WRA's Rob Uhrina on Associations Staying on the Cutting Edge

Information, Inc. (01/15/16)

Rob Uhrina currently serves as Vice President of Marketing and Communications for the Wisconsin REALTORS® Association (WRA). He has over 25 years of experience, but that experience was not in real estate before he joined the association in June 2003. Instead, it was technology, with previous stints as a senior product manager at Sonic Foundry (now SONY Creative Software) and as product manager at Follett Software Co.

When he came aboard the WRA, his experience in digital and video media, software development, and marketing communications was quickly put to good use. His leadership has kept WRA ahead of the game in terms of innovation perhaps best exemplified by the launch of the first online distance learning program for the continuing education of real estate agents.

Uhrina recently sat down with Bottom Line Briefing to discuss his career and how important it has been keeping WRA on the cutting edge. What follows is our chat:

BOTTOM LINE BRIEFING: As Vice President of Marketing and Communications, what are your primary duties and responsibilities?

ROB UHRINA: My core responsibility is to head up the creative services business unit inside of our trade association, which serves as an advertising agency to the other functioning areas of the organization: education, legal, public affairs, membership, and so forth. We run a statewide magazine, of which I am the Managing Editor. Our department is involved with everything from direct marketing and advertising to analytics, web design, research, social media, video, and publications. The variety is pretty much endless, and we operate with a small staff of three. Our mantra is to be hard working, open-minded, willing to learn and accountable to our promises.

BLB: How have you put your personal stamp on things? What wasn't in place before you that is now in place because of you?

RU: When I was first hired, my boss at the time was Bill Malkasian, who has since moved on to the National Association of REALTORS®. He was looking for someone who knew marketing, but also had a technology-driven background. In 2003, so many things were happening in the world with regards to how companies were marketing themselves online. Bill needed a competent person both in traditional media and online marketing to bring our products and services to a new level. I held positions for software companies my whole life and they were extremely progressive and fast-paced in their response to customer needs. Bill said, "I want to be ahead of the curve. I want to be on the cutting edge, not the bleeding edge." He wanted to do everything from electronic catalogs to video programs to webcasts. He wanted electronic delivery of education over the Internet. That was my entire background! I wasn't a REALTOR®. I had never been in the real estate business before. But with how fast technology was changing the real estate business and marketing as a whole (call it a convergence), it was a natural fit for me personally.

BLB: Have you found real estate to be an industry that is open and receptive to technological change and new ideas?

RU: Technology is moving in dog years. It has been for a long time. It's moving so fast, we need to accept the challenge of keeping up with it. Sometimes, we discover a new way of doing something better. "It just came out last week, everybody is using it, so why aren't we?" It’s much like social media in the beginning where so many “old school” marketers hated it and now our fastest growing demographic on Facebook is over 50 years old. You have to keep an open mind and commit to building your knowledge and be efficient with the new tools that are out there.

In the real estate world specifically, we have always wrestled with some key issues. Most REALTORS® will say that technology is rapidly changing the way they do business whether it is the online tools they use to market themselves or the electronic forms they use in transactions. Back in the day, real estate agents would have a briefcase filled with information on housing and everything their clients needed to know about buying and selling a home, including local market data and details about a listing.. That's where the customer would know that the REALTOR® had a lot more information than they ever would have. Now, with Internet-based sales and marketing of properties, clients are more educated than ever, even before they walk through the front door of a house. It is changing the way REALTORS® conduct business…. consultative versus information disseminator.

BLB: Your association has created custom marketing packages across different media. How does that work, and has there been a package or bundle that has proven to be especially popular?

RU: In 2005, we started seeing trickles of on-demand video education out there. Webcasting was fairly new at the time. Our association is located in the central part of Wisconsin, and the state is a big place. The furthest north is six hours, the furthest east is two hours, the furthest west in an hour and a half. We're not a small state like Rhode Island, where students can come in and out, drive here in a hour, and be back home after a class in time for dinner or to conduct a home showing. It was obvious to me that we needed to deliver education in a way that members could do it on their own time, their own schedule, and at their own pace.

BLB: And REALTORS® are being hit in a million different directions with priorities.

RU: Right. Flexibility is extremely important to them. Our on-demand education product allows REALTORS® to take on-demand education on their own schedule and still get the same quality that they would get in the classroom. We delivered that in 2006, and we were one of the first trade associations in the country to do so. We knew competition was coming, so we had to be progressive in our approach.

Our 1.0 was replaced with a 2.0 a year and a half later. We're now up to our 3.0 level product, which provides instructor interaction through e-mail and chats. We have slides and video, and users can layout the screens as they please. Video can be on one screen, the book on another screen, and so forth. It's evolved quite a bit. With its maturity, we’ve been able to work with local firms in the state to deliver their own education through this technology. If they want to use our continuing education courses and brand it, they can put their own name on it. They can add their own videos to it. We developed it such that it will eventually serve as a customized course builder both inside and outside the industry. People with these large firms can contact us and say, "I really like your product. Can you customize it for us, put a new intro on it or have a new instructor for the first hour, and so forth? And we say, “Those are things we can do.”

BLB: So, 13 years on the job for you. What do you still love about the work you do?

RU: I love the variety. We're not stuck inside of a bubble. We have leadership that understands we need to be progressive in our approach and they expect no less of us. The payoff is when REALTORS® look to us for help, we’ve earned their trust and credibility. It also helps to get support at all levels of the organization. Our current CEO, Mike Theo, continues to build a strong culture within our organization, challenges us to be forward-thinking and supports us with budgets and resources to do our jobs well, which in turn benefits everyone. From a staffing perspective, I enjoy watching the staff grow from the point of hire to where they become self-sufficient in their roles and they are running their own areas independently and confidently. It's my goal as a manager to help them mature in their roles, build trust from the organization and be able to demonstrate their successes both as a team and individually.

BLB: What is it about job that you still find challenging?

RU: One of the fun challenges is staying on the cutting edge and not getting too used to the way we've always done things. Challenging the status quo and saying, "Are we really doing the right thing? Are we doing it just because we're able to do it, or are we doing it because this is what our membership wants?" If there is something that our membership wants and we're not delivering it, maybe we should take a look at it. If it's something they don't want, we need to kill it and kill it quickly to avoid expending resources on unnecessary initiatives.

BLB: Since you did come in from outside of the association world, was there some advice that was given to you early on that has stuck with you in your career as an association executive?

RU: I go back to something my dad always used to tell me. He taught his whole life. He worked with executive professionals on improving their careers. He and I would drive to work together, and he was always coaching me. I was 18 or 19, and he would say, "It's all about ideas plus action, thinking and doing, having a dream, and making it happen." It’s advice I never forget. We all come up with great ideas, but are we acting upon them? Are you making it happen? Even before many of my car rides, he would always say, “be part of the solution, not the problem or else you’re just another squeaky wheel” Simply put, starve the problems and feed the solutions.

I also learned early in my career not to micro-manage people to get results. If you teach people how to think on their own and be accountable, they will pressure themselves to succeed individually. Especially with a creative staff, I like to give everybody enough room to be creative. I don't think people can be overly creative if they are pressured all of the time and don’t have time to think or strategize. The third thing I learned -- and this was a hard learn -- is that when you have a staff of three, it's a very small fish tank. So, when hiring, don't hire a good resume. Hire a good cultural fit. If you are a small group and you hired someone with whiz-bang skills but they are toxic, you've just ruined your department. You don't want a piranha amidst two goldfish.

from the 01/15/2016 issue, Teddy Durgin of Bottom Line Briefing