, but not in, at least for transfusion medicine is not a very fast changing field. Biotherapies is a different story. It's a big, it's sort of a big question. How do we double in size? What would that look like? Who would we be serving what are the opportunities? do that, you know, our job is to provide value. How do we do that in a way that picks the right areas of value, the right customers, the right members, and I think there's a lot of opportunity grow and to use abbs expertise in novel ways. One of the way things that I think is really important is to think not only how we can serve our members of today and tomorrow, but how can we take our expertise, our strengths, and actually apply them of our space. So an adjacent area of healthcare, for example. Or for that matter to the frozen pizza industry, if they need, you know, to apply our, our quality management stand systems. And that's something we talk about here. Like would this set of standards and quality that we're working on a new program right now for facilities that aren't our current customers or members. Would this apply to a frozen pizza manufacturer? And if so, would we? Want them as a customer, will we allow them as a customer, maybe not a voting member. To me that is so much fun. It's, it, it sort of boils down to me to where are the gaps and the needs? What are the needs in any market that we can fill, and what's the trade off if we do that instead of another And we've been, I think, very successful in extending core expertise, which is blood banking to out, to biotherapies into, into new areas. that didn't full, maybe that was wishy-washy of an answer.

Jackson Boyar 12:25

I think it's a great starting point and it speaks to the rebrand, which we'll talk about in a little bit at AABB frozen pizzas would be a big market leap. I love that. I've been the CEO in a leadership team meeting. When we talk about adjacent markets, and oftentimes there is a tension between how deeply we've penetrated the impact and the demographics of our core market before we're ready to move into an adjacency. So when you think about blood banks or biotherapy, where are you today and what's sort of the threshold that A CEO should be thinking they, they need to cross before going to market 2, 3, 4, and so on.

Debra 13:08

Well, I'm, I'm not sure I would position it as sort of a distinct, you know, I think about adjacent markets. It's not always a. Clear, like this is now market three or market four. Sometimes they, they might be a natural evolution. So for example, we're in Biotherapies, ABB has been in Biotherapies for many years as the way that cell and gene therapy is provided, evolves. Over the last few years, we saw that that was going to be delivered to the patient through a pharmacy, which is new. So that's a change. So in order to ensure we're, we believe that we are the organization that is the right organization to serve value and ensure, most importantly, ensure safety and quality, which is our mission. we developed standards. We have come out with a new accreditation program. What we ask ourselves is what is our role with this new market? And I think a new question for associations to be exploring is when we go into a new market, it to be the same thing that we are to. The market we are serving over here. So I have my core members here that are coming to my meeting and they're coming to my online education events and they're part of our connected community. And now I'm, I'm serving cell and gene therapy pharmacies in a way that hopefully helps them and I know will help them ensure that the product a patient receives is of high quality. But they have already another. Association community, that's the right place for them. So my job is actually to facilitate a partnership and a good relationship with where they already are, and to help my board and my team see that it's not our, it's not our goal to be all things to everyone. That is, I think, a, I don't think we always think about that as associations because we're used to being the professional home. I think that's a real limiting factor in and in thinking creatively about where we can really provide value in new markets.

Jackson Boyar 15:28

I wonder if there's almost a cultural tension in associations which are known for being community spaces, inclusive spaces relative to the business, kind of fundamental of focus and doing less for a couple groups really, really well.

Debra 15:43

think that's such an astute point. Jackson, and I fully agree. I think there, I mean, to the level where there's a tension, but I think even with using the word customer and at a BB, we, we use the word customer for some of our products like cell and gene therapies. A, a good example, and, and we we're okay with it. We're, we're really comfortable with the idea that we're serving people in different ways. Not everybody is going to be a member. You also raise, I think, a really big tension in the association space, which is being comfortable with the idea of associations as a business. And some associations are, and some are really uncomfortable with that. And sometimes CEOs are in a tough spot because we're held accountable for the business. But we might have board members that don't wanna view the association as a business. And so these tensions are sort of something we live with. the time. And nonetheless, associations are a business. We just have a unique business model. And I think if we leverage that model, we can actually really deliver value and, and grow, deliver excellence for our teams. All the wonderful things we wanna do. There's a real opportunity for associations to embrace what we do from a business perspective.

Jackson Boyar 17:10

I, I think a lot about you know, I'm, I'm from the social enterprise world where, you know, I've run for-profit companies, but we very much focus on a double bottom line, and that has been. A difficult line to walk. I do not envy association CEOs who have even more stakeholders than a for-profit company and their boards and their members and so on. It is a cultural challenge to look, you know. The future of the industry in the face recognize there's competition from for-profit online communities and consumer brands and have to compete there, but also live true to the tenants of being a nonprofit and carrying the mission. So let's, let's talk about, you know, one of the levers you've kind of pulled to activate. The business model and more business needs more impact in association in launching abbs first biotherapy certification. The CABP help me understand what it takes to go from, you know, no product, no certification to something in reality,

Debra 18:12

Yeah.

Jackson Boyar 18:12

you make the case for the business model. What was that like?

Debra 18:15

For me. a high level, this has been so much fun. I love product development and I love watching my team leaders, like the folks who worked on our staff and on our volunteer membership. Work on something new and sort of build, especially internally, build the capacity, build the expertise to design and launch, and now, you know, continue to foster growth in a new certification program. Certification programs ideally are done very well, and they're not, it's not the same as just tossing up a, an education program. We need them validated. We need, you know, there's a whole, field dedicated and many associations dedicated to, supporting other associations with credentialing programs. I think that it started with a vision. It started with with a vision by the team to. able to bring this to bear. We were working on really developing our, you know, what is a, B, B what's our spot in in Biotherapies? Because Biotherapies is huge and there's other, many other great organizations that are doing great things. We, you know, what's our, where, what are we trying to accomplish? And. We, we were doing a lot of what I call playing, well, I didn't come up with this. This is, this is from a book called Playing to Win. We were doing a lot of playing to play, and, and we needed to find some spots where we were going to be the leader. And in that analysis, one of the. we identified was, is, was workforce challenges, which probably is no surprise. I mean, this is a, a big issue. And as a part of that analysis, we identified that there was no way for someone to know that who they were hiring had expertise. No way for experts. And of course we started with our own members. No way to say, okay, I'm a, I am an expert. Here's how you know that, no defined body of knowledge. So we were very excited to come out with this. We, the business case that we made to the board was, I think, really exciting for the board also, you know, be able to be first to market with something, build partnerships with other organizations. So no one else tried to duplicate that. I'm over answering your question because I just love this. I love it, love it, love it. Lesson learned. For me and for the whole team market adoption of something brand new, takes longer and you, you know, this better than better than many. I think that that's been a source of both frustration and let's call it momentum for the team, trying to figure out how we grow and celebrating the wins, but. We don't want the team to feel frustrated that, it's gonna take, five years for this to take hold. The industry itself doesn't really have, you know, it is moving really fast. But that, that's one of our, our biggest lessons along the way. So we're adjusting and, and, and the program is definitely moving forward and growing slowly but surely.

Jackson Boyar 21:33

You might argue it takes multiple decades to really instill a certification into the economy. At least if you look at some of the most established you know, nine figure sort of level of, of impact. But I am curious when you, when you. First take the business case to a board, you know, it doesn't come for free. You have to invest in the standards and the build of the curriculum and so on. What does that kind of investment look like? And you don't have to give us exact numbers, but how, what would, what would the business case look like?

Debra 22:04

I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, so I definitely can't. You know, we positioned this as a, what we call a strategic investment, so we kept it outside of the annual operating budget. Which allowed the board to see, to track, to understand, okay, this is, this is this program in isolation, and understand that, you know, we still have to run the day-to-day business of the organization. So we positioned that differently. Which I know many or many associations do, but differently from a, a traditional capital expenditure. But what we went with was a full plan. Here's what, here's the case, why we think it's important. Here's what we think the addressable market is, and I. I will take a gold star for my team to say, this was before Claude and Chat, GPT would've made this so much easier. Right. I think about redoing that it's important to have talked to a really thoughtful plan to engage. The board leaders, what, you know, something like this to be successful. It can't feel like staff is shoving this and, and promoting this. And when we get in the boardroom, we already know what the majority of our board leaders think. We've already woven into into the pre-reads, into our presentation, what they need to see. That's ROI. What are the things we're gonna need from them And, sometimes it's, it's about storytelling. Everything that goes to the board is, is about telling a story and painting a vision that helps them see why this is the, be the thing to do. And then it's the board's to deliberate and, and in this case go forward and really champion, you know, really, really champion.

Jackson Boyar 23:57

Makes a lot of sense. And I know in your time at AABB, you've had to push through not just initiatives, but sort of transformational changes to the organization. So let, let's talk a little bit about. The, the rebrand, you're able to keep the AABB, that's a huge plus. No, no domain change. But the name means something different today, and I think it speaks to the adjacencies of the market as your core expands. What was it like to change your brand? I've talked to a number of association CEOs that have legacy and baggage tied to their brand, some of which is helpful, a lot of which is hindering their current growth. How did you make the change?

Debra 24:37

This was a very this was sort of like a fortuitous wonderful opportunity for me as a new CEO. in and one of my first board meetings was a strategy meeting, and A BB, I should say at the time, was going by a BB. And then in parentheses it said. Formerly known as the American Association of Blood Banks. So that's like a little like the artist

Jackson Boyar 25:04

A mouthful.

Debra 25:05

Right. It's a definitely a mouthful. I actually went to visit a member early in my tenure and I love to go visit members and talk to them and donate blood wherever, I am. So I get to be a little bit of a secret shopper, but I went to visit one member who said, you know, it's really hard when I need to talk to a surgeon or someone, a blood user, let's say in, in the clinical setting because A, B, B. Has the standards and I give them to them and they say, what does a, b, b stand for? And I have to say, it doesn't stand for anything. And that didn't feel good, right? That didn't feel good. But as a new CEOI came into a board that knew that wasn't good. They knew that already. So the one win here is that I knew I did not need to convince my board. They were sort of itching to get a CEO in place that could. with this transformation. it's funny, at one of those early board meetings, the, one of the executive committee members at the time said, we should just sort of call the, you know, da da and blood and biotherapies and be done with it. And we went through a whole, year long process, market research, all the things you would expect. And we in fact, landed on exactly what she said at that meeting. And I'm not so surprised, but the investment of engaging the community was just, I think it really helped, and I can share if you wanna hear why we landed on the name we did and, and how it landed with the community. By the way, you may not know this, but we did that during COVI. We sort of launched the, the new brand during COVID, which wasn't what we had hoped. Obviously to do, but we wanted to be in person, but I think it was, think it provided a lot of energy and excitement to the membership during, frankly, as we all remember, a bit of a challenging time.

Jackson Boyar 27:02

I'm an association with a legacy name that imagines a brave new world where I have broader clear value proposition, like what are the things that did go wrong? If anything like help me. Get in touch with what might actually happen. That isn't what I want, so that maybe I could make the brave decision to to do the change.

Debra 27:23

Well, I'm gonna annoy you because I'm gonna say this really wet. Very, very, very smoothly. And we've all seen name changes not go well. I think a big part of why this went smoothly, and I promise I'll come to a thing, you could that is a lesson learned. I think part of why it went well was that we engaged the community early on. And we knew a few of the things that were. Sort of the guardrails, and that did include, and you mentioned this, the acronym, so abbs, written into legislation, into regulations. It was never an option. It was never entertained that we would the acronym. I guess that that's one piece of suggestion. What are the things that are so important that they really. Need to stay the same. I have seen many organizations change names and it hasn't gone well. and lesson learned from my own experience before I was a CEO is even just with a logo, you never really can underestimate how attached are to names, logos, colors, and how members. This is their professional home. So it's like changing their address. It's very important. It feels very, very personal. You have to know what your board thinks before you walk in the room. And yes, staff are capable. They're more creative in the, you know, meaning the board are not usually graphic designers unless it's the, graphic design association. Of course, my like lesson learned, again, not, not as a CEO, is you have to engage people all along the way. Even if you think you know what the end result should be. Don't present ideas that you don't like because you might get stuck with it. But if people feel left out, if people feel like a decision of something, of great importance was made without them. No matter how excellent the design, no matter what, if it's the right name, will flop because at the end of the day, it is their association, not yours As staff,

Jackson Boyar 29:47

you strike me as somebody who does the pre-work and avoids the work that comes up when you don't do the pre-work. Harking back to 60 one-on-ones when you first joined AABB, seems like a lot of time on the front end, but the time saved down the line. The organizational momentum that you can build when you do that pre-work. It's absolutely worth it. It's just a hard decision to make in the moment. Let's, let's talk about something that maybe was a bit more reactive, out of necessity. So, I know in I think it was 2022, your annual meeting had to go virtual right after the pandemic. Because everyone was craving in person in 2022. Hurricane Ian popped up with little notice. Tell us about that type of decision.

Debra 30:33

That was terrible. I mean, it was just a terrible, situation. I mean, it was unavoidable. I'm even getting emotional while I'm telling you about it. I remember being in front of my team, on Zoom, of course, and having to tell the whole staff and, and meeting with the board, know, after two cancellations in COVID and everybody's working, and now here is the last possible second And the hurricane was, was upon us. So it really was one of the more difficult times. and people are working so hard and pulling together so hard and for associations a community, bringing people together is what we do. Our first strategic driver is a connected community. So we hadn't felt connected or we had, felt differently connected for so long. we, we certainly pivoted. We had a virtual meeting. Our membership rallied around us. All of the things. One of the things I distinctly remember, which I so appreciated, was, the association community itself is so connected and people. My colleagues not just my colleagues that I'm very close with, but people were reaching out, just, was so heartbreaking, I think, for the industry as for the association industry to see. One thing I'm really proud of, in addition to the decision that we made, which was certainly the right decision, I can share if it's of interest, how that all went. But immediately after we made the decision, we were able to get. of the food and beverage, which had been per we were about to get on planes, I mean it was about to happen. We were able to redirect that all to people in need in in the area and support our members, which are blood collectors and hospitals in or and surrounding region, to be able to really make sure that what was most important. Obviously is everyone's safety. Making sure that that blood is on the shelf where it needs to be, when it needs to be. And I think that really helped, sort of lift up the, the team after such a tough, tough set of decisions to be made.

Jackson Boyar 32:49

You know, as a. Outsider. When you have to go virtual like that, is there a plan you're cultivating as a backup throughout the entire process that you hit go and you can just do it virtually? Or does that then start the clock on an entirely new line of work, in this case in 48 hours of time or so?

Debra 33:08

Such a great question and I think there are a lot of lessons learned and a lot of opportunities I think, that have come about since then in terms of how can we connect people. In new ways, so we can talk about that. When we made the decision to cancel the meeting, we also, we did not have plans for a backup to all be virtual at the time. And we're talking, you know, 6,000 people over several days and, 15 concurrent sessions. To have technology ready to press go is frankly very expensive and. Just even the staff to be able to dedicate to that kind of a backup plan is probably fairly unreasonable. I think my team was very thoughtful in what would it take to deliver a virtual meeting at the level of excellence that we. I our members and our attendees deserve. And so we did not just put all those people on Zoom the same days. We delayed for several weeks, we rescheduled. We did have a virtual meeting, but we worked to make sure the technology was the one we wanted it to be, to have everything in place so that the experience was the best. That it could possibly be. And I think that was a really important decision. It really, it can feel like, oh, just, just kind of bootstrap this together and that might be the right thing. But it also could be starting back to that idea of North Stars, what is important for us to deliver? How can we do that? Can we, is there something we could do in the intro? Can we, still connect people in this way or that way, but. But think differently about a, a true virtual sort of backup plan. It's, it's not that easy to, at that scale it and do it well while you're also unwinding a multimillion dollar location-based meeting. So that, that's my advice is don't feel like you have to just get a bigger Zoom subscription and press go.

Jackson Boyar 35:15

it sounds like again, a lot of care taken for the staff and member experience which will pay, pay dividends my observation over a year working with associations just a year at this point is, is how the beating heart of the association member experience is the annual meeting. And in your case it sounds like a very large portion of the operating budget as well. How do you kind of financially plan for, for something like that?

Debra 35:44

Yeah, that's a great question. The meeting is may about a fifth of our annual budget. So one of the ways that we plan for that is over the, the time that I've been here, we've been very intentionally working to diversify our revenue portfolio. So that's number one is, there are. Associations, I know where this is. Could be 80%, at some, a large trade association might be so reliant that I, I felt very fortunate through frankly COVID, through COVID as well, that we had already diversified our revenue. Insurance coverage is pretty important, and that for us is unfortunately we got to practice our insurance claims three times in a row. I don't think too many of my colleagues can that on their Gold Star list. Learning how to capture, even in from a budgeting standpoint, how we capture the expenses, how revenue that you expect. For example, you might have publication sales in the bookstore, but if it's not reflected in the annual meeting budget, it's harder to justify within your insurance claim. Little things like that when we announced was really important to activate the insurance claim. So calling the insurance partner early, all of those. All of those nuances. And then the last thing I'll share is, back to revenue diversification. I think COVID taught us that we, while yes, getting together, we all believe, I think that being in person and talking to each other in person and networking in the hallway, all of those things is amazing and wonderful and we want it to be a part of the association. Only doing that once a year also isn't healthy for a connected community. And so how do we bring people together in meaningful ways? That are different than an annual meeting might be, could still be in person and in, in different, configurations, but also the build off of existing programs already. Maybe, study groups for, for our program or or peer mentoring. We have a mentor. Program that a lot of people participate in, what's something that we can do to, to actually rethink that, not only from a revenue model, but from a connection model? What, what would this look like if we were connecting people all throughout the year and not just at a single point in time? That is dependent on a lot of factors, including hurricanes, which we incidentally turns out cannot control even though we might like to.

Jackson Boyar 38:20

We are recording this at the moment before a very large snowstorm is about to hit the us. So yeah, there are a lot of external factors that are tough to control for maybe at conference. Attendees don't even want to come to this country for one political reason or another. It's hard to get everyone in person these days.

Debra 38:39

Yeah.

Jackson Boyar 38:40

Very good perspective. I'll give you one last question before we wrap up. Stepping back as an association, lifer and leader you have a pretty good perspective on the embattlement of COVID and how associations have rebounded. If you're advising a new CEO help me, help me finish this sentence as you give them advice. Associations worry too much about blank and not enough about blank.

Debra 39:07

Okay. First of all, I'm still stuck in the fact that you call me an association lifer. That's I feel like that it just hit me like, oh, okay. Yeah, I actually this,

Jackson Boyar 39:18

Oof.

Debra 39:19

that is like, you're right. I just hadn't thought of myself that way. I still think I'm 30. Oh my goodness. Associations worry too much about making every single person happy and enough finding. The best opportunities that deliver both business results and mission results.

Jackson Boyar 39:41

Would you care to expound on how that's come to be the case for the association industry? I mean, I think it's really good business principles, but sometimes we're pulled by our stakeholders into various actions. And how, how do you come to be more focused as an association leader?

Debra 40:00

It is a great question and I didn't expand 'cause I was trying to stick to the assignment of just filling in my blank.

Jackson Boyar 40:06

You did a great job.

Debra 40:07

Thank you. I appreciate the, the acknowledgement. I think that. How did we get here? I think, you know, associations are governed by boards of people who I did not come up with this, but they are, they are the customer, the decision maker, the workforce. So by nature we're, we've got these tensions all the time. CEOs as I mentioned earlier, we're accountable to the business results, but we're working, not in every case, but in some cases with members who don't have business acumen, they don't have business experience There. Practitioners from whatever field it is that that association represents. So what's important to them in their experience is different from a corporate board. Because a corporate board, people are there for particular reasons for the business results. And I think just by the DNA of associations, they're created to bring people together to solve. Common challenges not to grow the business of the association. So from like the start, the premise of why the business was created was not to have good business results, nonetheless, in order to do that great work. The more business, the stronger my business results, the more public policy impact I can have, the more I can outreach to countries or areas of the world that aren't currently, having the safe blood practices in place. All of that, every, every dollar we bring in goes to support our work and grow the association. It's not going to our stock or to, shareholders in the same way as a for-profit. But because we're a community of people who love our association, there's no question a lot of attention and energy goes to making everyone happy. What happens when someone is not happy with the decision? What happens if that's a past president and how are you gonna handle that? What do, what do we do when there's a complaint? And it can really redirect, I think there are, are boards and a lot of work goes into by CEOs and, and, and board leaders avoiding that or building resilience within the board structure. nonetheless, I think as a part of our association, DNA, we spend a lot of time on that or we worry about it. Instead of thinking about how we're gonna make sure we're here at all and growing and finding the thing that delivers value each and every single day to our members and our members of tomorrow, making sure we do it really, really well. That's to me where we need to be focused. If we can avoid putting our energy where it's not gonna deliver ROI, I think we'll get a lot further on our mission impact.

Jackson Boyar 43:23

It's a really eloquent summary and I can only imagine I know how hard it is to let some portion of your stakeholders down, but sometimes you have to let it burn. While you build the foundation, and we could probably have a whole second podcast on just how to emotionally regulate yourself while you're doing that. But Deborah, I wanna thank you so much for being our inaugural guest on Built to Connect.

Debra 43:47

you.

Jackson Boyar 43:47

Thank you for sharing your wisdom today.

Debra 43:49

You so much. It's really been fun to think about these questions and we do have to have some follow up chats. I think about a number of these. You got me thinking. I wanna hear your thoughts too. So thank you so much, Jackson. This has been a lot of fun.