In the first episode of Associations NOW Presents: Industry Partner Edition, guest host Sharon Pare, Director of Partnerships at HighRoad Solutions and co-host of the Rethink Association Podcast, sits down with Lance Wiggins, CEO of the Automatic Transmission Rebuilders Association, and Layla Masri, Vice President of Customer and Product Intelligence, AI Strategy, and Adoption at Higher Logic, to explore how associations are using AI in meaningful and unexpected ways. Lance and Layla share their professional journeys and discuss how AI is being applied to real-world association challenges—from improving efficiency and reducing errors to strengthening member engagement. Lance highlights how AI tools have reshaped technical support and training within his organization, while Layla emphasizes the value of starting small and building confidence through early, impactful wins. The conversation also addresses the importance of using trusted platforms, like Higher Logic, to adopt AI securely and responsibly. Throughout the episode, the guests underscore how thoughtful AI implementation can free up staff time, improve service delivery, and deepen relationships with members.

Check out the video podcast here:

https://youtu.be/T_L5q9QcfDA

This episode is sponsored by Higher Logic.

Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.

Transcript

Sharon Pare: [00:00:00] Welcome to the inaugural episode of Associations NOW Presents Industry Partner series, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Sharon Pare, director of Partnerships at High Road Solutions, a HubSpot solutions and implementation partner, and your hosts of this series throughout the year.

This episode today is sponsored by Higher Logic. Today we're excited to welcome Lance Wiggins, CEO of Automatic Transmission Rebuilds Association, and Layla Masri, VP of Customer and Product Intelligence, AI Strategy and Adoption at Higher Logic. Layla, Lance, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to be with us today.

Lance Wiggins: Thanks for having me. 

Sharon Pare: Well, before we dive in, I'd love for each of you to give a quick introduction for our listeners a little bit about who you are. The organizations you represent, and since we're talking about AI today, I wanna know, this is a little bit of an icebreaker here, but [00:01:00] what is one way professionally or personally that you've unexpectedly started using ai?

Layla Masri: All right, so yeah. Thank you Layla Masri. So I am a new hire to Higher Logic, but come from a very deep association marketing background. Many of you in the association space know me from 20 plus years that I ran my own digital agency. Worked with tons of different membership associations doing web and app development, interactive.

Capabilities and so I'm very excited to help Higher Logic, head up AI practices, and build out what is looking to be an extremely robust pipeline for 2026 and beyond. I have used AI most recently in some really fascinating ways. I have used it. To craft jokes to send to my kids really bad Dad jokes. I have used it to create the proper ratio for hanging photos on a [00:02:00] wall.

I have most recently used it. I am going on vacation shortly and I used it to help me strategize my itinerary where a couple friends were joining in the middle of a trip. So I had to optimize the key sightseeing moments, but then also build in a really robust amount of things around it. Super geeky, very helpful.

Sharon Pare: Love it. How about you Lance? 

Lance Wiggins: I am the CEO of the Automatic Transmission Rebuild Association. I have been with this company since 1999. The company has been in existence since 1954, celebrating our 70 plus birthday here shortly. We are the only association in an entire planet Earth that does this.

We are a facility that we do research training for transmission shops internationally. We have a little over 2000 shops in the United States. From coast to coast, north to south, we have rebuilder and [00:03:00] warranties that go from Canada, all the way through, the United States. We have chapters that are in Canada, chapters that are in Latin America, chapters that are in Australia, Asia, Australia, chapters that are formulating now currently in the UK as well.

Primarily our goal is to help transmission shops fix your vehicle. There are billions of vehicles out there right now with automatic transmissions in them, how to diagnose 'em, how to fix 'em, how to repair 'em, how to, and also to make sure that we are servicing the customer. We are all servants here at the association, so our culture is of that.

I've been a coach for 25 years, so I know how to coach people. I know how to coach other things. Believe it or not, we've actually been using AI in the automotive industry since, I'm guessing it started back in 19 96, 97 when we had adaptive strategies for transmission. So [00:04:00] adaptive strategies on any vehicle.

Once you rebuild the vehicle, rebuild the transmission, it doesn't know who's the, who the driver is. It doesn't know what the baselines are. It's basically when it gets rebuilt and reinstalled, you can consider it. A toddler, it doesn't have any idea how to walk or shift, right? Or who the driver is. Some drivers are leadfoot, others are soft foot.

You adapt the transmission and once the shifts start getting better and you start getting smoother, then you give it to the customer, and the customer say, it didn't shift this smooth before. I liked it when it shifted. A little bit firmer. Typically, we will tell 'em, give it a couple weeks and come back for your checkup.

If in a couple weeks it's still the same way, we'll take a look at it, but more than likely, it's gonna adapt to who you are. We currently use AI for our technical hotline through Hire Logic, actually, and or one of our partners. We've, we've named our AI assistant techie go figure, and in we can ask it [00:05:00] all kinds of cool questions about automatic transmissions.

It pulls everything from our 90,000 pages of data and it's really helping our association and our members gather information a lot faster than making the phone call and going through that, that, that pro, that process. 

Sharon Pare: I think that's incredible. Lance, in the nineties, adaptive strategies and AI existed before I think we even knew what AI was.

So love to hear about this in the podcast today, and we're going to dig into the six points that Layla has shared about AI adoption that has come up again and again in conversations across our industry. So I think the perfect time to unpack them. Is today from both the technology and the association perspective.

So let's kick it off. And Lance, I know you're about to just get into this here too, but there are so many organizations that are getting stuck thinking they need some type of full strategy before they can even start. So Lance Layla, I'll leave this open for both of you, but how are you identifying that [00:06:00] first meaningful use case for ai?

And Lance, if you wanna dig into this phone line system, or Layla, how you help them implement this, that'd be a great start. 

Lance Wiggins: Sure. So we have had technical department. Since the late eighties, and typically you want to go, for those of y'all that don't know about faxes, fax mill was a big thing back in the day, right?

And so if somebody would call with a problem on a vehicle, we would go through the different scenarios, fax them over a check sheet, or, or a fix, or definitions or specifications, whatever the case may be. That's how that would go. Then email became a thing, and then now with our AI, what the way we use it is actually a lot more efficient, a lot faster.

It's freeing up our technician's time. Even when the phone call comes in, we actually, our technicians go to the AI assistant with [00:07:00] 90,000 pieces of material that we've done in over the course of 35, 40 years. Nobody knows where everything's at, and this is, it's literally, this is like going to a library back in the day.

If I date myself at 55 years old, back in the day, you actually went to a Rolodex and you opened it up and you pulled out the card and you went over to the location where it was at. This is exactly the same thing, just a heck of a lot faster, and we found that the timing that we have to actually do more research on vehicles.

It's unprecedented. We just have a lot more time to, to actually dig into real world problems that prior to that we just, we didn't have that much time. So it's working for us. 

Layla Masri: That's a perfect use case and a great way to dip your toe into the water is to figure out what you have already on hand and or what things you're struggling with.

If there's something you're doing, your staff are doing 50 times a day or a week, [00:08:00] those are things that are just absolutely slam dunk opportunities to look and see if there's a way that AI can optimize and assist with those types of repetitive tasks. It frees up your stuff to do the more needy subject matter expertise, like really digging in with personalized service.

I've found that that has been a really great way to dig in there. Associations somewhat stereotypically, I will say, have. Often been somewhat risk averse and we've seen so much technology come our way of faxes, right? Websites, apps, all of these things like I have lived through the development and creation of those things.

I've helped people implement them, and I think any new technology is gonna come across initially is big and scary. You're worried. Do I have the time, the people, the budget to learn one more new thing to implement this. But there's also that balance of understanding that your members are expecting you to go places with them and to be somewhat forward thinking.

So the [00:09:00] thing that is so promising about AI is that this is the lowest risk technology pilot that I've seen in 20 plus years. You don't need extra budget, you don't need extra people. You can bite off just the teens CS piece and especially using tools like Higher Logic where they're built in. And for our customers, they're free to charge as well.

It's great to just test your, you put your toe in the water, test them things, and then iterate and build from there, which is exactly what Lance and the team are doing. 

Sharon Pare: And I know a lot of folks are still feeling really intimidated by ai, but I love that toe in the water analogy that you just mentioned, Layla.

So. What does that actually look like for associations who are starting to explore ai? I know you started talking about it a little bit, but what are some of those smaller, low risk ways that they can start experimenting with it now? 

Layla Masri: Sure. I can give you two examples that we actually have inside of our Higher Logic Thrive software that are already going gangbusters and are gonna be built out with a lot more functionality in 2026.

So one of [00:10:00] them is the idea of an ai cis. Right. We're at this point, a lot of us are using things like chat, GPT. Lots of us have already used chatbots in various ways across different websites, not just in the association space, but whether you're traveling or whatever. A lot of the kind of back and forth with a chatbot, and that's the lowest I think, hanging fruit that you can implement right now.

And the wonderful thing about using an assistant. Is that you can create a closed wall garden of your content because certainly a lot of associations, of course, we're investing in our own content. We are curating, and that's part of what your membership value is, getting that specialized content that you can only get with a membership.

So we don't wanna put that out into the world. You don't wanna feed that into the chat GPT and let everyone have it. It devalues the membership. It devalues the importance of that research and the exclusivity of your content. With chatbots like the AI assistant, you can actually have that [00:11:00] walled garden where you can say, I would like you to search within my, my repertoire of all of my documents Lance was saying.

Go through that look and see what's available. You can send me to relevant documents. You can suggest events. You can basically pull from all of the things in your learning management system and your content management system, and you can quickly get people to places. However, we all have seen the Yeah, but you might not have the right thing that I want.

And I think one of the best things that we have been implementing is this idea of. Ask my fellow human if I don't get the right answer, if I'm not seeing what I want, or, this is interesting, but I want more. That's the real value is not replacing the human being, but giving you access to information and then allowing you to pose that back to your member community, to then richen the experience and truly.

Take what you've learned from that initial pass with a chat bot, for example, and then take that out into the world and see what your fellow humans are actually experiencing. So it's a really [00:12:00] nice blend of, again, trying out functionality, but also ensuring that you are getting the best of what your colleagues and your professional network have to add to that.

Sharon Pare: And Lance, I've got one for you. And I know that the A TRA has been familiar with AI for quite some time here now, but was there something that made it feel. More manageable for your team instead of overwhelming that you can recommend. 

Lance Wiggins: So for us, it's interesting. I have to digress back to my, my history really as a coach and a football coach, I'm used to change.

Literally you change every half. Sometimes you change in the quarters, sometimes you change of practice. So the whole aspect of new, to me, it's like it's, I'd live it. Our culture here is very much the same. We love technology. We absolutely thrive in technology, right? We, we looked for ways to do things more efficient [00:13:00] and to be better, to better serve essentially our members.

The internet was a big deal back in the day when we launched, we actually launched. ATRA online back in the late nineties, early two thousands. It was like, oh man, look at, this is magical. And it was pages and pages and pages and nobody minds scrolling. Nobody. You'd search for something, you'd scroll and scroll and scroll, and you'd finally find something, maybe you didn't.

Then we decided to add some descriptions, and then that was a big deal, right? And then we decided to add just the transmissions, and then that was a big deal. Now. When you go to the internet, we the company, we don't go to the internet. We go to an ai. We either go to Gemini or we go to chat GBT, or we go to Gro or we go to Techie.

So if we're inside of our higher logic profile, we go to techie. We ask that question in techie, and if he doesn't know. With a [00:14:00] few adjustments that we made because Allis want to give you an answer. They all, it doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong, they want to give you something, feel compelled to just give you something which we appreciate.

But in our world, if we give them something that is inaccurate, that could cost 'em thousands of dollars, it could cost some customers, it can cost us thousands of dollars and customers on our end, we've worked really hand in hand with. Higher logic to, to try to finite our material because it's 275 different types of transmissions out there at any given time.

Uh, 2000, if you go back to 40 years from now, and each one of 'em, while they're different, they work the same internally. The rules virtually the same. And if we don't have the information, we want them to go ask a human, along with what Layla was saying. If somebody goes on and says, I have this transmission with this problem.

And our AI assistant gives them an answer, [00:15:00] but it's not what they're looking for. They can simply ask a human, and then, and now they have a chance to ask 12,000 different individuals, including our technical department and the, and now the answers that come in are. Become part of the AI as well. So it's gonna continually keep learning and learning where that did not happen before, but that wasn't even a part of our thought process.

Now, to give our members an opportunity to see this, to give our own technical department an opportunity, and I want to say this, there were times where we didn't really know what question to ask, and with the formulation of ai. You're asking questions, you didn't even, because you're getting an answer, wait a minute, and then you ask another question, then it, and then another question, and then all of a sudden, four hours later you find yourself, ah, that's the answer I'm looking for.

But it's a wonderful tool that we're currently using and, and I just, it's gonna enhance our association. It's gonna propel us into another [00:16:00] sector, another sector that we've never been in before, actually. 

Sharon Pare: I think that's a really great point, and I think this brings us to one of our next key points.

It's, we're talking to ai, it keeps iterating with us. But I wanna ask this, Layla, but where do you see AI helping associations, reducing those human bottlenecks or operational slowdowns? I know that's a another key point that you mentioned has been brought up time and time again, but is there, what do you see there?

Layla Masri: Yeah, I mean, there is a concern that people have that, like Lance mentioned, it is very important that you can validate that the information that people are getting suggested to them by AI is what will be helpful. It is the right answer. So that's always a key concern. Of course, knowing that the information is coming out of your system makes it a very trusted experience.

But ironically, avoiding AI sometimes is often riskier than using it, presumably because it can help catch mistakes. It can help reduce [00:17:00] some of the things that human error can introduce. AI can often solve for that. But I think the real beauty of AI is that it's just, it's so fast you can get answers in seconds, and like we said, if you don't get that answer, your tools can prompt you where to go next or can ask you questions you didn't think about.

That's one of the things I love about using some of the tools like GPT, et cetera. Where they all, they never just give you the information they end with. Could I help you find an event to go to that would cover this information? Or are you looking for resources? May I connect you to a Higher Logic community where this is being discussed.

So it's really a lovely way to keep that conversation going. As I mentioned, reducing repetitive staff tasks that can introduce inconsistency. That's a great way. To employ ai. It can also help if you have a small staff, which many people do. You can use AI to help teams respond to [00:18:00] things faster. So actually providing better member service and then being able to funnel people that do need that kind of personal assistance, but you do help reduce that overall workload.

And then really it's like having an insurance that you are providing a timely communications with people, it standardizes a lot of the delivery of that material because typically if you're reaching out to a customer service, you're getting my way of telling you this information or Lance's way of telling you this for information.

The nice thing is you can have that beautiful quality control. This is how we want to talk about these things, or these are the kinds of resources that we want to offer. So it does provide a lot. Of risk reduction and it does speed up operation so that it again frees you up to do the things that humans are really good at.

Sharon Pare: Lance, is there an example where AI has helped her team to work smart and avoid errors? Just digging into what Layla had just mentioned 

Lance Wiggins: soon. I'll say that the transmission is a very complex piece of machinery, [00:19:00] so at any given time in a transmission, he could have 500. Pieces of parts, right? Our system and the way that it uses our material is again, based on what we've loaded into, and pretty much we've loaded almost everything.

It's learning our videos, it's learning our rebuilding videos. So to give you that example, we asked a question last week on how to rebuild a pump. Assembly from a 10 R one R 80 transmission, and it gave us some generic information. A week later, we asked the same question. Not only did it give us the accurate specifications, but it also gave us three sources to go and look and view for our pleasure as well.

So now you can go to the [00:20:00] PDF, you can go to the video. You can see how the pump is built. So as it's learning, like I mentioned, it's like a toddler now. Maybe it's a five year old and seven year old. And the more information you give it, the fungi year it becomes, and really for us, it's just making sure that the information we're giving it is accurate.

And our technicians, we've got 300 years of technical experience between everybody here, including myself. When we build things and we edit. We make sure that quality control maintains The difference is if you, if you drop that stuff into Gemini or drop that stuff in a chat, it, it pulls from all over the place.

That's where you can get in trouble. Yep. You can really get in trouble. 

Layla Masri: If I could add one other item. As you said, it's every month, every day. It feels that the agents, these engines are getting smarter and smarter. There are things that I can do now that six months ago wasn't [00:21:00] able to do. Same for pretty much anybody across the AI universe.

The half-life on improvements is just. Astonishing. And I think what we're really seeing is AI is improving in a way that allows us to get better info to answer things more accurately. And in fact, that's what Higher Logic is devoting a lot of our roadmap and AI development to do. And this is what we're focusing on right now.

And then definitely for 2026 and beyond ongoing releases. And you mentioned, Lance, you mentioned adding video and that's one of the things that I am personally so excited about. Is the ability for AI to add transcription to video and to be able to search it. How game changer that is. If you like this exact podcast, being able to search for text and language and phrasing inside a video like that is.

Super exciting. 

Sharon Pare: Our logic unifies your community marketing, learning events, and more into a complete engagement [00:22:00] ecosystem. So every member touchpoint feels connected and personal. With AI powered campaigns and vibrant online communities, members feel seen, supported, and excited to engage every day. And because everything works together, your staff spends less time wrestling with tech and more time achieving your mission.

Plus you get built-in strategic guidance and support to boost retention and turn passive members into passionate advocates. See how higher logic is revolutionizing engagement by booking your [email protected]. I wanna shift gears a little bit. See what I did there, Lance? 

Layla Masri: Anyway. You mean to need chat GPT or write your dad joke for that?

Sharon Pare: Just ask my dad. Dad jokes of association. We talked last week and you both said that this is the first time we've all had, we've had technology that's now truly accessible to everyone. So what do you think makes AI different from some of those past digital tools? 

Lance Wiggins: For us, it's. [00:23:00] By far, it's the speed of searchability.

It's the q and a. It's the informal formal conversation. You, as you're talking to our techie program, it's asking other questions, and then as you're having that conversation back and forth, it's like. When we have a brand new trend that we, we actually have a brand new transmission down there from Toyota.

It is state of the art. It's a CVT transmission that doesn't have, uh, a belt in it. It's two electric motors that run this. It is state of the art. It is the future of CVTs. It's pretty awesome. We pulled it apart, so you got three guys sitting there pulling it apart, figuring out how to pull this thing apart.

There's no videos on it. There's the Toyota hasn't released anything on it. We're all bouncing stuff off of each other, right? And so we're taking pictures and we're doing things. The motor is the same type of motor that's used in other, like Elon Musk has in this Teslas, right? Same type of motor. So I'm, all right, let's, [00:24:00] let's go to our programs and we start researching some of the programs, start finding out how the motor actually works.

Now we can put it into our own words, how that works. Once that happens, we put it into our higher logic platform. Now when we do the videos where we do the shoots, we do the, anybody that gets on there when they search this transmission is gonna have an endless supply of material that they can't get.

They can't get it from Toyota. That's another thing that I think is very interesting is all of the manufacturers, all of them back in the day. We used to go to a helm, a bookstore, and purchase shop manuals for every manufacturer out there. Toyota, Ford, General Motors, Chrysler. The ones you couldn't get really were BMW and Volkswagen, but we don't really have a lot of those units in the United States as much as they do in Europe.

But you, that's where we purchased our library and would fill up rooms. I'd have hundreds. Thousands of books, [00:25:00] and you'd go to a book and you'd open the book and you'd go to the page and you'd find the page and you'd scan the page and you'd fax the page and so on and so forth. And then when everything went digital, now you could get it digitally, but the subscription, right?

Like anything else that you purchased, there's a subscription. The subscription cost, if you don't use it once or twice a month, people start thinking, I'm not gonna really use that. We started building that into our own subscription. Like any other association, when you have material that will help your members, you build it, you research it, you build it, you put the training together, and now you have that information.

So what we're doing now currently is building that information for the future. So next year when they get into, it's all gonna be accessible to 'em. That's proprietary. That's not out in the world until somebody gets that transmission and decides to throw it on YouTube. But do I actually trust that guy? I don't know.

I would much rather trust the association that's been around since [00:26:00] 1954 doing transmissions since 1954, 90,000 plus technical things and 300 plus years of material. It's a game changer for us. It's just huge. It's just a, it's a great opportunity for us to do things that we haven't really had the opportunity of doing with less people.

We have a saying, you can only go as fast as the slowest car in front of you. And that's a true statement, right? But when there's no cars on the road, look out, man, we could, we can get up and get to it. This is just, it's just changing the way we do business, literally right in front of our eyes. 

Sharon Pare: It really is, and I wanted to add something in here and throw this in.

Especially as you say, you can only go as fast as the car in front of you. And I was thinking about this over the weekend, and a lot of our for-profit peers, right? Us in the tax exempt world, our for-profit peers. I think that the level playing field of AI is now, we're all behind that same curve. Do you think this is an opportunity for the association world as historically?

[00:27:00] We've always been a little bit behind that curve. Is this time for us to be able to set that tone and innovate with this technology? Now, what do you, I would love, 

Layla Masri: I think AI tools are modular, so modular that I think it really lends itself to really. Making a jump in deciding what you wanna try so you can turn on AI for a single workflow or single campaign.

You don't have to take this huge leap of faith. You can just take a leap of curiosity or a step of curiosity and say, what would it be like if we tried this one thing? Even if it's something that's just for one department of your organization, you can try that. You can try AI without making like an overarching.

Commitment to ai and what that means is that there's no IT lift. You're not talking about like integrations, you're talking about staff that can run like micro experiments off the side of their desk like Lance is describing. And you can then determine what's the ROI on this? So that if you can, if you decide that this is something you wanna take [00:28:00] more broadly through your organization, then you can explain.

We ran a test on it. The test took us an hour to set up in our existing tools. We ran it for this amount of time. These are the results we would like to now implement this through the rest of our organization. And assuming, of course, those results are highly positive, whether it's we've reduced staff time, we have things like smart campaigns in higher logic Thrive, where you can actually use AI to.

To generate very hyper targeted micro campaigns to do the stuff that staff usually doesn't have time to do. Like encouraging people to join a committee or to update their profiles so that you can best customize experiences for them. Really important stuff. A lot of times people don't have the time to do those things, so if you can bite off these little pieces, show that they work, it's just a great way to, to jump in your staff benefits.

Your members will feel it after that. And these like snowball effect of these internal winds make the innovation and the reach of [00:29:00] it and your expansion of that seem a lot less scary and gets people more excited about it. 

Sharon Pare: So question for you both when you are saying to just start going out there and peak that curiosity by actually using it.

What defines a trusted platform for everyone to start it? And is it security, is it usability? Is there something else? What would you say is a great place to start, 

Layla Masri: if I can jump in on that one? Of course, higher Logic has built this into our tools and is continuing to build this into. Platform, and I think regardless of what you use working with ai, the safest way to try ai, I believe, is inside of a trusted platform.

Because as Lance mentioned, if you go out and start to roll your own, you can be introducing a variety of different issues. For example, taking proprietary content and putting that out on the internet. Diminishes the value of your organization. It also requires IT assistance to make sure that you are tapping [00:30:00] into the proper agents or LLMs, et cetera, that you're able to move this content around and have it digestible and output.

So that would mean like writing APIs and not like people's heads are probably like, yeah. Too much tech, right? It gets overwhelming. So anytime that you can try something, anything of a tech experiment, I think it's always best to try it inside of a platform because the data stays where you're already governing it.

You are not worried about uploading many things sensitive, as I mentioned, and then. The great news is that the AI and what it does and its outputs, can also follow the same permissions and rules that you have set up in the rest of your systems. So starting where your data already lives, it means that you can just work with inside your tech stack and you don't have to do anything special to it.

You're just enhancing it. I'm sure. Lance, you have some thoughts on that? 

Lance Wiggins: Yeah. Interestingly enough for us, the majority of the people that currently work for the association aren't. Brand new. We've [00:31:00] had a 30 year turnover, so most of the people that had worked with us had been with the company for 30 plus years.

My, I've been with the company for 26. Those groups of bodies are retiring and the newer groups, which are much more. Used to working in these types of platforms are the ones that are suggesting these type of platforms. So it's, I'm a father of six kids. I understand how this goes from the age of 24 to 33.

So I've got a pretty good span of technology that they use. Some things I do, some things I don. Our material is proprietary to an extent. We produce material, we do members and non-member events. We have books that we have that we sell to members and non-members. And believe it or not, there are people that scan it, put it on the internet for everybody to use.

That's cheaters will be cheaters. That's how that works, right? But having something that we can. Sandbox [00:32:00] and it's our own material. You can't put a price tag on that. That's where this particular scenario and using the AI platform within higher logic, for us, it's a game changer. Like I mentioned before, it's just, it's gonna take us to a place that we probably thought if we're gonna go with some other larger companies that are out there, the price tag is.

B beyond expectations. This works this and they're working with us. That's another thing. OG is a great company. They are literally partners with us. So as we give them something, they give us something back and then we collaborate and say, this is where we're at. We are very unique. We are the unicorn of unicorns.

But there are no other company like ours. They are companies like. No other association like ours, you can't just put a blanket and say, this is good for all associations. Some associations are different than others, and this is the best part about this and working with them, is that we can give them our problems, tell them where we're at, and then they're creating solutions that are not only [00:33:00] helping us, but also could help other associations as well.

Sharon Pare: I think this will be an interesting note to end on for our podcast. We've run out of time, but speaking of time, we talked a lot about how AI has given our staff that time back too, right? And I wanna keep this one a little bit more generic, but what do you think associations. Could accomplish if they did have 10% more, 20% more of their time back each week, because now they're using these technologies that are now in place at the organization and either one of you can jump in.

Layla Masri: Sure. I'll start. So I think in terms of using AI that's giving. Time back to their staff. That's not changing. Member experiences. The, so I'll summarize the things that I think AI would be fabulous use for in terms of how we're saving time. So drafting, marketing copy, summarizing discussion threads and [00:34:00] communities, suggesting engagement messages, auto tagging, categorizing content.

Those things are huge. If Lance can say to his team, Hey. We can use AI to do those kinds of things. Then what it allows his team to do, and I'll of course let you speak to this with the specifics, Lance, but like theoretically across all organizations, so you're then not asking a staffer to, Hey, pull out that generic email that you send every time someone asks you for X.

Or if people are needing resources on these 10 things and we just have a list and you have to send them out. That's probably not the best use of that person's time. You really wanna use them for strategizing, for analyzing, for sitting with your membership and actually providing like real customer experience and customer input so that helping them actually problem solve and or ideate on really bold and audacious [00:35:00] things, whether it's marketing, whether it's event planning, you name it, community engagement.

Those are the things where people. Are really great at doing that, and you build those relationships. That's why AI has, in my opinion, an area where it sits in helping manage, digest, and surface information, but it's never gonna replace that value, the human being. And that's why we join organizations, right?

We're not just getting it for information. So much of it is about the community, about learning from your peers, sharing your subject matter expertise. That's what I think the staff of an organization. Are also best free to do when you introduce those efficiencies of ai. 

Lance Wiggins: Yeah, a hundred percent. For our association, it's, it's an aged association.

If anybody's listening to the news, you got Ford CEO going on there saying, we, we have a technician shortage, et cetera, et cetera. That's true because quite frankly, we told everybody to go to college and been tell 'em to work on cars. So [00:36:00] it's the way that the world works, right? Like we mentioned earlier, it's the world's a different place than it was 30 seconds ago, even 30 years ago, right?

The curiosity is there for our staff. We spent most of the time gathering lists getting. Dues shipped out, answering incoming calls, getting events organized. We failed miserably at communicating with our people. And to me that is the most important thing. If we don't talk to our people and we don't have a relationship with our members, there's a huge question they ask.

Why am I a member? It's very simple. And if they think that we don't care. They think that we're just an entity, a body that collects dues, chances are they'll leave. And once they're gone, as any association would know, they're, it's very [00:37:00] hard to give back. So from our perspective, it's helping us with time to make those phone calls, to create those relationships, to maintain those relationships.

So much so that on Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We had maybe three or four calls come in the entire day. And so I told the crew, I said, listen, if y'all wanna take off, go ahead. Just forward the calls to me and I'll take 'em for you. And a call came in as a gentleman. He said, oh, I gotta pay my dues. And I said, and I answered the phone.

Thank you for calling ATRA, this is Lance. He says, who? And I said, Lance, he goes, Lance Wiggins. I said, yeah. He goes, I didn't mean to call you. I know, but I'm here. What's up? How you doing? What's going on? You about ready for Thanksgiving. And we started having a conversation that was real. It was just a true conversation.

And he said, I gotta pay my due. I gave, I let everybody go home early to go visit with their families. Can we give you a call on Monday? He says, [00:38:00] absolutely. I said, why don't you take the rest of the day off as well and we'll see you on Monday. And he, you can hear him smile. You can just feel he felt like I was treating him like a human, as we all should be doing.

And as I mentioned before, we're servants. We should be serving these people. And that's the part of the game that a lot of companies don't. You're not just a number, you're not just a bed, you're not just a car. You're human beings with, with families, with people. You need to get those people to those locations.

You need to help the young bucks, the ones, the new blood that's coming in. They can't be afraid of failure, right? In our industry, we learned a lot By failing that was part of the game plan. Now we can learn. Gather information and reduce the failures, but also gain the valuable experience that we need sooner than later.

All of our shop owners and technicians that are in their forties, when you look at a 20-year-old kid coming through the door and he's [00:39:00] got a few tools here and there, he may or may not know how to use 'em, who knows? But if you put 'em in front of the, our video programs. You put 'em in front of a, a, an AI program on our community forum and say, Hey, research something on this.

And then, and when you're done, I want you to come over 'cause I'm actually working on that vehicle. I want you to see what it looks like in real life. I don't know that you can get better training in that. So it, it's a, it's an opportunity for us to, to just have more time to spend with them rather than having more time to spend.

Licking stamps and sticking them on an envelope. It's just one of those things. 

Sharon Pare: Lance, thank you so much for sharing your story, especially CEO of ATRA, picking up the phone call on Thanksgiving and a member not knowing the CEO of ATRA is picking up the phone, but giving them that true member experience.

I'd love to know any final thoughts before we conclude the podcast today? 

Layla Masri: I'll just say [00:40:00] that I think that speaks to the power of ai, that Lance felt confident that there were enough supports and tools to do more with less, that he felt confident that. It could hold down the fort while people were away enjoying their families and that things would continue to hum along and members would continue to be able to get service.

And also the special treat of getting to talk to the CEO, that's pretty amazing. And I just wanna say thank you to Lance because. It's never a good idea to build anything, especially software in a vacuum, and being able to ideate with our customers and understand exactly what they need and how they need it oftentimes surfaces things that we wouldn't have even thought of.

So it's just such a treat to be able to have that direct connection and to listen and learn from each other and to build something that is super helpful together. 

Lance Wiggins: A hundred percent agree with that. It's teamwork is the dream work. Yeah. I appreciate you guys for having me on. This has been great. 

Sharon Pare: I wanna [00:41:00] personally thank you, Lance, and thank you Layla for sharing your insights, both of your experience, your expertise for the conversation today.

And that does it for this episode of Association NOW Presents Industry partner series. We'll have these special episodes throughout the year, and please make sure to join us each month overall as we explore key topics relevant to association professionals, discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field today, and highlight the significant impact associations have on the economy, the U.S. and the world.

We wanna give a big thanks to our episode sponsor Higher Logic. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. For more information on how AI is transforming the way associations operate, visit associations now online at associationsnow.com. Thank you [00:42:00] everyone.