A Chamber Member’s Journey with Cathi Hight

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability and to correct obvious transcription errors while preserving the meaning of the original conversation.

Episode 39 — A Chamber Member's Journey with Cathi Hight
Clean Speaker-Labeled Transcript
Guest: Cathi Hight
Automated QA: Passed

00:00.83 Brandon Burton
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
00:15.832 Brandon Burton
Hello and welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. We're here today with episode thirty-nine of Chamber Chat Podcast, and I'm Brandon Burton. It is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas so you can better serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest today is Cathi Hight, president of Height Performance Group. Kathy is the developer of the member retention kit and a new approach to tiered membership. Kathy helps chambers meet expectations of their members. She provides strategies to help chambers manage constant change, deliver benefits that members value, leverage volunteer and staff resources efficiently, and effectively communicate the value of membership. Kathy has a diverse career experience, which includes serving as a senior vice president of growth strategy for the Austin Chamber, VP of Operations for the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii. Regional Sales and Marketing Manager for Doll Foods and Dean Foods, National Manager for the Kaufman Foundation's Fast Track Entrepreneurship Program, and a Motorola University instructor for continuous improvement. Kathy was a national trainer for ACCE for membership development and has been an instructor for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Organization Management for over 14 years. Today, Kathy and I are going to have a discussion around a chamber members journey and we'll get into this discussion right after we hear from our sponsor. Every chamber is looking for new ways to increase their non-dues revenue. Has your chamber found a good affinity program? I have a great affinity program to offer your chamber that will continue to increase in revenue year after year. I want to introduce you to Swipe It for all of your credit card processing needs. Swipe It has a unique affinity program that 1.
02:18.306 Brandon Burton
Helps your chamber members be more profitable, and three, provides recurring nondues revenue to your chamber. To learn more, please visit chamberchapodcast.com slash CC for credit card. Again chamberchappodcast.com slash C C and get swiping with swipe it. Okay, Kathy, and we're back. Please take a moment, say hello to the audience and please share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.
02:53.1 Cathi Hight
Hi, Brandon, and hello everybody. I'm so glad that you're listening to this podcast. Hmm, something interesting. I guess that's that's always in the the the ears of the listener. some people may know this, others perhaps not, but I spent twenty five years of my life in Honolulu, Hawaii, and I actually grew up on the west shore of Oahu. So you know, you can always take a gal out of tech out of Hawaii, but I don't think you ever take the aloha out of the girl. So I'm your Hawaiian connection.
03:24.46 Brandon Burton
All right. Well being that we're both Texans at at the moment, you in the Austin area, me in the Dallas area, I know Texas is a great place to live. A lot of people come here for various reasons and they can't leave. But I mean it's it's gotta be a a good poll to bring you here from Hawaii. That's
03:43.886 Cathi Hight
well, you know, I had I had kind of an in between stop. I first when I was recruited by the Kaufman Foundation, I was recruited to Denver to run the entrepreneurship program. And then I kinda migrated up to Boulder and I spent sixteen years there. So so getting me over the water was the first challenge. But once I got here and my son went to school at C U Boulder and then he moved to Austin with a j with his first job and started a family. So that that's what made me pick up and and come and come and be here to be close to them.
04:16.866 Brandon Burton
That will do it. That's strong poll. Yeah. So I I I know I touched on it a bit in your bio, but can you tell us a little bit more about height performance group, just for anyone who may not be as familiar? just share with us a little bit more about your business and what you have to offer chambers as you serve them.
04:19.197 Cathi Hight
S.
04:36.622 Cathi Hight
Sure. so I launched my company in two thousand and one. I tell everybody that I was an accidental chamber consultant. I started my business doing organizational development, strategic planning, marketing, and customer loyalty strategies, leadership development, things like that. And I volunteered for my that the Boulder Chamber and they were having a retention issue. And the one thing I think that I didn't realize about chambers, even though I used to work for the state chamber in Honolulu was that they didn't really understand their their members very much in terms of segmentation. So we did a lot of work sort of doing a deep dive into the membership creative retention plan. And that was in showcase at ACCE. And the next thing I knew, I was in the chamber consulting business. But over the eight 18 or 19 years, that's kind of migrated from not I still do a lot of membership development here at model development, a lot of strategic planning. Board and staff retreats. But really, my essence of how I try to help chambers is to help them to continue to evolve, to meet the expectations of their community and their members, and to stay essential to the communities that they serve. So that's how I all sort of preface it, and the projects that come out of it are varied. So I'm working with a group of five chambers now that are looking to merge. just got done working with another chamber, redesigning vision, mission, core values. so it really varies. but but I think I I think I find myself working with chambers that really are inspired to stay essential to their communities and they're not afraid to change. So that's that's that's sort of what draws and it kind of connects us together.
06:24.974 Brandon Burton
That's great. I I noticed as you're explaining that, the five different chambers you're working with right now and how they all have different outcomes. as you were giving your explic explanation about how you serve these chambers, my the thought was coming to me. I'm sure there's some things that you kind of have a similar approach and maybe similar direction to begin with. But then what are what are some of those things that the chambers you know, are unique to them? that may take that course a different way to make those outcomes different for each chamber.
06:57.594 Cathi Hight
you know, oftentimes your approach by the executive director or the president that says here's what the challenge is and here's what they want to work on. I always ask to interview key stakeholders, you know, influencers in their community, whether they're members or not. and I might interview about 25 of them. and and and I think that that's really helpful to sort of get the lay of the land, get some different perspectives. And sometimes what comes out of that really guides the chamber in a different way to say, well, it's not really about that, or that's a small piece of something that's actually bigger. and so I really let that be an outside in process. So sometimes that initial thing that they want to do changes to become a really different initiative, but it's usually the right initiative. And I think that's that's important. Let's not just chase the The red herring, let's you know, I always tell people my job is to help you figure out the real problem and solve it. And sometimes the problem they present isn't the real one.
07:58.774 Brandon Burton
Yeah. I like that how you interview so many of those key stakeholders. That way you're not just the person coming in from out of town thinking that you have all the answers, but you're actually finding out what those needs are and helping them come to their own answers is what it sounds like, which is a great, great setup.
08:15.575 Cathi Hight
Yes, yes.
08:17.624 Brandon Burton
So so our topic of of discussion today, as I mentioned earlier, is is going to be focused around a chamber members journey. So there's some different steps along the way to kind of establishing a chamber members journey. Y could you start maybe explaining to us about developing a a member persona?
08:39.212 Cathi Hight
Yes. I I think a lot of chambers have seen the matrix. I think the the four types of members. I know that Kyle Sexton and Frank Kenny and I have talked about that. n none of us developed it was actually developed by a board of directors at the Kitchener Waterloo Chamber in Ontario, Canada. So I think they're the brilliant minds behind that. but I think you can kind of do a little bit of a deeper dive and and and again kind of goes to my earlier conversation. or thing that I mentioned about segmentation. It's about really trying to understand different groups of members. So a persona is it's it's it's you thinking about different groups of members but sort of putting yourself in their shoes and imagining who they are and what their lives are like. So a persona is usually a fictional representation. Like we never use pictures of real members, but it's based on real things and we know about them, like demographics, behaviors, where they are in their career, you know, if they're married, if they have family, if their what their role is in an organization. And so we kind of spend time creating personas. sometimes we design four, six, eight different personas. It's wherever you think you've got the largest pockets of representation in your in your in your membership. Because when you look at the matrix, it they're just four generic sort of descriptions. Personas, that's the whole thing about the word persona, person, is sort of imagining a particular person. So I'll give you an example. So maybe there's entrepreneur Emily. And entrepreneur Emily, she she may be, you know, in her late twenties. she started a business or she bought a franchise. she might have just might just be her. She maybe she's got a couple of other people, she might work out of her home. So we try to kind of think about well, what is Emily's life like? Okay. She's married, she got two kids, she's juggling this business, working out of her house. this is her first business, so there's a lot she doesn't really know. She's afraid of failing because she's, you know, put a lot of time and money into it and she's left her job.
11:02.206 Cathi Hight
so we really kind of get into the the person and sort of think about well, who is this person and what are they like? What are their fears? what are they really trying to do and and what do they need? and then we kind of talk about marketing Mary and she she really her job is to market the company. She doesn't own the company. she's trying to really create visibility for the company, kind of talk about their story, their message. position, maybe this is a new market for them and there's a lot of competition. So how does she kind of get in front of the right people? and this is the person who may be buying sponsorships for you. But the idea is what is what is Mary's job and what and what are the challenges that she faces and what is she trying to do? And then we could have CEO Charlie and he could own the company, maybe not, but he's he's the big decision maker. He probably has quite a lot of staff. And so what are his concerns, you know, not finding the right workforce, kind of wanting to leave a a legacy, but really trying to keep the company in good hands before he retires, looking out at the market, seeing a lot of changes in competition, maybe worried about what's going on in in the schools, concerned about traffic and I wanna I want to, you know, retire here, but I want to make sure this is a good place for my grandkids. So, you know, each of those personas is different. And so spending that early time really just having that emotional connection that what I call customer empathy and really profiling. So if you think about like CSI or what is the other show that kind of that has the behavioral criminal model Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's the same thing. It's like you're going to do profiles.
12:48.366 Brandon Burton
Yeah, criminal minds, yeah.
12:55.048 Cathi Hight
and that's when I realized that a lot of chambers really didn't had a hard time doing this because they're like, you know, I don't really think I know them that well. Or I'm not really sure how do I how do I bundle them together so that I can actually create a profile. so it's harder than it sounds, but it's it's actually a lot of fun. And we kind of would have a picture up there to say, okay, this is Emily, everybody. Everybody kind of so you kinda think about like the old picture of the on the Wheaties cereal boxes from a long time ago. It's sort of that image, it's like Can you picture him or her? so that's the first place is is doing the personas.
13:31.608 Brandon Burton
So I know as you're talking about personas, I'm I'm hearing you know, a lot of other people that I've you know heard of are they call it creating an avatar, you know, for their their audience. And it's the same thing where you're able to to pin a name, maybe have an actual picture that you can look at and say, This is Emily, this is Mary, this is Charlie. So when you look at them, you know what their story is, you know what their purpose is, you know what their goal is and what they're trying to accomplish. w through their membership with the chamber. question I I came up with is you're talking about CEO Charlie. So he's with the bigger company, a lot of employees. In those instances as you're creating these personas, are you looking at the person that actually took the step to join the chamber and making the persona around them or around the business? Since CEO Charlie's business may have several reps underneath the chamber. How do you look at that?
14:29.954 Cathi Hight
Well, even though we tend to look at companies as being our member accounts, companies don't make decisions. People do, right? And and if you're familiar with the book called Strategic Selling, came I think came out in the eighties and it's been redone a few times. They talk about the fact that if it's a company, there there are multiple users. And you need to understand the needs of the different users. So that's kind of where I come from in my sales and marketing background is If I really want to protect an account, I I might have to identify three or four users, right? The CFO, the the the the CEO, the VP of marketing, and realize that I've got to have a value proposition that works for all of them, right? So in that case, if that's who I'm gonna be trying to engage at the chamber, I have to profile those most common roles or customers. And make sure that I have something for them, right? Because it could be a collective decision that CEO might leave. And so have I resonated, have I demonstrated value with the other users who might be making that decision? so it's it's it's not the company, even though like I said, yes, the company's the member technically, but when you were trying to engage people, it's the people you are personifying. Yeah.
15:53.864 Brandon Burton
Absolutely. Okay, so the the next step that we'll look at here is the member journey maps for joining. You wanna dive into that and explain what that looks like?
16:04.354 Cathi Hight
Sure. so you know, this concept has been around for a while, probably ten years in the for-profit sector, but relatively new, I would say, in the association space. And they've been kind of delving into this the last a couple of years, and I would say really brand new in the chamber space. We tend to lag behind associations. I don't know why that is, but they were the first ones to use tiered models. so you know, they just tend to be a few years. I think I had a chambers. so this concept about journey, a customer journey, is to say that, you know, every customer is on a journey, with or without you, they they're on a journey. You need to understand what that journey is. And if if they're doing the journey with you, then you need to recognize the journey and you need to be able to make it successful for them. So for instance, you know, if you were to think about, you know, somebody wants to be a member already is a member and their and their journey, their professional journey is elevating their brand, right? So the brand of the company. So that's that's at Marketing Mary. You know, that that's my journey. I'm I'm figuring out how to elevate my brand. You have other members who are on a journey to grow their business, right? My journeys grow my business. Or I want to, I want to shape our community or a region, or hey, I want to advance my career. so if you can sort of identify a few journeys that your members might be on, there could be the journey to lead, you know. I'm I I want to be a leader, or I am a leader and I'm looking for an opportunity to serve, right? Those are all journeys. So the whole idea is to realize that they have a greater ambition or goal. And when they're looking at the chamber, they're looking for ways to activate that journey. So this idea about the journey is thinking about the fact that there's a path that they're on, and we happen to be partners in that journey, and I want to make sure that I can help them navigate the journey with what we have to offer to help them have a successful set of interactions with us. But it's their journey, it's not ours, even though I think we have the intention that we want them to sponsor.
18:29.004 Cathi Hight
Or you want them to stay members. Again, it's coming from that customer empathy, that place in the member that says, What's my journey? What am I trying to do here? And then tapping into that journey and mapping that out so that you can actually be an influential partner in that journey.
18:46.454 Brandon Burton
So as you're explaining that, it it sounds like there's some similarities to developing the member persona with creating the the member journey maps. maybe the difference that I see is with the member personas, you're looking at these groups, these segmented groups of people, and maybe kind of making a blanket assumption that the people in this group are doing this is their why as to why they're engaging with the chamber. And then the member journey becomes more personalized for that individual. to see, okay, what is their individual purpose? They they came from this persona, this is their blanket purpose. But then as you get to know them more personally, what is their individual why and how can we help them accomplish that?
19:29.43 Cathi Hight
Right. Right, right. So like let's just let's just take for example, and there's a book out there called Managing the Member Experience, which is written by Sue Frogett and Mark Levin. And they mostly work with associations and they released this book, I want to say it was twenty fifteen or sixteen. and in there th there are three member journey maps, which is great. Now they don't they don't really get into the personas, but it's a great overview of the concept of journey map. So I would recommend that to anyone. And I think you can only buy it from they're two separate consultants, but you can kind of only buy it from their website. So I don't I haven't seen it on Amazon, for instance. so so one of the the maps, which is really common, I think every chamber could use, is that first year onboarding journey, right? So we all want to onboard our brand new members. Because we know that first-year members don't have the best retention. So we can kind of create a 12-month journey map, probably broken down by quarters. And and the authors talk about that. They say, okay, that very first stage and the very first three months of this onboarding journey is is is the welcoming stage, right? And the member is probably thinking, okay, I joined, now what? Right? How do I get started? how do I tell you about me? how do I learn more about what what you guys do? And and where do I find this information? So that would be sort of generic, right? And then there is a connecting stage, there is an engagement stage and then a renewing stage. And so what the book then says, okay, so if you know those are the stages, then you design the map, right? So what should happen in the first 90 days and the next 90 days, etc. So That's great. I think creating just a broad onboarding journey map for the first year is a great idea. But I think you could take that further by adding the personas to say, well, what if I had like a little questionnaire and I welcomed you and I'll say, you know, we know that people joined the chamber for a number of different reasons and we would love to be able to serve you better. Could you
21:53.144 Cathi Hight
Could you help us out by answering just a few questions, right? So if if I just, you know, I wouldn't tell, I wouldn't ask what journey are you on, but but I would might but I might ask a question that says, you know, as you think about your motivation to join, you know, the chamber community, which of these things would be important to you, right? So to elevate my brand, grow my business, shape our community, or advance my career. Right. So they might pick one of those. And then what would be great is if I actually had four different little journey maps for onboarding based on those motivations. So if you told me you wanted to shape our community or shape our region, I'm probably not going to be inviting you to member orientation into business after hours. That would not be what I would do. I might do that with Grow My Business. advance my career, but I may not do that with you. And especially if I think that you're if you're the CEO Charlie, then maybe the first thing I would do is is have a board member welcome you, right? So so I think kind of plugging in the persona, thinking about the journey and then finding a way to customize that journey would be the ultimate goal, right? So when we think about onboarding, yes, we want everybody to have a successful first year. We know that's critical, but But I think adding the persona element to that journey map would help you to actually customize the approaches and who on your team would be helping to orchestrate that or what would you be pointing them to on your website. Maybe your emails might be slightly different.
23:32.83 Brandon Burton
And I love that, being able to personalize that message. In fact, the episode I did last week, it was a a book review on Pat Flynn's book called Superfans Developing You know Followers into a Superfan base. And in that book, he he starts off talking about you need to learn to speak the language of your followers. So with your chamber members. What language are they speaking? You don't want to say, let me help you create your journey map, because that's a chamber language, right? Right. So you want to help them establish what their purpose is and what their goals are and how you can help them. But then he talks about creating quick wins. So when you're you had mentioned about the keeping the retention after that first year, if they're getting quick wins along the way and you're helping them see the value that the chamber has to offer to them, and then broken up, you know, throughout that first year. then that retention is gonna stay much higher than it would be if you just let join and just kind of float along the way for the year and then, you know, flip a coin to see whether or not they they renew the next year. but then he talks about being keeping them connected and then engaged. So
24:41.206 Cathi Hight
It's it's it it's very, very similar. So if I'm gonna move to the connecting engagement stage, how I would navigate that for a CEO would not be the same as I would be navigating that for Emily. That would be totally different. the groups that I would introduce them to, where I would try to get them to engage, it needs to match sort of what that motivation is. Otherwise it just it feels frustrating when you think that the organization doesn't understand you and is not is not targeting you with opportunities that make sense to you.
25:17.624 Brandon Burton
So with the ongoing engagement, you had mentioned kind of breaking them down into segments. So you're reaching out to them and inviting them to different things that appeal to their specific journey map. are there other things that you you could give us tips or advice as far as engaging members on a more on a personal level like that?
25:37.994 Cathi Hight
well, you know, if you understand who the who the members are, so for instance, I was just talking to a chamber yesterday, they really want their whole team to sort of feel responsible for engagement, you know, that it just doesn't fall on the membership person. And they said, you know, maybe you could spend a couple of hours with our staff sort of looking at how do we How do we enhance the member experience and and what are our roles in in doing that, regardless of what you do, whether you're the front desk person or you're the person that puts on events? and so you know, like we're gonna actually have them all do a preliminary exercise, which is just based on the matrix itself with the four types of members, to have them identify three to five members that they think fall into, you know, those particular ones. but you know, just pulling up someone's profile. in the database and looking at their activities or who they are, what what their role is, their company, what does their company do? And if you have if you have someone on the phone, that would be a great thing to just be able to pull up their their profile and to know a little bit more about them and to be able to log that conversation, the gist of that conversation into the database so that other people who might do the same thing and pull it up would actually see that interaction. to start to realize that, you know, the more that you get to know and you start to s recognize them as people and understand what they're all about is certainly going to help you. So whether or not you have a journey map designed or not, I think just the just the essence of know your customer, right? Or get to know your customer would be important regardless of what your role is. because I think we all interact with members, but we all don't capture what we've learned about those members. And I think collectively, when you you've got different people doing that, you can get a really nice three sixty view of that member, instead of just the person who brought them in the door. So
27:45.358 Brandon Burton
I'd love that tip to be able to log those key count conversations in the database because I know so many chamber executives or membership engagement people, they'll they'll have these discussions and they get to know these members and individuals on a pretty personal level. And as I talk to them, they'll tell me, you know, John from ABC Company, you know, he has these things going on. And it's all in their head, you know, they They know these conversations because they've had it. But if somebody else on the staff were to have that conversation with John, they don't know where that left off. So being able to log some of those key conversations, I think, is a great tip for anybody to apply.
28:24.962 Cathi Hight
Yes, and and I'll mention just one one additional thing, because I think most of the association management systems like chambermaster or member clicks or anything like that can actually produce a total engagement report. And I think if you were to pull that a couple times a year, which just sort of captures the engagement over the last year or two, you know, which basically says here's their dues, but here's what else. they invested in, right? So maybe the dues was just a thousand dollars, but they did a five thousand dollar investment to a capital campaign or economic development plan. They somebody went on the Washington DC trip. they were a sponsor, you know, at the annual meeting or something else gives you a really good idea. You can't just look at the dues. You you sort of had to have this this overview. And of course it's only looking at transactions. It's not recording committee participation and other types of things. But when we've done that with some chambers, it it's been really interesting how they'll say, God, I didn't even know that that company did all that. So you know, like they're only paying 500, but wow, their their tall investment was was really like $10,000. And it that that tells me a lot about that company. And I was like, yeah, right, exactly. So even just pulling a report like that a couple of times a year. can give you some more insight into the members, maybe guide the conversations a little bit differently. So data can be your friend if it's there, whether it's captured as notes in the database or running reports. But all of that is usually already available. We're just not we're just not tapping into it.
30:11.146 Brandon Burton
So that maybe just open a new can of worms, but I'm thinking when you when you when you pull that report and you can see, you know, maybe the the top 15 or 20 businesses that have invested in the chamber that in the past year, do you then maybe put more attention on them and try to provide more value for them? Or do you look further down the list at those that didn't? contribute as much to try to add more value to them and build them up to where they're being more engaged.
30:46.23 Cathi Hight
Well, I mean I mean I think it's both. I think you definitely want to maintain those that are already very engaged with you. it's probably easier to get ten percent more engagement from those that are actively engaged. But I would definitely look at who's not engaged because one thing that we've known is up t up as many as I I think I can go up to seventy-five percent of dropped members are have usually not been engaged at all. So I I think looking at who is under engaged or not engaged at all, and just following up with them. And it's not to say that everybody has to be engaged in a transactional way, but I think it's it's sort of wondering why they haven't found anything to be of value to them. And maybe it's because we don't really understand what they're looking for, or it's just a lack of awareness of what might be available. So I think that it would make me want to pick up the phone and Or go visit and at least have a conversation so to understand a little bit more about it.
31:45.516 Brandon Burton
Yeah. And as you were giving your answer, I thought there may be a way even to take some of those top investors and help them to be able to express the value from the chamber to those that are not as engaged. So whether it that's through testimonials or videos on your website or, you know, some way to have them express the message of the value that the chamber's provided for them and the connections they've made and have them become a real advocate for the chamber.
32:12.406 Cathi Hight
Right. Absolutely. I mean, you know, they tell the story the best. So I think I think that's I think it's a great way of doing that. Okay. Well, anything else you want to know?
32:23.426 Brandon Burton
Yes, I would I was gonna ask you just as we start wrapping up here, besides obviously hiring you directly, which many chambers should do, call Kathy, what is one action item based on our discussion today that members or that chambers can do to help their members have a a successful journey with the chamber? If you're just to sum it up in into one action item.
32:47.616 Cathi Hight
Well, I think they could definitely get started on on c creating the personas. we usually do that with, you know, just we kind of make a list of the different types and then put one type per flip chart and just start kind of profiling and and trying to answer similar questions, you know, in terms of, you know, what do we think the age range is and w you know, what do we think income is and What do we think the biggest challenge or fear is for that type, right? So you kind of kind of do something sort of similar in terms of an exercise, but that's something they could easily do, I think, just within their organization. if they're an ACCE member, I've done webinars on member personas and journey maps. And if you're a member, I believe they're free and available on their site. on my site, there's lots of free articles, there's lots of webinars as well. but I think based on what we talked about, I I think people could probably just get started. They could also just Google, you know, j journey maps or customer personas, learn a little bit more about the concept, and then just sit down and and try it on for size. I think that's the only way that it really happens. and I and I think people actually have a good time doing it. And I th you know, I think it just makes it a lot easier. And what's what's interesting is I use a software, it's not for chambers, but a CRM software. And I've gone to their headquarters. And what's interesting is when you walk through their headquarters, you actually see these like what they look like cereal boxes, big cereal boxes hanging from the ceiling. And all of them feature their customer personas. That's yeah. So that as you walk around you can you can see Bill. and so Bill's, you know, motivation is this and this this is these are the challenges that really keep him up at night. and and here's what he's trying to do with the software. And it's there so that you just look up and as you're talking to somebody, you're like, I'm talking to Bill, you know. But but I do think that we can not to say you plaster that all over your chamber walls, but I think the idea is how how can we help everyone on our team understand
34:58.222 Cathi Hight
who our most common types of members are and how we serve them. the other thing you can do is once you have your personas, you can look at all your programs and you can actually go through your list of programs and say, who's it for? Is this for Emily? Is this for Charlie? and and and think about whether or not you have the programming that actually matches up to the reasons why they would want to be engaged.
35:22.38 Brandon Burton
That's perfect. So get started and have fun with it. That's what I Yes.
35:27.18 Cathi Hight
Absolutely. Absolutely.
35:29.226 Brandon Burton
As as we look to the future, I ask everybody this question I have on the show. As we look to the future, how do you view chambers of commerce and their purpose?
35:38.338 Cathi Hight
I think that chambers are always going to be necessary in the community as long as they understand what their core roles are. It is really not so much about events as much as it is understanding what your community's challenges are, defining how you help to address those challenges, and then be willing to change your how, or like Simon Senex says, understand your why. and it's true. It's like if you look at the community and you ask yourself, why do you exist and what is your purpose? And then you can shift the your how and your what to meet that purpose. So don't get too hung up on, you know, your annual festival or your your big events. Don't lead by that. Lead lead by the why, and then I think everything else is easy.
36:31.254 Brandon Burton
That's perfect. Well, Kathy, I wanted to to thank you so much for taking some time out of your day today to to be with us here on Chamber Chat Podcast. And thank everybody who's out there listening. The show notes for this episode will be found at Chamberchatpodcast.com slash episode thirty-nine. And in those show notes we'll we'll try to get the links to the books that you mentioned, Kathy. And also I'd like to put your contact information on there too, so people can get in contact with you. What are the best ways that you'd prefer listeners to reach out to you?
37:05.544 Cathi Hight
well, I mean they can they can always find me on LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook just by looking at Kathy C A T H I Height H I G H T. the website is height, H I G H T performance dot com. And they can always send an email to me at Kathy at high performance dot com. So lots of ways to find me and get in touch with me. if you just Google my name. lots of things will come up, so I won't be too hard to find.
37:39.894 Brandon Burton
All right. We'll we'll get those links in the show notes. But again, Kathy, thank you for spending time with us today. I really appreciate it.
37:46.744 Cathi Hight
Thanks, Brandon.
37:51.5 Brandon Burton
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