Harnessing Technology for Student Engagement from Social Media to CRMs

In the final episode of FYI with Gil Rogers in the hosting chair, Harrison “Soup” Campbell joins for a retrospective on careers rooted in innovation.

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Who is Harrison Campbell?

Harrison (aka Soup) has been leading innovation in higher ed for over 15 years. Currently he serves as the Head of Community Experience at ZeeMee.

In this Episode

Harrison “Soup” Campbell, Head of Community Experience at ZeeMee, joins FYI host Gil Rogers to discuss leveraging technology to engage and connect with students, and how institutions can optimize their processes for better outcomes. Soup and Gil cover the evolution of changes in the tools and technologies available to schools throughout their careers.

They also share insights from their experiences, particularly how digital tools and AI can be used to enhance student interactions and the student experience. Soup recounts his pioneering work with social media in higher education and some policies in the past that would be unimaginable in today’s Higher Ed landscape. Their conversation also covers the importance of building early digital communities for prospective students and the evolving nature of AI in education. It’s an excellent rundown for anyone interested in the current state of student engagement and how we got to this point.

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Episode Transcript

Harnessing Technology for Student Engagement from Social Media to CRMs with Harrison “Soup” Campbell

Publishing Date: October 20, 2024

[00:00:00] Gil: Welcome back to FYI, the For Your Institution Podcast, presented by Mongoose. I’m your host, Gil Rogers. And today, I am joined by longtime friend and colleague Harrison “Soup” Campbell. Soup and I talk about a lot of things, mainly focused on ways we use technology to connect and engage with students and how we can use different processes to be more effective. Let’s listen in.

Soup, what’s going on, buddy?

[00:00:27] Soup: It is so great to see you, Gil. What’s up? It’s been a while.

[00:00:30] Gil: It’s been too long. You know, by the time this podcast drops, we will have been hanging out at the NACAC Conference. So, that’s pretty cool. I’m excited for that. That’s coming up here pretty soon. And we’ll get to see each other then. So, that’ll be… I feel like that’s our once a year, kind of, pilgrimage to whatever city NACAC is in to hang out and see each other.

[00:00:52] Soup: You know, we’ve been going to NACAC for a while, Gil. We got a good little stretch going. I don’t know how many you’ve been to, but, man, we go way back. And I think, yeah, we often do. That’s the time we run into each other, where we catch up. So, yeah, definitely looking forward to seeing you in LA.

[00:01:05] Gil: Yeah, we’re of the age now where when they say, “I was at the NACAC when it was in Baltimore,” you have to say, “Which one,” because again, we’ve been there a couple of times, been Houston a couple of times, you know, Columbus will be a couple of times, right? So, it happens. That’s with experience and age and wisdom, right? We have wisdom exuding from us.

So, I wanted to pick your brain a little bit. But before we dive into the topic du jour, you’re internet famous. I’m sure most people who are listening to this podcast already know who you are and what you do and all that sort of fun stuff, but for the 1% of people in higher education that might not know you, would love to just get a little bit of your background, how you got to where you are, what drives you, what motivates you, and then we’ll talk a little bit about students here in a little bit.

[00:01:50] Soup: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I’m a dinosaur in the space at this point, Gil. I’ve been in the game, just like you, for a long time. But my background is in education. So, if we go way back to early in my career, I spent time as a secondary middle school, high school social studies teacher in a previous life, which led to an opportunity of making a switch over to higher ed.

And so, for about 10 years, I was very fortunate to work in enrollment management at several incredible institutions in Indiana. That’s where I’m still located. I live down in Evansville, Indiana. But, and Gil, as you know, if we go back to some of those early days where I started on the higher ed side, this new emerging thing was happening, this stuff called social media. And there was a handful of us in those early days that really were like the pioneers of just trying to do really cool innovative stuff with leveraging social media, seeing it as an opportunity, you know, to engage prospective students and build these relationships earlier in the process.

And so, you much of my work, even though I traditionally was always housed in admissions, I was able to do some really cool innovative things in marcom and social during my years on the higher ed side. And then, one day, I get this random, kind of, message in my inbox on LinkedIn from this guy Adam Metcalf at this company called ZeeMee, which I was, kind of, familiar with. At that point, you know, I knew the name. And he just… we just started messaging back and forth. And he caught me at a good time when I was thinking maybe I am at a time for some type of transition. We really just started talking about social and what that could look like, what he was envisioning or wanting to try to build with ZeeMee.

And, of course, again, my background was leveraging these platforms, but then always being frustrated, right? There’s only so much I can do with Instagram. I don’t own the audience. I’m limited to what I can do. I can’t really get the data from that platform that I want. And so, I think something really intrigued me about the possibility of joining a team to build a new type of social that would have all the things I dreamed of being able to have when I was on the college side.

And so, a lot of people don’t realize this, but when I first started in Zeemee, I was like, “Look, I don’t… this whole remote working remote thing.” So, this was 2018, long before remote was a thing. And I’m like, “You mean I’ve got to stay cooped up in my house and I’m not going to have the social interactions of being on a college campus?”

And so, when I first started ZeeMee, I said, “Let’s do this. This is a perfect time. Let’s just do a three-month contract. I’ll do some fun work for you guys. You know, I’ll get to see and…” I mean it probably wasn’t after that first month that I was just hooked and I just felt like this is something I want to be a part of, this is something that I’m passionate about.

And so, after those three months, we just, you know, went into a full time role. And I’m into my sixth year now at ZeeMee and just how we’ve grown over the years and just being able to be a part of that has just meant the world to me. And so, yeah, that’s, kind of, how I got to be where I am now.

[00:04:57] Gil: Well, there you go. And in the small world of small worlds, I bought a pair of shoes at the shoe carnival in Evansville, Indiana when I was in middle school, because my stepmom’s parents lived there and we went there for Thanksgiving once. So, I’ve been to Evansville, Indiana, and I’ve also purchased shoes there at… and I looked it up, the shoe carnival is still open, according to Google.

So, there we go. I can’t tell you where those shoes are now, but I have the memory. So, I feel like one of the reasons why we get along is that we are, one, we’re awesome, but two, more importantly, we are unapologetically student first when it comes to the mindset around when we’re building things, when we’re building experiences, whether it’s a piece of recruitment software or whether it is a program on campus, a lot of the work that I do now outside of hosting the podcast is consulting ed tech companies on new product innovation and making sure what they’re doing actually makes sense for the market and for students themselves.

And I think one of the things that, kind of, gets lost in the process, especially on the institutional side, is we do things because it’s easiest for us and not because it’s best for the student. And that’s not because we don’t care about the student but it’s more so because I’ve got so much to do in my day to day that I’ve just got to get everything done, and so it’s easier to check the box versus try to think differently and innovate forward a little bit more, right?

And so, from your purview, I know you talk to a lot of institutions and I observe a lot of conversations that students are having, what are some of the things that you’ve, kind of, understand and see that institutions really should be thinking about differently? You know, we need to think about, like, by the time this podcast drops, schools have gotten through their move-ins, they’ve gotten through Welcome Week and orientations and all those sorts of stuff. How do institutions get students better prepared and connected for those types of experiences so that they get the most out of them once they’re actually there?

[00:06:51] Soup: Yeah, I love it. There’s a couple things I would love to just, yeah, dive into on this skill. One of those is, so, recently, the past few conferences I’ve attended this year and I’ve had an opportunity to speak, there’s something that I’ve been trying to touch on a little bit. And for those of you listening now, like, imagine, kind of, a horizontal line. On one end of the spectrum is the experience, how things can impact those of us working on the college side. And then on the other end of that line, at the opposite end of the spectrum, how does that impact students?

And what I’ve been challenging all of my friends on the college side is to think about, sometimes the best technology, sometimes the best services, the best tools that we can use on the college side that we 100% should be using, it doesn’t necessarily always correlate to a great positive experience for students. And I’ll give you an example, right?

Gil and I, we’re old enough to remember admissions before, probably, CRMs even came to rise. And, like, none of us today would ever, on the college side, think to try to do this without a super sophisticated CRM, right? Like, we just wouldn’t, like, we know we’ve got to leverage technology like that, but then if you think about things where the sophisticated CRM lets us do the most amazing creative email campaigns and we can line these things up, but if you also look at it through the lens of one perspective student that is now getting 25,000 emails during their senior year from all of these colleges and universities, what was great for the colleges to make things efficient and, kind of, getting comms out isn’t necessarily the best experience for a student. And so, that’s, like, the challenge, like, I’ve been through.

I mean, we can spend more time on this, probably, at some point in the episode here, but, like, AI is the perfect example today, right? You know, AI is going to revolutionize the way we can do so many things. But again, we may leverage it in certain ways on the college side that are really great for us, but we also have to make sure that aligns with the experience that’s best for students.

And so, you’re 100% spot-on, Gil. I think my whole career has always been student-first. One of the main reasons ZeeMee has been successful is because we were laser-focused on building for the student, because if you get it right for the students, and then all of a sudden millions of students are there, guess what? Everybody else is going to want to be a part of that.

And then a second, kind of, follow-up to, kind of, your initial questions there, I think what I’ve seen evolve here the past few years is this idea of community and, really, when does the community for a future college student begin with that school? Is it when they get admitted? Is it like, “Well, no, we think they actually become a member of our community once they arrive on campus for orientation or once classes start.” And what I’m trying to help our industry understand is, community should begin with your future students, oftentimes, long before they’ve even applied. And it’s this sense of, now, these digital communities and being able to really build these relationships with them, you know, long before they ever arrive on campus, it’s, kind of, like, that’s the way you have to do this now. And so, communities really become like, “This is non-negotiable.” I’m not saying it’s, you know, you’ve got to use ZeeMee, but if you’re a college or university and you’re not somehow building this amazing community and reaching those students really early in the process that way, where all of the students can also be connected with each other and building those relationships, you’re really missing an opportunity.

So, those are just some things that I think are evolving and what I’m seeing, but definitely, we need to be laser-focused on really trying to see how this process is through the lens of the prospective student and truly trying to meet their needs and their expectations. And we’re getting there. We’re doing some things that are good. But I think there’s definitely room for improvement, for those of us that, you know, have and are working on the college side.

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[00:11:50] Gil: I want to talk about the automation AI piece here in a few minutes, for sure, but I think one thing that you bring up is I feel like it’s a mindset shift on which tactics to use, right? I feel like, at many institutions, it’s, “Well, we’re going to buy all these names when they’re juniors. And now, we’re going to buy all these names when they’re sophomores. Oh, well, we want to get these students into our pipeline as early as possible. So, even if you’re a freshman, if we can do that, like, well, we want to be first in the mailbox. We want to be the first one they hear from. We want to be, because that’s going to boost our enrollment and boost relationship with them at a high level.” That’s not wrong.

Earlier you start a relationship with a student, you have more likelihood of converting them. But then, when given the opportunity to be able to connect and engage in a way that’s outside of, kind of, the normal “normal” process that they’re used to, traditional, legacy, whatever term you want to call it, I think that that’s where, as institutions, we see the challenge in, kind of, crossing that chasm and just thinking differently, right? We’re like, high level, we want to talk to these students as early as possible because we build a relationship with them. So, the way you’re talking, they’re a part of the community by the moment you begin a relationship with them, right? Because they are! They’re a part of your community by the moment you’ve identified them.

Now, how and when are we making those connections, and how frequently, and who are we connecting them with, those are the types of things that evolve and change. I think that that’s something that we, kind of, struggle with sometimes at institutions is losing control of the “conversation.” You know, I remember that being the pushback. You remember when CRM platform were new. I remember when institutions were making their first Facebook pages, right? And, like, the pushback from faculty and pushback from administration was, “Well, we really want to be in there and we really need to start a conversation.” And it’s like, “You don’t have a choice of if you’re part of the conversation or not, it’s how active of a participant you want to be and how supportive you want to be and responsive do you want to be.”

I’ve never advocated self-promotional posting over and over again as a way to try to engage students, but having an ear to the ground on those conversations is huge. And I think just the place in which those conversations potentially has shifted, it’s gone from the coffee table around at the house to communities on the internet, right?

[00:14:03] Soup: You know, in the palm of your hand on this device that’s attached to these students 24/7. And Gil, I’ve got to share this with you. I’ve shared some people have heard me tell this story, but this might have been back, I want to say, maybe 2008-ish or something. It’s like, you know, my first year when I transitioned from high school into higher ed, I’m just an entry-level admissions counselor but already doing some kind of cool stuff. I had been doing, previous to that role, like, some crazy cool stuff on MySpace, but there was this new platform that was really starting to emerge on college campuses with college students. And I kid you not, Gil, this will totally… you will laugh at this, but you’ll understand. I ended up being in a meeting with our vice president of marketing communications at this institution that I’m working for. And then these are the people that really know marketing, right? These are the people that get it. They’ve been doing it for years. And I was brave enough at one point in that meeting to, kind of, raise my hand and I said, “Hey, I’ve got an idea. Has anyone ever thought about maybe we get on this thing, the Facebook, where all of these students are starting? There’s these active spaces. Like, we could really… we could talk to students.”

And a VP of marketing communications looked at me and said, “We will never get on the Facebook. And that is not how marketing’s done. That’s not how we do this. That’s not how we’re trying to…” and I mean, you think about that now and you just look where we are. It’s crazy how things change and evolve.

And I’ll get into another thing that sparked when you were just talking previously. I mean, Gil, you think about how traditional we are on the college side, right? Literally, all of our college friends right now are gearing up, you know, fall travel season. We’re going to do the same things we bought. We’re going to send these counselors to high schools to sit at the lunchroom table and have all the students just stare at them and not want to come talk. We’re going to have them, you know, go and sit for four hours at a college fair where they talk to two or three students. And we invest the tens of thousands of dollars of still trying to reach prospective students that way. And yet, you can have this digital community with thousands of these prospective students in the palm of your hand. And yet, it’s hard to get colleges to understand, like, “Look, they’re here with you right here all day, every day. Like, why aren’t you talking with them here?”

And recently, I was on a call with a partner school. And I said, “Look, I’m not trying to be mean, but think of it this way. Imagine you sent one of your admission counselors to a college fair and 700 students are at their table and that admission counselor has their back turned to them and never acknowledges them being there, never is willing to answer one of their questions, never is willing to engage with them. Like, that’s what we’re doing if we’re not showing up to meet where these students are today.” And that’s just, that is a fundamental shift in just how we’ve traditionally done it. And it’s really hard for a lot of schools to wrap their head around that.

And I’m not saying… listen, everybody, I’m not saying it’s time to scrap fall travel, and I’m not saying that at all. But it’s just we need to think about how things are evolving and the way that we really can reach and build connections and relationships with these students.

[00:17:07] Gil: Yeah. I think it’s interesting because, you know, I was at a virtual events company during the height of COVID, right? And when COVID hit, they had budget to move to digital stuff because they weren’t using their travel budget. So, they were able to shift and pivot to online. But there was never really a full comfort to virtual events and virtual content, because the entire time we were doing it, we were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and have a virtual event be a mimic of what would’ve been the in-person experience. And the institutions that understood that they’re not the same are the ones who did better at them, right?

I, I don’t remember how many times I reminded people that, when a student’s on your campus in an open house, sure, their escape hatch if they’re bored is to look on their phone and do stuff, but most people aren’t going to rudely just stand up and walk out and leave. When you’re on a virtual event, if you’re bored, you click that X button and you close the browser and nobody cares, right?

And so, it all goes to the tactical element of the strategy is connect and engage, right? We need to connect and engage with these students in meaningful ways. The places in which those connections have changed, right? And we need to have a good balance there, I think, with respect to the travel component of all of this.

It is kind of funny because have a feeling that one of the things that saved college fairs was virtual college fairs, right? Because virtual college fairs were so bad because of the lack of engagement, the lack of a quality experience. And so, well, at least in-person college fairs, I get to talk to people, right? A lot of the times, in these situations, we don’t go to college fairs. I didn’t go to the New Jersey ACAP College Fair every year because I felt like we were getting complete great outcomes every single time and every single day.

We got good enough, I guess. And it wasn’t really my decision to make when I was the counselor going to New Jersey, but it wasn’t necessarily just for the conversation with students and their families during the day. It was for the karaoke night that Thursday evening with all of my admissions counselor friends, right, who go to college fairs to complain to their friends about how bad the college fair is. And you get that in-person interaction with your colleagues. It’s a networking experience and a networking opportunity, right?

But I digress. I wanted to talk about what you mentioned in the beginning, too, about AI and the impact on the student experience. And I think one of the things that CRM platforms enable us to do is merge fields, right? Microsoft Word was doing this before CRM platforms. But, like, “Dear first name,” like, that’s personalization. That’s not personalization. That’s table stakes of just addressing that person by their name.

Personalization is the cadence of the communication tied to their interest level. It’s content that is relevant to where they are in the process. And these are all things that, again, we understand but then we fall back on the tools and the automation. And one example from the “real world” outside of higher education and its bubble, I read an article a couple months ago about Starbucks, one of the reasons why Starbucks sales have plummeted is not just because their prices are super high for what you’re getting, but it’s also the experience, right? Starbucks used to be an experience. You would go and it was like your local coffee shop. And local coffee shops are doing just fine. They’re actually probably doing better because people still drink coffee.

Coffee consumption hasn’t gone down, Starbucks consumption has gone down. And a big part of that is because they turned into a manufacturing line, right? It was no longer about the experience. It was just get you in, get you out, mobile order, come in, grab it, get out, stand in the line, order, wait. And it’s, if we do that same thing with student engagement, we’re going to go the same way of Starbucks’s sales, right? Now, they’re making changes and they hire a new CEO. And by the time this drops, maybe everything’s turned around. But the concept is the same, right?

I feel like we’re at a risk here, where because we’ve been grasping for efficiency in higher education for so long, if we lean too far into what AI can do from a content perspective, I think processes and analysis and data and that sort of stuff I think is a great use, right? But as far as direct engagement with students in the middle and bottom of the funnel, I think there’s a risk there from an institution’s perspective. I think there’s lots of uses for the top and qualifications modeling and all these sorts of things, but it should enable us to shift the people resources to the places where they make the most impact, right? And that’s the middle and bottom of the funnel. And that’s the way it’s always been.

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[00:21:25] Soup: You know, I’m fascinated with all things AI. And again, I’m past my prime, put me out to pasture, stage alive, so like…

[00:22:25] Gil: You just want to retire as soon as possible.

[00:22:27] Soup: Right. Like,I just want to be in the garden at this point. I don’t think I’m ever going to be, kind of, like, the AI power user, like, young professionals are diving into today, but yeah, I’m with you. And I think, I mean, we’re still at such the beginning of this to really see how this is going to play out, but yeah, I think there is this thing where, you know, personally, I just, I feel like, I don’t… how great the AI gets, that’s never going to replace Gil talking with a student, that’s never going to replace me, like, engaging with the students.

So, I think you’re right. The efficiencies, the things that AI could use to free up the actual human capital to really be able to have more time and bandwidth in real interactions with prospective students is key.

And then I think, too, I think, I’ve been trying to think about how some of this might play out. I think there’ll be winners and losers in the AI race battle. From a product standpoint, I think the winners are just, obviously, going to be those great CRM companies, because the Slates of the world or Element451, you know, who’s crushing it on the AI front, I think, you know, they’re going to be able to implement this software, this AI technology and really use it in a positive, efficient way for things that we’re already trying to do these things with our CRM. And I think people that might be out there, like, I don’t think it’s going to be hard to come up with a one-off product, right, that could do something because the CRMs are just going to be able to offer that.

So, I think it’s, like, interesting to see how products will come out that could be leveraged. I think, consulting, I think, is obviously, like, firms out there that, you know, Bart Caylor being an expert in this stuff, I think that’s going to be a very useful resource because not everyone’s going to know how to even leverage it or how to use it. And so, yeah, I’m really fascinated with it to watch it evolve and unfold. And I just… I hope, and again, because, historically, this is what we do, historically, we take something that could be so great and we use it in ways that’s just… it’s not, and again, I’ll use social media as an example. When social media first started, it was pure. It was about, wow, just relationship and connection. And as we know, as these platforms evolved, their primary way to monetize is to turn into ad platforms. And then, really, higher ed, kind of, has followed that.

And I, you know, I’m not bashing anyone that works in higher ed social. Those are my people. They know I’m one of them. But now, it’s almost like we just use these channels to spam our brand and just, you know, it’s more about us, us, us, us, and we’ve forgotten it’s not about what we post for International Cat Day. We should actually just be trying to build connection and relationships.

And so, my hope is that that’s not what AI becomes in the future, where we’ve had this amazing technology but we end up using it in ways that’s maybe great for us on the college side but maybe not the greatest experience for students.

[00:25:33] Gil: Yeah. And I mean, I’ll give an unsolicited shout out to the sponsor of this podcast, Mongoose. Mongoose has done a lot of work as a company with respect to AI because texting and engagement is a huge component of this.

[00:25:48] Soup: Absolutely.

[00:25:48] Gil: And I think the important thing to think about is, like, how do we use AI to better engage the students who don’t necessarily need the personal touch in that moment, they’re just looking for answers?

[00:25:59] Soup: Yes. Yeah.

[00:26:01] Gil: And right now, I shouldn’t even say right now anymore because it’s, totally, technology has helped them this way a little bit. But in many respects, the solution has always been, well, call a counselor, email a counselor, or a counselor is managing a live chat, right? Live chat’s a good solution, but live chat with an AI component, better solution. If I can identify what the student’s questions are and triage that, they’re just looking for basic information, redundant information. Let the robots handle, like I said, the top of the funnel, the thousands of students that are just casually researching and browsing, who haven’t opted in for you yet, or haven’t decided that you’re on their list yet.

Then, once they are, now they’re in your community, you want to build a better relationship with them. They should be connecting with other students, they should be connecting with their counselor. And then their counselor should be freed up, not chasing those thousands of leads. They should be freed up to engage with the students who are at a better place to be hearing from them, right? And there’s decades now of research of the place when admissions counselors are most important, and it’s always been post application through enrollment. And yet, we invest all of their time – or not all of their time, but at least over half of their time – and go out and get us more leads and go out and get chase more, answer more redundant questions, stand at the table, answer what the average GPA is for our school 20 times during a three-hour period and feel good about it because you walked out with a stack of cards of people who will never remember you, right?

That’s what the first institution I ever worked at, they hired graduate assistants to be the roadrunners because they’re a nameless face that’s going to disappear after a year and a half or two years. Nobody remembers who talked to them at the college fair. They remember who called them when they were admitted, who messaged them when they were admitted, who was there when they got to campus. They remember that person. And it’s important for that person to be the person who’s helping them through that process. So, I think that’s where, obviously, there’s going to be different levels of embracing of technology and different levels of embracing AI. One of the things that’s nice is, I think, the narrative of AI is coming for everybody’s jobs went away really fast. And it’s not that… it’s also the cliche, the person who uses AI is coming for your job. Like, cool. Yeah, that was a good, kind of, summary, like, nine months ago. Well, at least it wasn’t nine years ago.

We’re moving rapidly here with the cliches when it comes to technology. I feel like the next thing is, like you said, don’t let the use of AI stop at, “Click this button to make my email more compelling,” right? That’s the table stakes CRM platform component to it, is help improve my email. Grammar check. Grammarly is AI. These are all things that you can use. It’s using the right tools at the right place in the funnel, your human capital in the right place in the right spot in the funnel, which is a conversation I think we’ve been having since the first time we met at a NACAC conference.

So, nothing really new here. It’s just logos and brands changed, right? I think, from a strategy perspective, that’s what we’ve got to do, right, is rethink just where and just make sure that we’re laser-focused on the student experience. If we do that, then we’re going to understand: redundant processes at the top, people at the bottom.

[00:29:02] Soup: Yeah, just let that be your north star. I mean, if you work in higher ed enrollment management, even from the marketing side of things, if we’re focused on the prospective student, let that always be the north star that, kind of, guides you as that student experience. And then it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what technology comes along.

And yeah, I’ve been encouraging people, like, we can’t be afraid of new technology. We just have to learn to embrace, adapt, learn, and then leverage these things that really can create the best impact for students, and us as well, right? It’s not just one or the other. You know, this technology also does need to improve the lives of our college staff and the folks working on that side. So, yeah, just, you know, as things evolve, don’t be afraid, just get your hands in, try to experiment, try to learn. And then, also, like, I’ve just always encouraged, for me, what I’ve had to do, since I don’t know all about it, is I have to trust, I have to look at people in our industry that I know and that I trust that are experts on this stuff. And I really listened to them and I really follow their lead and, kind of, what they’re thinking.

And so, you know, if you’re like me and you’re a little like, “I don’t even understand it all yet,” like, just find those people in our space. We have talented people in the higher ed space that are on the forefront of this stuff and are there to help guide us as this evolves. So, you know, lean on those people if you’re a little intimidated right now.

[00:30:25] Gil: Absolutely. So, Soup, I appreciate your time and being a part of this conversation and starting what I hope is a good, thoughtful process for a lot of folks. Again, for folks who might not be connected with you already, for the 1% of the people on the internet that don’t know Soup, what are the best ways to get in touch and contact you?

[00:30:43] Soup: Yeah, so I’m definitely in LinkedIn. I spend a lot of time there. I love engaging and having the network there. So, I think my LinkedIn name is just Harrison “Soup” Campbell, on LinkedIn. You should be able to find me there. soup@zeemee.com, that soup@zeemee is the email. So, if you want to email me… email is my worst channel. So, if you’re trying to reach me on email and I haven’t responded, it’s because I’m just not great with email. But if you hit me up on LinkedIn, send me a message, I’m happy to connect at any time. And if you’re out at conferences, you know, I met a lot of conferences, I love to meet in person, so, never hesitate to reach out and set up a time for us to meet if we’re going to be at a conference together. And, yeah, I look forward to connecting with all of you down the road.

[00:31:24] Gil: All right, Soup. So, thank you so much for being here today.

[00:31:28] Soup: This was awesome.

[00:31:29] Gil: Awesome. For our listeners who have been with us for a while, this will be the last episode of this season. And if you’ve been listening for the past couple of weeks, you know that I’m going to be taking a little bit of a break from podcasting hosting duties, focus a little bit more on my business, where I work with ed tech CEOs and business leaders on helping support their growth in how they support college and universities. So, I really appreciate the time and being a part of this.

And I want to thank Mongoose for their support. Mongoose will continue to support and host this content. I think a lot of these conversations, especially with people like you, Soup, have been a great value-add to the higher ed industry. And so, really grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this and continue to watch it grow and move forward.

Soup, I know you’ve been listening to the podcast for a little while and have been a part of conversations that I’ve had over the past two years or so hosting this podcast. Any thoughts of closing words that you’d like to add for our listeners, being the last person that I interview for the podcast, which is, kind of, a big deal.

[00:32:36] Soup: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if it’s an honor that I’m being the last or if it just shows that I’m notorious for, you know, the ship finally going down. It’s all like on me being the engineer. But, no, Gil, I’ve watched so many of these that you’ve done. Such good content. I know Mongoose will still be leveraging all of that content as much as they can. And for me to have an opportunity to join you today and just be a part of this final one with you is, is awesome. I mean, we’ve been in this game together for a long time and it’s just been a joy to just catch up with you and chat. And like we always say, when we get together on a Zoom, we can literally just hit Record and go and we can have, probably, a dozen podcast episodes because we just love to chat so much.

And so, Gil, you are awesome. You are such a value-add to our industry, in our space. And, and what you do is so meaningful. And I just think like I personally know how much work it takes to create content like this. And hats off to you for all of these episodes that you’ve been a part of. And thankful for that and thankful that I got to be on the last one with you, brother.

[00:33:41] Gil: Awesome. Thank you. And it’s not that we’re running out of people to talk to. It’s, we went by companies and ZeeMee is, of course, at the bottom. So, we’re at the end of the alphabet. We’ll call it that.

I appreciate the kind words. And once again, I appreciate Mongoose’s support of these amazing conversations over the past year and a half, close to two years now. It’s been an honor, a privilege, and it’s been a lot of fun.

So, thank you, all, for listening. And we will encourage you to check out the archives at FYI and stay in touch with all of these great conversations and all of these amazing guests. So, I won’t see you next time on FYI, but I’ll see you somewhere. Have a great one!

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