Jon Bassford With Lateral Solutions

Intro: [00:00:00] Broadcasting live From the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for association leadership radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:17] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Association Leadership Radio, and this is going to be a good one today on the show, we have John Basford and he is with lateral solutions. Welcome, John.

Jon Bassford: [00:00:28] Thank you. Happy to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:30] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about lateral solutions. How are you helping, folks?

Jon Bassford: [00:00:35] Sure. So it’s an operations management company and what we do is is launch into operations for startups and non-profits for profits and really help them create streamlined, efficient and effective internal operations. Then it can also provide ongoing management through bookkeeping HR services, as well as CFO and CFO level strategy.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:01] So what’s your back story? How did you get involved in operations?

Jon Bassford: [00:01:05] Well, so I got started in associations as a whole, you know, not like a lot of people, not necessarily intentionally. I went to law school and I am one of those people who was leaving law school and did not know what I wanted to do with my law degree and with my life. And I started working for a legal organization. I was a member of in law school and that launched my career in association management. And when I was, you know, my my position grew with that organization, I took on a lot of operational duties and responsibilities, even though it wasn’t my core job. And when I was ready to move on and go to the next next position, I focus my my search on entire operations and have built a career around it.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:50] Now, having, I guess, worked with a lot of different types of organizations, do you see kind of similar challenges that maybe a non association firm would have, but an association firm doesn’t have and vice versa?

Jon Bassford: [00:02:07] You know, I say that the only the most part, the only major difference is taxes, right? Which nonprofit doesn’t pay taxes unless there are some, some? Not not to say that that never occurs with different business lines for an association, but for the most part, that’s the difference. At the end of the day, everyone is trying to deliver on their end goal, whether it’s to sell a product or deliver on their mission, and they’re trying to do that the best way possible with the resources they have. At the end of the day, you know, that’s what every company with a for profit nonprofit is trying to do from a business operations standpoint.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:50] Now, when you started getting into operations, was that something like you? You said it wasn’t kind of your initial goal, but you got into it. What made you think you were good at it? Like, what were some of the clues that you had where you’re like, Hey, you know what? You know, I can really make a difference in an organization by becoming kind of a ninja in this space?

Jon Bassford: [00:03:11] Yeah, a couple of things. One being, I am probably the definition of jack of all trades, master of none. You know, throughout my career, I have been involved in marketing. I have been involved in budgeting and finance. I have been involved in HR or legal events, management programs, programmatic management, volunteer management. And, you know, operations is really, to some degree where all that comes together and working for small organizations and small companies, it really allows me to utilize my diverse set of skills. Again, I have a lot of great, but I’m not a practicing attorney. I have an MBA, but I’m not a CPA, but I really have a broad knowledge in all of these areas and really have able to to hone those. The other part of the operations is that, you know, it takes, I think, a person who has problem solving skills and an analytical mind. And I think those are two areas where I really excel throughout my career and in my life.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:15] Now, is there any, any kind of actionable thing, an association leader right now while listening to you and your background about operations? Is there something they can do today that can help make their life easier?

Jon Bassford: [00:04:31] Yeah, I think this is true for all companies, but I think it’s even more true for associations. And my answer is to question everything, you know, the reason why I say that that that’s even more true for associations is because of the longevity that associations tend to have with their staff and being mission driven. And you know, everyone who works and works for or is involved in that organization loves and cares about what that organization does. They tend to fall in the trap of doing the same thing over and over again. And, you know, we’ve all we’ve all heard it before, like, what do you do? What do you do? It’s the way we’ve always done it. I think the biggest thing for association leaders to change with the times, with our digitally staff culture, whatever it may be, is to really question what it is you do and why you do it. And I think nothing should be left on the table. I think you should. You should question everything. Obviously, I’m not suggesting that you review your mission every week. That’s certainly done at the governance and board level, but your day to day transactional work and your tactics and why you’re doing it, questioning why you’re doing it, how you’re doing it and whether or not it’s delivering the results that you intend.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:47] Now, do you find that folks are hesitant to do that kind of an audit because they’re kind of afraid of what they might find? And when you bringing up these points where, hey, you know what? We’ve always done it this way. This is how it was done before I even got here. So why question, you know, if it isn’t broken, you know, why fix it? And people not realizing that sometimes you should be breaking some things because they have out kind of lived their usefulness?

Jon Bassford: [00:06:14] Yeah, it’s a good question. And obviously we’re talking broad here. So, you know, it’s always tough to kind of maybe narrow down some specifics. But you know, here’s one example it just how how life and the digital world everything has changed. You know, a colleague of mine who is a very similar job as a director of operations for a a quasi governmental organization and, you know, operates as a as a nonprofit association, if you will, to a certain degree, but gets funding from the government. And she runs payroll for four 30 people, and she spends two to four days a month entering, internalizing, reconciling, reconciling with benefits. She’s been two to four days a month on payroll, where clearly right now I handle payroll for five companies myself personally, not outsource anybody else. I personally run payroll for five companies. I spend less than 15 minutes a month on all five combined. Not for payroll, not per company combined. And the reason is is because I’ve I’ve stayed out there and watched and listened to to what new strategies, what new platforms are out there so we can streamline the process. And again, I realize that this is is one tiny little piece of the pie.

Jon Bassford: [00:07:36] But just think if you if an organization could get back two to four days a month that someone’s time, what much more could you do with that time in that money than having them sit there and enter manual payroll? And I think that can apply to a lot of areas, whether you’re marketing strategies or old school or your H.R. strategies, right? Are you a company that still? You know, has as a very manufacturer based PTO policy. And is that the best time to be using your staff’s time and counting hours and and book and PTO and someone on the back end managing all that? Or is it time to go to a more modern tactic and strategy with that and have an unlimited PTO policy? So there’s a lot of different ways, you know, that I think. Leaders need to be looking at. How are they using the most the most up to date technologies and strategies? And they’re for. Are they being as efficient and as effective as possible? And that’s and that’s the bottom line that they’re trying to get to right.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:47] And I think this is where having an outside person come in and shed some light to this is really important because the people in the organization just don’t know what they don’t know. And you need to have somebody with fresh eyes, especially that has deep depth of knowledge of some of these areas to be able to say, Hey, you know what? There’s a better way, and it’s not as scary or as hard as you think it might be to make this kind of a change. And the and the benefits can be dramatic. And especially like you’re saying, oh, a day or two here, a day or two there doesn’t matter. It seems minimal for the cost of change, but those things add up, you know, a day a day here, a day there becomes a week here. In a week there. Pretty quickly.

Jon Bassford: [00:09:36] Yeah. Another, you know, go back to your question about a difference between the for profit nonprofit world. I think another area that I see a big difference between my for profit and nonprofit clients is is outsourcing. You know, I think most associations, they tend to figure out the skill sets they need and build an entire team internally around that. And by no means is that for me to say that’s a good or bad strategy. But what it does to lend itself to is having people performing duties that they don’t have an expertize in. Whereas when you take a for profit startup, you know, that’s that’s just as lean just as just as as, you know, trying to scale and do the most it can with limited resources like most associations are, you know, they’re outsourcing the majority, their stuff and what they can do by that is is reduce their costs a lot of times because you’re not paying for that nine to five job and the benefits. But what they also, what they get instead is expertize in every single little area. If they have a campaign that that is direct mail, they hire a direct mail person. They have a campaign that social media that hire social media person. Whereas you take your normal association and it is one person who does all the marketing and all the communications across the entire organization. And if it’s not a specific area of expertize for them, you know, they just kind of have to figure it out. And again, you know, I came up that way in my career and it served me well. But at a certain point, our organizations getting the amount of expertize and skill they need for the amount of spending.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:23] Now can you share a story, maybe where an organization was struggling and you came in and help them maybe get to a new level, a level that maybe they didn’t even imagine what’s possible? You don’t have to name the organization, but just shared kind of the pain they were having and how you were able to intervene and and help them.

Jon Bassford: [00:11:44] Sure. So, you know, I’ve a lot of my clients when I moved to consulting side again, it’s been on the operations front, a lot of it, a lot of that has to do with with organizations that are completely startup, even for a nonprofit. You know, at some point they’re going to start from the ground up or an organization that was incubated under some kind of fund and that was branching off. And that’s actually where I’ve had a number of my nonprofit clients in the last three years, and a lot of that has to do with, again, kind of going back to this area of expertize. Most day to day functioning business people or operators, you know, again with their executive director for a for profit or nonprofit or your CEO for nonprofit, they don’t know the ins and outs of minutia of Inter operations. It’s not rocket science. People can figure that out, but often it’s something that needs to be ramped up quick. You don’t have time to figure that out, right? You know, you don’t. There’s only so many mistakes that you can make on accounting before it affects your taxes. There’s only so many mistakes you can make on an HR front and take it soon. And on top of that, do you know what insurance you need, right? So a lot of my clients have come to me and said, Hey, we’ve incorporated or we’ve branched off from this or we’ve done. We gotten to this point, but we have no idea where to go next. And what my company tends to do is to say, you know, and a four as a one stop shop, come in and say, we will do all of the internal operations and administrative functions that you need to take this from, you know, just a project or idea and turn it into a company because non-profits and associations, they are companies, they are incorporated and they need to make sure that the the operational processes and procedures that they are putting forth are in compliance with with local and federal laws and regulations and and really making sure that they are following the best industry standards in those areas.

Jon Bassford: [00:13:45] Because whether you are a for profit or not profit, accounting as accounting for the most part other than taxes that are legal is legal. Insurance is insurance for the most part, and you’ve got to make sure that you’re working with a partner that knows those areas to make sure that you’re doing this right because here’s what ends up happening. A lot of people convince themselves that they know enough or they care enough about the internal operations matters, that they’re going to stay on top of it. And I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve been brought into a situation where books have not been reconciled for a year or, you know, having a client that doesn’t want to pay my company to do certain aspects. And so we don’t. But then we handle the reconciliation of the books or something down the line. And the amount of money that they spent for us to clean up their books and to make things right is what they would have spent. They would have had us do the entire thing all along and give themselves back that time and money.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:49] Yeah, it’s one of those things where you’re coming in to fix a problem that could have been prevented in the first place.

Jon Bassford: [00:14:56] Right. And a lot of times without any additional costs, usually usually, you know, for example, you know, when I when I first started out consulting, I had a just a few small clients. You know, I think at the time I had, I had five clients and it was just me at the time. And the the one person who did not want me to do their accounts payable, I would spend more time reconciling their books than the other four clients combined.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:26] Right, it’s because the system, the system isn’t good, then the the output of information is not going to be good, so. Correct. Correct. Now when you’re working with a new client, what is typically the pain? Are they in some sort of a crisis as something happened where they’re like, Hey, we better call John and his team because, you know, we screwed this up or something, you know, something isn’t. You know, I’m feeling some sort of a pain. Are you coming in in that kind of regard or are people proactive in trying to get ahead of things?

Jon Bassford: [00:15:59] You know, so because a lot of my work has begun at the startup phase, again, whether it’s true, start up from nothing or branching off the pain point is we’re incorporated and we don’t know what to do from here. Right. And so that’s that’s that’s certainly a big, big pain point that I’m feeling it is providing that expertize on all those different aspects that you need to to set up and start running. The other part, yeah, I would say, you know, more than any other area. Where the pain points become visible to the executive director of the owner, et cetera, is around accounting, you know, you can kind of fake it till there’s a problem, right? Business insurance you you don’t know that there is a problem to there is a problem, right? You don’t you don’t sit around thinking, Oh man, do I have enough insurance? But the accounting is something that is going to pop up all the time. Whether you’re doing the finances for a board meeting, you are getting ready for taxes. You are, you know, just trying to get to a point where you’re reviewing your own financial reports on a regular basis. You know, there’s a there’s there’s there’s several different flows of information that occur with accounting that at some point you’re going to be like, Oh, like, this isn’t right, and I don’t know how to fix this. And it’s usually because there aren’t the systems and processes in place. And you know, as much people are good intentioned on on stay on top of accounting. It’s an area that slides because it’s not an area of competency. And for most people, it’s not fun, right? It’s not what they enjoy doing. It’s not their core mission, it’s not their core business, and they tend to let it slide. So yeah, a lot of times we are brought in to say, come in and say, Hey, like we say, something is off on our books and we don’t know what it is you need. Can you come help us find it?

Lee Kantor: [00:18:03] And then so when you start an engagement, you’re coming in to maybe solve a specific problem like that or build a strong foundation. Is it something that you’re coming in to just kind of triage that situation or does this eventually turn into a Hey, Johns? I might as well just outsource this to John because he seems to know what he’s doing.

Jon Bassford: [00:18:25] Yeah. We occasionally do ad hoc work for problem solving, and I’d say that happens more on the association side for me more than anything, and it probably happens a little more outside the outskirts of operations. You know, one of my one of my clients is redoing their component relations handbook for their professional association, their professional chapters across the country. And it’s just one of those things that, again, it just falls to the wayside because it’s not the core job of the individuals. And so it just sits and sits and sits, and they’ve engaged me to say, Hey, look, you know, we need to revamp this and we want your skill and expertize on how to do that. So we certainly do that. Add how to work. But my goal is always with clients is to get my foot in the door with some kind of project and then from there provide ongoing services, whether it’s and sometimes it’s just from advisory standpoint, right? Maybe you have that person at your office that the EPA or the operations manager who handles all the transactional day to day work, you know, they make sure the bookkeeping is done. They make sure there’s business insurance. They respond to the emails and the inquiries when they come in that maybe they don’t have that high level view and experience on some of these areas. Or again, that’s an area where I can come in as a CEO or CFO advisor and really just kind of help quarterback the person, right? They can handle the transaction work, they can handle the day to day. But I can come in and provide them with some a little bit more expertize in helping make sure in a limited number of hours, you know, five or 10 hours a month. Making sure that that organization is is getting ahead of the future hurdles and making sure that they don’t get in that same place again.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:17] Yeah, a strong foundation is critical. And and just even like you said earlier, little tweaks can have a big impact over time. So get some of this stuff right at jump rather than kind of just accept certain levels of inefficiencies when you don’t have to.

Jon Bassford: [00:20:35] Yeah, and I have a great story. It’s not operation. It’s for my first, my first, very first role. But again, I think it kind of goes to a little bit of what we’ve been talking about with associations and change associations and evaluation and also the the end goal of making sure that what you’re doing on a day to day basis, weekly basis, monthly basis is driving the results that you intend. So I started my my new job with this legal organization and I done a a trip. It was it was a traveling field rep position where I was going around the country, visiting chapters at law schools and helping the ones that were struggling by training the officers, doing recruitment for them. And it really just kind of being that that in the field person to help these chapters grow and succeed. And I’d finish my my first training trip with a colleague and a couple of weeks in and I kept being told by by my boss, this is what we expect our chapters to do. You know, like it was very, very specific, right? Disney of our programs, this number of recruitment events. You know, they need to have an initiation every semester or at least once a year, you know, very, very specific requirements. And you know, I’m here, I’m training. I’m the new guy. And again, my mind is analytical. I’m always always thinking about what’s best and how things should work. And so I come to and I said, You know, you keep telling me that this is what chapter should do.

Jon Bassford: [00:22:02] Where does that exist? Where are we telling the chapters that other than me repeating the words? And the answer was, Oh, there’s this, there’s this document in the back of the district conference manual. So I’m sitting here thinking, I’m like, OK, it’s the back of this manual, I said, So what happens if if a if a chapter doesn’t kind of destroy confidence, do they see this document ever? No. Well, what if they leave their manual at the desk, a conference and leave and go home? Well, they see this again. The answer was no. So this entire organization’s chapter operations is really what a submission is all about. These chapters deliver on the organization’s mission, which is the the sole purpose of the organization and in the chapters. Doing these tasks on a semester annual basis is the whole is the whole point of what they’re doing to fulfill on that mission. And that instruction was buried in the back of a manual. So here’s what I did. Again, I didn’t make broad changes. I didn’t. I didn’t reinvent the wheel, but I took the these pages. I think at the time it was three pages and I I boiled it down to a two page document front and back, four, four printed out and two pages for digital. And I had that document be at the front of every single thing I did if I was emailing a chapter about initiation, I mentioned this document.

Jon Bassford: [00:23:24] If I email them about programing, I mentioned this document. Everything I did was geared around this around this document. And because of this kind of proactive approach of really putting out all the expectations on the chapters up front, here’s in my time there. I was there for six years during my time there, the organization, which was a 100 year old organization. So was it was it new like it wasn’t in a growth phase in the lorsqu’il department, we had a 20 percent increase in membership. We had probably, you know, sometimes hard, hard, hard to quantify, but a two or three times in programing from our chapters we had, we went from having about 15 chapters out of two hundred meeting these mental expectations to over 100. So really just really increasing that greatly. And here’s another big thing that with with utilizing this document and lioness expectations and communicating it proactively, the organization had an issue where they had a lot of times would have to subsidize people to go to their conventions to get the numbers that they wanted. And what we were able to do during my tenure is not only cut out those subsidies. We actually increased the the convention attendance. Year after year, why was there and it was all because of utilizing this document being proactive about it, laying out clear expectations for these chapters and communicating that proactively as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:51] Wow, that is a great story. And that shows being proactive on your part, enabled your client to really benefit and really just probably benefiting to this day.

Jon Bassford: [00:25:03] Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and there’s no doubt that that, you know, some of my bosses and people I worked with had started this process, right, like the organization was in a place of change and transition. I think, you know, five or seven years prior to a volunteer alumnus, kind of being the executive director of the organization to paid staff. So it had made some changes already, and it was certainly growing and making some progress. But but again, there’s this one little tweak. One little change of pulling this document out and really driving it home really made all the difference for that organization. They also started doing it more on that pre-law department, and they started seeing growth there. And there’s no doubt that I was. I was piggybacking on some of the great changes I had before me, and I’m sure that the, you know, the people following me took what I did and made it even continue to use the core of it. But what our continue to grow and expand that as well?

Lee Kantor: [00:26:04] Well, John, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, what’s the website?

Jon Bassford: [00:26:12] Yeah, you can go to WW Dot, think laterally

Lee Kantor: [00:26:18] Think and then the hyphen lateral. Correct? Yep. Well, John, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Jon Bassford: [00:26:27] Thank you very much. I appreciate it as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:29] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on association leadership radio.