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Kevin Tyler
Hey everybody. Welcome back to Higher Voltage. Very, very happy for today’s guest Melissa Farmer Richards, author of the upcoming “The 30-60-90-Day Handbook” is on Higher Voltage today. Melissa is the founder and principal of iMarketingMix, LLC. She is an author, teacher, consultant, facilitator, and leadership coach, dubbed the checklist guru. She authors the weekly leadership checklist and coaches strategic and developing leaders using her own proprietary three fundamentals of leadership curriculum. Melissa’s 32-year career includes senior positions at software companies and global technology organizations and later led in such roles as chief of staff and vice president for communications, marketing and enrollment, serving liberal arts colleges and a large public institution. She has founded two small businesses and co-founded two nonprofits. Melissa Farmer Richards, I am so excited to have you join me on Higher Voltage today.
Melissa Richards
Thank you, Kevin. I’m thrilled to be here.
Kevin Tyler
We have this book coming up, and it’s not released just yet, but the format of it is a checklist. And as a fellow checklist maker, I would love to know why you love checklists so much.
Melissa Richards
Fabulous. I love to know that you love checklists as well. I call myself the checklist guru and I share a story in the forward of my book about how I’ve always loved checklists. In high school, I was a chronic list maker. I even made a checklist in my homework assignments every day. And it was the act of checking off the items on the list that gave me a sense of accomplishment. And there’s actual science in that. It generates a rush of dopamine in your brain. And, as you probably know, dopamine is a neurotransmitter known as the reward center. And humans are actually hardwired to seek it out. Also, on the geeky side, I was a rhetoric and communications major in college. So, I naturally admire Aristotle’s virtue of habits and his regard for having a sense of control over our actions, which we refer to as self agency.
And quite simply, checklists make me happy and they reduce my anxiety when I have a lot to do or I need a roadmap to get me from one point to another.
Kevin Tyler
I hope I’m not alone here in being part of the population who will finish a task, forget that it’s not on the list, add it, just so I can do that. So I want to come clean on that. But I guess one of the things I’m really intrigued by, and this was a conversation we were having before we hit the record button for this episode, is how the book came to be. I would love for you to kind of retell that, sorry, but I’d love for you to retell that story so that folks understand how it’s going to come into the world.
Melissa Richards
Yes, so I was speaking at the CASE Conference on Marketing and Branding in the summer of 2023 in Seattle on this topic. So, the title of my presentation was a 30-60-90 Day Checklist for Communications and Marketing Leaders. And it was well received, which I was really pleased about. And CASE and I talked about turning it into a book. So, we put together, put a contract in place that CASE would publish the book. That was summer of 2023. That fall, I put together a survey, an online survey and handed out cards at the next conference I was at, which was the American Marketing Association’s Higher Ed Symposium that fall to solicit responses to a survey.
And then in January, I started writing, and I made it a daily habit. I followed the advice of Stephen King from his book on writing where he details his process of writing. And he said, write every day, even when you think you don’t have something to say, write every day. So I set a goal of writing 250 words a day. I’m a morning person, so I would wake up, grab my coffee, get to the computer.
Some days I would sit there for 10 minutes staring aimlessly at the screen. Other days it would flow like running water. I had so much of it in my brain and it was a matter of getting the structure in place. And I tackled the introduction, the forward and the introduction first because I was very emotionally tied to that story of why this book was important. And then I dug in, started
dumping checklists that were already in my brain into the outline and conducted some interviews with experts for the intro chapters of each section. And slowly, you know, on a daily basis, I got the book written. I sought some advice from experts in certain areas, such as finance. After I developed, you know, drafted those chapters and asked for their input to review it, to make sure that it was spot on. And I wrote the book in seven months and then, yeah, seven months.
Kevin Tyler
That is crazy. Congratulations first, are in order. I’m really excited for the world to meet your baby, this book. I am particularly intrigued by the organization of the book. I appreciate that it is segmented in terms of time, right? 30, 60 and 90 days of a new leadership position.
I would love for you to share some just examples that might illustrate each of those steps in a person’s, when they enter a campus in this leadership role. So the first section is the first day, day one to day 30, and that is about building trust. Can you share some things to avoid when trying to build trust early on in a leadership role on a campus?
Melissa Richards
So if we flip that to the positive about building trust, you have to follow through on things you’ve committed to do. Not following through does not build trust. In fact, it seeds mistrust. Look, executives are busy. I know, I was one for many, many years. And the higher up you are, the more people you have who depend on you.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a peer executive commit to do something, send something, say something. And then when I follow up, they’ve completely forgotten about it. And they didn’t just simply forget to do the thing. They completely forgot the conversation and the commitment. So that’s a situation that is really hard. It’s hard to build trust when that happens.
Kevin Tyler
Yeah.
Melissa Richards
Being consistent is number one in my checklist for building trust. Doing it over and over and over again, showing up. Also showing compassion, exhibiting competence and communicating well, but following through on commitments is essential. It’s top of the list.
Kevin Tyler
I couldn’t agree with you more. And I think one of the other kind of nuances in building trust on a new campus is not applying what we might know from other campuses or other industries onto the campus that you’re on. There are a lot of nuances that, and details and intricacies that exist between campuses and all the things that we might know from, I don’t know, CPG or wherever a new marketing leader is coming in from into higher education. Similarly, people who are coming from either a large public or a small liberal arts, whatever it is.
The same rules may not, likely will not apply to the new campus that you’re on. I think building trust is also understanding that there is a listening component to getting to a new campus as a leader and absorbing the truths that you will need to know about in order to do your job effectively. Otherwise, there is no trust to be made.
Melissa Richards
Indeed, indeed.
Kevin Tyler
So the next section of the book is the 30 day to 60 day and that is about earning credibility. Can you share some examples of how you did that in past roles most efficiently as a new marketing leader on campus?
Melissa Richards
Yes, and just as you touched on, listening is really critical in, related to credibility. But here’s the thing about credibility. It isn’t finite. Leaders bring a certain level of credibility to the job with their background and skills, right? In the interview process, you’re meeting people, you’re greeting people, you’re sharing your knowledge, they’re asking you tough questions. You have a CV that’s pages and pages and pages long, right?
Kevin Tyler
Right.
Melissa Richards
But earning credibility doesn’t stop there. That’s where it starts. Credibility is based on actions and evidence. So once you get to campus, your colleagues and the people who are working for you are looking for those actions and evidence before they bank more trust in you and continue to perceive you as credible. There’s also that connection between trust and credibility. And I’ve always found listening to be my best tool in earning credibility.
I had the best success when I was intentional about building relationships, engaging with others, showing respect. And even when I was brought in as a vice president to enact change, I needed to respect the past in order to understand the present and redesign the future.
Kevin Tyler
I love that. I think that’s so appropriate here. And I think one of the other things about credibility is that it opens so many doors to partnerships across campus to link up and do work together to help to amplify strategy that is so important for there to be partnerships across campus. Because marketing is not just the marketers job, as you know, right? It’s everyone’s job to deliver what we are promising. And so with that credibility comes the opportunity to do more of that in spaces that might not have ever expected or anticipated there to be a marketing play in what they do in their corner of campus.
Melissa Richards
Yes.
Kevin Tyler
And then I guess the last section is the 60 to 90 day section of a new leader’s role. And that’s about demonstrating commitment. And I think this is a really important point because it can get wonky real quick when you talk about demonstrating commitment, especially in a job that is as busy and demanding as a leadership marketer. Can you please expand on what this means to you and how one might find balance while also demonstrating commitment in these new leadership roles.
Melissa Richards
I see demonstrating commitment as multi-dimensional. It’s more than just staying late, showing up at campus events that are optional, or even just simply staying in the job. Demonstrating commitment means showing that you’re in it to win it, as I like to say. You’re there for something bigger than yourself. It’s not about your ego. Colleges and universities are mission-driven institutions, and the people who work there love the mission.
We know that, we see it. They work hard and they work so hard for that mission that they need you as the leader to fill their cups back up when they’re running low. So demonstrating commitment also is about helping your team members connect purpose to their work. It’s about empowering them and it’s about showing appreciation for their work.
Kevin Tyler
I need this book, essentially. But I couldn’t agree with this more because it’s easy to define commitment in ways that are just about like time in the seat, time in your day, how much you’re giving. But I think it’s also about standing up for what you know is right for the institution. It’s about saying no when no is warranted. It’s about saying yes when yes is warranted and making sure that we are not only serving ourselves, but also serving the institution and its audiences and stakeholders. And that can be really, really hard to do, especially in the climates that we have to operate in so often, which also change so often. And so I think that commitment is such an important component to any leadership role, of course, but especially in higher education.
Melissa Richards
Yeah, and I have a phrase for that, Kevin. I call it stand-on-the-desk leadership.
Kevin Tyler
I heard that.
Melissa Richards
You have to feel so proud and empowered by the mission of the institution that you’re willing to do the right thing. You’re willing to say the right thing, do the right thing. And that means you believe it so deeply that you’re willing to stand up on a desk and shout it to the masses.
Kevin Tyler
Stand on business, exactly. I’m curious because you’ve had, you’ve worked in higher ed for so long and have such deep experience. How is higher education marketing changing and what new characteristics do you think leaders need to possess that they may not have had to have in the past?
Melissa Richards
Well, there’s so many things changing. And when I came to higher ed in 2009 from the technology industry, it was easy for me to get some early wins, right? Because I got there and I said, what do you mean you don’t have a content management system? What do you mean you don’t have an email marketing system, right? So people thought, oh, wow, she’s bringing so much. I wrote the first social media guidelines for Virginia Tech, right? Like that was so long ago when all of that seemed so fancy.
So we’ve come a long way, higher education is facing some difficult issues. And I believe deeply that communications and marketing play a really important role in navigating those issues. I have the privilege of living here in Hamilton, New York, near several incredible colleges and universities. And earlier this week, I attended a panel discussion at Colgate University, led by President Brian Casey.
And the theme was the role of the American college in our time. Three incredible panelists, all college presidents, Lafayette College President, Nicole Heard, Grinnell College President, Anne Harris, and also just up the road, Hamilton College President, Stephen Tepper. And they covered a number of issues, but none of them were really new issues, right? We know that higher ed’s been facing financial and demographic challenges for over a decade.
Kevin Tyler
Yep.
Melissa Richards
And 2025, this year, is predicted to be peak enrollment for the next decade, at least. Hundreds of colleges have closed or are closing or merging. I read just yesterday the Penn State University system, for example, just announced that it’s evaluating the longevity of about a dozen of its satellite campuses, specifically the rural ones. So you can imagine the economic implications in those small towns.
We worked hard to justify the value proposition of a college degree in economic terms, even though there’s plenty of data that show that colleges are the number one engine for social mobility and many other benefits. College athletics is changing, it’s moving towards professionalism, right? So many things are happening. None of these issues are new, but they’re getting worse. And the one big thing that these presidents said that really resonated with me is that the Dear Colleague letter from the US Department of Education on February 14th, Happy Valentine’s Day, is momentous. It was intentionally confusing and threatening. Now, its legality will be disputed, but as this panel of college presidents pointed out, it was a deliberate attempt to impose ideological mandates on institutions of higher learning. The Biden administration issued executive orders that protected underrepresented people. But the spirit of this letter was the opposite, and it’s concerning. So that climate, that environment of higher education is really important. An important background as we as we skill up our higher education marketing and communications and think about the audiences that we’re reaching to enroll them, in our colleges and universities. And then also as well internally how we are respecting academic freedom and crafting the curricula and offerings that we are offering through our institutions.
Kevin Tyler
It’s such a wild thing to think about. In my opinion, it just feels like, what, every six months, it feels like the hole in the needle we have to thread gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And listeners of this show will not be unfamiliar with what I’m about to say, but a man, Brandon Busty, who I really like listening to quite a bit, has said a long, long time ago at a conference I was attending that once something in America becomes politicized, it’s virtually impossible for it to become un-politicized. And what we are seeing now is obviously a politicization of higher education, but also higher education is included in that, of course. And I’m just so curious about what things look like in the future for higher education. Of course, we’ll get to that question because everyone gets asked what the future of higher education might look like. But when you think about Penn State assessing the viability of its rural campuses. That feels problematic to me. It feels problematic that we are taking away the supports that exist for folks who want an education, but who might not be able to afford it, or they might not have the programs, whatever it is that gets in the way, there are structures set up to take those obstacles out of the way. And what feels like is happening now is that we’re putting obstacles back up. And so as marketers, we have to understand what the conversation looks like in like a, in a microwave, right? The conversations in Pennsylvania are going to look very different from the conversations in California where I live. And so when we’re trying to attract audiences from different places, we have to understand how to talk to them, what they’re dealing with, what’s most important. And it just goes into this hyper customization that we’ve been talking about for years and years in higher education marketing, but feels like it’s going to be ever more important these days.
Melissa Richards
Yes, I agree.
Kevin Tyler
This book that you’re going to release here in the spring feels like an advice book, a work help book, as opposed to a self-help book. What were some of the things that you wish someone told you to expect when you got into higher education marketing?
Melissa Richards
So as you know, I spent 16 years in the technology industry before coming to higher ed in 2009. And when I left the tech industry and accepted that first role, at Virginia Tech, my technology friends said, oh, you’re going to hate higher ed. You’re a mover and a shaker. Higher ed is slow. It’s underfunded, resistant to change. But actually, I found that because I don’t just bring an idea to the table, I always bring a business plan. I’m a strategist, so I thought through how I’m gonna approach it, what are the goals and the tactics and the predicted outcomes. And so I was lucky to have a manager, the AVP, Larry Hinker at Virginia Tech, who, he was open to my ideas because I brought more than just the idea. I brought a process and a plan. Also, I think it helped that I was out of research institutions. So they really respected that as well, that process. So I, and again, as I said earlier, I had some early wins because I was bringing new knowledge to this industry. And so I, you know, I think I debunked what my friends predicted. But I sort of, I think, I did that on my own.
Like no one told me to approach my job that way. Nope. You know, my boss didn’t say, bring me a plan, not just an idea. Like I had to figure that out naturally. And I did well because it was part of my training and my background and really just how I approach things. It’s actually one of the reasons I was motivated to write this book because I felt that other leaders needed a roadmap. So I set out to create a roadmap for future higher ed leaders so they can be better prepared.
Kevin Tyler
And I love that. I think that we are knee deep as opposed to just a toe in the water. But I think we’re about knee deep in this collaboration across institutions. I think that while we still have rankings and competition and all these other things, at least as marketers, we find great value in talking to each other about innovative ways and how we got through certain situations, whether they are personal, that bleed into professional or vice versa. And I think the more that we talk to each other about this, the more we will be able to make some ground on behalf of the industry as a whole, which I very much appreciate about the role I feel like this book will play once it’s released.
Melissa Richards
Good, thank you.
Kevin Tyler
What’s the one piece of advice you would give someone now and how is that different from what you might say when you got into higher education marketing?
Melissa Richards
One piece of advice, Kevin, I gave you a whole book. As I said, when I first made the leap to higher ed marketing, higher ed marketing was in its infancy. And so I spent a lot of time then building up my team’s skill sets. The majority of college and university marketing teams are much more sophisticated in their approaches and measurements now. So, you know, for example, one of the things that I did at every institution when I got there, I found that they didn’t have a sophisticated way of measuring results and using data to make decisions. We’re better at that now. Most, most colleges and universities, right? It’s still important to assess team skillsets, but I think it’s even more important to build trust, earn credibility and demonstrate commitment. Those three pillars. My three fundamentals of leadership. As many of us in higher ed marketing like to say, bust those silos, right?
Kevin Tyler
I’ve never heard that, what are you talking about?
Melissa Richards
Reach across, build relationships, figure out how to strengthen the mission of the institution and achieve the strategic priorities of the institution by collaborating effectively across departments and be prepared to hit the ground running. I think that’s really important.
Kevin Tyler
Absolutely. I find, I got into, I guess, higher education marketing 10 or 15 years ago. And at that time, the work, I was on the agency side, the work was simply marketing at college. And then we started to have to not just market the institution, but also market the value of going to college. And now we have to know as higher education marketers, like at least enough to be dangerous about so many different kinds of topics because we don’t know who we’re going to be interacting with. And so one of the things I always think about is like, how are we learning about current events and how are we staying on top of that while doing our full-time job of attracting students and making sure that they stay? All of these things. We have to think about food insecurity. We have to think about diversity, even though it might be a bad word in the interview right now. We have to think about quality education experiences. We have to think about where people are coming from, family income. There are so many things that as marketers, we have to be able to talk about thoughtfully, all the nooks and crannies of a campus experience, the marketer has to know. And I think that’s one of the things that has also changed is just how big or how much bigger our brains have to be in order to do this job, this work effectively.
Melissa Richards
Yeah, our portfolios have grown tremendously.
Kevin Tyler
Absolutely, absolutely.
TVP ad read
Kevin Tyler
So, I want to go back to one of the points you made at the top of our conversation, and that was around the survey that you conducted as a research for the book that you’re writing, have written. And I’m wondering if there are any other trends from that survey that you can share here, that any data that surprised you or didn’t surprise you, something like that?
Melissa Richards
There were a couple of things. I was surprised, but not surprised about a lack of self-confidence by the leaders who responded. More than half of them told me that it took them six to 12 months to cross that proverbial learning curve. Six to 12 months.
Kevin Tyler
Wow.
Melissa Richards
That’s too long in today’s higher education environment, where the big issues that you’ve just described and we’ve been talking about are waiting for you on day one.
As I said, you have to be prepared to hit the ground running. So I’m concerned that a lack of preparation is contributing to a leadership crisis in higher education in every area, not just higher ed marketing.
Kevin Tyler
Right.
Melissa Richards
I believe that one area for improvement is better onboarding of leaders. So another example, almost half, more than 47 % of the survey respondents reported that they had to request
their departmental budgets in the first 60 days because they were not automatically provided to them.
Kevin Tyler
What?
Melissa Richards
20 % said that it took longer than the first two months to get their budgets, right? That’s data that should be given to you in the interview process so that you show up on day one already in a mindset of how to organize your budget, find efficiencies, make the most of what you have because it’s not gonna be much in most cases, right?
They had to ask for it and 20 % of them said it took longer than the first two months for them to have their budgets in hand. And I also asked whether the communications and marketing department had a multi-year strategic plan and fewer than half of the respondents said yes. Right, so if I flip that around, right, fewer than 50 % have multi-year strategic plans.
Kevin Tyler
That’s wild.
Melissa Richards
So I think these examples illustrate a lack of preparedness by our current institutional leaders, right? Onboard new leaders, and we have to do a better job.
Kevin Tyler
It sounds like, to me at least, that there are lots of different types of 30-60-90 handbook books. You could probably write one for presidents, one for other parts of the industry, because I think that what as marketers, what we show up expecting might not be on the radar of what person that we are working for might expect. And so if we have some sort of shared expectation or this is what I’m about to be asking for, because I have Melissa Farmer Richards’ book and you have your presidential version, then we can meet on the common ground.
Melissa Richards
Yeah, I mean, my goal is my goal and my vision and my hope is that every president who’s onboarding a new vice president for communications and marketing will gift them this book to be prepared.
Kevin Tyler
I think that’s a viable goal. I think that’s going to be a support goal because it also shows that there’s an understanding of what the practice is that we do on and for campuses. And if you don’t have to have that conversation to advocate for the value of your position, then that makes it even easier.
Melissa Richards
Agreed. And this book isn’t about me, right? I based it on my experience, but I really believe deeply that we have to do a better job of preparing our leaders. So I wrote it for all of you, you know, who are new leaders, aspiring leaders, developing leaders. It’s for you.
Kevin Tyler
And think it’s important to note here also that it comes with a workbook. So this is not just something that you read and then kind of absorb and that’s it, but there’s an active or interactive component to it. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Melissa Richards
Yes, so that came as an afterthought while I was in the, we were in the editing process. I thought, I really want people to be able to write in this book because when you’re going through the productions process, the publishing process with your publisher and it’s in design stage, you’re thinking about the size of the book and the paper, right? So you have to, I’m thinking, can people write in this book? Is it big enough? So I wanted to develop a companion piece, which is now a workbook to go with the handbook. So it’s a separate book that comes with the handbook that you can mark up. You can make copies, mark it up, turn the checklist into your own. And again, going back to the origin story of The 30-60-90 Day Checklist, which is, I described this in the opening of the book. I created that when I, my first one, when I went, when I got my first vice president’s role and I created my own list. I got advice from my current manager, whether it had all the right things on it. I interviewed the president that I was going to work for to make sure it set his, you know, met his expectations. And then I continue to refine it and use it over and over again, a couple of times. Soon,I had people calling me and asking me for advice as they were moving into new vice presidential roles. I would give them my checklist and say, here, please turn, make this your own. And so that’s my goal is that people will use the workbook with the handbook to make their own 30, 60, 90 day checklist for new roles or roles that they’re aspiring or even roles that they have. Because I think the checklists are handy even for people who’ve been in senior leadership positions for a while. It’s a great refresher. It’s a list of things all in one book.
Kevin Tyler
Yeah, yeah. And if nothing else, what we know about higher education is that when there’s a good idea or a good product, that it spreads like wildfire. And I imagine this book will be the next thing that catches like wildfire.
Melissa Richards
Yeah, and more great minds contribute and it gets better and better and better.
Kevin Tyler
Totally, totally, totally. So we’ve talked a lot about how higher education is now. We’ve touched on a little bit around what the future could look like, but we have to, before we close, we’ve got to ask the last question, which is, what do you think higher education will look like in five or 10 years?
Melissa Richards
I love this question, Kevin. I’m an optimist and a strategist, as I said before. So I’m optimistic that higher education will still be valuable to us as individuals, as it will also be important for society. I’m also a first-generation college student, so I believe deeply in the transformational power of higher education.
I embrace change when it’s change for good. So I believe that there are actually some excellent opportunities for good change in higher ed. Some of them are a little scary. I also have a saying that organizational change is fundamentally about people. So we’re not just talking about an institution. We’re talking about institutions and organizations that are made up of hundreds and thousands of people.
So there are a couple of things that I feel optimistic about that are good change opportunities. I like the idea of accelerated pathways to degree completion.
Kevin Tyler
Yeah.
Melissa Richards
I’ve had conversations inside of institutions who were thinking about three-year degrees, right? When we have more and more high school students who are graduating with their high school diploma and an associate’s degree at the same time, right? Four years is a lot for them to think about depending on the fields that they’re pursuing. And I know that there are some of the accrediting bodies are actually working with colleges and universities on the idea of a three-year degree.
I also think that some consolidation of institutions will make higher education more efficient and more sustainable. It’s a sad story. It’s tough. It’s really, really difficult because again, our colleges and universities are made up of people. So closing an institution is never an easy thing. But the truth is economically, we have more colleges and universities than we do have students to fill them. So I think if there’s some consolidation in smart ways that consider the people that are being impacted, we can make higher education more efficient and more sustainable.
I teach courses online for Aurora University. So I see firsthand that asynchronous learning can be effective when it’s done right. It creates opportunity for non-traditional students. So, for example, I have students in my class who are working parents, who are deployed soldiers. I had a student who was on base in Alaska, which was really exciting to communicate with her.
It creates opportunity for people who are going back to finish a degree that they started. It also creates opportunity for people who may be changing careers and want to gain new knowledge and skills. So I think, you know, we’re going to see more asynchronous learning, more online learning, and it’s going to be done better than it has been in the past. Technology, of course, also creates fantastic opportunities to improve online learning.
I also think, and I read this this morning, there’s some really interesting things happening with universities from other countries.
Kevin Tyler
Yes!
Melissa Richards (36:12.002)
So this morning I read that India is exploring opening campuses in the United States, which is of course the opposite of what we’ve experienced with US universities opening campuses in other countries, such as China. And some of those campuses have closed as well, due to either lack of enrollment or other political issues that have gotten in the way. When we think about that consolidation of colleges and universities in the United States, and what’s going to happen to those campuses, maybe there’s opportunity there for international universities to come in and establish a presence on those campuses. I think that’s really exciting and I can’t wait to see what happens with that.
Kevin Tyler
Same.
Melissa Richards
I’d say a couple other things. And again, you know, here I am, the optimist and the strategist. I have a lot to say on this topic.
Kevin Tyler
I love it. I love it.
Melissa Richards
But I think we’re going to see a resurgence in the popularity of co-ops where students are studying and working simultaneously in a specific professional field. So I’ve watched the children of some of my friends who are students in engineering, for example, had not intended to pursue a co-op opportunity. It wasn’t required by their college where they are studying, but they sought it out because after they got a bite of the work through an internship opportunity, they were really, enjoyed that taking what they’re learning in the classroom and in the labs to putting it into practice immediately.
Even one student I know who’s gone, he was actually done it twice. Once he studied, you know, for a couple of years, he did a semester of a co-op and then he went back full time on campus and then he went back and did another co-op. So I think that colleges are going to adapt or they need to adapt and hopefully they will to better serve these Gen Z students who are pragmatic and they have self agency, they’re eager to be a part of the professional world and of change making. And so some of them see four years of college is a long time to wait. And finally, I think and related to that, I predict that colleges and universities will get better at preparing students for the speed of change and to embrace possibility.
Kevin Tyler
I love that. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate, A, you writing this book, because I think it’s going to be very helpful for any new leader on a campus, maybe even a tenured leader or veteran leaders as well. It’s a new way to think about how we approach our work. And I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today.
Melissa’s new book, The 30-60-90-Day Handbook: Checklist for Communications and Marketing Leaders in Higher Education is now available for pre-order from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, that’s CASE. Pre-order to get the separate workbook included. CASE members will receive 20 % off. It’s ideal for new leaders, rising leaders and aspiring leaders in higher education, communications and marketing. And listen, there is a gift here, which I appreciate. This is the first gift we’ve had on Higher Voltage, so thank you. I would love for you to introduce the gift so you can get this right.
Melissa Richards
Sure, I love gifts myself and I love giving gifts. So I have a gift for listeners. If you email me, melissa@iMarketingMix.com, I will send you chapter four of the book, which is called Checklists for Building Internal Relationships with Peer Leaders.
It’s actually my favorite chapter because it is packed with checklists of questions to ask your peers from other departments. So when you’re a new leader on campus, you just get there. You’re the VP for communications and marketing. Here are the list of questions that you should be asking your VP for advancement, your VP for finance, your VP for enrollment, all of the things in one place.
So I would love to give that to you.
Kevin Tyler
I love that. Thank you so much. I’m sure that’s gonna be very helpful for our listeners. And before we go, I would love for you to share how people can find you on social.
Melissa Richards
I’m very active on LinkedIn and you can find me with my full name, Melissa Farmer Richards on LinkedIn. On Instagram, you can find my company name, iMarketingMix and on Bluesky Social, I’m Melissa Richards. And I hope you’ll subscribe to the weekly leadership checklist. It hits your inbox every Monday, a new checklist with leadership topics. And you can find that link to subscribe in the profile on LinkedIn.
Kevin Tyler
And we will have all of that information on the episode page as you all know. Melissa Farmer Richards, thank you so much for the time today. I loved seeing you, of course, but also talking about your newest project and I can’t wait for the full book to be released. When does that happen again?
Melissa Richards
Hopefully in the next month, I don’t have a specific date yet, but it will be very soon and I can’t wait to hold it physically on my hands because I’m still one of the people who loves holding a physical book and reading on paper.
Kevin Tyler
I am too. The same, same way, I’m the same way. Melissa Farmer Richards, thank you very much for your time today. I appreciate you could join us.
Melissa Richards
Thank you, Kevin.
