In this week's episode of the Six Degrees of Associations,presented by Big Red M and hosted by Lucas McCann, we visit with Russ Webb, mQAS, CAE.

Russ is CEO of the Bay Area Apartment Association in theGreater Tampa region and joins us to talk association shop. We learn about the advantages of a regional association, which can be substantial, though knowing how to leverage that natural value-add is not necessarily something everyregional organization is able to capitalize on.

Other important themes we explore include:Why bigger is not always better and complacencyis the enemy of innovation.

Not being afraid to fail and learning from thosemoments.

Net promoter scores and leveraging mentorships.

Concentrating on member recruitment at theexpense of retention and fixing the leaky bucket of members who fail to engageor renew their membership.

Learn more about the Bay Area Apartment Association: https://www.baaahq.org/Follow Russ on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russwebb/

About Big Red M: https://bigredm.com/

It's really this simple: when building a product, you shouldstart with the user story, and you will end with the best solution.

This week on the Six Degrees of Associations Podcast, hosted by Lucas McCann and presented by Big Red M, we're joined by Pete Zimek, the founder and CEO of NoviAMS. We discuss:

• How a customer-first AMA is solves problems arounda user story with precision
• Why products and services tend to hit different whenthe customer (and not private equity) is calling the shots
• How to build impactful software services arounda user story

Learn more: https://www.noviams.com/

Pete is a prolific problem solver with a lot of resilienceand grit. He had already run two Ben and Jerry's franchise locations and founded a tech company specializing in supporting college towns' off-campus housing (which he still owns and runs), when he was “voluntold” to build a technological solution to solve an absolute dumpster fire of an accounting software issue. The end result (and 600 customers later) it became Novi AMS.

Shout out to Nathan Victoria for his recommendation andnominating Pete to join our show! You can watch Nathan's episode with us here: https://youtu.be/H_gF1n5R9Ws

We are joined by the incredibly inspiring Nathan Victoria, CAE, on this week's episode of the Six Degrees of Associations as presented by Big Red M.Nathan is Vice President of NextGen Association Management Company, the inaugural Executive Director and CEO for the Society for Personality Assessment and a doctoral candidate at the George Washington University. He discusses how he makes time for all of these responsibilities while balancing his first calling – being a loving partner and father of three. He is also an ASAE DELP scholar and active in ASAE’s AAPI Advisory Group.We also want to give a shout out to past Six Degrees of Associations guests Wendy-Jo Toyama, Joanna Pineda, and Donald Dea who are also key contributors to this Advisory Group, promoting the inclusion of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in the association sector.Learn more about NextGen: https://nextgenamc.com/ Follow along Nathan’s Journey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-victoria/About Big Red M: https://bigredm.com/