Blog
Can I Trust You?
I was recently thinking about something my very smart friend Jamie Notter is fond of saying: Trust and risk are correlated. As trust goes up, risk goes up. In order to lower risk, we also…
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What’s “Normal” For You?
An association colleague recently called me because her membership director is “freaking out” about their association’s retention rate. The rate? 65%. Which, if you look at data like that from Marketing General’s 2024 Membership Marketing…
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Try Before You Buy
Free samples are a time-honored tradition at bakeries. You walk in and there, on the counter, are bite-sized samples of some of the wares available for sale. You might have come in for a loaf…
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So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
The title of the fourth book in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “So long, and thanks for all the fish” is the message the intellectually-superior-to-humans dolphins leave as they depart Earth just…
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Truck Stuck! Now What?
I think we’re all familiar with the story of Truck Stuck by Sallie Wolfe. It’s a charming children’s book in which the kids are the heroes, figuring out a creative solution to get the truck…
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Do Your Incentives Make Sense?
I was recently chatting with a newly hired membership director. Their association offers both individual and group membership, and they were looking for ideas on ways to increase individual recruitment and retention. We had a…
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Resolve to Resolve Better
The “icebreaker” activity on every call I’ve joined in the past three weeks has been: “What’s your New Year’s resolution?” Responses have included things like: Productivity. Efficiency. Mindfulness. Pilates every day. No processed sugar this…
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Of Non Dues Revenue and Opportunity Costs
I recently had the opportunity to participate in an ASAE Marketing Mavens call focused on association career centers. My question for the group was: Many of my clients are finding that their career centers are…
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Be the Solution
Why do people associate in the first place? We come together because we have a goal we want to achieve or a problem we want to solve that has proved resistant to individual fixes. I was…
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Most People Don’t…But You Do!
I was honored to join Bart Berkey on the Most People Don’t…But You Do! podcast recently. Our conversation centered around the importance of asking tough questions and, even more so, how to deliver tough answers in…
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