93 – Sonny in the Hot Seat

In today’s episode, the roles get reversed. Peter puts Sonny in the hot seat. He asks about pressing topics in the association management world, so listeners can learn his perspective on these issues.

They touch on:

► Membership retention and engagement
► Revenue diversification
► Digital transformation
► Sustainability and value alignment
► Event management and community building

 The full audiovisual version of this episode is available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_y3RXk3UpCk

“The Obvious Podcast” is a production of ABC Florida East Coast Chapter. Unless otherwise stated, all content reflects the opinions of the guests and hosts.

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Transcript

Sonny Maken 0:09

Welcome to the Obvious Podcast. This is episode 93. My name is Sonny Maken. I'm the COO at ABC Florida East Coast.

Peter Dyga 0:19

And I'm Peter Dyga, President and CEO at the ABC Florida East Coast.

Sonny Maken 0:23

You are watching or listening to the Obvious Podcast, where all opinions reflected are our own unless we say otherwise.

Peter Dyga 0:29

Love the show, subscribe on any major podcast platform, or watch us in action on YouTube, follow the Obvious Podcast on Instagram, X and TruthSocial, and now on TikTok. All the links you need are in the show notes. Reach out to us anytime at theobvious@ abceastflorida.com. And if you're enjoying the ride, help others find us by leaving a review wherever you listen. Happy Friday, Sonny.

Sonny Maken 0:54

Happy Friday. Seven weeks till our hundredth episode. Crazy.

Peter Dyga 0:59

We got some big planned, don't we?

Sonny Maken 1:01

I hope so. Otherwise, Mr. Producer is going to be in trouble. That's great. So okay. We'll find out if they do anything special for us. I mean, I'm expecting a cake, but it's uh seven weeks away. I'm just reminding the team. Something is coming up.

Peter Dyga 1:16

Every week. Every week. We haven't missed a week. So yeah. All right. Thank you for being along with us. So yeah. Thank you all for being along with us. Hopefully you've uh had a few laughs, uh, which we certainly do every once in a while, and also found it engaging and from a business and an association and an industry uh perspective.

Sonny Maken 1:36

So remember when you when you said say a prayer or a yoga chat? So you believe in. I'm still laughing at the yoga chat reference. Yeah, well. Um anyway, what are we talking about today?

Peter Dyga 1:48

Well, this uh I think we're calling it sunny in the hot seat. Oh, great. So um I thought this is uh we'll try to we can try to everything we do can make everything interesting that we do here. But I was just curious, let's talk about some of the uh hot topics in association management world.

Sonny Maken 2:04

No, I like to call it industry, industry uh growth world.

Peter Dyga 2:09

Aaron Powell And how they um uh how they impact us or how we've responded to those challenges. Uh and the reason we're calling it sunny in the hot seat is because you know I've been around a long time. I have my own opinion about these things. You're going on with your third year anniversary coming up, so you're a little newer to some of these things, perhaps. So I thought I'd I'd be interested in your perspective on these things, especially now that you've been here three years. So and there's there's a few of them that I want to cover, uh about five. So we're gonna have to go, it's gonna be like lightning. Lightning round. Lightning rounds, you know, four minutes each round. So I'm gonna take a look at the clock. So all right, so one that's kind of at the top, uh I'm gonna lead with this one because I think it is one in particular that um we're paying a lot of attention to, which is membership retention and engagement. Yes. You know, so uh how are we, or how does uh we need to prioritize membership retention and engagement strategies to strengthen connections and uh with our communities and whatnot. So and and what challenges are we facing?

Sonny Maken 3:07

Man, couldn't even start with something easy. Hardest one out the gate. Okay, here's a challenge, right? We're a staff of uh 33 people. Uh we run the largest apprenticeship program in the s in the state of Florida. That takes up, I think, seven, eight people. Um, just devote their entire career just to that, right? And then there's something like 70 to 90 events a year, which I know doesn't even include the webinars and the stuff we do virtually. There's um three different board of directors, there's three different set of financials, there's accounting, there's uh communications, there's government affairs, which is massive. It's a huge player in our success. Now, the at the core of it all is our membership. We have, you know, something like 600, um, 600 members. There is going to be a varying degree of value extraction for those 600 members. And it kind of drives us nuts because we want everybody to to see the value in the whole organization and what the whole organization provides.

Peter Dyga 4:16

Right.

Sonny Maken 4:16

But it's a challenge because uh if you're a four-person company focused on concrete and you are a GC with thousands of employees, your value motivation is going to be very different. And how you extract value out of what the organization offers is very different. And we try our darnest to sort of make it as uniform as possible. Obviously, we don't succeed because people will get out of it what they want to get out of it. But they also will leave money on the table if they don't understand the full depth and breadth of what this organization has to offer.

Peter Dyga 4:51

Well, we have some members that, you know, uh have been members almost since our charter. Yeah. Actually, some I think that have been members, you know, that that get so much of why we exist and how we're benefiting in many ways. And so they might not be as interested in the primary reason most people join, which is networking and but I'm thinking back to a previous episode of things we've done about how never be correct me, never be happy with your success or content with your be, yeah. Because even though we know there are certain members that uh that probably will renew every year just because they appreciate the value, we can't ignore them either. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right. I mean you constantly gotta have to be re-recommunicating in new ways and making sure that uh we as an organization uh stay focused on whatever the impending challenges and whatnot, whether it's uh workforce development or a government affairs perspective and regulation or disabilance or whatever.

Sonny Maken 5:50

Trevor Burrus, but like I think that's our our biggest challenge because the demands on people's time have only increased. Trevor Burrus, Right. The bandwidth has only decreased. And so how you communicate I mean, communication is such an personalized, individualized mode of transportation, or mode of communication, right? And so mode or I would say mode of understanding.

Peter Dyga 6:12

So you might have heard me say, you know, you can communicate something a million times using hyperbole, you know. Uh but if that person hasn't heard it, uh it's not it's not gonna matter until that first time, and then they hear it, or commute we communicate it in a way that they hear it. Yeah, it clicks for them. What are one of the I mean, uh one of the things we do, and I'm thinking of something specifically, in order to try to track engagement because it's so tied to retention.

Sonny Maken 6:36

I mean, look, you are known around here as the king of data, right? Your bachelor's was in what was it again? Quantitative management. Quantitative management. Um Everybody knows uh if you want to make a case to Peter, you have to make a case based around data. So I think we do a organizationally a substantially good job in tracking your data. We're not perfect at it. I think we really could find ways to leverage AI to analyze that data even more.

Peter Dyga 7:06

Don't get ahead. Don't get ahead.

Sonny Maken 7:07

Sorry. So I don't know these questions, by the way. If you're thinking I've uh uh Peter has I've I've not been shown these questions. So I think we do a great good job uh tracking our data.

Peter Dyga 7:19

Uh and we do for what what I'm specifically was getting at, like we tr we track engagement. You know, when we do a regular, you know, ask like our board and uh our membership committee that if we haven't seen you as a member out to something in the last six months, you're gonna get a personal invite, you're gonna get an outreach because we know that and again, uh talk about nerdy, you know, like in the association world. You know, I I've loved over the years reading you know different studies and things. And one of the things um that we know about this business is the number one way of determining whether somebody's gonna renew is is are they engaged? Have they come out?

Sonny Maken 7:55

I mean that's not what we're reaching out. We're reaching out because we care about you and we want you to be successful and we want you to come in and certainly and get the most value out of what you're investing in.

Peter Dyga 8:03

So yep, exactly. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Sonny Maken 8:04

By the way, our membership is one of the lowest in the state that I've heard of, like you know, because I hear other people are. Um our cost structure is unbelievably low. All right. You're gonna get the value out of it that you put into it.

Peter Dyga 8:15

Trevor Burrus, that's a good segue into the next topic, which is revenue diversification. So by the way, and again, these are you know, I was just curious. So I asked the Internet, you know, what are the top issues facing associations these days? And this is what uh this is what it came up with. And I think this has been an issue of concern for as long as I've been in this business as well, right? So, you know, a lot of nonprofits are in the 90s and upwards uh reliant on a single source of revenue, whether it's dues or donations or whatever. So so talk a little bit about this and your perspective after three years or approaching three years of working with this chapter about how well we have or have not done in terms of revenue diversification. So I wish I could take credit for this, but you can for a lot of what's in the irons in the fire.

Sonny Maken 9:02

Yeah, for for maybe in five to ten years I could. But this organization, I think, has done such an incredible job diversifying its revenue sources. Um and and we say that quickly, right? And I just wanna I wanna draw people's attention to the fact that uh diversifying revenue sources is not a simple concept because it allows you to function as in different roles and different modalities at different times and different ways.

Peter Dyga 9:33

Aaron Powell I'm really glad you brought that up because um we don't want anyone to think, and we talk a lot about this at meetings. Right. Because it is such a hot topic of conversation, that it's easy, even though we've had success. Right. So anyway, not to interrupt your train of thought.

Sonny Maken 9:49

No, but like you know my dad used to say this over the time.

Peter Dyga 9:53

Because if it was easy, we'd all be doing it and you'd be fine aware of the diversification is. But um if I could ask you to continue your train of thought, but also touch on your risk aversion and what impact that has on this in the nonprofit world. Okay. I'll get into that too in two minutes.

Sonny Maken 10:10

So sorry. Uh as an example, uh one of our revenue sources is that ABC functions as a landlord. Uh so we make rental income from out the pro real estate that we own. Now, we own real estate because uh leaders and boards before us uh made great decisions that allowed us to be in a position where we own real estate we can rent out. We bought our own building in Haileyah recently, last year. Last year, uh, which sits there as a revenue um source as well. Now, you just can't buy real estate and be like, oh, I'm making money in real estate. It allows and it forces you to be good in a bunch of skills that aren't necessarily inherent to somebody that's running a nonprofit trade organization, right? So we are very good landlords. That didn't happen by accident. Like there's a lot of work and effort that went into it uh in terms of being great property managers, being great landlords, being great leasing agents, being allowed being uh keeping track of what the market is doing, you know, servicing a tenant, bringing a tenant in.

Peter Dyga 11:15

I would add again something that's happened in the last couple of years, which was staying in front of improvements and things you needed to do to make sure that you you got the maximum uh you know rent that you could, because those are hard things. You gotta save in order to invest. And of course to try to try to convince leadership, although we're we're blessed that in they're in this business, so they appreciate more than most the value of that's just one thing we do that we're good at.

Sonny Maken 11:41

Right, right. We have a whole publishing business, we have a whole um uh event business, we have a whole government affairs. I mean, there's our events are very profitable.

Peter Dyga 11:50

And that's yeah.

Sonny Maken 11:51

But again, it doesn't happen by accident. It's a it and what how we succeed at events is a very different skill set in how we succeed as landlords, right? But that's sort of the beauty and diversity of this organization that I don't think most people appreciate. They just look at line by line, oh, you're making money here, you're making money here, you're making money here. Right. But it's like it takes a lot of time and effort and skill set to succeed in each of those. There's companies out there that are just property managers. There's companies out there that just make money in real estate.

Peter Dyga 12:19

Yeah.

Sonny Maken 12:20

That do one of what we do, right?

Peter Dyga 12:22

Right? And we do all of this stuff. So if you talked about risk and risk aversion and challenges to organizations wanting to diversify.

Sonny Maken 12:28

Yeah.

Peter Dyga 12:29

Because I think that's something that has to be overcome, that it's difficult.

Sonny Maken 12:31

That 100% has to be overcome. And I think the the biggest risk I think most organizations have, they step foot in areas without really understanding the skill set necessary to succeed. And I think if you can figure that out in terms of what skills you need and you can fill the skill gap for your organization, that I think is going to go a long way in terms of minimizing the risk. Now, risk analysis, it's a whole art. Pricing analysis is a whole art. Like there's a whole thing based around that that I think we do really well as we kind of grow. You know, we have conversations all the time about how much to charge for our events. We have conversations all the time about what what should a sponsorship cost? How much should rent be, right? How much are we spending on air conditioners? How much are we spending on roofing? I mean, there's all these things that go into this very sophisticated decision making that I think, again, people used to think what Michael Jordan did was easy, right? Because he was so good at it, he made it look easy. And I think that's ABC. Because we are so good at what we do, we make it look easy. And people don't realize the uh the hours and hours of analysis and work and and data collection that goes into everything we pull off.

Peter Dyga 13:37

All right, number three in this top list of hot topics in association management is digital transformation, Sonny. Think of maybe a personal favorite of yours, right? Yeah. So how is the use of technology, including AI, becoming increasingly important for our enhancing our member experiences and operational efficiency?

Sonny Maken 13:56

I think AI rooms are good, right? These are very good questions. Did you get them from AI? Are these yours? I'm just kidding.

Peter Dyga 14:04

What is the difference between AI and the internet these days? Right or none. I asked somebody. Google, Bing, I don't know.

Sonny Maken 14:09

Google's on its way out anyway. I think AI is gonna replace that. But I think digital transformation for the sake of digital transformation is is a waste of time and money. But I think if you can use pretty important that's it. There's a lot of people that feel like just because. Just because. Yeah, okay. Uh I'm gonna use AI because everybody's talking about AI. If you, for your own specific organization, don't have a solid use case for AI, don't get into it.

Peter Dyga 14:33

Right?

Sonny Maken 14:34

I mean, there is there has to be a solid use case for everything you do when it comes to a digital transition.

Peter Dyga 14:40

What might be a solid use case, either for an association in general or or ways in which it has been for us?

Sonny Maken 14:45

Okay. So sim keep it simple. Um using AI for data analysis. We're a 58-year-old organization, we collect a ton of data. I'm I'm I would need three people full time just to look at data all the time, for me to tell what actionable items can I can take based on the data we're generating. I think that is a huge uh benefit of being able to leverage AI and technology to figure that out. You look at it.

Peter Dyga 15:10

Can you get a little more specific? Can you think of uh I'm thinking of some examples recently I've seen here and I'm like, wow. You know. And again, in large part, it's uh we're generationally different, and it's definitely is I think younger generations are a little more um um ada uh I don't know, what's the word I'm looking for?

Sonny Maken 15:27

Uh open. To using it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean uh the the one that the use case that I'm thinking of right now is we did a s considerably substantive. Yes, that's the one I'm thinking of. Yeah. Federal um grant application. You know, and we really leveraged AI for it. Now it wasn't just all AI. I mean, you know, look, people read it, multiple people read it, uh multiple people contributed to it.

Peter Dyga 15:49

What amazed me about that experience is AI was like you're you're weak in this area.

Sonny Maken 15:53

Yeah.

Peter Dyga 15:53

You know, we need to spend a little, you know, and that just it was amazing to me.

Sonny Maken 15:56

It was amazing. Yeah, it was amazing. It identifies because it reads, it does so well in terms of reading the actual um you gotta be careful because sometimes it'll just make stuff up and you have to be very um careful about that. But I think we did a we did a great job organizationally leveraging AI on that ground.

Peter Dyga 16:11

Probably encouraging that uh within the chapter staff-wise. And and uh you might uh allude to some other conversations we're having about how to maybe uh leverage this for our members as well, right?

Sonny Maken 16:23

Yeah. Yeah. Although that's that's uh yeah, I'm excited about that training. That train hasn't left the station. But I am excited about that project. But you'll you'll you know, how to leverage AI for construction. I think you'll be hearing more from us on that topic in the future as well. That's something very exciting. Uh that if done right will help us diversify our revenue streams as well. Absolutely. But when you do something for as long as this organization has, you build a lot of institutional knowledge, you know. And I think technology, as we especially uh with the stu the projects you and I are working on, I think as we move forward, that institutional knowledge will allow us to build and deliver uh technology in a way that really hasn't been done before in construction. And I think that's going to be a huge game changer for our members. I think it'll create a it'll be an exciting place to be for sure.

Peter Dyga 17:13

All right, this this next to last one is uh the most ambiguous, in my opinion, of all of them. But let's see what you can do. Sustainability and value alignment. There's this thought that associations are being held to higher standards by stakeholders these days. Yeah, I would agree with that. So how what kind of challenges do we face as a construction trade association? And and are can you think of any good examples of where we've either failed or succeeded in particular?

Sonny Maken 17:38

So this is why it's sunny on the hot seat. Right? Yeah. So for-profit companies run the gamut, right? Uh one person with a website to thousands and hundreds of thousands on millions of employees, right? Like there's a huge range. To a lesser degree the same as of true of nonprofits. You know, you got a rinky dink one-man shows, two-man shows to big national organizations that have hundreds of employees, right? Um for some reason, because we're uh we're a regional powerhouse, right? We have I mean, I've been in rooms with hundreds of people, and my hand is the only hand left up when they ask you, do your your does your organization have 10 employees or more? And um it's my hand is the only one left. And I'm in a room with 200-300.

Peter Dyga 18:32

So in some ways, would you argue because of that, we've kind of overcome a sustainability?

Sonny Maken 18:37

We have definitely overcome the sustainability issue. I think we've definitely overcome the impact. Like it's it's I mean, again, 58-year history, uh you can see the impact.

Peter Dyga 18:46

And value alignment. I mean, how many times have we on this show talked about value alignment? And so do we do a good job in particular of that, do you think, at ABC?

Sonny Maken 18:54

I think we do an amazing job of value alignment. I think we don't do a good job of reminding our members how good we are in terms of not just our value alignment as the value that they get out of it, but also the values that we share with our members. Right? I don't I mean, I think that's something we need to constantly work on. That's the other thing I've realized. I think I've realized communication is constant. And I think our value alignment is phenomenal. Um, the only way we're gonna kind of rebuild that culture is if we keep repeating it and keep reminding people like, hey guys, one, like a lot of our members serve on smaller local nonprofits, and I think they bring that same mentality to us. And it's like, guys, apples and oranges. Like we're not we're not some $300,000 nonprofit like trying to like live off of donations, right? And I think that's the sort of mentality we have to remind our leadership all the time that that's not who we are, and we've come a long way. I mean, 58 years is a long time. It's old this organization is older than I am, and we've come a long ways to be able to be in that position. You are our four I love saying this, you're our fourth CEO in 58 years. There's been some great stable leadership that has contributed to the success of this organization, and more than anything else, this can this organization has had an undeniably positive impact on the industry it it serves.

Peter Dyga 20:12

So I want to do a little uh di dig into that a little bit more. So, which is how can an organization, and do we do this well or where do where where can we improve, make sure that our values are aligned with our community values. And by community, I mean our industry, right? We're here to serve the commercial construction industry. That's our community. So how do we make sure that you're not an organization that drifts from that in our specific case or you know, somebody's more gen generic case, you know, making sure those value that value alignment because it would be easy. In particular, an organization like us that has developed a lot of uh getting back to an earlier issue of revenue diversification, you know, we could just take off in some of those areas and to hell with uh the alignment of values or I don't know.

Sonny Maken 21:00

But you said something not too long ago, you know, we could be as successful as we want to be, we can have all sorts of revenue sources, we could be a $10, $15 million, well, we're already a $10 million organization, we could be a $30, $40 million PL organization. But if we're not serving our members, what's the point? Right? And so obviously we want we want to grow and protect the organization, but at the end of the day, our goal, our value proposition is to grow and protect the industry. The organization could be huge. We could be like um Marcha Dimes. Polio's gone, we made a ton of money, we're very successful, we're very big. Uh but then polio gets solved, what do we do? Right. And I'm not saying we're gonna end up in that marcha dimes position, but you could be a big organization, and if your industry has shrunk or your industry isn't protected or your industry isn't growing, well, what's the point of your existence? Right, right? And so to me, the whole idea here. Here is our growth is intimately tied. I mean it's a but it's it's a it's a connected relationship, right? Where uh our growth needs to be intertwined with the growth of our industry.

Peter Dyga 22:12

Yeah. All right, we're a little long, but we're on the last one. Okay. So and we're ending on a strong note because I think anyway, but but let's let's uh challenge ourselves a little bit. And the last one is event management and community building. And I think the reason this is on here is because on a virtual kind of global environment where more and more is talked about uh you know, teams meeting and webinars coming out of COVID and advanced platforms for online networking, you know, and whatnot. I don't know. Where where do where do we stand? How important is this moving forward for the organization? We talk a lot about, by the way, I mean, we have some of the best, you know, I talked in a recent podcast about uh anecdotally a comment that was made to me off the cuff about our events, because sometimes you know if you all you do is watch social media, you know, you might get that uh the way we talk about young, young people get this false notion of other people's lives. And if you're not careful, you can get a false notion of other associations' lives as opposed to somebody's real experience. And it was a very positive comment about our events, which we believe. We try, we spend a lot of time. We think we got top-notch staff, you know, we're always trying to keep our events fresh. They're very well attended. Um, they're, I think, sponsorship, they're very well supported, which the people would not do forever. You know, there are some charitable uh segment of that, but but it wouldn't it doesn't last forever. It doesn't you can't build on that if people don't s see the value that they got. So anyway, sorry, I'll shut up. But where do you think in terms of moving forward, event management, community building?

Sonny Maken 23:48

I'm gonna say this about events. One of the reasons our events are what they are, it's not because of you and I, but because the team that runs events for us is asking themselves the same questions you and I ask. That's beautiful, right? It's got nothing to do with us. They are so good. But every event they do, they they do like their own version of an AAR, right? An after action report where they'll kind of talk about what we can do to make this better. Do we need to change locations? Do we need to bring in new food, different vendors, different ideas? They're always and then they're always executing. Now, I've heard you say to them, multiple trying, we'll try it. If it doesn't work, we'll we'll pivot, right? Because you want to encourage a certain level of level of risk taking. So not it's not and by the way, if you haven't been to an ABC event, like you need to come out and and see it. I mean, it's there's nothing like it.

Peter Dyga 24:38

Yeah, come on out. By the way, did you know that when your member's a when your company's a member? Anybody can come. Anybody in your company can come at the member rate, if if there's a rate at all. So I mean a lot of what we do is free of charge to members. So, you know, we we encourage uh first off, we'll add as many second what we call secondary contacts. Anyone in your company, up to everybody in your company. If you want to add them as secondary contacts, they'll get the direct email communications. But feel free to post the flyers too. We're still old school in that sense that we not only do electronic communication, but we also almost have a flyer for everything we do and an online web registration page for everything we do. Feel free to share it because everybody's welcome.

Sonny Maken 25:15

We got an events uh newsletter, just send it to whoever you want to uh whoever you want to attend from your company. Um and I think that's sort of one of the biggest reasons why uh our events team is so successful because they ask the same questions we ask. And I think that's sort of I've realize that's one of the keys to success in in organization is if your team leaders ask the same questions that the executives are asking. And uh and our team leaders do, and I think you can see it in the in the work product that they put out there.

Peter Dyga 25:42

What a great way to end. Yeah. You did a great job. Thank you very much. Sonny on the hot seat.

Sonny Maken 25:48

Wow.

Peter Dyga 25:48

So spectacular. Thank you very much.

Sonny Maken 25:51

That was an interesting episode for sure.

Peter Dyga 25:53

So all right. So thank you for listening.

Sonny Maken 25:55

Yep.

Peter Dyga 25:56

Honoring us with your time. We look forward to sharing another episode with you next Friday.

Sonny Maken 26:00

For comments, compliments, uh complaints, send us an email at the obvious@ abceastflorida.com. All right. Until next time. Ciao.