 Welcome to another episode of the non-profit show. We are thrilled you're here. Today we have a returning guest from a long time ago, Julie Perry, who's joining us from the US Super Yacht Association. And you might be wondering yachts associations. How does that work to the non-profit world? But it's a big thing to be thinking about. And so we're really excited to have Julie's thought leadership with us because associations and how they're managed as nonprofits and how we in the non-profit sector can be looking for support from an association. We think it's gonna be a big, big topic. And we're gonna be talking about marketing. So you can join us for this really vibrant conversation. But before we get going, I want to reintroduce myself. If you don't know me, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Non-profit Academy and my trusty sidekick, Jared Ransom, will be joining us later on in the week. And you know this, if you watch this, but we're really excited because you can get to any one of our past episodes and we are marching towards our 500th episode very shortly here, which blows my mind. You can find us on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV and Vimeo. And we are now turning all of our broadcasts into podcasts. So wherever you get your streaming content, you can find us and we will love to share our episodes with you as well on the nonprofit shows now streaming. Again, we wanna thank all of our sponsors, Blumerang, American Non-profit Academy, Your Part-Time Controller, The Non-profit Nerd, Fundraising Academy, Non-profit Atlas, Non-profit.Leader and Staffing Boutique. I always say this, but without them, we would not be having these conversations. And we're gonna have a great conversation today because we have Julie Perry. Welcome back. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Very happy to be here. Well, we are super excited to have you. You have joined us through some different paths, but what's really cool in when I first met you, you talked about this, you are a board member of the US Super Yacht Association. Okay, super cool title. I mean, so talk to us about what your association does and how you do it roughly before we get into all these questions we have for you. I know, it always does raise a lot of questions in people's minds. How I'm even involved, because here I am based in landlocked Indiana, so people don't have a problem with that. So the story behind that one is, I am a member of the US Super Yacht Association and have been since 2013. The organization itself, we're celebrating our 15th anniversary. And I am associated with the Super Yacht industry because I was once a yacht stewardess. So if you've ever seen that TV show Below Deck on Bravo, I was a Super Yacht stewardess. And so that people know a Super Yacht is defined as any yacht 80 feet or larger. So technically for a boat to be called a yacht, you're looking at about like the 50 foot range for motor yachts, sailing yachts sometimes can be 35 foot. But when you get up into the 80 foot range is when there are regulatory bodies that require that you have a professionally trained crew with various certifications. So 80 feet and up is a Super Yacht. And back in my day, now I was a yacht stewardess in 1999, 2000, 2001. So it was right out of college. And by the way, if anyone has a kid about to graduate from college, I'm telling you, have them go do this for three, five years. It's the best. You get to travel all over the world, rub elbows with rich and famous people and get paid a heck of a lot of money. It really is great. Oh Robert, hello. Now, I thought the industry was so great as a job that around 2006, I decided to write a book about how to work on yachts. So I wrote The Insider's Guide to Becoming a Yacht Stewardess, which is also used by a lot of engineers, captains, chefs. It's basically how to get into the industry. So that book came out in 2006. And in 2013, I caught wind of the fact that Bravo TV was about to put this TV show out about this very job. It's funny, I wrote the book in 2006 and it was like, here are the book launches and it was like crickets because no one knew this industry existed. They knew you could go work on cruise ships. We all are familiar with the cruise line industry and it's economic impact. But the super yacht industry has a huge enormous economic impact as part of the marine industry. The marine industry in Florida is bigger than the citrus industry. No. And the super yacht industry itself is responsible for, I mean, the economic, the global economic impact is like 37.5 billion. And 20% of that hits the United States. So you're looking at a $7 billion industry. There's 6,000 companies that represent this industry worldwide. You're talking just 8,000 super yachts that exist. Well, it's like eight to 9,000. Nobody knows exactly. A lot of the foreign owners can figure out ways to hide their vessel ownership as we're starting to see with some of this oligarch stuff coming out of Russia. But anyway, but yeah, billionaires, when do they have that much money? Yes, they're very philanthropic but they also like to have their toys. And super yachts is kind of that big thing that is the top of the line. You can get a plane, okay, that's cool, but jets or so, whatever, like get the boat. So when the TV show came back out, that's when I did a second edition of my book because I thought, well, here I'm not good. I'd sold 5,000 copies in those seven years but it was sort of like, okay, now that there's gonna be a TV show, I gotta get this book back out. So I joined the US Superyacht Association for the marketing and networking benefits that come with being able to be introduced to a lot of other service providers. I mean, we have 400 members of the US Superyacht Association and our board is about 25 members. We rely very heavily on our board. And so I was on a marketing committee with the association for the first, let's see, it was 2013, 14, 15, 16, 17. So back in 2019, I was elected to the board but I had served in a committee capacity. So I'm very familiar with how we were doing a lot of things when it came to marketing. Now we have sort of a four-pronged approach with our trade association. Advocacy is one of our biggest. So we do go to Washington DC every year and hit Capitol Hill and talk to legislators and try to, one of our big wins back in 2018 was getting vessels over 300 feet to be able to flag themselves US because that means a whole different, that you're in a different category with benefits and things that the vessel can do, the crew, oh, I don't wanna get too much into that technical side. But yes, advocating on behalf of the industry and then also education. So we do a lot of educational seminars that are really small business seminars because most of our members are small businesses. And then events. So and that's where a majority of our revenue comes from is events. So I know we're gonna talk a little bit later about what we did during COVID but that was a huge hit to us as it was because boat shows stopped and that's when we do our big events and then marketing. So education, events, advocacy and marketing and marketing is that side where promoting our own members but also the industry, the US side of this industry. Because as I mentioned, it's a $35.9 billion global industry and we compete a lot with Europe. The builders, the manufacturers, the shipyards. You know, when a vessel needs to go in for maintenance and repair, we actually started a campaign called Refit America which was to try to attract yacht owners to bring their vessels to the US shipyards. You know, we've got Savannah, we've got wonderful shipyards, 13,000 miles of coast, right? With San Diego, wonderful shipyards all the way up in Seattle, Wisconsin, Manitoc, Wisconsin, Burger Boat Company, it's still up there manufacturing vessels and also doing repairs. So we like to say individually strong together a powerful force that together we're able to push more of the come to America and then look at all of our beautiful shipyards. You know, this is what's so interesting to be talking to you because we were talking about this Julie in the green room chatter. And that is that we find that in the nonprofit sector, there's such a lack of associations, you know? I mean, there are some associations that tend to be have been generated through like the medical side of the nonprofit world or social services. But you know, there's not even an association for board liaisons. I mean, for all these different things that just to hear you from these first few minutes of the nonprofit show, look at the benefits that an association that is a nonprofit brings to a critical sector. It's fascinating to see or to learn about how your association is really impacting the trade. I mean, it's fascinating actually. You know, when COVID hit and we needed to sort of pivot with our education because we used to do it all day once a year summit called the Supriyat Summit and people would come and we would have all different breakout rooms on any variety of subject that you could go and learn about with big keynotes. And so transitioning to doing webinars online, I mean, we were doing things about the PPP, you know, when COVID first broke out, we're now doing things like there's this regulatory OSHA training that all maritime companies need. So we're in partnership with Nova Southeastern University to offer educational discounts and programs so that our members, company employees can go and get this training. We do a lot of the marketing webinars teaching people about small businesses about SEO, about utilizing social media. And that was one of the reasons I got on the marketing committee because I was every year at that Supriyat Summit that we would do, I would always speak on a marketing topic. And so now we're doing those online. We just did one earlier in the year and we're charging for it now. Like during COVID for the first year and a half it was free events, but now we're actually saying, okay, you know, that's a revenue source for us and we get sponsors for them. And you're finding that your association members are seeing this as a good value and the marketing of these educational pieces. I would imagine like you said, like the OSHA thing, that's legislated. So that's probably something that needs to be certified and tracked and the association is doing that correctly or is that correct? Yes, yes. And we also offer group health benefits or you can sign up for 401K. We have a 401K program. And that's a big one for me. I went to an investment coach a couple of years ago and I had gone freelance from full-time positions and was starting a consulting business. And she said, is there a marketing association that you can join where you could get health benefits through them so you don't have to go to the marketplace and do all this. And I looked at the National Marketing Association or US Marketing Association and I couldn't find anything. Well, then the US Superyacht Association comes out and says, hey, we're gonna start offering and they do long, she wanted me because I did go through the marketplace but this investment advisor, she wanted me to do long-term disability insurance and the USSA now offers that. Yeah. And I think it was, you know what? I could find health benefits, this is what it was but I couldn't find long-term disability. Well, now the US Superyacht Association offers that for our members as well as 401K programs that our members can get their employees involved in. And that's one of the things about associations. You know, they can offer some of these things especially within the nonprofit marketplace that's so small. The majority of our nonprofits have fewer than 10 people. And so they're not gonna be structures. That's why I think one of the things of looking at these associations is an added benefit to your employees. I mean, there's things that you can loop back in and finding them as one of those other things. Okay, we gotta ask you about this. You know, marketing, you really had as an association, you had been really relying upon in-person events where you had big trade shows and I would imagine you had parties and galas and awards. I mean, you had like a real hospitality-centered opportunity to meet with your stakeholders. That vanishes. So what did you do? It was the online events. And, you know, because the Bocho's got camps too of the Bocho, the biggest, the Fort Lauderdale Bocho where every year we usually have a big pavilion tent and then all of our members get booth spaces and then there's parties every single night, huge sponsorship opportunities. So yes, so we pivoted to doing, we did our Super Yacht Summit virtually. We did our annual meeting both in-person and virtually because so many people, they did try to have the Fort Lauderdale Bocho in 2020, no, yeah, in 2020, but it was very limited as to how many people you could have in a room. So we did a hybrid where we had the in-person event and then most people joined virtually and we ended up being able to use YouTube afterwards to, because everything got recorded. So it's been great because any presentations that were there might not otherwise have been recorded. And then, you know, now we have those online that people can still to this day go back and watch. So selling those, but, you know, we had to get creative with how we sold the sponsorships because when you're at a live event, you get the chachakis, you get the bag and the pamphlets and your table is covered with everybody's brochures and literature. So instead, what we did was figure out ways what we could add on sponsorship levels that had increased exposure online. So what we do, and myself as the marketing co-chair is we make sure, number one, that sponsors of any events are marketed before, during and after an event. So with this, we were able to say, okay, you know, we have talent on our staff that know how to run social media advertising. So isn't it better when you have a third party validation, you know, someone else is running ads for you. So what we will do is say, okay, sponsor X, we will run up to $300 worth of advertising for you on social media from our profiles. And we will make it all about you. So let's just say it's Burger Boat Company, which is in the manufacturer of Badab, Wisconsin. Then we would say, okay, we will write the promos, design the graphics and put the social media posts out there and the native kind that look like they're part of the news feed. And then we will use our money to boost it. And so it's, well, it's partially their money, right? Cause they're paying a little extra. But that was a big one for us. And so, and we find that that keeps the sponsors coming back again and again, because they also get exposure after the event. So when we promote the videos or recaps, put out blog posts recapping what was learned, they also get that exposure. And we have their logos on everything and we'll do individual shout-outs if they pay for that. Now, are you seeing, I mean, like today, literally today, there are states and cities and counties across this country that are ending their mask mandates, which is really a big signal to more in-person events and things of that nature. So what are you all gonna be doing? Are you gonna keep continuing with this marketing and sponsorship relationship? Or are you gonna, I mean, how are you gonna, in essence, pivot back or pivot forward? What does that ecosystem look like for you? Well, it's interesting cause we do have the SuperYacht Summit coming up. Now that's event started as a three-day event back in 2014. And now I think people just aren't as into events right now. Like they just don't wanna spend two whole days flying in and staying in a hotel. So last year, last year we got creative with it. It was limited attendance. This particular event happens during the Palm Beach Boat Show. And so we have it two days prior to the Boat Show. And of course, without the Europeans coming over last year and all our friends from the UK, that just left not a lot of people coming to these Boat Shows. So we last year just did a luncheon and it was a panel and it was just during the day where people could come for four hours and listen to, and we actually got five SuperYacht owners to sit up on stage and we asked questions about everything. And it was fantastic. And it was one of the most raved about SuperYacht summits, I quote, because it was just a one-time panel. So we're doing that again this year. In fact, it's coming up on the 22nd of March and we've got six industry experts and everyone's coming for a luncheon and it's just a three hour event. But we're also doing more events like that. So we decided this year to do the Inspire Initiative which is all about women in the yachting industry. So we're gonna celebrate women at a luncheon on Friday the 25th where we've got Leslie Visser who's, I don't know if you know the sportscaster, she's always on like NFL game, she reports from the silence, just got inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame. Okay. And Captain Sandy Yon who's on Below Deck Med, Carol Aronson who's the CEO of, it's a 10 hair care products. I don't know if you've seen that in the purple bottle. Anyway, she's a yacht owner. So we're doing that luncheon. So we're doing two luncheons as opposed to two full day events. And we're really telling the sponsors, yes, that a lot of it's gonna be about that online promotion but we're actually gonna have the in-person events. They're just smaller. And do you see that some of your events, I'm seeing this for your association are going to be less like more education functioning as opposed to the entertainment side. It seems like everybody's really been starving for knowledge and education because so many things are changing or have changed and are changing. What are you seeing with that? Education, definitely and in and out. Not let's go for the whole day and go from room to room to room. But I think everybody's suffering from a little bit of social anxiety these days. So the networking events, I think are gonna be somewhat slow to come back. The boat show next week will be interesting to see because that used to be, we had every night a cocktail party and we are not doing that this year. There'll be cocktail parties like two as opposed to six, you know? Cause we- Interesting comment about the social anxiety. I love that comment. I hadn't really been able to define it but yeah, I think you're right because in the nonprofit sector, we're starting to see these big events that weren't all went away. You know, AFP is coming up with a big event. Yeah, but they're all gonna be different. That's really interesting. That's really, really interesting. Well, we don't have a lot of time left but I wanna get into this and a little bit of a deeper dive because you mentioned this briefly and that is the marketing of your association, tagging your sponsors in, using that social media. You really have had success with that. So that's not gonna go back, go backwards, right? Are you seeing that as an association, not just tagged to events but actually a part of your sponsorship and your membership value? Definitely a membership value. You know, again, individually strong but together a powerful force. So being able to, rather than if you're a shipyard that does maintenance and service rather than you spending your own budget to try to market internationally globally, you know, you join with the other shipyards and someone will say, oh, with those are your competitors. No, the idea is that we gotta bring them to the United States. Like we as the United States compete for those jobs with Europe and with Asia. And we've also done a lot of partnerships that have helped us to get marketed in other parts of the world by helping various groups market in our part of the world. So for example, partnerships with the Pacific region. So we do, we have a lot of members based in Australia. We have members in 25 states and 20, I think 26 countries around the world because the Pacific region and then also South America. So like we have a group that does expeditions down around Patagonia. The Patagonia Capcoms Association. So we have a lot of associations in this industry. So we've reached out to those associations. Same thing with Central America. We've got members in Chile, Panama, Canada. So we work very closely because our part of the world is where we wanna draw these yachts. But we also know that Australia is where a lot of yachts are gonna be headed due to, I think they've got the Olympics, the World Cup, a lot coming up soon in Australia. And so we help them market as a cruising destination, service destination, and then that partnership with them allows us to market the U.S. in their parts of the world. So we do represent the industry as the United States. So marketing becomes not just helping our members market to each other. And we do a lot of in-person networking events down in South Florida, which is where we're in 26 states, but most of the people are down there in South Florida. So they'll do in-person events. But yeah, the idea of doing more sort of networking on online events, on our Zoom webinars, you see everybody because we want everybody to see who's there so that they can connect. And we try to do a lot of introductions then after, so recently we did a webinar on search engine optimization for small business. And what we said to everyone was, look, you guys need to be trading content. You're basically publishers now as marketers. So why don't you look and see who on this call represents a company that is similar but not a competitor to yours? And then try writing blog posts about one another where you link to each other and then you can get that search engine, I like to call it SEO juice, flowing back and forth. And people loved it and they were there in the chat saying, hey, you, let's talk after this because I can write a blog post about you and vice versa. So, and then we remind them that as members of the U.S. Supriot Association, we're there to promote them as part of these larger initiatives. So they need to send us all of their press releases. Every time something comes out, there's the media but they need to look at us like the media because we can then put it on our blog and then use that link to go and promote it out through social media where we have a lot more followers than many of them do on their own. Right, and that's the brilliance of an association is that you're, and you keep saying that phrase, stronger together. I mean, it's really a powerful thing to recognize how any type of membership can really propel someone forward. And I think also it's really interesting the policy piece of this because the nonprofit sector, depending on what your topic is, policy really should be a central theme to what is gonna help mitigate your work, find solutions, navigate the process and the association concept really is that opportunity. Yeah, we do a lot to just make sure our members are getting news as it's happening. Right now, there is a huge crisis right now with, well, two things. One, we have a crew shortage right now, believe it or not. So again, if anybody knows someone who wants to go work on a yacht, my book's available on Amazon, go check it out. But the American crew are hard to get and because of visa restrictions, because there's a lot of Australians and New Zealanders and South Africans that work in the industry, but they're having visa problems now. So, and if you're a US flag vessel, you have to have US crew. Now, a lot of even US owners and the majority of yacht, super yacht owners are American. And if they flag their vessel somewhere else, so offshore, Marshall Islands Grant came in, both of whom are members of our association, the Marshall Island Registry and the Cayman Islands Registry. But a lot of vessels are licensed there and flagged there, meaning that they can hire crew from anywhere, but those US flag boats, me American crew. So there's a crew shortage. And that then allows our association to say, okay, well, we can work on, how do we promote crew jobs in the United States so that we can start attracting more crew? And right now we're of course dealing with this Russia situation where there's a lot of crew that work on vessels that are now being seized due to the sanctions. And what do those crew members do and what rights do they have? And how are we getting them back to their home ports? Whether they're American or whether they're from South Africa or Australia. So getting the updated information about what's going on has been crucial. And every day there's a new email, here's the latest. And so we keep our members informed and that becomes a really big. And then because everybody's all grouped together in whether it's emails or alerts on social media, then they're able to talk in real time about these situations as they're happening. Right. Well, it has been amazing to hear your perspective. I wanna make sure that everybody sees Julie's contact information. USsuperyacht.com is the way to find them to see how this association is functioning and what it looks like to be in the center of a lot going on, as you said right now. I mean, there's a lot. I would encourage people to go and check out our social media profiles. Because you and I originally met when I was the VP of Marketing at Portable and Board Management Software. So we apply a lot of marketing tactics that are used in high tech SaaS world to get the word out about our members tag members. So what we're doing on LinkedIn, what we're doing on Instagram, what we're doing on Twitter and what we're doing on Facebook are definitely, I would say models to go and take a look at and see how we promote ourselves, promote our members and promote our events. I love it. And you know, we need to be doing this. We need to understand it. And it's hard to always know what to do. Again, I wanna say thank you to Julie Perry. Again, I'm Julia Patrick. Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd. We'll be back with us shortly. Again, we wanna thank all of our presenting sponsors from Blumerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy, the nonprofit nerd, your part time controller, Staffing Boutique, nonprofit.leader and then nonprofit Atlas for being a part of this conversation. Julie, I learned so much from you today. I really, I love how you amplified the value of a nonprofit to an association structure and the nonprofit association structure to for profit. I think it's just magical thinking. And so I really, really love that you joined us today. And thank you for having me. I was so honored. Yeah, I love you guys. I need to be watching the show more. I know I used to watch every week when, you know, I was back at Boardable and I'm gonna start checking you out again. And I love that everything's available online. I was trying to find topics for people the other day. And the fact I can access your full library, you've got every topic under the sun. My goodness. Yeah, it's a lot. We're coming up on 500 episodes and we have a lot more coming at us. So it's really excited. You know, as we like to end every show, we want to remind all of our viewers and our listeners to stay well, so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone. Thanks so much, Julie.