Podcast appearances and mentions of george why

Patrick explores the complexities of Catholic faith, providing insights on parish life, sacraments, and spiritual growth. He responds to personal stories of faith challenges, such as Jessica's dilemma over a family wedding and Barbara's struggle with church teachings. With empathy and clarity, Patrick offers guidance, highlighting the church’s mission of bringing hope and understanding. Jessica (email) - My husband and I have been asked to be the "padrinos de arras" for my brother's wedding, and I would greatly appreciate your advice. (1:31) Barbara - My priest wants to excommunicate me because I have too much Protestant ideology. He says I have to believe everything the Church teaches, or he will excommunicate me. (13:17) Patrick discusses the immense success of the Beatles but questions its significance if one doesn't make it to Heaven. (27:43) George - Why doesn’t the church use the pre-Vatican II Catechism? (33:39) Jessica (email) – Follow up from the start of today’s show. (43:05) Robert (email) – My family has been at odds with the Catholic Church for a long time… (47:04)

This is the inaugural DT101 Live!, with guest George Aye. George co-founded Greater Good Studio with the belief that design can help advance equity. Previously, he spent seven years at global innovation firm IDEO before being hired as the first human-centered designer at the Chicago Transit Authority. He speaks frequently across the US and internationally. George holds the position of Adjunct Full Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Today, we are talking live about ethics in design in the design industry.  Listen to learn about: >> What is ethical design? >> The current state of ethics in the design industry >> Project “gut checks” and saying no to projects >> How power can warp ethics Show Highlights [01:33] Audience welcome + breakfast fun + mochi doughnuts! [05:20] Dawan shares the event agenda. [07:42] Dawan introduces George. [09:06] George starts off by talking about human-centered design. [09:41] The story of the invention of e-cigarettes on the Stanford campus and how it relates to human-centered design. [11:13] What George found most shocking about the story. [11:24] It's not just about can we do something, it's about should we do it? [12:38] Looking at the roots of the design industry. [13:13] The weakness of Dieter Rams' ten principles of good design. [14:20] What we need is an ethical framework for good design. [15:12] How Greater Good Studio approaches ethics in design. [15:58] Lived experience is expertise. [16:21] Design is transformative. [17:04] The design industry and education has trained designers to always say yes to projects, but not to know when to say no. [18:01] George's Ten Provocative Questions. [19:10] Losing one's inner conscience and voice. [20:47] A succinct definition of power. [21:24] Power asymmetry. [23:59] The risk of working on projects that potentially cause harm. [26:00] Greater Good Studio's weekly gut checks and breakup emails. [27:38] Some patterns and a framework when writing your own breakup emails. [29:12] Design is an accelerant. [31:08] We must call out the ways in which design can be harmful. [31:24] George's ideas around a possible standard design code of ethics and standards for practice. [32:05] Accountability, not gatekeeping. [37:21] Leadership needs to constantly practice being receptive to hard feedback from the team. [38:19] The gut check is a deliberate tripping hazard. [40:28] Ethics for people who don't normally handle ethics. [42:48] Approaching the potential for harm in a trained-to-be-optimistic design industry. [47:58] How do we approach C-suite and other leaders to have conversations around ethics? [51:49] What the next ten years looks like for ethics in design. Links George on LinkedInGeorge at SAICGreater Good StudioGreater Good Studio on MediumArticles by George Why designers write on the walls (and why you should, too)Design Education's Big Gap: Understanding the Role of PowerIt's Time to Define What “Good” Means in Our IndustryThe Gut Check, by Sara Cantor Aye DT 101 EpisodesDesign for Good + Gut Checks + Seeing Power with George Aye — DT101 E50 Design for Good + Ethics + Social Impact with Sara Cantor — DT101 E100 Trauma-informed Design + Social Work + Design Teams with Rachael Dietkus — DT101 E81

This is the inaugural DT101 Live!, with guest George Aye. George co-founded Greater Good Studio with the belief that design can help advance equity. Previously, he spent seven years at global innovation firm IDEO before being hired as the first human-centered designer at the Chicago Transit Authority. He speaks frequently across the US and internationally. George holds the position of Adjunct Full Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Today, we are talking live about ethics in design in the design industry.  Listen to learn about: >> What is ethical design? >> The current state of ethics in the design industry >> Project “gut checks” and saying no to projects >> How power can warp ethics Show Highlights [01:33] Audience welcome + breakfast fun + mochi doughnuts! [05:20] Dawan shares the event agenda. [07:42] Dawan introduces George. [09:06] George starts off by talking about human-centered design. [09:41] The story of the invention of e-cigarettes on the Stanford campus and how it relates to human-centered design. [11:13] What George found most shocking about the story. [11:24] It's not just about can we do something, it's about should we do it? [12:38] Looking at the roots of the design industry. [13:13] The weakness of Dieter Rams' ten principles of good design. [14:20] What we need is an ethical framework for good design. [15:12] How Greater Good Studio approaches ethics in design. [15:58] Lived experience is expertise. [16:21] Design is transformative. [17:04] The design industry and education has trained designers to always say yes to projects, but not to know when to say no. [18:01] George's Ten Provocative Questions. [19:10] Losing one's inner conscience and voice. [20:47] A succinct definition of power. [21:24] Power asymmetry. [23:59] The risk of working on projects that potentially cause harm. [26:00] Greater Good Studio's weekly gut checks and breakup emails. [27:38] Some patterns and a framework when writing your own breakup emails. [29:12] Design is an accelerant. [31:08] We must call out the ways in which design can be harmful. [31:24] George's ideas around a possible standard design code of ethics and standards for practice. [32:05] Accountability, not gatekeeping. [37:21] Leadership needs to constantly practice being receptive to hard feedback from the team. [38:19] The gut check is a deliberate tripping hazard. [40:28] Ethics for people who don't normally handle ethics. [42:48] Approaching the potential for harm in a trained-to-be-optimistic design industry. [47:58] How do we approach C-suite and other leaders to have conversations around ethics? [51:49] What the next ten years looks like for ethics in design. Links George on LinkedInGeorge at SAICGreater Good StudioGreater Good Studio on MediumArticles by George Why designers write on the walls (and why you should, too)Design Education's Big Gap: Understanding the Role of PowerIt's Time to Define What “Good” Means in Our IndustryThe Gut Check, by Sara Cantor Aye DT 101 EpisodesDesign for Good + Gut Checks + Seeing Power with George Aye — DT101 E50 Design for Good + Ethics + Social Impact with Sara Cantor — DT101 E100 Trauma-informed Design + Social Work + Design Teams with Rachael Dietkus — DT101 E81

In the first hour with Paul and Joe: The Astros gave up nine runs in the first inning to the Royals Deep Steel Blue Pill with Gallant and George  Why are Bills fans coming after Stefon Diggs? 

Dive into a thought-provoking discussion about the cancellation of Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem amidst the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. Patrick shares his personal experiences in Bethlehem and sheds light on the dwindling Christian population in the city. Moving on to a listener question, the topic shifts to the theological concept of Mary as the Mediatrix of all graces. Patrick offers his insights on the issue, highlighting the importance of staying grounded in scriptural and apostolic traditions. Christmas display in Bethlehem is cancelled by Palestinian authorities 'in honor of Hamas “martyrs” (00:43) Tom - What do you think about 33-day consecration to Mary? Patrick recommends Tim Staples book “Behold Your Mother” Brooklyn (10-yearsold) - I believe in God but I don't get how we know how heaven is real? Bob - I am a high school football coach. What do you think of the 'Fellowship of Christian Athletes'? (27:08) George - Why do we call the host the Eucharist, which means 'thanksgiving'? Jeff - How can I increase the virtue of temperance? Mike - Fellowship of Christian Athletes: How would it play out if you reversed it so a Baptist was in a 'Catholic' sports organization?

Teresa - The attack of Israel on the day of our Lady of the Rosary. We need to pray the rosary more. Dolores - I don't agree with what happened to Israel but I think Palestine people are upset at being oppressed by Israel. Mary - How do I explain the role of Mary in the Catholic Church to my husband? Jackie - A friend told me that we have politicians who are supporting Palestine. Is that true? George - Why would you support sending American troops to Gaza? Yvonne - What do you think about fasting and praying for what is happening in Israel? Peggy - I heard that Clement the 1st believed in faith alone. When people say James was in charge during the counsel of Jerusalem in the Bible. How do I respond to this? Myra - Where in the bible can I find the story of Saint Michael? Elizabeth – The attack on Israel was done on the Feast of the Holy Rosary. Kristi - The reason for the UN is because of the answer to Hitler. We can't leave these countries on their own.

Patrick answers caller questions such as, is it okay to listen to Taylor Swift, what are plenary indulgences, how can I explain abortion to a young child, and what is the difference between apostolic societies and people who take religious vows Leslie - Is it okay to listen to Taylor Swift if her videos have devil stuff in it? Mark - Romans 5:14-1 Timothy 2:14 - Can you compare these two verses? Mike - What are plenary indulgences? Are there different kinds? Patrick recommends “Handbook of Indulgences: Norms and Grants” Barbara - How can I explain to my 7-year-old about abortion? Margaret - I found strange Prayer Cards to my mother from my father. What are these? Antonia - Can a nun officiate a funeral at a funeral home? Mary - What is the difference between apostolic societies and people who take religious vows. What about widows and virgins who are dedicated? George - Why don't Catholic Schools support families who can't afford it? Is there something these families can do?

Patrick answers listener questions such as how to control angry outbursts, do aborted babies go to heaven, what makes the Eucharist authentic, and how do we get “saved” -  James - Does Patrick have a book or suggestion regarding righteous anger? Rebecca - Where do aborted babies go after death? Elaine – Let's pray for all the mom and pop Catholic stores! George - Why doesn't the Anglican Church have an authentic Eucharist? Dave - Can you clarify what you meant by babies not going to heaven? Benito - Going to a baptism for 2 and 9 year olds, but the family is not really practicing. What can I say to them? John - 'Transformation in Christ' by Dietrich Von Hildebrand - what are your thoughts? It has been very insightful for me Jose - How do you get 'saved?' Is it by being born again?

Patrick answers questions about why were books taken out of the Protestant bible, how to get rid of demonic spirits, cremation, and why do we pray the Rosary? Rob – My friend asked me to join her getting baptized in the Church of Nazarene, is that something I can do? Cathy - Why were 7 books taken out of Protestant bible? Patrick recommends the show “Shtisel” Annie - How do you get rid of demonic spirit transference between siblings? What books can you read demonic spirits and how to get rid of them? Judy - When we will resurrect with our bodies, what would happen to people whose remains are getting cremated? Pat - What Bible should I get my 13-year-old grandson who wants to come into the faith? Thomas - Question about my son's baptism (a couple of years ago). The priest was losing his memory at the time, and parts of the rite were not performed. Is there anything we need to do to complete the rite? Cindy - Can psychics put a spell or curse on you? George - Why do we pray the Rosary if we are only supposed to pray to God?

Patrick answers questions such as, can lay people do the Blessing of the Throat, why don't Jewish people believe Jesus was the messiah, can a non-Catholic receive the anointing of the sick, and what's the difference between God's Mercy and God's Judgment? Nicholas - Can lay people do the Blessing of the Throat? George - Why don't Jewish people believe Jesus was the messiah? Joe - Relevant Radio has been crucial to me becoming Catholic! We donate 50 bucks a month because of how awesome you are! Sam - Can someone who is not Catholic receive anointing of the sick? Aaron - What does the bible teach about speaking in tongues? Paul - Could you explain the difference between God's mercy and His justice?

  Amazon Sunsets AmazonSmile Amid Cost-Cutting  The AmazonSmile will be ending by February 20th, according to a statement from the company, as reported by NPR and others. While the program dispersed nearly $449 million to nonprofits globally, the company says that the donations were spread too thin, minimizing impact. Amazon pointed to other efforts, such as its Housing Equity Fund, which supports affordable housing efforts near its headquarters, as an example of a social impact program receiving investment. However, smaller nonprofits that received AmazonSmile donations say that the donation were helpful and would be missed. The move comes after Amazon announced 18,000 layoffs, amid a winter defined by tech layoffs across the industry. Read more ➝   Summary Time's Up to halt operations, shift resources to legal fund | ABC News  People are only just realising what happens to the money IKEA makes - and it's blowing their minds | The US Sun Founder of Seattle West African immigrant nonprofit accused of embezzling millions | king5.com  What if school was all outside, every day? N.J. ‘nature schools' take class outdoors, rain or shine.  NJ.com The Eagles thought their Christmas album would fund a toy drive. It ended up doing much more. | https://www.inquirer.com     Rough Transcript [00:00:00] George: This week on the nonprofit news feed. Well, we are talking about turning that Amazon smile upside down. I was first off, really happy to be able to come up with that subject line. Um, not as happy that this program is ending. Uh, Nick, how's it going? [00:00:42] Nick: It's going good. George, this is, I think, gonna be one of those weeks where we are just focused on, on one-liners and, and puns. But alas, I'll take us into the top story, which you alluded to, which is that Amazon Smile. The program that donated a PORs, uh, portion of the proceeds from purchases on Amazon to nonprofits will be coming to a close on February 20th. [00:01:07] This comes via reporting from NPR and other outlets. And in the history of the program, it dispersed nearly 449 million to nonprofits globally. However, the company says that the donations were spread too thin, minimizing impact. That's in quotes. Um, Amazon pointed in their statement to other efforts such as its Housing equity fund to support affordable housing. [00:01:34] Here its headquarters as an example. Of a social impact program it was investing in. However, in the articles, smaller nonprofits said that Amazon SMILE donations were helpful and would be missed. And this comes amid broader economic headwinds that the industry is facing. Amazon has announced 18,000 layoffs. [00:01:57] Tech layoffs are now commonplace across the board. Amazon Smile more like a frown these days. [00:02:06] George: I'm sad to see a CSR corporate social responsibility program of this magnitude get sunset in this way in short order. I've been looking on LinkedIn, um, the reactions, and some folks are saying, you know, good riddens, this was a distraction for nonprofits because it sort of baits an organization into becoming an affiliate marketer. [00:02:30] Meaning you get a portion of the sales based on a trackable link and you're pushing product as opposed to your purpose. , I hear that. I also see 449 million, uh, across nonprofits being something meaningful now. Yeah. You spread peanut butter too thin and it turns into nothing. Right. If I were to donate that, but like, that's still just, that's a lot of money. [00:02:55] You know, there's, um, 1.5 ish million nonprofits, so I don't, I don't know that I buy that full narrative of like, it was too small to make a difference. , it was part of, for some organizations, a balanced fiscal diet. It was a diversification of revenue streams. You know, it was something that they, they got and ideally didn't have to push too hard for. [00:03:19] So bad thing too bad. You know, I, I, I don't think that, I'm curious why, and, and I'll maybe never know the reason of like the actual, like, is this a cost cutting? Is there just a change in csr? Did they not get enough, uh, from it? Because on the same token, it actually served them as well because guess what? [00:03:42] Somebody was buying something from them. You know, it was the affiliate marketing strategy. It was actually pretty darn clever, and it worked so sad to see it. And hopefully there'll be a, another solution that arises, an opportunity that shows up for, for those organizations. [00:04:02] Nick: I agree. I. It can't have cost them that much money to run though. Like that's the thing, right. [00:04:11] George: Well, the the other thing is like you can just sign up for an affiliate link and sell things, but I think the difference also with Amazon Smile is that, You could have your supporters put Amazon Smile on their purchasing. So I had it for, for my nonprofit, and it was just, anytime I buy, I had something on Amazon. [00:04:27] A point went that way. So I, I, maybe you need to backtrack on like affiliate marketing versus actually it was adding a layer that said, for these customers, a portion of your proceeds go back to this organization. So that is uniquely different. [00:04:43] Nick: That's fair. That's fair. We'll continue to see if we hear more about this, maybe they'll roll out something different or new. Alas, we move along to our next story, and this one is from a ABC News and others that the Times Up organization, the Me Too, the organization born out of the Me Too movement, particularly the that one in Hollywood, um, has Hal. [00:05:13] Operations and is shifting remaining financial resources to the Legal Defense fund. So Times Out has had a. Go of it. Fallout from associations with Andrew Cuomo and that scandal, um, and has been something of an EM battered, uh, embattled organization rather, um, over the past couple years and is now closing doors and, and shifting that money to the legal defense fund, which does, uh, provide, uh, resources for women in, in specific industries. This is kind of a weird one because it's such a high profile organization that came up very quickly. I think there's probably some lessons to be learned here. George, what are those lessons and what is your take on this? [00:06:03] George: I wish I was smart enough to actually understand the, the full implications of of this. The different narratives that I see here, one, are the types of organizations that pop up in these. Cultural moments have a lot of headwinds. Later they start off with a disproportionate amount of attention and funding upfront, which certainly times updated and they did remarkable work, certainly around if we're looking at victims of Harvey Weinstein, and then the way that they were able to, I'd say, update the way that victims were dealt with. [00:06:44] In these cases from a legal standpoint and a lot of achievements there, but there's a certain type of what feels like immutable. What goes up must come down type of physics here, where the speed at which with which you rise to fame. also seems to all but guarantee the fall from Grace. That is kind of like the inverse Lindy effect. [00:07:15] The Lindy effect is if you have been here for this long, you'll probably continue to be here. Uh, coming from the. Run of show for Broadway, uh, productions that if a Broadway production had been on, you know, it's a, it's a wonder that cats ever stopped being on Broadway. Cause cats had been forever on Broadway. [00:07:32] And it was this, this joke of like, once you're in the line cafe, you'll sort of never be removed. Um, I've gone far from the topic, I'm gonna come back to it. So the first thought, the speed with which something rises probably dictates the speed with which it falls the next. Looking at organizations that need to sort of spin up with all of the overhead, with all of the infrastructure and hiring staffing, like to create a new organization takes a lot of, of work and wealth. [00:08:08] And the fact that now at the end of it, you know, they, they talk about, and even in this quote, very simply, the Legal defense Fund really reflects who we were, not only at our inception, but really at our core. And that's a quote from, uh, Schultzer. And that's why, you know, the, the remaining 1.7 million, which is, is quite small, uh, in the grand scheme of the size of the organization, uh, is going back to that fund. [00:08:33] And the question I guess in my mind is, you know, the fund administered by the National Women's Law Center in Washington? Which has provided and provides legal administration help to, to workers that identify as low income and 40% of people of color. I, I'm, I'm curious as to what the world would've looked like, had times Up simply been a branch of that organization, how much more could have been applied to it and the, the learnings and the staff and that ability rolled into an existing organization rather than saying, we need a new organization. [00:09:08] You know, could this have. A campaign or a program of that legal defense fund. Those are just questions in my mind, and it's, it's tough with an organization under this level of scrutiny. I, I have a hard time getting behind some of those decisions they made with, you know, Andrew, Andrew Cuomo and, and consulting, allegedly consulting with them behind closed doors that was then later revealed by reports. [00:09:33] Uh, It's tough. I think nonprofits are under, uh, a much, much greater microscope and it doesn't take much to set the, set the tide in the wrong direction because you exist at the public's. Will you rely on funding and funders and if those funders are then effectively being shown. as public donors because nine 90 s are all public. [00:09:59] We can see donors and donations. Are you then saying, oh, a large donor has to then reconsider like, wait a minute, am I supporting an organization that supported Andrew Cuomo? Not saying that that is a direct line, but all things being equal, it doesn't take much to hurt in that reputation, and it's tough for organizations that are in that frontline type of work. [00:10:17] Nick: George, I, I think that's, that's a great point. You bring up a lot of different nuances and the threads there, and it makes me think that your nonprofits have to play by different rules than businesses, right. [00:10:33] George: They do. You can't just go on an apology tour being like, Hey, sorry, we fired him. We're all back to normal. Like, nevermind that our news station. Maybe let this kind of go by the wayside. [00:10:44] Nick: Yeah. Yeah. Um. Yeah, I guess we'll, we'll continue to keep an eye on this story. It'll be interesting to see how that legal defense portion of it, which is still administered by, um, that, uh, the other organization, the, the woman's um, uh, legal organization, how that all pans out. Um, so we'll keep our listeners updated, but to that end, I will take us to our next story. [00:11:12] And this one comes. From King five.com and the founder of a Seattle West African immigrant nonprofit is accused of embezzling millions. Um, so. Uh, the, the gentleman in, in question, Issa I apologize cause I know I'm mispronouncing. That was the founder and longtime executive director of the West African Community Council or W A C C, which is based in Seattle. [00:11:44] Um, and after decade of service, um, he was ousted, uh, on December 16th. Accused of embezzling, which is, which is, you know, terrible, terrible, um, especially, you know, people who really, really need help. And then this long article kind of goes into it, it goes into, uh, in DA's started of the story, um, as well side of the story rather, and it kind of a complicated one. [00:12:11] But, uh, George, what's your takeaway on. [00:12:16] George: I look. Board members for this, and this is a reminder for the fiscal responsibilities that your board members take on. And I'm not saying send this article to your board members, but if you are on a board, if you are building a board, fiscal stewardship and hiring and firing the c e o, those the primary jobs and roles of a board. [00:12:38] And so I see this and I don't look at, you know, in the D and say, oh, what a bad actor. Like there are bad actors. One out of a thousand people, one out of 10,000 people are not the, you know, folks that you should be trusting. The job of the board is to hire and fire and make sure the right people are in there. [00:12:56] And the fact that this was an extra bank account started in 2014, like a secret bank account, and like hundreds of thousands of dollars going through there, you know, I'm looking at auditors, I'm looking at board members looking at that, and so paying attention to those things like, oh, it can't happen. . Um, it, it is just a function of odds and, uh, again, I wouldn't have put this in here actually if it had not been for the size of the, the embezzlement. [00:13:25] We have millions of dollars. It's, it's brutal. Uh, so it's a reminder to, to board members out there that, uh, while those finance meetings may be boring, and also the people preparing them, like, here's, here's what you're actually doing. Um, you're making sure money gets to the. The right places and you're avoiding, um, tragedies like. [00:13:45] Nick: Absolutely. I think that's a fantastic point and we always like to keep our listeners on their toes to protect themselves from this happening at their organization. I have our next story is an interesting one. Um, Georgia. Did you know that IKEA is owned by a nonprofit? [00:14:11] George: Here's the thing. I didn't know that Ike. Was owned by a nonprofit. Frankly, this is like a non-story story, but it's fascinating because, uh, you know, in the , the rep reputable, the US Sun , and this title says no Ikea, uh, people are only just realizing what happens to the money IKEA makes, and it's blowing their minds. [00:14:32] I mean, first off, a plus on a hook title. But it's funny because there is a nonprofit involved and owner of the main entity. So IKEA is actually a nonprofit organization. So the money made from those, uh, you know, fund to assemble wardrobes, uh, you know, beyond paying is, is put away into, um, a nonprofit. And the charity's big mission is to further the advancement of interior design. [00:15:01] Nick: Novo, Novo. [00:15:03] George: uh, They're putting it out there further, the advancement of interior design. I mean, you've gotta believe in that mission, I suppose. Um, I did. I didn't have anything else here. Just I thought it was funny. [00:15:17] Nick: it's really funny. So the detail is I e Ikea store stores are franchised by a company called, Inga Holdings, which is fully owned by a nonprofit organization called Stitching Inga Foundation. Um, yeah, I , it's kind of funny. I wanna do a deep dive on this. We need like a little mini documentary on what the hell's happening, but. [00:15:45] Uh, I am willing to bet there is some criticism in the wonderful Scandinavian world about, uh, whether this is truly because people are passionate about, um, easy to assemble interior design pieces, or whether this is some kind of, uh, super duper clever, uh, tax loophole that is being taken advantage of. [00:16:09] George: Yeah, I mean, look, there's some definitive, like this is a tax play very clearly. They pay according to online mba, 33 times less taxes than the average business. The Economist, the overall setup of IKEA minimizes taxes and disclosure handsomely, rewards the founding camra Cam Prad family, and makes IKEA immune to takeover. [00:16:32] So it's interesting. That when you're saying like, this is a strategic reason, like frankly as a business owner, now you have me thinking, should a nonprofit own whole whale and suddenly we don't have to pay taxes. We have, I'm gonna go ahead and say a loftier mission then to improve, I'm sorry, I want to get it accurately to, uh, to further advance, uh, the advancement of interior. [00:17:00] Further the advancement of interior design. So I would say ours has built a healthier, more just and sustainable world as an agency. I, uh, I don't know. One of the funnier quotes here is, uh, no wonder why you gotta put everything together yourself at Al Okaya, because they rely on a bunch of volunteers to put their stuff together. [00:17:20] So, you know, they have a lot of volun, big volun. I have volunteered for Ikea on more than one occasion, [00:17:29] Nick: Volunteering on for IKEA is a, a family pastime. Um, That's funny. Here's another one for you, another light story. We're, this is a good week. There's nothing too traumatic in [00:17:42] George: I mean, just, you know, massive embezzlement, half a billion dollars of CSR stopping at Amazon. This is a good week, [00:17:49] Nick: Yeah, this is, [00:17:50] George: on [00:17:51] Nick: this is a good week for [00:17:53] George: this. Okay, you're classifying Good week on this. Okay. [00:17:55] Nick: I, you know, maybe it's just because it's sunny out. But that is a perfect segue into our next story, where one New Jersey school asked What if school was outside all the time? Every day. So New Jersey Nature schools are taking class outdoors, rain or shine. Um, and this article talks about bundled up kindergarten students at a Star Child Nature School in Medford, New Jersey, outside collecting tree sap to make glue. [00:18:28] Four handmade ornaments. So this is an immersive, you are outside, you are learning, you are one with nature type situation at this school. And that brings us to, uh, the relevant question of making, uh, the question of nature versus nurture ever. The more salient. [00:18:46] George: Wow. It's, it's all, it's all nature school here. Uh, and I know some are nonprofits, some are for-profits, but there's a number of them, and I'll call out one quote here From the South Mountain Nature School, our programs promote social and emotional development and instill confidence and foster independence. [00:19:01] Said Mary Claire Solomon. Who also in other news happens to be my sister. And so I'm incredibly proud of my sister for starting one of these nature schools, pushing through the pandemic and growing to the size that they have, uh, in New Jersey. And, you know, I get to see the, the pictures and the approach that they take in. [00:19:23] There's, you know, that question that comes up, well, what about when it snows? And it's like, you know, there's no bad weather, just bad apparel. So they, they are out there, rain or shine. I think this is a, a really healthy way for, for young people who are inevitably going to wander into the world of screen first learning and engagement and work to realize that, you know, food comes from the ground. [00:19:52] SAP is fun and it's, uh, it's great to see. I'm very proud of my sister, though. In other news, [00:20:00] Nick: That's super. George did you know that's mine, hometown, A South Mountain Reservations with in walking distance from where I grew up. [00:20:07] George: He can go over and say hi. [00:20:09] Nick: Go over, say hi. Maybe a little too old for, uh, the Nature School thing, [00:20:14] George: you could volunteer perhaps. [00:20:17] Nick: love it. All right. How about a feel good story? [00:20:21] George: Yeah. What do we. [00:20:22] Nick: This one comes from the Philadelphia Inquirer, uh, and it's about the eagle. The team, not the group, uh, thought that their Christmas album would fund a toy drive and it ended up doing so much more. So the Philadelphia Eagles of a football and. Sports fame can tell. [00:20:44] I follow football. Uh, thought that they were just raising a mere $30,000, um, for this charity toy drive, when in fact they raised [00:20:59] George: Quarter million 250,000 I believe. [00:21:02] Nick: million. Wow. Wow. Good for. [00:21:07] George: Yeah. What it's nice is also going to be funding not just one, but two toy drives and a summer camp, uh, which. Objectively I, while I respect toy drives and I like those moments, it's great to also say, what about dealing with, uh, the summer learning gap and supporting communities when, um, when you are needing a potentially even more. [00:21:29] So, uh, congratulations. Also, full disclosure here. Nick thought that this wasn't the team, the Eagles, but the band, uh, the Eagles. And it took him a couple of reads to realize that it was a fact about the sports ball. So Nick, I think we all learned something today. [00:21:49] Nick: We've learned a lot. [00:21:51] George: Have we, well, before I give you a terrible joke, I have a bit of a sponsored post here and it. A note that we are opening up our, as far as I know, we only do it once a year and it's the ad grant cohort and we're teaching. Organizations how to run the ad grant, the Google Ad grant, the thing that you get 10 K a month in in-kind ads for placing ads that drive traffic and value to your organization. [00:22:20] We're doing a five week live cohort. This isn't pre-recorded. This is hands-on and we're sharing exactly how we run this ad grant to maximize the ROI for your organization. And so we're gonna help, uh, only I think it's limited, 25 organizations. It always sells out. Registration is now open. Uh, and you can find that link in the show notes or wander around whole whale.com/university and you'll find it there. [00:22:47] Alrighty, question Nick, for you. [00:22:52] Nick: Uh oh. [00:22:53] George: Why, why did the clown donate his salary? [00:22:57] Nick: Hmm. I don't know about the clown thing, but why did the clown donate his salary? [00:23:02] George: Uh, it was a nice gesture. [00:23:05] Nick: Ah, ah, ah. [00:23:09] George: He, he laughs sometimes he doesn't know. And then we like, go off, Nick, did you actually get this one or is this gonna be the one where you like pause and you're like, I didn't get it. Explain it to [00:23:17] Nick: I, I got this one. I'm a huge Shakespeare Stan. I, I'm very familiar with a court gesture and this was, yes, but offering to explain was as well a nice gesture. Um, cuz [00:23:30] George: I just wanted to do it cause I feel like I cut off. I'm like, this would've been much funnier if he didn't understand it. He was like, I laugh, I don't get it. Alright. Thanks for humoring me and this is what you get for staying to the end of the podcast. Leave us a review. Thank you. Bye. [00:23:46] Nick: Bye.

Pastor Andy Cass Jesus and George: Why does he have to talk about money so much? Money is not a simple subject but in fact our situations can be so complex financially. With rising costs, monthly pressures and inflation this is a great time to lean into God's Word to see what Jesus has to say about it. TEXT: Matthew 25: 14-18; Deuteronomy 8:17-18 NOTES: 4 Observations- 1. One is not like the others 2. The Master trusts his servants 3. There was no time table given 4. There are three methods of handling their -Invest -Earn -Bury

Interview with Soraya Alexander, COO of Classy.  We discuss the Classy State of Modern Philanthropy and dig through the data. Get the report: https://donationtrends.classy.org/    Rough Transcript   [00:00:00] George Voice Dub: I have known about this particular fundraising platform for quite some time. I'm excited to have none other than Soraya Alexander, the chief operating officer, the COO of classy. How's it going for you today ? [00:00:14] Soraya: It's going great. Thanks for having me. I'm so happy to be. Yes. [00:00:19] George: Yeah, you pop up, you know, as a definite provider of services, but also a lot of content. I see a lot of educational resources being churned out, which I, as a, as a consumer and creator myself deeply appreciate. And always I'm more interested generally in platforms that can look at their own data. [00:00:40] And so you've recently created this report, but before we get into there, how do you describe in your words, uh, what class he. [00:00:47] Soraya: We've got, um, a fancy brand proposition, but at the most basic level, we do digital fundraising for nonprofits. So the whole suite of, you know, main donation forms to events, to peer, to peer, um, anything that your donors, wherever your donors are going online, we're [00:01:03] George: It's such a competitive landscape. I, when I, you know, 12 years ago I started whole whale. I was like one thing I will never, ever do donation platforms. It just strikes me as like an impossible field to, to kind of grow in. So how has, how has it been over at classy? [00:01:19] Soraya: Oh, it's been great. So I've been a classy for four years. And I think where we get really excited is that, you know, we've got several thousand customers and they are honestly, the sector is made up of the most innovative, ambitious people. And generally. They're totally under resourced to match their ambition, right? [00:01:38] Like that is the definition of the sector. They don't have the resources. I don't know how many, how many, you know, the resources you would need to solve the world's greatest problems, but the sector definitely doesn't have them. And so we really see a lot of promise in technology overcoming that gap. [00:01:52] Like how can technology accelerate your efforts, amplify your efforts, get more fun, city, more good. Um, and so we're really not cynical about, you know, what we, what we do. We see. How technology can transform the work of the sector. So I, I completely love it. The, the pace of innovation, um, the way that we engage with donors, um, has been changing a lot. [00:02:15] So it is competitive, but that also just means we have to be better. And I think the sector deserves that. Um, so I really, it's been a lot of fun. [00:02:22] George: You know, it it's good to hear. And certainly like under resourced is the, is the sad mantra of what's going on and great that you're able to provide the sort of frictionless way to get more money into more good hands. You have come out with the state of modern philanthropy. I was hoping maybe you could pull out what that is first [00:02:45] Soraya: Yeah. Yeah. [00:02:46] George: what do, what do what's the state? [00:02:48] Are we [00:02:48] Soraya: , I don't know that I have an answer. I think, uh, optimistic is probably the one word answer. So the state of modern philanthropy is an annual report. We do it's the, the fifth year we've published it. And we would just kind of glean all of this information from all of the campaigns on the platform. [00:03:05] We would collect all of these insights around donor trends, behaviors, campaign trends, payment trends, uh, and it was just too much too much information to not share it out with the sector. We thought it could be really valuable. So, you know, this past year we saw over a billion dollars of donations. Uh, it was 12 million individual transaction events, 54,000 campaigns. [00:03:27] And so from that, you can start seeing kind of what's working. What's not how are things progressing? Um, so yeah, really happy to publish it. And it. Kind of goes hand in hand. We do several consumer surveys throughout the year as well. And so you marry up what are people saying about how they wanna give and then what actually happens on the platform and, um, you find some interesting, interesting insights. [00:03:47] So yeah, excited to kind of share some of those today, but, um, please do you know if anybody's interested, go, go through there's there's way too many insights to, to talk through. It ends up being, you know, feeling tedious, but we think that we've packaged it in a way that could be really helpful. [00:04:01] George: Yeah. And just so folks know, we'll have the link in the show notes, but I, I found it by going to donation trends dot class e.org. So that's, I think where we can find this, the looking at your executive summary, which I always appreciate. The quick summary. Tell me what I need to know before I need to know it. [00:04:19] Cuz I'm super lazy. You have that events are back. Um, so events were away, clearly events. Meaning I read this as in person fundraising events, cuz that pesky little thing called the COVID. So we're BA we're back. [00:04:35] Soraya: we're back. What, you know, so one of the things we do is because we've got kind of long term relationships with so many nonprofits, we'll only isolate to year over year performance for the same kinds of campaigns and the same kinds of organizations. So this isn't just. We started selling, you know, to a lot more organizations who are interested in events. [00:04:52] This is actual year over year performance. Um, and we saw that revenue from events group 50% year over year. So that's coming back in a big way. Uh, but it's not just coming back in person. I think people got really used to virtual. Events then got totally sick of virtual events, but they held onto some of the digital components that feel easier, more elegant, more efficient. [00:05:15] And so I kind of mentioned these consumer surveys. We did, we actually did a, a fundraiser experience report, which was a survey of donors and they talked about really. Uh, valuing when there are things like digital auctions or, you know, digital fundraisers added on to either hybrid or fully in person events. [00:05:35] So now we are seeing about half of donors say, yeah, we wanna come back to events. Events are raising a ton of money again, you know, anybody who's, um, You know, been in this ecosystem or frankly been in an airport, knows that like the in person experience is back, but that digital component is not going away. [00:05:51] It's just evolving. Uh, so that, that kind of combination we're seeing as a, as a real transformer as we go, as we go forward [00:05:59] George: And just to, to repeat the, what was the year over year increase. [00:06:03] Soraya: 50% [00:06:05] George: About a 50%. That's pretty phenomenal. And again, just the, the sample size, I think, just to confirm is the, the total over, you know, $1.1 billion that transaction, like, so of that has a huge increase. Uh, is the, is the overall amount donated on the platform also increased in that same period of time? [00:06:24] Or is it like the percent of money coming via? Makes [00:06:28] Soraya: Yeah, it's a good question. So we're definitely, um, growing and that's both growing through individual organizations who are growing, who are doing kind of really well with all these optimizations and different campaign types. And, you know, we'll talk about. Um, channel optimization and payments optimization, and then it's also growing just as our out platform grows and we're able to support nonprofits, but for events specifically, these are events that were run the year before or organizations that were with us the year before that weren't running events and what they did the next year. [00:06:56] So it's not reflective of just kind of new organizations it's truly year over year comparison. And we're seeing, um, a pretty drastic, uh, increase, which we find really encouraging. [00:07:05] George: Yeah, you read my mind. I'm like, well, wait a minute. You know, the number went up, cuz our number went up and you're like breaking news. [00:07:10] Soraya: for it. [00:07:11] George: organization's numbers go up because they got bigger. So you kind of controlled for it. Looking at the same organizations. Uh, running these events. I'm curious, are these events I R L or are they a mix? [00:07:22] Do you have that [00:07:23] Soraya: Total mix. We it's, it's a complete mix and it's even harder to what we're seeing is either even the IRL. Very few of them are strictly in person. Now, almost everybody has introduced this digital component. They've, you know, really come to understand that. Why place a geographic limitation, if you don't have to. [00:07:43] And people in the room are happy to engage online with, you know, again, things like digital auctions, so why restrict it, or even timebound auctions, there's no need to restrict it. You're raising more money. If you can kind of open the aperture and it's so easy to do now, the donors experienced with it. [00:08:00] They actually prefer it, um, based on our donor surveys. And so, uh, we see very few pure play in real life events happen. [00:08:07] George: the majority of these are non geofenced. [00:08:11] Soraya: It's it's in person events that have a digital component that has been layered on. That's a lot of what we're seeing now. [00:08:19] George: Gotcha. So there are people hanging out in person, but like, like logo, like, like I'm gonna walk around my block. I'm gonna walk around my block, like, oh, cool. [00:08:27] Soraya: of that, or even just, we're gonna have an in person gala, but our auction's not gonna be a, you know, the paddle race is gonna be ver digital now. And so if you wanna phone it in, you couldn't make the gala that night, you just really could not get outta your sweatpants. You can actually participate at alongside the people who are in the room. [00:08:42] That's a lot of, kind of what we're seeing. [00:08:44] George: Yeah, finally sweatpants for a cause I knew it was gonna come. [00:08:48] Soraya: I am behind that. Cause [00:08:49] George: What is the weirdest event you think classy has been, been parked to? [00:08:55] Soraya: Oh man. You know, I need customer permission before I can talk about some of these things. I will say the coolest one was right at the start of COVID. Do you remember, um, that Robin hood telethon in New York that had. Tina Faye crying. It had, I mean, it had everybody coming forward and really like every celebrity you can imagine coming forward to raise money, um, for all kinds of relief efforts that Robin hood was doing just at the start of COVID incredibly powerful. [00:09:21] And if you had told me that we were gonna be part of some huge telethon in, in the year, you know, 20, 20, I, I would. I wouldn't have believed it. Um, but it was a really incredible kind of moment for everybody to come together. And we were really, really proud to work with them. [00:09:37] George: I'd be so curious. I, I feel like I can just talk about this or parse this out almost in, in a lot of ways. What are the, I don't know if you have this, but what are the highest yield, um, types of events? Is it, is there a certain center, like, oh, they're running the, uh, yield walkathon or like, oh my gosh, it's the, the silent awesome pet grooming Bonanza that like really brings in the dollars. [00:10:00] Soraya: It's a great question there. It totally depends on the organization, which is a really unsatisfying answer. The one thing that I will say is completely consistent is I think sometimes event organizers. Feel like the big ask is getting people to the event, getting them to register, getting them to give again, they don't, they're, they're nervous to ask for those participants to also fundraise on their behalf. [00:10:22] When you do event with fundraising on top of it, you invite somebody to raise additionally either for, you know, uh, run, walk, ride, or even just a gala. Event volume goes through the roof, always encourage your network and your supporters to do more for your cause. It, it, that is a really transformative aspect that takes very little from you. [00:10:42] You are just activating your supporters network, um, and it's not used as much as you'd expect. And, and really that has transformative impacts on, on how much you raise. [00:10:53] George: So as I'm understanding this being explicit, that attend, but you're also fundraising. [00:10:59] Soraya: Yes. [00:11:00] George: Don't just show up, like [00:11:02] Soraya: That's right. And you think about, you know, everybody gets one more donor, you've doubled your event revenue. Like it's not hard stuff. You don't really have to ask them to become superstar fundraisers, say, Hey mom, I'm going to gala tonight. Do you wanna throw 20 bucks on top of my ticket? Um, for something that I care about your mom will. [00:11:18] Pitch in 20 bucks. Um, and that, that can really change, right? Yeah. that changes things. Um, and it's, it's very low lift. It should be no lift with the right technology. Um, and, and you don't, and, and suddenly you have all these new donors as well, suddenly mom's part of your database suddenly you can market to her and get her as a more committed donor in the long term. [00:11:36] So even outside of the event, you've expanded your network in kind of profound ways. Um, so we, we are always encouraging our, our, uh, organizations to consider. [00:11:45] George: right. Big takeaway. Everybody. Get those mom dollars. [00:11:48] Soraya: Get mom dollars. [00:11:50] George: another one we, yeah, hashtag hashtag get mom dollars. Uh, donors give more when they have choices. Can you, yeah. And other news money, money buys things. [00:12:03] Soraya: yeah, shocking. [00:12:04] George: I don't, I don't mean it that way. What does this actually mean? [00:12:07] Soraya: Well, well, so we, um, we launched a payments offering a few years ago because we heard that organizations kind of want everything consolidated. They want easier reconciliation. And so we, we launched this, this payments gateway as a, as a way to facilitate easier organization reconciliation and just reporting honestly. [00:12:28] And then we saw the light on payments and became completely obsessed with how. Offering different payment types can really transform conversion rates, donor retention rates, even dollar amounts that you're giving. And so as our payments offering expanded, we said, okay, let's layer in digital wallets, right? [00:12:46] Apple pay. Yes. You should have apple pay PayPal. Yes. You should have PayPal, Venmo, crypto ACH, which is like digital bank transfer. You start offering all these things and you see individual donation amounts go up, you see conversion rates go up, you see. Um, recurring commitments, go up, you see lifetime value of those recurring commitments extend you start adding all these things up and it starts sounding like comical numbers. [00:13:10] So I'm not even gonna share kind of some of the things we're seeing, cuz I am making our team go through and scrub it a hundred more times before I would share it with a public. But we will say, you know, a couple of the stats we saw, one time donations could increase 50% when you have payment options on there. [00:13:25] And this sounds really profound until you actually take a second and say, how do I behave as a consumer? Oh yeah. If there's apple pay, I am more likely to complete a checkout, whether it's on a eCommerce site or a nonprofit donation form. If I don't have to. Get up while I'm in my sweatpants, you know, watching the gala from home, I don't have to go up and get my, you know, find my phone and find my credit card and find whatev or sorry, find my credit card, find my laptop, whatever else. [00:13:49] So it's really intuitive when you put yourself in the mind of a consumer. Um, and yet we, you know, we still have kind of nonprofit saying, well, I've got, you know, I've got a credit card form. Like that's enough. You know, I, I have a means for a donor to check out that's actually not enough. Um, and. It's transformative when you have all of these options. [00:14:09] And it's also tragic when you think you've spent so long, getting the public to know about the cause care about the cause. Find your organization that is trying to address the cause. Get all the way to a donation form, and then still check out. Rates are. Way lower than they should be. Definitely not a hundred percent. [00:14:26] And, and you think about how much work you have done to then lose the donor at that last moment. And if it's kind of tragic, um, and that's why we've become obsessed with payments, cuz you can start bumping that number up in kind of meaningful ways. [00:14:36] George: Yeah, just to reiterate though, you're saying that the average one time donation was nearly 1.5 X more just by offering these options all in one place. That's that's amazing. I had thought prior. To this, that probably the number one piece that impacted the amount given in that first time, one time amount was the anchoring, what the prefilled amount was, [00:15:03] Soraya: Yeah. We're seeing as actual payment options. It's not just conversion rates that are impacted. It's actually the dollars that you give. [00:15:08] George: Wow. And, and you found, so you now accept crypto. [00:15:13] Soraya: We do we accept [00:15:14] George: when did that start? [00:15:16] Soraya: a couple of weeks ago. We just launched it, um, right in the middle of crypto, winter. It's you know, we'll we'll uh, [00:15:22] George: what are you guys doing? Losing [00:15:23] Soraya: I I know, come on over. No, I mean, the idea, what we've seen is the more offerings you have, we like saying that we know we have more payment options now than Amazon. Um, you know, you just, you wanna come over no matter how you wanna give, we will be there for you. [00:15:35] We will accept. We will accept any, you know, any form of [00:15:39] George: You accept all cryptocurrencies, all, all forms of all forms of the, uh, the doge. [00:15:45] Soraya: Not, not everything, but more every day. I think we just, um, announced that we, we extended to another only 10 currencies just last week. So they keep coming. Um, the capabilities keep extending, um, but very early days. [00:15:58] And I think, you know, that's the most exciting thing for us. Um, you know, we, we did. Credit card and ACH. A couple of years ago, we layered in digital wallets about six months after that, about a year ago, no, maybe eight months ago was PayPal. Uh, then Venmos two months after that crypto, you know, was just a couple of weeks ago. [00:16:16] So, uh, the velocity and the, the focus and the expansion here is, is continuing. And it's really because of that value, we see the donor engagement and the reactions and the receptivity. um, so, so no plans on, on kind of slowing down, we're running out of currencies to accept and, and payment methods to accept. [00:16:32] But, um, as long as there's more, we're gonna keep, keep exploring to create, create new things. That's it? Well, and it's fun cuz now you get to start getting, uh, really weird about thinking. Okay. What does event, you know, we're talking about hybrid events, we're talking about crypto, the future of. Uh, virtual galas where you're just auctioning NFTs, and suddenly things become really interesting is, is absolutely, you know, there are brainstorming sessions happening with some of our most innovative customers around what this can look like and how we can support it. [00:17:00] So, [00:17:01] George: Why did you choose to, uh, why did you choose to accept crypto? [00:17:04] Soraya: Um, really it's about kind of donor choice and organization choice. So our job is to be a platform that just says we can enable nonprofits to engage with our donors in any way that is meaningful to donors. And our job is to. Do a lot of kinda market assessment stay on the cutting edge of, you know, eCommerce trends, donor trends, non-profit trends and say, okay, where, where is this going? [00:17:24] Where can we get more funds to causes that need them? And then we will have, you know, we will pursue offerings in that capacity. So it was, it was kind of an easy choice from that lens. [00:17:33] George: and do you, uh, Do you have any organizations that are expressed to saying like, no, no, no. Like turn that off or I assume they have to turn on all of these things. It's not default outta the box. Right? So [00:17:45] Soraya: We do no, no, no. You have complete control over what you do, how you engage with it, what you turn on. Even at a campaign level, you can decide, you know, this one doesn't really feel right. We don't think it's the right donor base. Um, but here we would like to [00:17:56] George: But your data seems to suggest that you should check all of the boxes, like land C air, however you wanna get us there. [00:18:02] Soraya: our data strongly suggested, but this is why we release these reports. It's like, you know, we'll do the analysis. You can make the decision. The choice is yours. [00:18:11] George: I love backed insights that fly in the face of the. Common knowledge is don't offer too many choices. You're gonna overwhelm the person, keep it focused. Like, you know, you seem to be betraying the, the imutable laws of UX and, and sort of throwing all this. [00:18:28] Soraya: I'm really glad you asked that. So, um, The right options are good. And so more options means you have a higher, uh, higher chance of getting to the right one for that donor. But does that mean all the donor? All those options have to be on the table for every single experience. Absolutely not. And so you're right. [00:18:45] We actually are working on how do you get more insights around who's landing on the page and maybe you cater those options. To that person. So you can have the full suite enabled for every campaign, but based on what you know about a particular donor visitor, you can say, you know what, we're only gonna show these three options. [00:19:02] We really don't see any indication that this person would be interested in option X. So we'll just hide it on that page. So it's not, it's not live yet, but you're absolutely right. Those are, those are things we're exploring right now. [00:19:12] George: be curious. Cause you just turned this on of putting all of those together. It seems that they are they're additive and it's like in addition to not, instead of, and I wonder with something. Like crypto, which has, uh, a polarizing effect, I think in its current cycle of adoption, which is a fancy way of saying doesn't this piss off some folks potentially that are looking at ways to give, and they're like, wait a minute. [00:19:37] This organization accepts, you know, you know, climate destroying cryptocurrency, [00:19:43] Soraya: Yeah, [00:19:44] George: you all. I'm not giving to this organization. I, I wonder if that's a thought or concern. [00:19:49] Soraya: Yeah, well, the, the, the crypto argument aside, we do have kind of off offsets enabled if you want as an organization to sign up for some kind of offset program. So we do have that kind of, um, integrated as well. And then, um, I think it ends up being the, the organizations know their donor base really well, and they say, okay, um, are you choosing kind of greener crypto, you know, offerings, things like that. [00:20:12] George: Yeah. I don't know the right answer, but I do know that more is different. [00:20:16] Soraya: more, more is different, more so far is really. Um, paying off and we are testing the heck out of it. Uh, and seeing, because the second it starts not paying off we'll, you know, we'll, we'll publish that as well and, and give control to kind of moderate. [00:20:32] George: Yeah. The irony to me of also the, like the crypto argument, then we'll move on. Cuz I love rabbit holes is, is the fact that I assume that on donation. The acid is liquidated so you're not holding it. You're technically getting it outta the system and switching back to Fiat. So it's, it's kind of funny to me being like, how dare you, you know, not go green. [00:20:51] You're like, you know what we're doing? Right. We're removing liquidity from the system. You don't like, you know how this works, [00:20:57] Soraya: love, I love that we haven't even pursued that angle, but, um, [00:21:01] George: Yeah. Yeah. [00:21:03] Soraya: It is, it is, it is early days though, and you're right. And the, the, the thinking around it and just the, the process of producing it, everything is evolving so quickly. And so I think for us, it's always, how do we, how do we stay on leading edge? [00:21:16] How do we make sure that. You know, so I started my, my career in the social sector and moved into e-commerce and customer loyalty and customer engagement for the, for profit sector. And so this is kind of the best of both worlds, where I get to say, you know, I ki I have familiarity with what the sector needs and what they encounter, and I know about e-commerce and it was always, you just try to go where the, where the donor, the consumer is. [00:21:37] You try to make it as easy for them. If you just, if the goal. Make it easy for them to spend money with you, then you have to figure out that psychology and that experience, and that is your job. And so for us, that is our job on behalf of the sector that we think needs the most. And so wherever that goes, we will, we will be there. [00:21:54] George: Of working with, and also like talking to folks that have experience in the e-commerce sector, moving into the nonprofit sector. You're like, yeah, go get that money. That's how this works. That's how all of this [00:22:04] Soraya: that's it. That's the, [00:22:05] George: get the [00:22:05] Soraya: the job. That's the [00:22:07] George: overthink it. [00:22:08] Soraya: Yeah. And you have to do that in really sophisticated ways. You know, how do you do that when you're not, um, you know, how do you do that when you're talking about impact, where you're talking about long term relationships, where, you know, you have a fraction of the budget, you've gotta get even more creative and thoughtful and personalized and all these things. [00:22:24] Um, it it's so much more important. You can't just say, okay, we're running a flash sale on something and you don't have those levers. Um, and so I just, I completely love it. [00:22:31] George: We have a final point in here that fundraising among peers thrives on social media and you have this number that peer tope raise on average 3.8 times more than other time based campaigns. Can you help me parse this out? [00:22:46] Soraya: Yeah. So, um, this is really around, you know, focusing on. Campaigns that say, okay, we've got, you know, we've got an end date. If that's an event, you know, you're leading up to an event you're trying to raise money or we're raising for a particular fund. Um, this actually goes back to the events conversation we had earlier, which is just activate your donors and your supporters networks offer a way for them to fundraise on your behalf and for time-based campaigns specifically, you see almost four times more raised when you allow people to fundraise and extend what their own wallet can do, what their own contributions can do. [00:23:19] And then suddenly you also get all these new donors. Um, so I, there's no reason not to allow people to do more than what you know, they're willing to spend in that moment. Cuz they have networks who are going to listen to them. You know, this is important to you and I care about you and I feel aligned to your values and I want to support the things that you support. [00:23:39] It doesn't have to be, you know, their entire network to, for it, to be really meaningful for non. [00:23:43] George: What does this actually look like? Are you saying the organization creates this peer-to-peer fundraising campaign and then sort of enables a certain feature for social share? Explicitly says it puts it in the flow. What, what does this [00:23:56] Soraya: Yeah, what, what we are, what we are looking at. So we have, um, peer to peer capabilities, you know, like separate campaigns and we have events where you've got fundraising on top of it. Uh, so those two event types where you can say. I allow I going to enable you to set up your own fundraising page. That's what we're talking about versus just an event where you buy a ticket or just a campaign where you individually donate. [00:24:19] So we're not talking about social sharing here. That definitely has power, but when you actually encourage people to set up their own fundraising page, we see almost four times more raised. That's right. [00:24:29] George: So the individual is creating a page that they have their, like their fingerprint on under the banner of the organization. And then they're encouraged to share that page on social, check out my fundraising page, and then they post it. [00:24:41] Soraya: That's right. That's right. [00:24:44] George: Yeah. That [00:24:44] Soraya: they don't have to be great at it. You know, that's the, I think that's the compelling thing is people say, like, I don't know that I've got these power fundraisers. I think that was the point. That was really exciting to me. You don't have to have a network of pseudo development staff at your disposal. [00:24:59] You just ask your, your committed fundraisers to open up a page. They get a couple of donations and you think about right there, that's four times as much donations, you know, four times as much volume. It doesn't take long for the math to get there. And yet it feels really profound. When you say four times the amount of volume as any other campaign type. [00:25:17] Yeah. Just, just allow people to kinda help. [00:25:20] George: Yeah, it seems like in some ways you're unlocking the power law even more so where clearly. 10% of your followers, donors supporters have 90% of the potential following. There's gonna be one person in there. Who's just happens to be hyper connected. And by allowing that person encouraging that person to leverage that social network, you're, you're, uh, you're dancing in the right side of the power law. [00:25:45] Soraya: That that's it. And you, it, it really doesn't, you know, if you have really sophisticated peer to peer and event with fundraising, keep, you know, um, campaigns absolutely. That exists, but they don't always have to be that you, you know, with the right tooling, you just say, yes, this is an option. They will take it from there. [00:26:01] Um, so I, I also recognize that we're talking to development officers and development managers who are saying, I don't have a huge staff to launch all these complex campaigns. You actually don't necessarily need it. You know, tech can help you. Tech can fill in the gaps of what, you know, your staff can't do manually. [00:26:17] It should be doing that. It should help you scale. And this is one of those areas. [00:26:20] George: I love it. Anything else about the report we should [00:26:23] Soraya: So there's one piece that is a really unintuitive. Stat. And so it takes a second to parse it, but I think it's, it's fascinating when you think about it. So recurring capture rate, when you are, um, donating and you decide to become a sustaining member as opposed to a one time member. Um, let's say that's a, you know, 10 percent-ish capture rate over time. [00:26:45] When you, as a development officer, look at your transactions, this is platform wide for us. You look at all of your transactions in a month. 58% of those transactions were recurring donations. That means that they were decided to give before that month. So it's not that there's, you know, 58% of the people who come in on any given month are making a recurring gift. [00:27:04] It's that the transactions that are processed in that month, 58% of them end up being recurring gifts that have been decided before that. And so if you think about your donor outreach strategy and your engagement strategy, know that. More than half of the transactions in given month have already been committed to how are you engaging that audience? [00:27:24] So back to like the e-commerce days, we think a lot about, are you talking to your recurring donors? Are you making sure that you're, you're letting them know that ongoing impact? Are you making sure that they have opportunities to give again? Are you treating them like gym members where you're hoping they set it and forget it and you never talk to them and they just let it go forever? [00:27:41] Or are you saying we wanna make sure you understand the value of this dollar because it. It's the, it's the predominant number of transactions, even if it's not the predominant number of donors you see every month. And so we just don't want 'em to, we don't want it to become like the silent majority that you forget about and take for granted and take, you know, just assume they'll always be there. [00:28:01] They require some cultivation they require talking to, and we actually see that about a quarter of recurring donors end up giving one time gifts on top of their monthly commitment. You should absolutely be engaging with this cohort. So it it's, I know it's a little bit of a confusing stat when you say it this way, but I just think about, you know, you look at a report and you see this many times a credit card was charged in this month. [00:28:22] More than half of those cards, those donors didn't come to your site necessarily that month they had already committed. And are you thinking about them as actively as you would any other kind of cohort of donors that month and you should be? Um, so I think a lot about donor segmentation and engagement and ongoing communication, um, and how important it is. [00:28:40] George: think the only thing that stuck to my brain there was that we have reoccurring donors as a nonprofit. [00:28:46] Soraya: Yes. [00:28:46] George: According to your data. Literally one out of four of those folks will just write an extra check. If I reach out to them, [00:28:55] Soraya: Yes. [00:28:55] George: I feel like that is something that would scare the, the fundraising pants off. [00:29:01] Somebody be like, oh my gosh, don't disrupt. Leave them. Be let the money come in. Don't like piss off anybody being like, how dare you ask me for more money. I already give you the money, [00:29:12] Soraya: Yeah, no, [00:29:13] George: no, the data suggests other. [00:29:15] Soraya: the data suggests otherwise. And, and again, I think we're, we're scared because we feel like we got away with something when we got that recurring gift and like, oh my [00:29:22] George: did, you got the [00:29:23] Soraya: money. For however long. Um, but people wanna validate their decision to invest in you. They're investing in your organization and your cause and the impact you can have. [00:29:33] So the ways that you communicate that was a good investment, the way you should validate that investment and the ways that you can communicate, how much more you can do with a little kind of extra on top, that all speaks to their values and why they're with you. So it definitely shouldn't be something scary. [00:29:47] It's really powerful. Uh, donors. [00:29:50] George: That's interesting. I'm wondering, do you know your average retention for a reoccurring donor? Like that, that gift amount? I'm always. Do you get more in the one time where that, uh, that cutoff and that trade off is it depends on, you know, who, which data source you're talking to [00:30:05] Soraya: Um, I do, and I've got fresher data. That's like hot off the press as of yesterday that I won't share yet. So a few years ago we pulled it maybe two or three years ago and we found a recurring donor is five times more valuable than a one time donor. Um, we have seen that go up meaningfully, um, almost. [00:30:22] I, I shouldn't dare you, but something like almost double it's almost, it's almost, it's almost double [00:30:27] George: More. [00:30:27] Soraya: And it's because of some of the, um, capabilities that we've enhanced along those lines of, you know, through, through our payments offering, which is, you know, recurring, retry, recurring capture. [00:30:38] Automatic card. Updater the ability to engage with donors before cards expire. If, you know, if we don't think we're gonna be able to update them, there's all kinds of capabilities to allow you to extend the life of a donor. Because more often than not, you lose a recurring donor because of a payment failure, not because they're canceling. [00:30:55] And so if you can address all of those, all of those reasons, or as, you know, as much as you can, you can extend the life of a donor, um, substantially. [00:31:03] George: That makes sense. And there's also just been like technical shifts in the way some credit cards operate that even when you cancel it, if it's a preexisting payment system already in place that they maintain that while canceling any new charge. So there's like just sort of happy accident of fate [00:31:17] Soraya: Yes. That's right. Well, and the thing that I'll add is if you really can get 25% of these donors to give a gift again, why would you ever say, I want the one time, because I'm scared that this is gonna be a lower donation amount over time. Like they'll come back because you've got that consistent relationship with them. [00:31:32] And so there's just, there's all kinds of reasons why no recurring is still. Still the way to go. [00:31:38] George: Like you're living on the positive end of the hedonic treadmill, [00:31:41] Soraya: Yeah, there we go. [00:31:42] George: fancy way of saying people just get real used to what they've been doing. Right. And like, oh, you know, like life could be as good as you want, and then you get used to it. And you're like, this sucks. I want something new. So on the positive side of that, I'm used to giving my 25 or 50 bucks, whatever the number is a month. [00:31:56] Like that's what status quo is. But is that good enough? The hedonic treadmill says no. [00:32:01] Soraya: We can do more and back to payments offerings. Um, I think we saw that for ACH. Let me see it. Oh yeah. Recurring gifts. When you have all these payment offerings, recurring gifts on ACH, which is kinda direct bank transfer are 30% higher than credit card. So even that number of what [00:32:15] George: Can you say that again? I [00:32:16] Soraya: yeah. [00:32:17] A AC recurring gifts made on ACH versus credit card. It's it's like a direct bank transfer [00:32:24] George: Gotcha. So I connect my bank and then like, I'm, I'm locked in. [00:32:27] Soraya: That's right. That's about 30% larger than those made on credit card. And so back to payment offerings, when you're engaging with kind of sophisticated donors and you can actually nudge them on, you know, if you're giving, you know, these might be like, these are options for you. [00:32:42] These are recurring donors who want to give in these other, in these other ways. Uh, you can actually nudge that number up as well. And so then. You start, you start compounding all of the impacts of these little benefits and it starts to be really, um, meaningful relative to let's say a one time gift where you only have one, you know, payment offering and, um, [00:33:01] George: You also can dance. You also can dance with the fact that you don't have to pay the credit card processing fee when you use ACH. Cuz [00:33:06] Soraya: That's right. It's cheaper for the organizations. That's right. A hundred percent. Yeah. [00:33:10] George: well, awesome. I'm glad you, I'm glad you added that. That's a, another counterintuitive, but look at the data and, you know, file that away. [00:33:17] There's some real, there's some real good gems in here. Thank you for sharing [00:33:20] Soraya: we think so. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We're happy to do it. [00:33:24] George: Yeah. Rather than just keeping it inside. You're like, oh, here are our secrets. You you've decided to share it. I, I do. I do genuinely appreciate that. Alrighty. Are you ready for rapid fire? [00:33:35] Soraya: now let's go. [00:33:36] George: Okay. I don't know if you have much of a choice, but I always [00:33:39] Soraya: I [00:33:39] George: that because, you know, uh, you know, ask, ask permission. [00:33:44] Okay. So let's kick this off. What is one tech tool or website that you have, or your organization has started using in the last year? [00:33:51] Soraya: The calm app. It helps me at work. It helps me with everything. I know you think that's a, that's a, that's a cheating answer, but it's not mental state is everything [00:33:59] George: That's great mind achieves with the mind achieves with the body believes and strike that reverse it. Tech issues. What tech issues are you currently battling with? [00:34:08] Soraya: Data availability everywhere. And as completely as I want all the time, I don't know anybody who won't an won't have that in their answer somewhere on their list. [00:34:16] George: Yeah. What is coming in the next year that has you the most excited? [00:34:20] Soraya: we just joined forces with GoFundMe and there are. [00:34:24] George: about that. [00:34:25] Soraya: Uh, I am so excited because there are a hundred million donors on that platform who are activated and engaged and not actually affiliated with nonprofits. It's all individual acute cause giving. And if we can connect those donors who are responding in a moment to a human and say, there's also organizations fixing this issue at scale and structurally, would you like to meet them and continue this relationship? [00:34:48] I think there is so much power for organizations and that is why we did it. And I cannot wait cuz we are working on it. Right. [00:34:54] George: Might have another podcast in the future. I'm always curious about companies that, that get acquired and then I'm always watching. [00:35:02] Soraya: Uh, I am so enthralled about it. It is like the most exciting area of how do you fundamentally change the game for nonprofits operating at a very competitive market? And I think this is a really exciting one, so I would love to talk about it. [00:35:17] George: All right. We'll put, put a pin in that one. [00:35:19] Soraya: Yeah. Great. [00:35:19] George: Talk about a, can you talk about a mistake that you made earlier in your career that shapes the way you do things now? [00:35:25] Soraya: No, I never made a mistake. I'm just kidding. Um, so, uh, I have so many, um, I think one of the earlier ones was, um, I was, I was, when you're early in your career, you were kind of insecure about how little experience you have. And so you try to overcompensate with confidence and demonstrating mastery, and then you get nowhere cuz you can't actually have honest conversations. [00:35:46] You're not in a position to learn and everybody sees through it anyways. Uh, so I've completely overcome that. Like I just wanna get to good answers and better insights and I don't care who has them. It's probably not gonna be me. That sounds like such a cheesy thing to say, like once you're management, but it's absolutely true. [00:36:00] And. The faster you get over that. And you're willing to say you're willing to like really get into learning mode. Uh, the better, the better your life is the better outcomes. There are, the faster you get ahead. All the things. [00:36:10] George: believe that nonprofits can successfully go out of business. [00:36:13] Soraya: Uh, I used to work at PBS and worked at Lincoln center for a hot second. So I hope not. [00:36:17] George: If I were to throw you in the hot tub time machine, back to your start at classy, what advice would you give yourself? [00:36:25] Soraya: The impatience to be great because the sector needs it. um, just be really unapologetic about that. I think at first you're trying to kind of navigate and make sure you don't rock the boat. I'm all about rocking the boat. If it means it's better outcomes for this sector. And we are really unapologetic about that now, but it took me a little, you know, it took me a second to really own that position. [00:36:46] Um, and I would just, I would just start even faster. [00:36:48] George: is something you think you or your organization should stop doing? [00:36:52] Soraya: I have a million things I should stop doing. One of the things I'm really proud of with our organization is we definitely have a culture of, if you see something stupid and you elevate it and there's discussion and we agree it's stupid, we just stop it. We are actually like very unattached to anything because it's always been done that way. [00:37:07] Um, so I can't think of anything, not cause we haven't done stupid things, but because anything that I know about, I think we've been pretty, uh, aggressive about stopping. I think it's an important skill for any company to have. I will say that or any organization [00:37:19] George: like. [00:37:20] Soraya: it's just, it's just impatient for inefficiency and in, and, and impatience to be great. Like, I really think it comes that that seeps through the, the DNA of, of everyone. So it's not that we can fix it overnight, but if we see something we should, we need to fix or we see something dumb. Yeah. We, we, we try to jump on it. [00:37:35] George: If you had a magic wand to wave across the social impact sector, what would it do? And you can't say just generate a whole bunch of new classy users. Like I'm taking that ability off the wand and no more wishing for more wishes. I'm tired of it. We can't have it. [00:37:47] Soraya: Come on [00:37:48] George: inflation and I won't have it. [00:37:49] Hmm. [00:37:50] Soraya: um, [00:37:51] George: What is your donor [00:37:52] Soraya: Donor retention, fixed donor retention. We're trying in absence of, in absence of a magic wand, we're trying with tech, but fix the donor retention problem, because I also think that talks about are people engaged in the cause. So it's so much more than dollars. It's also about like public engagement with these causes and these missions that is required right. [00:38:09] Alongside the dollars. [00:38:11] George: right now on average 54. [00:38:12] Soraya: Um, our, you know, like our recurring donation or [00:38:15] George: No, just like overall, like, yeah, reoccurring, like I gave this year next year. What percent am I likely? [00:38:20] Soraya: Donor retention across. So there's like a bunch of ways to cut it. It's it's lower than that. Going up fast. If you adopt all of these capabilities, it kind of depends on what you adopt. Um, and it's for the base organization. [00:38:32] I think industrywide not just on classy. It's something like a fifth. I mean, it's something abysmally low. I don't know. Remember the reports are out there. Um, all of these tools we have seen kind of meaningfully increase that long lifetime value, a long retention, um, still lower than I think anybody would like it to. [00:38:49] George: Yeah. So hovers around 20% for you all, [00:38:51] Soraya: Well, not with, not with our recurring and our classy pay customers. So no that's much higher, but, um, yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm, [00:38:57] George: Gotcha. Appreciate the sidebar. How did you get started in the social impact sector? [00:39:02] Soraya: I took a semester in college and went and worked full time at amnesty international and the refugee department in DC and loved it. And then started at a strategy communications digital agency for the social sector right after college. So early, as early as you get in my career. [00:39:18] George: What advice would you give college grads looking to enter this sector? [00:39:22] Soraya: Most entry level jobs kind of suck, but. There is always something to be learned. If you really lean in and you try to figure out who is doing interesting things, how can I be of value? How can I work a little harder? Because you get exposure to do interesting things and your job for most of your career is to gain as many experiences as you can. [00:39:40] That doesn't mean job hop. That means whatever you're doing. Try to involve yourself in as much as you can and do it really well. And it will all start coming together into something that looks like a linear career. It just takes a second. So be patient and really lean. [00:39:52] George: What advice did your parents give you that you either followed or didn't [00:39:56] Soraya: Um, I am, uh, I am a little bit intense and I am always trying to like, You know, work really hard to prepare for the next thing to, to, um, set myself up. Well, and I think when I was 15, my mom looked at me and said, you know, you're not gearing up so you can get ready. So your life starts like, this is it. This is your life. [00:40:14] And so it didn't really sit with me. Yeah, that's it. I didn't really sit with me until I had kids, but now I think about it a lot. Like this is it. If I'm not living in the moment, What am I doing back to the com app? the, the grounding efforts are, are, uh, are a dominant part of how I, how I try to operate now. [00:40:31] George: Brilliant. Last hardball question. How do people find you? How do people help you? [00:40:36] Soraya: Uh, come find me on LinkedIn. I am, uh, I am there. I would love, love to connect, go to classy.org. You can contact us there and it's still, um, you know, very accessible team. I would love to chat with anybody who is listening, who wants to learn more, definitely check out the report. But yes, I would love, um, LinkedIn is a, is a great place. [00:40:55] George: thanks for the work you do really excited also about the headways that you're making in the, the GoFundMe and helping nonprofits claim, a larger stake of that, that audience. That's [00:41:07] Soraya: Thank you so much and thanks for the work you do. Um, and I'm so happy to be here. Thanks again.

This is an Encore Presentation Fr. Rocky joins Patrick Madrid to talk about The Memorare Moment. Get your free copy here: https://relevantradio.com/moment/ George - Why don't they have the word 'please' in the Memorare? Sandy - I am a Choir Director. We never recited the Creed at mass. Is that valid? Chad – It is not necessary to say 'please' in the Memorare. Molly - I have a 9-year-old son who is learning more about mythology. How can I explain the differences to him between that and our true faith? Bishops sign letter warning that Germany's 'Synodal Path' could lead to schism Margie - What does it mean that God is outside of time?

Interview with Heather Yandow, the founder of Nonprofit.ist, an online resource that helps pair nonprofits with the right consultants; a co-founder of Beehive Collective, a Raleigh-based giving circle; and the creator of Third Space Studio's Individual Fundraising Benchmark Report. Host, George Weiner discusses how nonprofits should approach RFPs and finding the right contractor or agency for the type of project they need.      Nonprofit.ist Resources  https://www.nonprofit.ist/home https://www.nonprofit.ist/rfp https://www.nonprofit.ist/5questionstoanswer https://www.thirdspacestudio.com/ Heather Yandow is a collaborative co-conspirator and creative thinker with over 20 years of experience in the nonprofit world. Inspired by issues that touch her heart and organizations invested in relationships, Heather gets joy out of helping groups move forward from chaos to clarity. Phrases like “adaptive leadership” and “change management” are sure to get her mind churning. Before Heather joined Third Space in 2010, she was the Director of Development and Communications with the NC Conservation Network, a statewide network of over 100 organizations focused on protecting North Carolina's environment and public health. With a personal motto of “just do it,” Heather identifies problems and dreams up actionable solutions. This talent has led to many projects: Heather is the founder of Nonprofit.ist, an online resource that helps pair nonprofits with the right consultants; a co-founder of Beehive Collective, a Raleigh-based giving circle; and the creator of Third Space Studio's Individual Fundraising Benchmark Report.   Rough Transcript [00:00:00] George: We have got a very fun guest. Heather . Heather is the founder of nonprofit IST that's nonprofit.ist to be clear. And Heather is also a consultant at third space studio. Heather, thanks for joining us. How is. [00:00:18] Heather: Great. I'm glad to be joining you today. [00:00:21] George: Well, you know, I came across non-profits, but I've also been watching your work for a while and I laughed because it was similar to a tool that Holwell has tried to build and kind of does on the side. But maybe we can just start with what is a nonprofit just. [00:00:39] Heather: Good question. So I think of a non-profit is like a florist or a dentist. So a nonprofit is, does a person who has experience with nonprofits. So nonprofit is, is also a website, a directory of nonprofit experts. So coaches, consultants, lawyers, accountants, anybody who can help nonprofits with the challenges they're, they're dealing with. [00:01:04] So we've got almost 300 folks from across the country as part of our directory and leaders, nonprofit leaders from all over the country can come and find the help that they need there. [00:01:15] George: And how is a non-profit is just uniquely different than somebody who is working for a for-profit industry. Like, you know, I work on email. Why is the nonprofit is just so important in this equation? [00:01:32] Heather: I think it's really important because nonprofits have. To some degree, unique set of challenges. We're often resource constrained. We're dealing with different kinds of social issues or behavior change or advocacy that maybe those in the business world might not be. And the nonprofit leadership structure often is really different than what you might have in a for-profit. [00:01:56] So, if you're working in a nonprofit, you might have to be dealing with a board of directors, but it has a whole lot of influence and power over the decisions that are being made potentially. And that often doesn't exist in the same way in the for-profit world. [00:02:11] George: And so this site, nonprofit that IST helps people find these professionals, like, how is it, Matt? It sounds like a marketplace. [00:02:23] Heather: It is a marketplace. [00:02:24] I, I designed it to be somewhat the Angie's list of nonprofit consultants. We do not have all of the features and Angie's list yet, but it is a place where you can come and. Sorta people you can search by any particular category. You can search by geography. You can look for keywords. [00:02:45] So if you're looking for a strategic planning consultant in Florida who has experienced with. You can put all of that in there and the system will spit out. Here's a few folks who might fit the less specific you are, the more people you'll get. But we have, I think, a dozen different specialties now. [00:03:03] And about 40 states, we've got represented. [00:03:06] George: Interesting. What's the most popular fist somebody is looking for. [00:03:11] Heather: The most popular is that people are looking for, tends to be fundraising. Unsurprisingly fundraising continues to be the thing that people really need help with and not whether it's figuring out how to ask major donors for. [00:03:27] funding, setting up bequests, thinking about grant writing, all of those specialties. [00:03:33] We see a lot of interest in. [00:03:34] George: So tools, sites marketplaces, like Fiverr have existed for quite some time or Upwork or, you know, fill in the. [00:03:43] Heather: Yeah. [00:03:44] George: Why did you decide to create one focused on non-profits? [00:03:49] Heather: I think what we saw in the, in the world in the marketplace was that there wasn't kind of trusted. just for people who have experience with non-profits. So certainly you could go on Fiverr, you go on Craigslist and find yourself a graphic designer. But if you need someone who really understands strategic planning, or if you want a lawyer who can help with incorporation, Those folks are a little bit harder to find. [00:04:17] And there was a very fragmented landscape of these directories. So some state nonprofit associations have kind of business directories, some very specific kind of specialties have their own directories, but there was nothing that was really national and that included all of the different kinds of help that non-profits? [00:04:39] really. [00:04:39] George: It sounds like a daunting task to try to corral so many independent contractors or small companies. How long have you been building this? How have you been going about adding to the database? [00:04:53] Heather: So I think it was more daunting than I envisioned. If I had known at the start, how daunting it was, I might not have started. But I began in January of 2019. We got our first expert to be part of the directory. We had a hundred folks by may of that year and opened up to the public. So it's really started getting nonprofit leaders to come and take a look. [00:05:16] And we've been growing really by word of mouth. So there was a big question when we started, how are we going to credential the people in the directory? How are you going to know that you're getting somebody good? And that for nonprofit consultants is actually a really hard question. There is no one a certificate that we can get. [00:05:38] There's no, no particular degree. If you're great in one specific area like fundraising, you might have a certification or coaching. But we went round and round about how we were going to credential people and eventually decided that trust is transitive. And so if I trust you as a consultant that you're going to do good work and you trust somebody else who I don't know, then that trust is transitive. [00:06:05] So I am going to trust that they are also a good consultant. So we have grown by invitation only. So our members can invite. Their colleagues to become part of the network. [00:06:18] George: Interesting. So it's, if a goes B and B equals C. And see, you could get a drink sometime and hopefully be able to speak the same language. So how does, you know you know, we have a wide audience listening. How would a consultant saying, oh, I want to be on this list. How, how would they go about that then? [00:06:39] Heather: Good question. So we do Have folks who are not directly connected. There's a way to apply on the website and you just have to answer a couple of questions. One of the other things that I know about consulting is that. One consultant. Isn't great for everybody. So we're not looking to say here's a set of absolutely perfect. [00:07:01] A plus consultants who are going to work for every person. We're looking to say, here's a set of folks who have some good experience with non-profits who have some trust with their colleagues. And if you're going to hire them, we want you to be a good consumer. We want you to think about how you're actually doing. [00:07:20] Choose who to work with and make sure that the right fit for you. [00:07:23] George: Have you ever had to boot somebody for, for, misbehaving? [00:07:27] Heather: We haven't ever really had to beat anybody for misbehaving? [00:07:30] I'll tell you that story later. [00:07:32] George: I love, I love the postscript on that and you know, it's, it's a. It's an important note though, you know, you, you mentioned sort of Angie's list and a part of that is ratings and trust, but at the, at the heart of it, you know, every organization can't be great at doing all of the things. And some percentage of projects just don't go as planned because that's the nature of consulting. [00:07:56] They have been hired to solve a hard problem, and sometimes it doesn't get solved in the way that everyone hoped. So how do you go about that? I guess as a promise to nonprofits, I assume nonprofits can come on there and post what they need, or look for a professional. Like, what is that type of vetting promise look like. [00:08:18] Heather: So. Promise that this is a trusted network. We allow people to, for nonprofit consultants, they can post their LinkedIn profile. They can post their email, they can put up testimonials about how great they are. And when nonprofit leaders, when a board member executive director development director comes to look, we really encourage them to think about how they're going to hire well. [00:08:45] But nonprofits as a website, doesn't get involved in that transaction. We really wanted to make it as frictionless as possible and also free. So for all of our nonprofit leaders who are coming to the site, it's totally free to get in And get access to all of these consultants. [00:09:02] George: And here's a tough one for you. What about ratings? I immediately think of, as you've mentioned, Angie's list or like a Yelp, I'm saying like, how many stars can I leave people potentially. [00:09:15] Heather: I've been really hesitant to get into the ratings game. And that is. In part, because I'm not sure in this case they'd be super helpful. I suspect that we would be getting a lot of five-star reviews. And that just in this context, I think people are too nice. I'm not sure that we would actually get the kind of constructive feedback that would be helpful. [00:09:39] And maybe that's just what I'm telling myself, because I have heartburn about putting that up and having to deal with consultants who might want to take down negative reviews or kind of mediate any of those. Because certainly there are times when I've been a consultant for 12 years. There are times when the work hasn't gone as expected, and it's my fault. [00:09:59] There are other times when the work hasn't gone as expected and it's actually the client's fault. And so. There's this a lot of a gray area there that I'm hesitant to get into, but is, is definitely on our radar. [00:10:13] George: I don't know the right answer. I have been in the same game for over a decade, and I'm aware that what happens on Yelp ultimately is the, the polars, right? You end up with extremely happy or extremely frustrated, and that can paint a weird picture and then put no marketplace owner in a weird place. But clearly from a nonprofit perspective, you'd be curious as to sort of number served or something there. [00:10:42] It's it's hard though. I started this conversation mentioning whole Wales got a similar product, which a, with a much, much, much smaller band. We only look at sort of digital. RFPs website builds for, you know, we originally did this because we don't build websites at whole whale. And there's a lot of things we don't do that whole well, where we want a need, a trusted network. [00:11:08] You mentioned that sort of transitive property of trust. And so it's like a handful we have less than 20 companies that serve a range of budgets for these types of technical projects and includes like ad-words management. And website dev the problem was, you know, the well, many fold, but just sort of scaling beyond that trust. [00:11:32] And like, we just, I didn't have the guts to just open up the door wider, but also we didn't have enough projects I'd say to come in. So the two-sided marketplace is super hard. We have. A handful of these RFPs coming in. I'm curious on your side, what does that nonprofit flow look like? What does the, you know, average size you mentioned it's a fundraising fundraising, unsurprised type of consulting people are looking for, but maybe you can paint what that looks like. [00:12:03] Heather: So we have been actively reaching out about the directory, marketing, the directory, really putting a lot of our budget behind recruiting. Nonprofit leaders to come to the directory. As I said, it's free to join and you've got to join if you really want to dig into somebody's profile. And we've got just over 3000 members now over the past three years. [00:12:29] So we're doing we're finding that a lot of people are interested in this. The two big ways that folks are finding us one is we invest a lot in Google ads. We have found that that has been a really good way for us to find new. And then also word of mouth. So every time somebody asks me or asks any of the consultants in our directory, do you know somebody who, which we get those questions a lot? [00:12:56] Our answer is non-profits. So that kind of constant referring back has been really helpful. Because we are not always in the middle of the RFPs the best data that we have about what folks are looking for and what they're getting is from doing some surveys every year. And so we know that folks are finding good people through nonprofits. [00:13:19] They're getting their projects done. They're recommending it to their friends. They have a pretty high level of satisfaction. [00:13:25] George: And for our tool, we jokingly called it snorkel. Our front door is an RFP generator. Like we don't let you come into the party unless you have an RFP. Now those three letters, the request for proposals. I know, spark a bit of ire in the consulting space. Maybe you can map out your approach and experience with the RFP. [00:13:51] Do they don't they dilemma? [00:13:52] Heather: Yes. So I am anti RFP just to stake my claim. I think that's Absolutely organizations need to get clear about what they're looking for before they approach a consultant, but that is different than having an RFP. An RFP can help you get clarity on some of the questions. How much money do you think. [00:14:17] When do you want this to be done? What are the big questions are looking to answer? I, have also seen RFPs that are 12 pages long and answer none of that. Right? So they are not necessarily the same thing. I actually asked some consultants on LinkedIn. I put out a post about RFP. And got a lot of great feedback. [00:14:39] Most folks in a similar situation to me that RFPs are just not what works. And I think they don't work for a couple of reasons. One is often they're really prescriptive and that prescription is either solving the wrong problem or. Putting together a scope of work that just really isn't going to address the need. [00:15:02] And part of the reason why you want to work with a consultant often is to help diagnose the challenge, help plan out the solution. So if you're already doing that in your RFP, if you've already seen. We're going to have one, two hour board training and one, one hour work session with the executive committee and that's it. [00:15:21] That's the solution to our problem. Then you're really not using consulting to its full capacity. You're not really using us in a way that's going to be helpful. They also often require a lot of free work. So I am half of a two person consulting firm. We use our time to do the work. And so if you are asking us to put together of five page RFP or five page proposal with lots of responses, we may not ever apply for. [00:15:53] And that's certainly going to be true for other folks who are not part of larger organizations. So you're kind of skewing your RFPs towards people who have the capacity to sit down and write lots of proposals. And finally they're really impersonal, I think when the best fits come, when you actually have that. [00:16:15] That personality, when you're able to talk to somebody and you clicked and you both understand the problem, you understand how you're going to work together. Those work styles really mesh and the RFP proposal process really doesn't do that. Well. I just had the best experience and I didn't even get the work, but it was still the best experience I had somebody send me a request for conversations. It was a two page document that included lots of the pieces of an RFP. And at the bottom, it says, if this seems like something you're interested in click here to schedule a 25 minute phone conversation. So I did my partner and I got on the phone. We talked for 25 minutes, fantastic conversation. And at the end of it, he said, okay I'm going to be talking to our executive director. [00:17:03] And if you move on the next step is a conversation with the two. So that was 25 minutes of our time. 25 minutes of his time. It wasn't the right fit for whatever reason, but that was fine. I would do those calls all day long, rather than write out those large proposals. [00:17:19] George: I, I wish I could say that. Like that's not perfect because the request for conversation, we see, we get those, like a request for information is also kind of goes by, and it's just so much more efficient. And I will say like, you know, we, we live in an RFP world for project sizes and pieces that. I just have to be part of the DNA of the process. [00:17:43] You know, one of our approaches is putting out a template that hopefully elicits something usable and it kind of brings somebody through that process, but we don't respond to cold RFPs where we don't get a conversation first. And I think that's an important note. The other piece I'll say about the RFP is it does help focus. [00:18:03] Sometimes I'd find the project as opposed to. You know, here's a problem. We have no clue what we need. And that's the difference of going to a dentist versus a general practitioner? Do you dentist here, like, let's be clear what the problem is. And so in, in that type of focus, we sort of, we default to the unfortunate RFP. [00:18:27] But I want to pull back to the size of organization that you somehow end up with. As soon as you kind of like pull together the RFP, you have to assume the type of machinery that can respond to RFP put together those pages. Right? We have a win rate of about anywhere hovering from like 46 to 52%, which means half of our work goes into yield dumpster of, of our. [00:18:53] How do you think about the budget expectations when it comes to these conversations? [00:19:01] Heather: The budget expectations from in response to what the non-profit is looking. [00:19:07] George: Yeah. That awkward conversation about how much does it cost? Well, how much do you have. [00:19:13] Heather: Yes. So I take my cues from say yes to the dress. And so have you ever seen this though? It is a. is a I don't know what channel is a TLC probably, but it's about women shopping for wedding dresses. And so they walk into a store and there's wedding dresses from, you know, a thousand dollars to a hundred thousand dollars. [00:19:33] And the bridal consultants, not sales women consultants say. Is there a price point we should pay attention to? This is our price point. We need to respect is there, is there a budget here? And so I lean on that kind of language. So is there a budget I need to keep in mind? Is there a budget you have set aside for this? [00:19:53] I won't really respond to an RFP. I won't respond to an RFP if it doesn't have a budget in it. Particularly for the kind of work I do. If someone wants a strategic planning process, it really depends on what kind of investment they're looking to make as to what the scope of our work can be. And so oftentimes I will kind of walk folks through that. [00:20:18] So here's a few different pieces of work we could do if we do all of them. It's a $40,000 project. If we just did this one little piece, it's a $10,000 project, but I need to understand where you are. And so certainly there's budget implications for that. The thing I think we don't often think enough about, especially in the kinds of organizational development projects is what's the bandwidth that the board and the staff have for this. [00:20:47] So if you're doing a strategic plan or board development, or even in depth fundraising, What else does, does the staff and board have on their mind this year? Are you also going through a diversity equity inclusion project? Are you also celebrating your 40th anniversary? Are you also launching a capital campaign? [00:21:06] Do you actually have. [00:21:07] the bandwidth to do this project this year? Or does that help to determine the size of the project as well? [00:21:15] George: So it's a monetary and a time type of budget. [00:21:20] Heather: Yes. It's. What resources do you have available for this in the coming year or two years? [00:21:26] George: It's super important in tough too, because you know, we've seen a lot of folks. Well, I don't want to put a bunch of down this, but I'm going to give you a five page RFP. I just sort of, I'm like, I won't pass that forward because you know, we've got companies on our snorkel list that we'll do a project for $5,000 in $500,000. [00:21:49] So for you to not give a budget, you're like, okay. I'll, I mean, I'll tell you what happens on the other side. They're like, yeah, we're not going to bother with us. Or what they do is they look at your nine 90 and then they analyze what's going on with the size of the organization and they back into it. [00:22:05] But this could be a small project for you. You just sort of wasting your own time and others' time by not having that budget range. However, I do see the. Converse there where maybe you're talking about a larger, you know, fundraising effort or a larger project where there could be a range and you want competitive bids, because again, a nonprofit is obliged by its statute to have three competitive bids. [00:22:36] And if you say I'm going to spend, you know, $60,000 on this project, then you know, like how much competition he gets. So what is your advice? For, for that nuanced game, [00:22:48] Heather: not all nonprofits need to get the competitive bids but many do threshold on that? Do you know? [00:22:55] I think it might have to do with the funding source. So it might be like government money. You have to get more beds. A lot of the nonprofits I work with don't have to get those bids if they're smaller and they don't have government funding. [00:23:07] I think though that when we're talking about. Reacting based on price, choosing based on price, you are not going to get the best consultant for you. So if your only way of judging is price and you're not looking at that fit, you're not looking at experience. You're not looking at work to be done. [00:23:29] Then I think you're really you're, you're doing yourself a disservice and your organization and disservice. So I. React. Well, when someone says, well, we've got kind of 50 to $60,000, that's our budget range. And here's all the things we want to do. What I see often happens is nonprofit leaders, eyes are bigger than their plates. [00:23:50] Their desires are bigger than their. So I might describe all the things we could do. And then I find out they've only got a very small budget, but they're still trying to cram all of the different pieces in and figuring out how to get the most bang for their buck, which I do think makes sense. But if someone. [00:24:09] Does it have a budget, huge red flag for me, they're not taking this seriously. They're not ready to make a significant investment of time and money if they won't share their budget. I think I try to walk them through. Here's why it matters to me what your budget is. Not because I'm going to max it out, but because I want to right-size the work. [00:24:29] And if they still won't give me a budget, then I think that's a, that's a big question for myself and my colleague, my partner to figure out, do we really want to move forward with this? [00:24:38] George: Yeah, I think the selection criteria is kind of interesting because if you just choose based on price, the adage of you get what you pay for is like an immutable law of grants. That comes forward. And at that point, you know, you should just go onto Fiverr and have somebody just, you know, go do it for $5. [00:24:57] You realize there's a point at which that's a ridiculous thing. And you're playing a weird game by going about that. Coming back to that question, though, you know, you have, non-profits waiting into 300, 3000 X, you know, options out there. How. Just the site or do you advise on choosing that? Right? We'll say fundraising consultant. [00:25:21] Heather: So our advice is to first be clear about what you need. So what's the challenge you're trying to address how many. Do you have to put into it both in terms of money and in terms of time, when do you want it done? Honestly, the wind can be really challenging. So if you have a board retreat next weekend, your pool of consultants is very small, right? [00:25:46] If you, if we have some time and some bandwidth, you have a much bigger pool of consultants. The other thing I encourage folks to think about is what are those kind of untangible, intangible, unteachable things that you are really looking for in a consultant. So it might be, you're really looking for a particular kind of experience. [00:26:09] It might be, you are looking for a particular kind of personality. So you might like someone who is super direct. You might like somebody who is really focused on project and task management. You might know that because of the composition of your board and staff, you really want to be sure that the team includes a person of color in the leadership. [00:26:34] Right? There are a whole lot of characteristics that if you reflect back both on yourself, The organization, the team that's leading this work, you might identify, there's some specific things that we're really looking for. And I think those can be really important. [00:26:48] George: Yeah. So there's some intangibles that like your style approach, other other factors. And then, you know, you have the conversations, it seems like the large part of this platform as you go on here are folks that fit your filter. Now go have some conversations while also sending some of that information upfront as a maybe request for conversation. [00:27:10] Heather: Yeah. I mean, it's, maybe it's an Angie's list. I should call it mass.com. Although I don't actually know much about matching anymore. It's to get you to the date, right? Like there's information here. There's background about consultant's experience, but it's really to get you to that conversation. [00:27:28] to see if there's a match to see if you fit in terms of experience. [00:27:33] If you see, if you like the questions that consultant is asking you, if they have good questions, answers to the questions you're asking them, it's really about that interaction. [00:27:43] George: What's the, you mentioned time, what's the recommended amount of time to sort of buffer in, like, I have a project that needs, I know it needs to start at the end of the year. And here's the funny thing that you and I see every fundraising cycle is I need this to start ASAP, which is just the hilarious four letters that we all see. [00:28:04] What is the recommended amount of time. Let's just play with this game of like, you know, that you're going to need a project in case. When should you start looking for that consultant? [00:28:15] Heather: It's going to depend on how booked out the consultant is, but I will say at least three months in advance you want to have, have the person in mind be signing the contract three months in advance. That way, if you're having an in-person board retreat or you're launching a fundraising campaign, you've got time to do the pre-work. [00:28:36] So that might mean that you need to start searching. Four months, five months, depending on what kind of process you want to do to actually select the person. But three months out is for me and for the consultants that I know gives a good bit of flexibility. What do you think [00:28:53] George: I think the shorter your time to start, the more you're going to end up having to pay for a larger firm that has that type of excess couple. [00:29:01] And that's just, you know what we have seen over time, for example, we're not taking on clients until July right now, and that data is rapidly moving away. And you know, the, the game is that the smaller, the shop, the less they can afford the availability, meaning that, can I just take on another project right now? [00:29:21] No, because I book up my months so that I didn't. I have an idol, you know, an idle hour, which is tough because you know, you miss out on projects and pieces that, that happen, but you can't operate like what we would say, high, a low utilization tool, like a fire department where it is fine because we want them to available and be available when the fire happens. [00:29:47] You just, I think end up with just massive agencies. That you can just cost more and maybe get less personalized. You know, we're a company of 26 people, but when I started, it was a company of me. So I've kind of seen this like grow over time and this game of keeping a plate full while keeping the opportunity to work with great organizations coming in and. [00:30:12] It always frustrates me when a great organization comes in and like, Hey, we known about this project for six months, but we're calling you right now. And you're like, why didn't you message us? We were going to get to It [00:30:26] Heather: My favorite is I put you in a grant requests that we were going to do this work with you next year. Okay, fantastic. And why are you telling me on December 15th? Like we needed to [00:30:39] George: No, but you're in the grant. I wrote you in. Okay. [00:30:42] Yeah. It's it's you know, about that size and I guess I would, you know, the average size of project, it seems like if these are consultants operating at like less than five people who are under five people, it sounds like that's kind of where the nonprofit is hovers. [00:31:00] Heather: Yeah, nonprofit consultants. A lot of fix our solar preneurs. We have a lot of small shops. My best guess is that our. The average project, our projects are somewhere between kind of 5,000 and 20,000 with of course, some variability on that on either side. A lot of the folks that we work with a lot of the non-profits are coming and looking for some startup help. [00:31:26] They're looking for running their first fundraising campaign, doing their first strategic plans. Sometimes those tend to be on the lower budget size, but we certainly have folks or we're looking to do, you know, a statewide communications campaign and need some help. [00:31:39] George: Yeah, I think that's such a valuable service because I know of so many, like solar printers and small shops out there that do great work, but you know, it's tough to find them sort them out. And you know, these are folks that may come and go out with. The career right there doing it between large organ, like large organization work. [00:32:00] Heather: Hm. [00:32:01] George: they'll show up for a while. I'm like, wow, this is great. But you know, it's tough to find that window sometimes. And it seems like a super valuable network for, for folks looking for those servers. All right. Before we go into a rapid fire, I'm just curious, any other final advice for nonprofits that, you know, you want to talk about? [00:32:20] You know, we touched on the choosing the intangibles time and budget, the request for conversation preferred over request for proposal, any other like, you know, insider tips for people looking to find a consultant on nonprofit. [00:32:36] Heather: Last thought is that it's probably going to take you. More money, more time, more energy than you think it will. Which is probably true for every. Consulting gig ever. And every house renovation and everything else you do, but as you're really putting together your budget, as you're thinking about the time span for the work, just know that unless you have a lot of experience with consultants, you probably are underestimating. [00:33:04] And so just go in with a little bit of a flexible mentality about all of those variables. [00:33:09] George: Yeah. It's like the Murphy's law of home renovation as much time as you have allocated for this, it's going to take more time even after accounting for Murphy's law. [00:33:18] Heather: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. [00:33:22] George: Alright, rapid fire. Please try to keep your responses shortish. And here we go. What is one tech tool or website that you or your organization has started using in the last year? [00:33:32] Heather: I am in love with Zapier, which connects all kinds of programs. You can connect your Gmail to your zoom, to your MailChimp. And it kind of, it does zaps back and forth between things. And I love it. [00:33:49] George: What tech issues are you dealing with right now? [00:33:51] Heather: I just launched a big survey on survey monkey and the bots found it. And so we finally figured out how to put a question that was, we want to make sure you're human. Tell us about your favorite meal and why, and that is the, the bots figured out how. The answer the multiple choice question about which one of these is not an animal we thought that was going to work. [00:34:14] It did not. They all knew it was a basketball, but this one seems to work so bots in my survey. [00:34:20] George: What is coming in the next year that has you the most excited. [00:34:23] Heather: are about to, for nonprofits launch our, what we're calling our ethos, which is our kind of statement of principles for the consultant community. We're just about done with designing it and we're going to launch it in the next couple of weeks. So I'm really excited. [00:34:39] to get that out there and, and hear what people have to say. [00:34:42] George: Can you talk about a mistake you made earlier in your career that shapes the way you do things. [00:34:47] Heather: Yes. So when I was. It's probably 15 years ago, I was working with, in my volunteer gig. I run a giving circle at that time in Raleigh called the beehive collective. And we were given this wonderful opportunity to host some events at a club in downtown Raleigh over the weekend. And so we were able to host an event on Friday night. [00:35:09] We had this like. Crazy talent show on Saturday, we had a clothes swap. We used to do that a lot. And then on Sunday night we had this thing called the barrister's ball, just a dance party. Well, nobody showed up to the third event and what I really figured out is how over-saturating her overtaxing, this community that we had, people wanted to show up for it. [00:35:37] It was just too much. They could not do a Friday night, a Saturday day, a Saturday night. And so they made choices. And so as I think about engaging any kind of community, I really think about kind of what's the, what's the cost of this? What's the trade off of this? How do I really figure out what the carry capacity is of my community or of this organization or whatever, and how do I design for that? [00:36:01] George: If I were to toss you in a hot tub time machine, back to the beginning of your work, what advice would you. The advice of take more risks try out more new things. Every time I have taken a risk, I have been rewarded for it. And I have really learned a lot and had a great time made progress on my goals, but have often found myself hesitant, especially early in my career to do that. [00:36:26] what is something you think you should stop doing? [00:36:28] Heather: Saying yes. Saying yes to all kinds of things work and otherwise [00:36:34] George: I already gave you a magic wand to wave across the industry. [00:36:37] Heather: it would stop executive directors from having. Unrealistic expectations about their boards and boards from having unrealistic expectations of their executive director. [00:36:50] George: How did you get your start in the social impact side? [00:36:53] Heather: When I was in college, I joined a environmental group, the student environmental action coalition. And from there just kept going and going and going. [00:37:04] George: What advice did your parents give you that you either followed or didn't. [00:37:09] Heather: I don't know. Sorry, I didn't. [00:37:12] prepare. [00:37:13] George: All right. Final one. How do people find you? How do people have. [00:37:16] Heather: So you can find me@nonprofit.ist nonprofit assist. You can reach me at Heather at nonprofit that IST and I would love it if you're a nonprofit leader and you want to join. Nonprofit assist and poke around and find some folks who can help you and also follow us on LinkedIn. We got a really active LinkedIn page, and then if you're a consultant and you want to find out more about joining the network, please be in touch. [00:37:43] I would love to talk to you about it. [00:37:45] George: Well, thank you for your work and for creating such an amazing tool and resource for the nonprofit community. Good luck. And thanks for sharing your knowledge. [00:37:54] Heather: Thank you so much for having me. This was place.

Fr. Rocky joins Patrick Madrid to talk about The Memorare Moment. Get your free copy here: https://relevantradio.com/moment/ George - Why don't they have the word 'please' in the Memorare? Sandy - I am a Choir Director. We never recited the Creed at mass. Is that valid? Chad – It is not necessary to say 'please' in the Memorare. Molly - I have a 9-year-old son who is learning more about mythology. How can I explain the differences to him between that and our true faith? Bishops sign letter warning that Germany's 'Synodal Path' could lead to schism Margie - What does it mean that God is outside of time?

George:  Alright, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the money. The George show a free for all Friday and the mind of Georgie belongs in a straight jacket, but luckily podcasting lets me share it with you. And speaking of straight jackets on the mind, I have to give a proper intro to my friend who was on the podcast today.I am super stoked to have Michael Bernoff wrote a book called average sucks and basically helps businesses and people. Optimize their life move from where they are to where they want to go and helps people like me that have struggled with self sabotage and mind blocks and past traumas, get through them and realize that we don't have to be a victim of our past.And that in every moment we get to choose where we go with all the tools, situations, and some of the best energy without the creepy hand clapping that I've ever seen when it comes to personal development. So without further ado, I'd like to welcome my friend, Michael, to the show. Michael. Good to see you, man.Michael: I appreciate it, brother. You'll be zero hound. Like that's all you get is handclap clap, like right there. That's the creepiest creepy as we get George. So it's exciting to be here. I appreciate the invite. Let's change some wine. George:  I'm stoked. And we were, we were overdue for a catchup, everybody. So I just said, get on the podcast and we'll just catch up there and we'll tell it a day.And so Michael, the first question. This kind of kicks everything off for everybody on my show. But when you think back, you've been in this game for a long time, you've been doing personal vellum. You've been doing business, you've been doing high level coaching. You just been helping people transform their lives. But when you look back and reflect on yours and Debra's journey, what was the biggest mistake that you ever made? And what did you learn from it? Michael: Interesting. Biggest mistake overall, or the one that I keep on making that I'm looking to get out of. I mean, which one I'll go, I'll go either direction, Number one is hiring myself. That's it? That's the biggest mistake I made in business is looking for me has been the biggest mistake I've made over the years. I kept on. I kept on bringing on people. I like, I enjoy, I want to hang out with their might buddies. They're my peers. And it was probably the biggest mistake I ever made.And I caught onto this after watching the, the men who built America that show. And I watched that Carnegie had brought on again in Frick, who was the absolute opposite of him. It took me eight years. And probably cost me half a million dollars in salaries and different things over the years, bringing on high level people that are identical to me that were not the opposite of me.And that's been my biggest mistake. I'd say in business, one of the hardest things that I've had to work on getting over is finding the missing link instead of finding a companion as crazy as it sounds.George: I'd say a really good one. And so what's the one you keep making over and over.Michael: You know, what's interesting is every time and we do really, really well, which is all the time, right?We get to this point where we've got this little chunk of this little chunk of space and time and meaning like we've got extra time, we've got extra money, we're in a good spot, which is predominantly my life where we can get this little bit of extra. I get this feeling every once in a while, but I could buy my problem away, meaning that I can hire a person.I can get it thing and do it. Instead of, I realize that I've got to do that myself. So I'm not saying you can't grow, you can't scale, you can't hire. But I'm just saying a lot of times when I get comfortable, have found that I looked four and I'm way beyond the normal comfort of people. But yeah, I find that I want to get to the next level and I think of it as throw money at it or throw something at it.I can make it go away. Instead of realizing that I got to put a little pieces in place myself first, before I can add that extra thing or person. So that's been a big one for me. Hopefully that makes sense. I break it up or am I good?George: I no, you're perfect. You're perfect. Well, I want to actually unpack that because I think that's probably one of the most common themes in the entrepreneurial world.I see. It's just the wrapping paper changes. We get to that place and it's like, it's like silent self sabotage. And like comfort comes and then you're like, Oh, let off the gas pedal for a minute. Okay. I have this space and for me it happens a lot, but what ends up happening for me is like, I'll be recording podcasts, like crazy, and I'll get a big buffer and I'll slow down and then I'm behind again.And I actually let go of the thing that created the space in the first place and then expect you to be able to recreate it overnight. And so I think it's a super, super common thing. I know for me, it isn't everybody I worked with. So as you recognize that, right, I think you nailed something that's so powerful in the entrepreneur world.We're here at all the time. Well, if you have money, you don't have a problem. I was like, well, that's true to a sense, except the foundation still looks the same and another floor as much as you want, but the foundation still can't support it. So like, when you say. For you like doing the work on me, you're looking at like, what are you talking about?And what do you look at and what work are you doing to help set yourself up, to get to that next level? Michael: Well, again, I'll give you a prime example. So I'm the best promoter of what I do. Meaning that when I promote what I do there's two beliefs. I talked to someone recently said the fastest way to change.What you do is to stop believing you're the best at what you do, even though there's certain things I'm phenomenal at the best of the world, the language communication, one of the best of the world at that. Believing that is probably a limitation inside of myself because as soon as I believe I'm the only one that can do it, I give up looking or trying to find anybody to help me.So I give an example. I bring on a business people to, I bring up, forgive me. I bring on myself. I'm excited about what it is that I do. I get excited. I pumped out our business. We make things happen. I promote, I sell. I do. And then I get busy with the infrastructure of taking care of all of it. And then I forget to put in place the things that work like for instance, If I'm training somebody new and I was working with them instead of just training them, I normally train them how to do what I do, show them the things that I do instead of thinking this old way of training or this old way of sharing.Like give an example if I'm great at selling what I do, I'm great at promoting great at selling can do some amazing stuff from stage. How do I duplicate that inside of another person? So doing the work to take the time to actually educate somebody to do it rather than I did the work. Did you see what I did?I hope you, you can do it. That's a big piece of the puzzleGeorge: Yeah, no, no, no. It makes sense. It's something, I pick an analogy. You're the language expert here. I just dabbled in it. I dabbled in the dark arts of language to get myself in trouble. Like that's how I see it, butI think what you nailed is that.You know, I have that same thing. I thought about it before. Like there's things in the world that I'm quote unquote, the Basta and then still having to improve, but I stay there. And then when somebody comes in, I hand them an outcome and I expect them to get there a certain way without giving them the actual way points or the touch points to get there that way.And the truthis that what I've struggled with? Because I'm just going full disclosure in the beginning is a lot of the times, I don't know. How I got there because I don't take the time to reflect or sit down or create that to make it repeatable because gets into my fear of success. Or my story might be wrong or, you know, all of those different pieces.And so Keith Cunningham nailed this one for me in his book, the road less stupid. it kicks me in the nuts every time I listen to it in the best ways, but, uh, yeah, that thinking time has been a really powerful determinant for me on like, just getting clarity and realizing that business.And I'm pretty sure personal development will be the same way as that. My thought with entrepreneurship is like immediate gratification, right? Like if I do this, I'll have this. If I. Launch this I'll make this, but it's just these short term results over and over and over again. And I feel like I've made those swings in my life as well to where it's like, Oh man, I got dad bod during COVID go run 12 miles on a broken the next day.Oh, I pissed them off when I said this, I'm just not going to speak for the next six days. Right. Like all those extreme. So like, how do you. Navigate that response. So I, and I'm only gonna speak for myself. You can use me an example yourself or whatever, but I know that there's times in our life where we're hit with this clarity, or we have to hire, or we get met with this resistance, or this fear comes up and we can either react or respond.And I know practices daily trying to increase that wedge between. You know, trigger and response, but like, what do you do? What's your practice? What do you recommend people do that? So it's not hasty and they can get into training that person the right way, or, you know, replicating their self. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.Michael: and so do me a favor, cause my add kicked in massively. I'm gonna ask you the question. Could you summarize that question? It's a bunch of pieces of the puzzle. Where do you want me to start on that? Cause that's a big, old question. I want to get this for the listener. I want to get that. So pinpointed where there's just like an exact answer.George:  So I'm driving the Zeigarnik effect home to the T with Michael right now, but. The core of the question is entrepreneurs are going to be faced with either. I need to hire somebody, grow them a moment. A lot of them are emotional based situations. They're either hit with fear or something along those lines, and they have two choices they can react to respond.So how do you recommend somebody navigates that? So we're not making reactive decisions, just trying to buy our way out of the problem and getting into the steps or the way points required both personally, and for the people on the receiving endMichael: So the first thing we've got to figure out is I believe you said earlier, we gotta be focused and yeah, the one thing is we've got to know what it is that we're after and what it is we want at the end of the day. And I think that's one of the biggest mistakes people make. I teach this to my HIQ program, as simple as it is. A lot of times we think outcomes is just our goals, but that's going to be questions.Like, what do we want this to do? That's a crazy question. And it's the people that can ask that question a lot that they really get really comfortable. Like, what do we want this to do? Like, I play ice hockey, right? So I'm going out, like, am I going to just go play hockey? Or like, what do I want to do this shift?Where are we at the approximate? Cause my outlet to get out of the zone as quickly as I can use energy efficient and then go up the other side of the ice. So most people, what I've recognized is they do not really know what they want. What it is they're doing to actually do. So I would start there with people.Number one is like, if you're hiring people, like, what do you want them to do? Like, I know you think you need somebody, but like, what does it look like when it's working? These are questions. Most people don't know how to ask. So, like I say to salespeople all the time, like when you're great at sales, what does it look like?What are the results you're getting? I'm saw a lot of people were making a lot of money. What does it look like? Because if it's just about sales and making money, You're missing it, the quality of life. What is the thing that we're after? So I think the biggest question we've got to ask right off the bat is what is it that, what is it you're after?What is it you want it to do? Because I think a lot of times the decisions we make in our lives, this is where my book average sucks comes in. It's like a lot of times people think it's about being better than other people, but we make decisions in life. I would say 99% of our decisions we make are out of problem mode.We're out of like. Something's screwed up or, Oh my God, I got a bandaid issue here. Put a bandaid on it. Just lost everything. I gotta to figure it out. So what happens is we get to a point where we're not where we want to be, and we're willing to take anything other than what it is we have versus ultimately getting what it is we want.So what I always say to people is that if you really stopped and thought your entire life even becoming an entrepreneur, Came out of damage mode. It's like either at a job, you hate, you want it to be your own boss. You wanted to figure it out. You were pissed off. It's about something that you became an entrepreneur. If any of us thought this through, we probably never would have bothered becoming it's crazy to be an entrepreneur, gotta be a whack job, screw up, screw loose person. But then we get so into it. It becomes our identity. So I'd say one of the biggest things issues. We run into it where we all need to start a big starting point is what do we want it to do?And number two, it, because when we realize we're here to solve a problem, What is the alternative to this problem because, Hey, we don't have enough leads. What do we do? Oh, you sell leads. I'll take you come here. But then we're asking, like, what kind of leads do we want? Is this the kind of person we want a relationship with? How long have we worked with this person? So we make very rash decisions. When we're not where we want to be. So that's one mistake that all human beings make and entrepreneurs, especially. So hopefully that's the beginning of an answer for your question. George:  Yeah, no, it's no, it's super good. So, you know, I think outcome based thinking is something that I just started to like really, really understand. Andthis might sound really weird. I hadn't done enough worker forgiveness on myself, even get into outcomes prior to this point, like I was using entrepreneurship as a tool, right. Like I knew where I wanted to go. But when it came to like being able to describe it with texture or detail or an outcome, I couldn't go there.I couldn't think about it. There was like this block. And so I had to kind of like, I don't want to say earn the right, but I kind of had to go through some licks and lessons to get into that clarity. And so now that I have that outcome based thinking it started to change everything for me, and I'm noticing a lot more alignment, but also requires a lot more patients on my side.Because I'm healing from that dopamine and gratification. So when you say outcomes, step one is clarity. And I think that that's probably been the most helpful one for me. And so somebody sitting here like, okay, To have this problem. I need more leads, my website's not converting.Nobody's buying my offer. Right. The easy immediate thing to do is react, knee jerk, jump in and be like, Oh, let me get more. And then creating permanent damage down the roadMichael:  thinking it through, you're thinking short term now, long term.George: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So how do you, what are like some of the tools that you can use? So like I use ice baths, right? Like for me, like it's the only thing that shocks me into the present moment. Ice baths, man,Miachel: wake your ass up.George:  Whew. Like you want me present? You put me in an ice bath. Right? All thoughts go away. All emotions go away. And I am in then here and now faster than I could ever get there. But. I know what it feels like, like during COVID, like we lost a couple of companies, I lost seven figures, right? Like I felt there were times that if I didn't have the tools in my toolbox, I would have been immobile, like paralyzed, like not knowing what to do because the weight was so heavy. And I have so much empathy and compassion those moments. Cause I know what it's like to feel stuck and frozen PTSD and all those other things. And so, yeah. You know, we're like, Oh, have outcome have clarity, but then once you have it and you get hit with that resistance, like what are some of the tools or processes or things that people can do in their life, help them navigate those times.Michael: Yeah. So let's take a real example here real quick. Let's let's bounce back and forth. You and I are cool. Let's do it real. Let play off this real quick. Let's think a real world equation. Let's  like, I'll take it just on me, but like, you got me here and we're lot. I have let's take bill, the entrepreneur, what he's dealing with and all, but on the dime. Cause I can give you a generic or I can help you personally, or somebody you've met like right now like there's somebody dealing with this on the show. So I'm going to throw it back at you.George: Yeah, I got bill. I got a lot of bills, myself being bill included.Michael: I can get in as we're listening. Keep going.George:  Oh yeah, yeah. Plugged me in. So our computer doesn't die over here. So bill all pre the world being shut down. Everything was good, was cruising. Things were predictable. Revenue was coming and then all of a sudden, the world gets shut down and locked down.Amazon changes, loses product, you know, sales chop, 90% having to make hard decisions. And now bill through that, but it's almost rebuild or relaunch where we are, but there's so many things happening that emotionally it's completely like all over the place. And so there's a lack of clarity. Number one because the state of the world is so crazy and nobody knows what it's going to look like and then how to find the right levers based on what's there.Now you do business coaching. So I'm asking about this particularly. So for me, bill is I either have to close this business or I have to make a big shift right now. Right? Like my social's kind of working, but it's not converting to sales. The people that I had, aren't buying again. I have to go find a new avatar.My product didn't get listed or it's not converting my website, my ads aren't working, but I think the root of it is there so much that can be done and everything was working and everything broke at one time. And so it feels paralyzing.Michael: So let, let's play with the words here real quick. And we'll just, I say we stay together here cause I'm going to want to watch this, your bill and the word. So I watched you're in California, right? George: I'm in Cali.Michael: So I watched not going to get into politics, but I watched the guy who makes the deal decisions over there, make the announcements right around March and he goes, California people, please stay home. This is what he said.  Please stay home.And then a minute later, The LA times is like California's on lockdown. He never said that. They said that terminology lockdown is designed in a strategic language to literally lock you down and mobilize you in place. It is designed by media companies to literally make you sit and read, sit and watch, and basically fuck yourself.Get nothing. Does that make sense? I don't know a better way to put it, but it's made to make you go, huh? It'd be down like this and they own, you that's designed no different than Netflix, that little button that makes you go to the next episodeof madman or whatever it is that's on next. So it's designed to do that.So one of the things is language is the fastest way to change anything. So I'm gonna give you a little bit of little technique. This is my favorite statement is that. Communication is the most underdeveloped underutilized asset that we have as human beings to achieving anything you want in this world.I'll say it again. Medication is most underdeveloped utilize asset that we have as human beings. So when people are like saying to themselves, the world is hard right now. Let me ask you a question. Is it hard or is it not what you want it to be? Because one of those is you're immobilized. It's difficult.A Navy seal would not call it hard. They would say, this is not optimal. I know that I worked with tons of Navy seals. They would say those circumstances are not optimal. And that is why they're Navy seals. Why we admire them. We go like this. Even if you don't like the military Navy seals are like this, we look at them go bad-ass.They're amazing. They are communicators galore. Hostage negotiation. They do incredible things. I've met a lot of these crazy guys over the years. So one of the things that I've recognized is human beings look at their situation and they do not set it up to win. I don't want you to be positive and go.This is great, but I want you to see it for what it is. Ultimately COVID is what's called an inconvenience. It's a massive inconvenience. You had a life that was different. The other alternative is you said you want a simple technique for people. How old are you now? George? George: 37Michael: 37 years old. How many months have we been dealing with nonsense?George: Seven. Six.Michael: Okay. You're good at math. You're good at math. What seven months too. Like my daughter asked me quickly today what's 2000 seconds. And how many hours is that? I go, 33. I'm quick with math. So what I recognize, you got to see me at a blackjack table. It's scare you what I can do,but what's interesting.I take over the dealers' minds. It's a fascinating concept. We do. But if I were to say at a 37 years of your life, seven months of which have been very inconvenient, correct? A lot of times we think our lives are over, but if you take 37 and you divide seven months into it. This is ridiculously like not a big deal, but most people it's been going on for 37 years in seven months.We're good. I'd be very concerned. Well, most people don't realize. We use words like quarantine. We use words like Corona. We use all these things that are going on and we're losing. The other thing that we're doing is most people. And I used to teach this. This is called a phone, right? Remember these things.George: Oh, Oh, wait the cable with a cord Michael: with the cable. This is like the old school right now. Back in the day when I'd call people, I'd say I'd have a lot of clients that call people money in motion. There's a lot to do with what you're sharing with me and they give people too much credit. So they're calling a guy that just, he just loved Google got 300 million bucks.He was one of the founders of Google. And you work for UBS financial. You want to transfer that money into your account. So when you call him, the guy could be five foot six, and you could be six foot five. And you're looking up at them. You're putting them on a pedestal. I think most people don't realize they put their problems up here.The reason Joel Olsteen has big Joel Olsteen is cause we picture up there power. We picture big up top. Most people position their problem incorrectly. Like it, when we were kids, it was Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Mike Tyson. That was it. That was okay. Tiger woods. That was it. Bumping bang. Boom. And what did we do? We put them on a pedestal, but anytime you put a problem or a person on a pedestal, you put yourself on the ground. So one of the things we need to do is call the Smurf and I hate to say the word Smurf, but when I call people, I picked I'm three foot two. And the reason why is it allows me to dominate in the situation.Most people are picturing COVID Amazon not working. They're like looking at, if you're watching me and not listening, I'm like cowering down to this thing. Instead of looking at it, like the spec, when the IRS sends me a letter in the mail, I know I don't want to read it. I look at it. I imagine it in my head, some little guy in a cubicle sent me this letter with his typewriter.Let me see what I got to deal with that I opened it up and I learned to deal with it. But if you picture big, bad, scary agency with machine guns, which the IRS doesn't have, you're picturing them with AR fifteens and your picture of them knocking on your door. They're their pencil pushers. George: They have a stapler and pocket protector.Michael: Yes there, the guy from office space or whatever it is, right. You're getting at it's all of it comes down to framing your life gets easy when you frame. So like I noticed this in my relationship when I first got married, my wife would say to me, listen, we're arguing. It's not over. We're just arguing. Like, it doesn't mean I'm like, Oh, okay, got it. This is.an argument in a relationship. George: Oh yeah. Aye. I say this because I think this is such a valid point and I don't know what part and just full disclosure, a lot of you're listening to, I've done a lot of personal mom or Michael, somebody I like highly respected. So all of this is very validating, the work that I work on every day, but one of the things for me that I noticed back in the past, and it's still cause the not compartmentalize, it still comes up, but I still have a default emotional state that comes up sometimes where it's like this happened.It's the end of the world, or I didn't communicate effectively. She wants me to move out or that didn't happen. The business is over. Now. I have the tools in place to be like, okay, no compartmentalize, like not like frame it. Right. Container it. And be like, okay, Nope. In this moment. Right. And one of the things I asked myself a lot is who am I.Who am I? Who am I? There's this awesome movie called chasing great,chasing presence. But, the professor, I forgot his name, but he's the leading professor on duality. Michael: I'm gonna write this down.Geroge: Yeah, it's called chasing the present and he's the leading professor, like most acclaimed, every award ever when it comes to duality and it was this really simple concept because in that moment, I asked myself that question, like, who am I?And I'm like, Oh, I'm this scared little boy. And it's like, what was I born that way? No. And I'm like, Oh, who am I? And I'm like, Oh, well I'm being compassion, but also fearful, empathetic and scarce. And I was like, was I born that way? I'm like, no. And then like it gets down. Yeah. And eventually there's no answer to the question and I'm who I want to be or whoever I am in that.Moment to moment . It's a really interesting perspective. So when you think about containers and language, cause like you're a master at NLP and framing and all those different things. I mean, it, it lands heavy when you, when you sit here, talk about like the media and the consumption and, you know, having to protect our lives from all that poison out there.But then what are some of the, like the self-talk statements? Like what are some of the empowerment things that people can do or say in those moments to create that container or frame those emotions or that experience to help them navigate that?Michael:  Well, let's let's, let's do something really interesting. Let's take a step back. I feel like we're I feel like we're debating. It's like I watched the debates. It's hilarious.George: OkayMichael:  Sure. Train really well, but not a bad debate. Let me go back sentence to what you were talking about. Then I'll pick it up. I have add like most of your listeners,  solve this. So one thing you said is pretty interesting about identity right there. So like when I was writing my book, A nine year old boy was trying to write the book. I didn't realize that Tucker had to call me out on it. It's like, Hey dude, what are you doing? Okay, what are you doing? Right. It's one of my, one of my best friends.And he's like, Hey, call me. I was like what are you doing? What's wrong with you?, And I realized that a nine year old boy that was trying to prove a point was writing the book. and then one day I looked in the mirror and go, why am I feeling thing so much of what am I doing? And then I realized something very interesting that I was trying to prove a point that I could do it myself, that I didn't need anybody else that I wanted to get it done.I wanted to heal myself, whatever it is I thought I was dealing with. And then one day I looked in the mirror and I was actually talking to Brad. Brad stands at one of my buddies. I was talking to Brad about this and I called him out right away the podcast. I said, Brad, how old are you? And he told me he was like 40 something.And he told me I will do this. Let me tell you a little story. I go, I believed I couldn't get into the book. And then myself who is writing the book and the nine year old boy was trying to write the book. That's where the idea of the book came in trying to be important. Then I said, well, what would a 41 year old man was a year ago?What would a 41 year old man me, that has worked with hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. That's happily married with great kids. What can that guy do? And what's amazing is most of us haven't updated our identity in a long time to make decisions from the who we are now versus who we were then.So one of the first things I'm going to, all of you is take a minute today. Look in the freaking mirror. You don't want any work to do. You don't have 90 seconds look in the mirror and go, who am I today? I don't care if your life sucks today, I'm a guy or girl that has been through a bunch of shit still alive, and I've made it is different than I'm a person that doesn't know what to do.So what I'm getting at is most of us have to, the first thing we need to do is look in the mirror and goes, who's actually making this decision. The problem is as a business owner, Most of us are still operating off who we were instead of who it is we want to be. So when I sit down with people from a coaching perspective, the first thing I ask them is what was your original reason for making money?And they're like, Oh, I wanted financial freedom. And I wanted to prove a point and I want it to be, how long have you been in business? Eight years. Awesome. Do you have financial freedom? Kind of. Okay, good. Are you on bossy ass? Have you proven a point? Yes. Then shut up and work on the next thing. Now it's about being profitable.We've got to move on. Most of us do realize that you're farther along than you think you are. It's just your old, you is running your life. There's multiple inside of ourselves. So a lot of us don't recognize that your brain is different than your mind. Your brain is. Your your, like in origin your mind is the operating system.Like your Mac computer is your brain, the operating system, snow leopard 46, eight seven three two Oh S. That is your mind. And your mind's main focus is keeping not you alive is keeping your identity alive. What you've said is necessary to be true. So that's going back to the thing we showed a minute ago.Now, the next question you asked was. The next question you asked is what do people do? And, and can you frame that last part for me again, because I'm going to add these two things together. George: Yeah. So keep it, to keep it short. So when feeling that way and getting into framing, like what do they do to, to reframe, right.And then take a step forward in that new interpretation. That empowering interpretation.Michael: There's three things. Everything we do. Number one is language. Language is made up of 85 different things, language I'm just making up 85, 80,000 things. There's the words, the intensity, the words, the tone, the word choice, the modality of the words, a million things.Number one is check your language. And the reason I'd say is there's another way to say what it is. You're saying more intense or less intense. Is it a failure? Is it a catastrophe or is it an inconvenience? Those are three different words with three different sets of emotions. I call it gradient language, but on each side of the room word is another way to say it less intense, more intense.Now you've got to ask yourself which way you want to go. Number two is pattern. We all have patterns in our life and you've got to ask yourself, like right now we have patterns we havewhat do we do? Realize when COVID first hit. I'm  personal responsibility, survivor type. Like I actually sadistically do really well during chaos.So when I'm playing hockey and a guy the other day got a blade cross his neck, I got a EMT, a plastic  three doctors and a lawyer. Everybody runs, but me and the plastic surgeon, the people that are used to blood, I go, you. Yeah. Even the referee didn't know what to do. You take your Jersey off, wrapped around his neck.You go call the ambulance right now. I do really well during chaos. So what's one of my patterns. So I've got to learn how do I selectively create chaos when I need it? Now, if you do not do good during chaos, you've got to then find a way to frame that differently yourself. So we've got language, we've got patterns.And number three is it's our state of being like, what state are we actually in? And I always know that a lot of times we try to fight through lowering your head and trying to get through your problems. The stupidest thing you can do. I always tell everyone, just give up. And the reason I say give up for an hour, give up for a day back in the day.And I didn't feel like working. I would go to Dave and Buster's, I could love video games. And the reason why is you're not going to do it, the reason you don't want to do it, if you were fearful, that's one thing. But if you've been in business eight, 10 years, and you're having a bad day, you're done, day's over.You're done. Don't go drink. I don't really, I'm not a drinker. I mean, if you want to drink,  I don't recommend drinking. It messes with the brain, but go do something, go play tennis, do an ice bath. Get that out of there. You need a clear perspective. You will not solve the problem inside of it. You've got to get into a different state.So Virginia city are one of my earliest mentors that I had. She's one of the people like the predecessors of NLP said, we've got three States. We've got decision making mode. Okay. We've got problem mode and we've got resource mode. But you can't make a decision unless you're in resource mode, but you won't be in resource mode when you're in the problems.So just imagine for a sec, I can get three cards in front of you. Like these are three napkins, but imagine one napkin said, problem. One napkin said solution, or a resource. And the other one said decision, and you put them out in front of you and go which mode I am, problem, resource and decision.And if you can't find. A, if you're in a problem, you need to very quickly get into a resourceful state. So you can make a decision and then you come back and solve the problem. And that's the one thing I gotta recognize learning how to become aware of that is how you get a Navy seals mentality. George:  Yeah, man, I love that those three modes it's actually similar to how Disney did it when they were doing business.They had three separate offices for ideation for the execution then for the critic.That, that same frame is really powerful and you and I are super alike and this has come up a lot in my life. Because I grew up in chaos, I then joined the Marine Corps for three combat deployments and I Excel.  it's somewhere hidden in the corner over here. I excelled in that, but then one of the things that you just said that really caught me off guard in a good way, and I think is going to be super helpful for me is there's a lot in my life where recognizing that pattern, I made that pattern wrong.That like, I was good under chaos, or I was good under pressure because I was framing it incorrectly. And you said knowing when to create that or when to turn that on. Um, so I dunno can you just expand on that for me? Because that one's super well to me, Michael, like I tend to subconsciously or unintentionally create chaos.Things will be good and I'll lob a bomb, right. Because then I'm comfortable or like somebody will talk to me. Give me feedback and it'll be completely nothing and I'll blow it out of perspective so I can win my way back. Cause I'm I thrive in that situation. Michael: But you like problems, you like solving things?George: Yes Michael: Okay. So there's a bunch of ways to, there's a bunch of ways to take this one on number one is we've got to realize that everything we do has a positive intention. That's one of my favorite beliefs and it's hard for people to accept that quitting is a good thing and procrastination is good. Some of you listen and go screw this guy.What'd you talk about. Quitting is good. Let me explain real quick. If you can quit little league, you can quit. You can  quit smoking when you get older, if you can procrastinate, which is a wonderful, full technique. How is procrastination? Good procrastination? Yeah, it's fantastic because if you can procrastinate over eating, you will be in better shape.Most people do not recognize the procrastination, quitting is positive things. So your ability to. Go into chaos and solve problems is a beautiful thing. When used appropriately would you, haven't learned how to do is understand the margins when to turn it on and when to turn it off. So here's the deal. If you need it to get going, I don't want you to get rid of it. Cause you'd get boring. I wouldn't like you anymore. You wouldn't be in town. If Mike Tyson didn't know how to work of a frenzy, he would never have been Mike Tyson. We would have never looked up to him. He would never be one of the greatest fighters in the world.No chance in hell. So we've got to learn how to do it. So the question is, do you know. How to turn it on. Yes. But do you know how to turn it off sooner than before it's too late? Like, do you know how to use it to your advantage and recognize what it is? George: No, not yet. Not yet like full, full disclosure. And like I guys on the pod we're going there. Cause I love Michael. I trust them inherently. So a lot of thousands of you get to listen to this live or, or when it's, when it's released. But no, for me I can turn it on now with all the right reasons and all the right parts. The margin. I blow out by a landslide and I don't see it until after, like, I haven't got the distinction of the awareness when I'm in the margin yet I missed the cues because I'm still, what, what I make up is I'm still, I have some unhealed trauma or I've just so far in it, like blinders on because I'm so comfortable, but also so afraid at the same time that I can't, I can't see those margins.  So, no, I haven't figured that out yet. Michael: Are you comfortable? Are you being effective?George: I'm comfortableMichael: Okay. Very good. So you're comfortable in the chaos? George: Yeah. Super comfortable. Michael: Okay. Very good. Very good. Okay. Are you uncomfortable when the chaos goes away? George: A lot of timesMichael: Okay, very good. Is it because you're bored and you like solving problems?  So you identify as a guy that likes to solve problems. Correct? George: I derived my vow. I've derived my value and worth from my ability to add value or solve something, which is the work that I do on spending time alone, because inherently I have a lot of codependent tendencies in nature due to my childhood. So I spent a lot of time alone working on being comfortable in that absenceness, or just by myself. Michael: Okay. So are you a codependent? Like, is that, is that like, is that a diagnosis? George: Yeah. Yeah, no, that was, that was a, yeah, that was a previous diagnosis. I've been through a couple of 12 step programs and all of that. So those were tendencies I had from my childhood in my trauma that have come into entrepreneurship. Well, and basically,, I'm super uncomfortable when there's no chaos. Michael: Okay. Was he uncomfortable? You don't know what to do. George: I don't know what to do. Okay. Michael: Those are two different things.  So let me just ask you again, are you uncomfortable or you don't know the next step? George: I don't know the next step. Okay.Michael: So do you know the difference between building and solving. well, tell me what you think the difference is. Cause those are words and they're interesting how words have meaning.  What's the difference between solving and the building?George: the difference between building and solving is,in a building would be the doing executing the task or the solution that you came up with solving. So solving would be ideating getting clarity, creating an outcome, and then building would be executing what you created that clarity on.Michael: Okay. So are you less comfortable in building something and more comfortable and solid? George: I am more comfortable in solving things. Yes. Michael: So no one really taught you how to build things. No. Okay. So bottom line is you don't have sophistication when it comes to building, but the thing you want revolves around building, so you really have a lack of understanding of building.  You really don't have a codependency issue. It's that building requires you to take responsibility for actually to build something. From scratch. So you like to build things or like it's a hallucination, the way you're building is you're building by solving a problem. So you like to hallucinate build versus what you really want is things to be sturdy, correct?George: YesMichael: Okay. So, um, so with that said, you've never looked at it that way.  So the issue you're having is no different than other people is it's not that things, aren't the way you want them to be. It's not that you like chaos so much. It's that. Chaos is comfortable and building is something you're not very familiar with, but what happens when you decide to get good at something and dedicate your time to it?  What happens? George:  go hard in the paint all the way.Michael:  What does that mean? George: Um, just tangible examples. Like I want it to be good at golf. So I got down to three handicap. I want it to Scott out of a thousand jumps in a year and a half. I wanted to scuba dive. So became a dive master rescue diver in a week and a half. Like I, I just tend to go all the way. Got it hard.Michael: So this is just an area that you've never actually applied yourself yet. George: Yes. Yes. And it comes up everywhere. It comes up primarily in interpersonal relationships.Michael: So do you believe possibly, and I had thrown you out there on your show will help you out with this. You had some challenges as a kid on sounds like parental stuff. I don't know your whole back story. There's some stuff, mom, dad, different types of things. Challenges does that, whatever, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Yeah. We'll leave that where it belongs. We'll let the therapist handle that. But the point is.What I realized, and we stunt our growth. We think we can't grow and we like to protect versus grow. So my question is, what if you did, when I said, and you thought about this, like, what is the, what are you capable of today? Like, this is the question that I asked Brad. And I asked you what can you do from the position you're in?Like, what could you, you build, like, if you were to be outside of you and hire you, what could that guy do? George: If I was to be outside of me and hire me, what could he do?Michael: stories without the like, cause you hired you, you would, that person wouldn't show up with the drama and the stories and the diagnosis they would show up with the ability,  So you would never hear about it. Like if you hired them and you paid you 150,000 bucks a year to accomplish a job, what job could that guy do? George: Yeah. So applicably in my business right now could write the curriculum for my mastermind could record the seven video ads could develop the email strategy for the next three months in a matter of an hour..Michael: Okay. That guy can do that. Yes, it may. Cause you would hire that guy to build. So the question is, have you put this person in the right job? What you have this person doing in the Marines? There's there's like the commander, there's the nightwatchman,there's the guard. There's PT duty.There's, you know, cutting potatoes. Like what job did you sign yourself up for? Like, what is your automatic job that you're signed up for? Is it protector as a builder? I think you forgot that you how to protect yourself right now. You know how to use a weapon, you know how to use your hands, you know, self-defense or badass.I think he forgot that you could stop protecting because you've already got that part down. And I think you need to flip into a different mode, which means your identity needs to shift. And I think you just forgot to update your operating system. You're operating off of an LG. What was that thing? Back in the day, you're operating off the old razor phone. Remember the razor? The star tech and you forgot, do you have an iPhone X, Y for seven six, and you realize you've already got production protection. 99% of the world would never want to get into an altercation with you physically or verbally. Yeah. So you've already got protection down. I think we could put that off to the side and we can go into building mode.And I think a lot of people can get out of lockdown mode. And a lot of people can get out of worry mode and we can start going into building. And I think we're just a little bit behind. George: Yeah, man. I'm actually, I have tears welling upMichael: I know I can see it. I love you. That's why I'm doingGeorge: And this is why I have people like you in my life. Cause I could coach this by Stefano. It's all the time I talk about this all the timeand the distinct and I love it.  I'm, I'm protecting and it's this interesting thing and it almost seems like a conundrum to me because I say like, I. I'm comfortable in the chaos. And then but when I'm in it and it motivates me, then I'll protect myself even more. Cause it gives me some semblance of safety. Michael: So you value value, protection massively, don't you?George: I do. I do. Michael: And when you value protection, you protect every aspect, you protect your finances. You don't want to lose things. You worry about stuff, all that kind of stuff, but here's the thing. Nobody could pay you to stop being a protective person. It's who you are. It's your soul. So you could actually stop trying to do it. You'll do it automatically. What if you were to take it down 20% and not even try to do it anymore?Fuck it. I'm just gonna put it off to the side. I'm done protecting. I'm gonna focus on building. I think for the next six to eight months, I'll always be a protector cause that's who I am innately and it'll show up as I need it. Well, let me ask you a question. You've never attempted to shift your identity, right?George: Oh, I have a lot. Michael: You moved it to something like building versus protecting.George: Yeah. That's why we have a podcast. Took me nine years. Michael: I get it. But have you ever said that to yourself? Very simply that you know what, I'm going to shift my perspective. I don't need to worry about protecting you.George: No, I've never, I've never used language to do that.  Or like made that declaration. Yeah. Michael: I wouldn't, I would give it a shot. I believe you've already done it. I see it leaning forward and how simple it is to do, but I'll tell you that you've got a venue you're automatically going to be a protector, like automatically every one of you is going to be an entrepreneur. You need to stop trying to be an entrepreneur. I need to stop building something. Stop trying to prove to people you're an entrepreneur and start building something that works. So anyways, that's just a side note on everything. I can't solve everything in one, one.George: I think. I, I, I actually think it's super, super powerful, not even a side note, like just the main, the main, it's a massive, main vein for me.And I know it's out there a lot because like, as you even said that, and you're talking about like me being the protector, I also will intentionally default to it. Out of, uh, out of the fear of growth, right? Because that creates vulnerable. And I don't know what it looks like and I have to build, and  it's like I've had these opportunities to declare myself a builder and, but I will only declare myself a builder in that container in which I think I can control.And what you're saying is very powerful for me. It's very, very powerful. I think it's powerful across the board. Like when you think about this and COVID and everything like,  I'm super, super excited, grounded and emotional in this moment and present because this is the narrative of my life and it applies everywhere.AndI do this work all the time and. You know, there's parts of my eye. A lot of the times I even, I even call the work hard. Like I make the work hard because I'm like, look how hard I can do it. Look, I'm protecting look. And it's just recreating all these patterns from, you know, the abuse as a kid, the sexual abuse, the physical abuse, the death in the Marine Corps, all that stuff and I've never intentionally Michael: shifted the identity, like it to be hard as you get em, You get more validation when it's hard, because thousand percent of that you could do something. And we love things to be difficult. That's what entrepreneurs sadistic. We like things to be hard. And I can only speak to this because I understand and I've been through it.We want it to be hard cause we feel like we'll get a double reward or a double validation. Wake up. Call is this. You don't get extra credit for being harder. Okay. A win is a win is a win is a win. It depends where you're at. So if you're a basketball or hockey or football, whatever it is, when you win, you won.Whether you beat a good team or not good team, a WCW.A win is a win. We think we get extra credit for doing something more difficult. That's our ego talking. So for a lot of people, we want to find that instead of realizing your job in life, if it's defined to make your life easier than it is not to make it more complicated.So the reason you're doing it is, and then I'm going to explain it, whether you're trying to impress your dad or you're trying to show some how tough you are. Prove a point, whatever. Finally get loved that you never got whatever that story is. And the reason why I hear people starting to use the word trauma, I think about that.It's like that word is so debilitating in a lot of ways, because trauma means permanent scar that cannot be gotten rid of bottom line is like, when I talk about AA, a lot of times, I always say it's step 13 is missing. And step 13 is after you've been sober three, four, five years. Step 13 is I used to live a way that didn't work for me.It's a better way to put it. Step 13 is declaring. I used I'm different now. And really owning that instead of I'm an alcoholic, you've been over 50 freaking years. You don't need to declare an alcoholic at 50 years sober. I think you'll be okay. You've been sober more than you've been drunk, but the point is, and I don't mean no disrespect.They've been around bill W's program for a long time. I don't drink myself, but the point is the why I'm bringing this up to you and why it's important is. Is understanding that we need to leave that where it was, you are not that person anymore. And that's a big piece of the puzzle. A lot of us have to realize it's not March anymore.We're not in lockdown anymore. We just have a different world than the one we had prior and we need to accept things. Aren't the way I want them to be. How long am I going to cry? And then we gotta move on.George: Yeah, man. Yeah. Thank you for that.Michael: I don't know what that does, but it does something good. George: Yeah, of course it does. I mean, I, and just so everybody know, watching or listening, we're on video and I know Michael really well, so I know he's watching everything I do with my body, like leaning in and do it. And this is his absolute mastery, but Michael, one of the things for me is what that simplified for me is I've been in this game for a long time doing this work and having it.And it really always comes down to the simplicity of it. Right. It really, really, we're not getting an extra trophy, but even that just simply really plugging in or, or putting myself into one of those mindsets to observe and see where I am and then creating a different mode is powerful.One thing I did want to ask about, and I think that this is, you said this earlier, but I think it's, it was prevalent for me. So I know it's probably prevalent for other people. When I started as an entrepreneur, my drive for success was to prove I could be it right. I could prove I could do it.And then I made it. And then I kept that belief and I lost a lot of it again, because I felt like I'd lost the fuel. And then a lot of the times for the years, like I was like driven by insecurity. I was driven by fear. I was driven by external validation. And then, you know, there are times in my life where I've been grounded and present and not really knowing how to value myself.And I was afraid and I've had moments of like, in those moments, I don't know what to do. Right. Like what do I do? Where do I go? And. You know, we talked about it with building, but I just think, I don't know. I just don't think this topic is talked about enough in entrepreneurship because it's so easy to live in the hustle culture.That should be cancelled culture. And I just think it needs to be talked about more. So, yeah, I don't, I dunno. I dunno if you have any other thoughts on that. Cause when you said it earlier, you're like, you know, we build something to do it, but then you don't change your identity. Like, Oh, you wanted to create financial freedom, then you did it.You wanted to do this, then you did it. And the thing that I struggled with is that. When I was in those moments.When I started to shift, I felt like I had no fuel. Like, I felt like I had no energy because I didn't know the outcome or the clarity, and I wasn't trying to prove anything anymore. And so I felt, I took me six months, by the way. Like when I walked away from a company before I like really got into flow again, it was like six months of going to Dave and Buster's, this was a 2016, 2016 when I walked away from.Michael: And that's the part people don't get that's okay. We live in this world. We think we have to push all the time. You don't have to be on all the time. That's the part. Most people don't get. You do not have to be on it all the time. so when I talk about this, your original reason for going into business, that's the reason I love that question. I ask people that they tell me, and then I look at them and go, have you achieved that already? Okay, great. Are you willing to stand on top of that now? And build from there. You can always go back that or be willing to stand on. The fact you've already pulled that off. Our reasons for things change. I'll give you an example. Like I had trouble exercising and my mid thirties couldn't figure out why I couldn't do it.I'm an athlete. My whole life played hockey, male life gain in some way, not feeling good. Why can't I exercise? And I realized my original reason for going to the gym was a 16 year, 15 year old boy. I was playing ice hockey, wanted to defend myself. I wanted to impress women. I wanted to look good and I wanted to what was the other reason? I, my buddies did it. And then I'm 35 years old. I don't have any buddies that work out with Madison. I have that right now. I'm going to get a kid, right? Nothing going on there. I attracting other, women's not a good idea when you're married. It's most people that's probably not recommended. We're gonna avoid that.Some people are into that. That's not our thing. I'm beating people up. You go to jail,  when you do that at that point in life. So I couldn't do it. Work out to me, meant something. I say, I'm going to do that. I don't do so in my head, I said, let's go to language. And I started training for a Spartan race.Think of a different spin word train, which is a fresh new word I've never used before. And then there's the word workout. Most people, the word entrepreneur needs to never be used again. I know you want to impress people by it. It means you work hard. It means you think you're special. Stop thinking you're special.It's your issue? Entrepreneur leader leads to the death graveyard of impossibilities and burnout, right? Leads that Gary Vee grind and hustle. I don't want us freaking life making a video every day of the week. I never seen his kids unless he's got a system I don't have. The dude's obsessed with working.George: Glad I'm not the only one that said this. Cause I've said this publicly before, I'm like, well, training your children. That work is more important than them because you never see them. Michael: Yeah. I've been realizing this now. Like I'm working my ass off during this stuff and my kids are home more. I'm like, damn, I, I. I'm not liking, maybe even what I set up for myself. So maybe we need to stopstop calling an entrepreneurship, stop calling a business owners. Cause our connection to those is hard work. Would you does require to get started? I'm talking to the guy, that's been a girl that's been in the game five to seven to 10 years, 15 years, 20 years.I'm not talking to the new newbie, crush it, kill it. Go work as hard as you can get moving for the people that have been in the game a long time. Maybe we need to revaluate what we even call ourselves instead of realizing. I'm building something that allows me to do this, that I'm not a business owner I'm seeking out opportunity.I don't want to be cheesy about it, but like when I ask what your original reason for going to business was to impress people or to prove a point, then you're a decade later, you're looking to do the same thing you've got to, we've got to mature past that. So the part of that is re languaging. It is.So I went from working out to training and now training is not hard. It's something I worked towards and it's got a target. Now I train my body in my mind. George: Well, when it comes back to what we talked about in the beginning, like, what is the first step it's having an outcome, like a clear outcome and you know, back in the day, do personal development, it was like, you, you can't hit your new destination when you're staring at the back of the boat, right?Like you're just going to sink the Titanic. And I went through something similar, by the way, in my mid thirties about like the fitness. Cause I went from this hard Marine CrossFit competitor to all of a sudden I was like, hating the gym, not getting up, eating like crap. And it was, I wasn't, I was trying to out-train my past instead of like, Looking at something that I wanted to accomplish.And I think at super they're what Mike McCollough, cause it, you might appreciate this. He says you're never allowed to call yourself an entrepreneur for the same reasons, call yourself a shareholder. He's like, because your performance and your payment is directly tied to the success of your company, where your hands are in.And I think it's a really, really novel point.to not own those labels and to not carry those around. Right. And so that one was distinction for me. That's funny because I've probably met 300 people since I read that book and I've said like, Oh, what are you doing? An entrepreneur? Ah, I'm a shareholder.And they're like, all right. And I still correct myself and it feels like the word entrepreneur is like toxic tongue for me at this point. And I haven't like broken the habit because it was a really powerful label for me. I was like, look, I'm the only person in my family that didn't end up on drugs dead or in an addiction facility.And I own things. And so, you know, like there was a part of me until probably 36 years old that just wanted, when anybody from home, like people, I don't talk to her. If that magical Facebook friend adds me 25 years later and they ask her, see what I do. I'm like, look, I fucking made it. I showed you. And. At the same time.It wasn't really doing anything for me. I wasn't spending more time Michael: Here's the cool part. This is why I married the right woman. My wife would look at me. Of course, you made something now, what are you going to do? So that's, my wife would say, so if you, if you actually saw you for what you were you wouldn't be impressed by what you've done yet.George: Five, seven Michael: big. Do you play George: about six 10? Michael: You sure. Are you sure? You're not playing five one compared to other people? You're sure you're not playing five one. Compared to what you're capable of in your heart, how big you play, and maybe you got it wrong  Are you at sales? How good are you at sales?George: Really good. Michael: Okay. Compared to Bobby Axelrod and billions, how good are you at sales? Geoge: On a scale of one to 10? Like a three.Michael: Okay. So my question is why do we keep on telling ourselves we're tens? Our biggest issue in life is we think we're great. That's our biggest fuck-up.George: Why are you the greatest in the world? That language. Michael: One of the greatest and that that's a specific marketing. Kidding. I'd love you and I, what? No, let, let let's, let's let's really play with that for a minute. I leave that for marketing purposes and for belief systems, but then I'd have to regulate myself so that I know I just said that, but I need to get you to own that total at the boutique, in the area of my life.So now here's the deal I've been working on it 20 years. You know what I mean? I've been at this a long time, 23 years old. I started in 43 next week. The point is, the point is why I'm bringing this up is you got to realize all of us, I sat down with a sales guy, how good are you at sales? He goes, I'm great.What'd you make? Last year? I made 92,000. Great compared to how much you want to make. How good are you? I guess I'm not that great. So the point is if all of us recognize we're not as good as we think we are your day or life changes. Is when you accept, you're not where you want to be. Yeah. That is the most beautiful thing.So I learned that you live in the life you have when you were in the Marines that I don't want to do this anymore. You said I don't want to be here anymore. What else do I want to be? An entrepreneur? Never thought it through. Started building a box, made an identity. I'm an entrepreneur. I struggle got some people that are gonna cheer you on.You built your box. I call it your average. You built this box for your life, but everything you want is outside of it. So there's three ways to get where you want to go. I'll give it to you. Real simple. Number one, build a ladder. Get out of where you're at. It's very hard, but build a ladder. Good luck.Learning how to build a ladder with any wood. Number two, lower your head, try to get through the wall. That's what we do. Doesn't work. Number three, let somebody help you very hard. And number four is outgrow the wall and how you outgrow it is by working on becoming honest. And here's why I say this is if you actually would look in the mirror and yeah, I'm not as good as I think I am and I'm okay.Actually capable of, but I'm actually capable of 10 times more. That gives you room to grow and it makes unlimited possibilities and massive insecurity in the same breath. But how cool is that? Your insecurity is that you're capable. You just don't know how, and then all you gotta do is figure out how to grow again. That's my, that's my excitement.George: No, I love it. And two things cause everybody listening Michael, I've spent a lot of time in person together and I love going back and forth, but  in full disclosure, there's a lot of times that I hang my current value on my past achievement. And that keeps me small.And it keeps me in that box of average or comfortable. And so like, I love this conversation. I appreciate it because there's been some big shifts even as of late, like different levels of noticing that and where I can improve. And it's funny because for the first time ever, I've brought an outside help, like four people better than me and all of these areas that are helping me get there, coaching me and building with me.But one of the things that you just said, and you said this earlier, and it's been an open loop for me that I want to close.  One of the things that I caught subtly is when you were talking about, about language. I forgot the two words you used, but you just used another one of insecurity.And my immediate go to is noticing how there's no negative meaning on the word. It means opportunity. It means possibility. And there were two other ones you used earlier, too. But even in that moment, I found myself when you said insecurity getting uncovered from like, Oh, I don't want to be insecure.I'm like, no, I do, because it's Michael: what is insecure on country. Think of the word. Let's just go to the word. Let's think all the meaning out of it. What does it mean insecure? I'm not secure about it yet. I

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George McGehrin is the President of the McGehrin Group, one of the U.S. top executive placement and recruitment firms of C-Suite executives and he's also a professional executive branding coach. In this episode you can learn from George: Why you need a broad number of clients to survive a crisis Top exec's need support just like everyone else Use your brand to find more opportunities How your Network leads to your Net Worth   Follow us and explore our social media tribe from our Website: https://leadership-hacker.com   Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA   Full Transcript Below: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services   Learn more from George on Follow George on LinkedIn Follow George on Twitter Website: https://www.mcgehringroup.com   ----more----   Episode Transcript. Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you.   Our special guest on today's show is George McGehrin. He is the founder of the McGehrin Group. He is an executive talent acquisition specialist and brand ambassador and ranked amongst top 30 most connected recruiters in the United States. Before we get a chance to speak with George, it is The Leadership Hacker News.   The Leadership Hacker News   Steve Rush: As various parts of the planet return to work and start moving towards getting back into a rhythm of productivity. Organizations still suggest that their productivity levels are down roughly 30% year on year, because of the way that we are adjusting and getting used to new things. So I'm going to share with you some top hacks around productivity to help you and your teams start moving your productivity forward.   Number one. Arrange your day in boxes of activity, so you can focus only on that box that you are in, being out of control and being far forward thinking sometimes creates anxiety, but being in control would mean you stay calm, stay focused.   Number two. Take regular productivity breaks. Our brains can really only work for about 90 minutes full on where we'll need to take some time out to recover. Make sure we get those recovery breaks on regular occasions throughout the day so that we can keep our brain focused.   Number three. If you have a to do list, don't put more than five things on it. Just focus on five things at a time. You will force to figure out what is really important to you, what the priorities are and therefore discount some of the things that really are wasting space and taking up time.   Number four. When you get to read emails, just read one email at once. When you open an email, decide what you want to do with it. To reply, delete, forward or archive it. What you can't do though, is go back to it later. It just creates anxiety and of course, it impacts on our productivity because we know that there's something haunting us for the rest of the day. Get to the habit of doing this is not easy. It takes a bit of discipline. It takes a bit of time.   Number five. Scheduling distraction time. What do I mean by that? We all know that there are going to be things that we want to look out through the day. Maybe Facebook, LinkedIn, things that are going to just curiously drive us to do stuff could even be research, right? Aimlessly browsing through Facebook and social media in and out through the date will do nothing but distract us. So plan some time in, but use that time to get really focused, so that is it for The Leadership Hacker News on this episode. If you have any insights, information or just some funny stories and you want us to listen to them, please get in touch.   Start of Podcast   Steve Rush: I am joined on today show by George McGehrin. George is the President of the McGehrin Group, which is one of the U.S. top executive placement and recruitment firms of C-Suite executives. He is also a professional and executive branding ambassador, George, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. George McGehrin: Yeah, I appreciate you having me. Thanks for having me on today. Steve Rush: Before we got into the world of executive search and C-Suite placement, how did your career take off? George McGehrin: Right, so it is a very open-ended question. Back in the day, I mean, I had sort of a normal, you know, I guess you would say you know, you go to decent schools, go to decent universities, land a job, and then do that for the next 50 years. That was what I was taught when I was younger. I worked for a bit for the BitForest, for Pricewaterhouse, as well as Elmstead Young and found myself with an opportunity in Miami. I am from originally from the New York area, New York City area. Found an opportunity in Miami, and next thing I know I was hanging out in Miami for a Consulting Company and three months into it, I literally walked into the office. It was it was a German Consulting Company and they said, hey guys. We are closing down the office, so all of you are kind of out of work. Right? And so I found myself unemployed, right? Other people have called it sort of pedigree background, but I don't, I never saw it that way, but you know, I had this very sort of strong career going and then I was unemployed and I found myself literally in the unemployment line. And I don't know if you've ever had that aha moment, right? Where you say, where you start to evaluate and just say, listen, I don't think I want to do this again. I literally in the unemployment line, I decided to start a business. I did not know what business that would be. And the game plan was, you know, and I do executive recruiting, but the game plan was just to go to a bunch of these recruiter guys, get a job, let them finance me for a little bit, and then I can start a company. And I walked into a recruiting company, I just thought I could do this easily and that was sort of it, I worked with the recruiting firm for a couple months, and then I decided to do my own thing. And next thing I know I had a recruiting firm by myself. Right, I used to say we but it was me. Steve Rush: Right. George McGehrin: So that is how I got into it. At the time, it was not executive recruiting. It was just very, there is the sort of lower level roles. I did that, built it up to about 50 people, the company and all my clients by the way, were banks and financial institutions. And, you know, and so this is from 2000-2009 and one day I got a call from literally all of my clients saying, Hey, George, you know, the world has gone.   Steve Rush: Absolutely right, yeah. George McGehrin: You know, thanks for playing, but you are not welcome anymore. And I went from 50 people back to zero. It was sort of a zero to hero back to zero story. You know, for me, I learned a lot of lessons on the way. Steve Rush: Yeah. George McGehrin: Mean, now I've got a 30 person team and, you know, I made a lot of changes in 2008-2009 that had impact us today, which has helped us quite frankly, with this whole Coronavirus thing. But that was the, you know, it's kind of a zero to hero back to zero back to hero story. If you want to call it that. If you were to paraphrase it, Steve Rush: And the work you do now is about placing top executives. Typical salaries kind of $300 or $400,000 dollars up to 5 million plus. Right? George McGehrin: Exactly. Steve Rush: Tell us a little bit, about what you are doing at the moment? George McGehrin: Exactly and a lot of these executives. I mean, they run global brands, they run global companies, and they have lots and lots of responsibility. We do retained search, which means that a lot of times a company will say, you know. We need to replace somebody confidentially and put somebody else in there. And usually it's, you know, it's sort of a, I guess in a very cliché way, they call it needle in the haystack recruiting, but that's kind of what we're doing, right? We are finding sort of that impossible person and we are getting retained by these large corporations to find talent for them. Usually they either can't find the talent themselves, or secondly, it might be too risky, right. From an internal sort of political landscape arena. So they hire firms like myself and we compete with, you know, Korn Ferry and Spencer Stuart, and that's who we compete with on a global level. So we have clients that are literally in every industry, geography, revenue stream you could think of, but we're working with people that are making from $300,000 a year to 4-5 million. It is a super interesting group. I mean, I can tell you, there is a lot of commonalities between. There is very few differences between somebody who makes half a million dollars a year and somebody who makes 6 million, which I found. Steve Rush: Yeah sure. George McGehrin: Just a very interesting group from a leadership standpoint. Steve Rush: And having had all of that experience where you pick out some of the key attributes that you observe in some of those that you placed too, but also as part of your work, George, you have become a renowned on helping people with their branding and placement of their own brand within these organizations. And you have that claim to fame that out of all of the fortune 500 companies, at least one of those executives you've really helped with their personal branding too. Right?   George McGehrin: Exactly and that was a mistake turned into a business model. And I don't know if that as ever happened to you and your side. But, you know, just from dealing with recruiting and, you know, folks at that level. They would always come to me and say, hey, George, you know, there is a board role available, or I might be open for another opportunity. Do you know somebody? That can either take care of my CV or, you know, LinkedIn or biography? And they would ask me sort of, you know, just these questions, you know. I took on one client and it snowballed into, you know, just a different beast, right? So that is more of, I guess, a B2C play if you call it that. But the interesting thing about that is some of the B2C business that we get on that. It turns into B2B, right. Because they are running. Steve Rush: Sure. George McGehrin: You know, if I'm introduced to a CEO of a large corporation, because of the relationship is formed. They then, you know, sometimes become a recruiting client for us. Which is the other part of it. A lot of these folks, I mean they feel very, you know, kind of lonely at the top. Right and they are extremely talented. But they also see the value in coaches and they see the value of getting help, you know, with outside sources. And they understand a lot of these and this is how I see this as well. They understand that maybe a coach cost, I don't know, 30, 40, $50,000 a year, you could say, right. But they understand that they have a $5 million problem, you know, or let's say they run a $90 billion dollar company in revenue, but they understand they have a bigger problem than just whatever fee they're going to pay to a coach, you know, for some advice. That's one of the common denominators I would say about some of these guys and girls on the show, yeah. Steve Rush: Got it, yeah. So with all of the leaders that you have worked with over your career, which is extensive across lots of different sectors. What are the key attributes that you observe that your clients are looking for when they are hired? George McGehrin: Number one, I guess the best word is that they are engaged. You know, and engaged is, even when they interview, or if it is a phone call or even if it is a private or just a personal conversation about. How the family is? or how the kids are. They are extremely engaged with whatever and focused on the opportunity and opportunity does not mean just job opportunity, but they are just focused on what they are doing. And I think that the reason they're able to be engaged is because they show up very well prepared. I've had situations where, you know, we're candidate walked into the organization with, you know, like a 28 page business plan of here is exactly what we'll do the first, you know, they just show up engaged. I think that is probably the number one attribute.   Number two. They treat everything as if it is their own business, even if it is not. They have so much skin in the game. It is just not a 9 to 5 gig for them. Steve Rush: Right. George McGehrin: I always ask the question. Sometimes I will say to them, you know, just in passing, you know, have you ever thought about just running your own show? Like why do this for, why not just do your own thing, you know. There is a lot of similar things going on and some of the response will be, yeah, that's my next play. Or some of the response will be, I really love running a global team and I love the fact that, you know, what I'm doing. I can make it or I can break it. You know, this 150 year old company, you know, it's like, I can either destroy them or I can make them something that they never even imagined. You know and they'd like that sort of risk. Steve Rush: There is a bit of myth, isn't there? That if you are working for an organization, you can't be entrepreneurial, but of course you can. It is just different bets, right? George McGehrin: Of course. Yeah, I would say everyone at that level is entrepreneurial and there is not really one person that isn't. They are all entrepreneurial, right. And you are dealing with very similar people. Steve Rush: Right. George McGehrin: Right, in terms of some of the clients you are dealing with, I mean, would you agree. I mean, do you think there is a better word than the word engaged? I mean, has that been your experience with some of these folks as well? Steve Rush: Yeah, absolutely. If lack of engagement from the very get go, means that you are never going to find that if you haven't got it to start with. Right? George McGehrin: Exactly. Well, the other thing too is, and I don't know if you've, what I've noticed is the higher you go up in the chain, the more detailed questions you can ask and they really know their business. Steve Rush: Yeah. George McGehrin: And I think the ones that are sort of, you know, working on it, and there is a book on this, right? The E-Myth Revisited, but the ones that are really working on the business and not in the business, you know, they have a great hold of how to run a strong operation, right. They also understand the value of people. Steve Rush: Yeah. George McGehrin: They talk about people, processes. There people, skills are amazing and I was speaking to somebody last week. This individual, he runs a company, they do about $50 billion in revenue, right. Obviously super busy and I was on the phone with them for about 25 minutes, even on the phone, you know, he made me feel like I was the only person in the world, right. When obviously he has other, things going on and I think they have that special leadership glow. Right. Steve Rush: That connection isn't it? George McGehrin: Totally, totally. And I've met some, you know, I've seen some of these world leaders speak, you know, live in person and they had that spark to them. And I think that's one of the things that a lot of the leaders that I deal with, they have this amazing innate spark and an energy that they make you feel like you're the only person really that matters in the world, at least for that 25 minutes and I think it's a special skill. Steve Rush: It is for sure it is and brand is also a skill, and often people don't perceive that actually building your brand comes with a set of skills. What would be your experience as to what brand means for you and for your clients? George McGehrin: Brands can be use in different ways. Right? So as a leader, you can use brand from a personal standpoint to find more opportunities for yourself. You can use it and this is a way that a lot of leaders use it. Brand also is a great talent acquisition tool, right? Where people want to work for interesting people, right. I mean, it's very rudimentary basic sort of way to say it, but by having a strong brand presence. You are also able to attract way better talent than somebody that just has a very, you know, just a kind of, I don't know if the word boring is correct. Steve Rush: Yeah George McGehrin: But the ones that do a better story and sort of that frame their story better and market, their own personal story, as well as the company story in a better light. They just in general. They just attract better talent, so that is another piece of it as well, that some folks don't think about it. They think about brand just in terms of how they can, you know, more job opportunities, but partners and vendors and new deals, and there is all these other facets of why brand matters. At the executive level, you know, they are constantly selling the vision of their company. The culture of their company, sometimes the, you know, the good and the bad of their company. So the brand piece is extremely, extremely important. And this is a change that I have seen in the last 10 years. I would say, thanks to like LinkedIn, but you know, 15-20 years ago. I would never have a conversation with an executive about, hey, George, let's talk about brand or let's talk about my image, or let's talk about, let's talk about some of the bad news, right? There is, you know, the reputation piece of it. And now it's a common conversation I have with people about just the storyline and how they'd like to be perceived. You know, when you and I are talking from different parts of the world. Steve Rush: Yeah.   George McGehrin: And the market is just a global market, you have to be aware and have to control some of that elevator pitch. And I'm not talking about embellishing the story, but you need to be able to be aware that somebody from, you know, I don't know. If you are in the state, somebody from England might be checking out your LinkedIn profile, right. You might be doing business in Africa through a client that you met in Australia, right. It is just much smaller market globally. Steve Rush: I like the principle of the story being the brand, because actually that is how it arrived in the first place. If we go back to when we lived in cave 50,000 years ago. The brand then was just about the emotional connection and the ability for me to tell stories and to hold court and to create that persona. And I guess that's just morphed to the world that we're in now, the corporate world that we're in now, right? George McGehrin: A hundred percent. I mean, I was on a webinar yesterday. It was not a webinar. It was one of these, I guess, these Facebook live events. And they were interviewing me and I didn't say this, but the host did. I just thought it was an interesting, but they said, you know, perception is reality, right. And to some extent, that is correct. I think at the executive level, though, you have to obviously back it up with proof, you know, the proof is in the pudding, but people will only know about you, what you tell them. Right. Especially with all the access to information and all of the noise that goes on and all the, you know, I mean, it is unbelievable in terms of news stories, right? Like if something happens in Indonesia, you and I will find out about it within about two minutes of it happening, right? Now you know 60 years ago would have been, let's say 30 years ago, it would have been in the next day, right. 30-40 years ago in the paper, maybe, but people have so much more access to information and there is this sense of being an obscurity. Being able to build your brand, takes you out of obscurity in some sense or another. Steve Rush: It does, doesn't it? And also I think perception is reality to a point and because we are connected across the world and we've got lots of different mediums. We can validate that much quicker too, can't we? So if I think I'm right about this individual, I might double check that and I might look at LinkedIn, I might look at their social media profile. I might read some articles to get verify and validate whether or not the emotional connection I am feeling is the right one. George McGehrin: Exactly, they call that I think social proof, right? and I have, you know, on the branding side, sometimes I'll get referred to people and they, you know, when we start talking about pricing and everything else, you know, obviously they'd like, sometimes they'd like to do their due diligence, right? You know, what do they do? They go on and I think you have had the same experience, right? They will go online and they will just Google me, right? To see what I am about. You know, some people don't pass the Google test, right? And some people do. So you have to be conscious of that now, as well. I mean even this podcast, for example, that you know, that you and I are on later on, if we Googled each other's names, I mean, we'll show up on Google, right? as part of a, you know, it will show up as a link. Steve Rush: That is right. George McGehrin: So you have to be conscious of that. You know, I guess, I don't know if it's a play, but I think you have to be conscious of the things that you do. And also the things that you don't do. I mean, you have to be careful of what you say, and don't say sometimes it will get out very, very quickly. And sometimes in the wrong way, by the way as a service and we were thinking about this, just because people are asking for it. They are asking now, executives are saying, hey, George, you know, how do I repair some of my reputation, right? Because sometimes, I mean, you know, but like a 25-30 year career, somethings, you have employees that were not happy. Things happen, maybe negative news, right. With the company, as and ask, you know, we are thinking about offering as a service rep. It is almost like a reputation prepare, you know, for executives. Because it is like I said before, a lot of these folks have a half a million of, you know, $4 to $5 million dollar problem, you know, one ding and when you're looking people up is a problem, right? I think you and I are sort of old enough. To realize you also have to deal with the person and see what your take is. Steve Rush: Sure, yeah. George McGehrin: You know, because sometimes people get, you know, what is out there. It is not always true. Right? Steve Rush: Yeah, absolutely right. That is very true, and also people do screw up with good intention too, don't they? And as long as we've used that as a learn in our life, and that's been a positive experience for us, then we shouldn't necessarily come with that worldview that because something's gone wrong in the past, it means it'll go wrong in the future either. George McGehrin: Well, I think that is the only way to learn, right? and you know, just to give you my story. So we've got 30 people, the recruiting is an eight figure business. The branding piece is a seven-figure business. That is right, on those fronts, but you know, I think everybody has those. When I had to let go of the 50 people in 2009 you know, I also lost three houses as well, right. Everybody that has done, you know, if you have done it even remotely well, I am sure you have. I used to feel like it was a skeleton in the closet, but I feel like it was a learning, you know, you learn how to deal with things. And everybody has that story, that is what I've noticed, right? The ones that take risk.   Steve Rush: Demonstration an element of resilience that bounce back ability or whatever it was called. George McGehrin: Yeah, you also learned to suck up your ego, right. Your ego is you have to learn how to, but everybody has that in their background. I think the ones that have taken risk and you could see it as two ways. Right. You could see it as, okay, the guy failed, or you could see it, the guy failed, but he got up and he did it again. Yeah, but it is just social media and the brand, and all of this comes into play. Also for candidates and this is just, you know, for people that have kids out there who are in university. You have to be careful of your kid's brands, your children and sort of their brand as well on Facebook and Instagram and everything else. Because employers, you know, look at this and they look to see, you know kind of what they are up to before they hire somebody. It is also important for somebody who is younger. Maybe this show, it does not matter to them but if you are in your fifties and let's say, and you've got some kids that are finishing University. Their next employer, 110%, I know for a fact. They will be looking them up in Facebook and Instagram and see what they are up to, right. Before they even make a decision. Before they even interviewed them by the way. Not even just to see if they. They will look at the CV. Look at the LinkedIn profile. Steve Rush: Of course, yeah. George McGehrin: But then they'll look at the other social media, you know, obviously Tik Tok and other things that are showing up now, you know, you have to be very careful as a younger person as well. And I see this as a mistake, a lot of the younger people are not being careful because I just think there's a sense of immaturity. They don't realize that in 30 years from now, you know, they're going to, all these things will pop up and their kids will probably ask them certain questions about them. Steve Rush: And I wonder if you notice whether or not employers are looking at parents, siblings, the social connectivity, does that feature now, as part of, you know, who you connected with, does that play out at all? George McGehrin: I would say directly, no. I would say indirectly you see kind of who is in someone's circle. We were referred to hire somebody on our team for an inside sales role. And it was a referral and, you know, from a Facebook group, that's one of my team members was on. So then you can see who, you know, you can see the profile, you could see who they are connected to and some of the comments and to be fair, I think it gave the wrong impression of the person, right? Because you can kind of see the circle of people that they hang in, right? I don't think it's a tool that people directly look for yet, but indirectly, you know, I'm sure it plays a little bit, I mean, it did for us, at least, even for a basic inside sales role,   Steve Rush: It's part of that social proofing, isn't it? It is part of that validation. George McGehrin: And maybe that goes back to a larger theme about sort of classism and right, and judgments of people before you even know them. Steve Rush: Sure. George McGehrin: And where people come from. I have a friend of mine; by the way, this is interesting. He is a multimillionaire, right. He grew up literally with nothing and he literally, you know, he moved out of the, he grew up in this very poor area. He literally, you know, he has business relationships. He does very well, but all of his friends, like his inner circle. They are all his buddies from where he grew up and he refuses, refuses. I was invited to a baptism from a friend of a friend and he just refuses to even justify, you know, like he hasn't changed. His inner circle is the same as when he grew up. I tell him sometimes, you know, I don't know who is right or wrong, right? Like maybe, he's got it right. But he's able to be himself sometimes, but I'm sure, you know, I'm sure. He has probably lost business opportunities because of sometime the people he is hanging out with. Steve Rush: Yeah George McGehrin: And they are nice people, just people make these judgements about others without knowing much about them. He is like the typical rags to riches story, just happen to keep the friends, you know, he didn't get rid of their friends. Steve Rush: I was out in San Francisco doing some business a few years back and bumped into a venture capitalist and we are having a coffee. And the one thing that resonated with me that kind of stuck with me from that point on was your Networth is equal to your Net work. George McGehrin: Right. Steve Rush: So if you've got a broader Network, it's diverse and it can help support your growth of your business, that's more like to help you succeed and conversely, of course, if it's very narrow and very short. George McGehrin: Well, it is also the mind-set, right. It is the mind-set of who you hang out with sometimes and sometimes the mind-set. I mean, I find that as well. I mean every client that we have now in recruiting, it's based on relationship, it wasn't because I, or somebody on my team sent the best, you know, sort of best email ever, you know, or it was the best, you know, it was the best call. It is mostly because of relationships, right. By the way, for some of your listeners that have, you know, businesses, there is a model. I mean, I call it the pay to play model. Where you can join some of these, some of these exclusive clubs or you can go to some exclusive restaurants or you can, you know, even politically, there is that pay to play model. And that's what people are doing, right? They are paying for access to make sure that their Networth is connected to their Net Work, right. I think that is what people do. I have a coach that I work with, and that was one of the recommendations, he had made. Is like, listen, you got to a certain level, maybe you now move to the pay to play model. Steve Rush: Really interesting. George McGehrin: Instead of, you know, you can get pretty much your whole core audience, right. In one room, you know, through a $3,000 dollar dinner, you know, maybe like in, you know, for some sort of appreciation, right. You have everybody there rather than spending 15 years to try to make that network up, right. Steve Rush: It then can seem quite cost effective marketing in many respects, cant it. George McGehrin: Of course, you are totally right. I see that a lot, right? Your Network is your, is your Net Worth. It is fairly true, I think to digress on that though, a little bit is. You have to give to people, and this is a networking tip, but you have to give to people, you know, give, give, give before you take. And I think the ones that play that, you know, the me, me, me, me game, it doesn't really work out well for them later on. Steve Rush: No, trust either. Right? No trust. George McGehrin: I mean you have had that call, right? Steve Rush: Sure. George McGehrin: Where it is just, you know, you go at a dinner party and it's, you know, it's, but the ones that give. There is a book written, I think, in the twenties, 1920, so it is called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. This gentleman, for 25 years of his life, literally all he did was interview extremely famous people, wealthy people, successful people, and he created this book for sort of common denominators and that's all he did. His life passion, his life mission was to interview these people. He talked about all those secrets to some of these folks success and one of the pieces was the law of, I think I might be paraphrasing it wrong, but it is Reciprocity, right? Steve Rush: The Law of Reciprocity, yeah for sure. George McGehrin: Where I give you five or six people, right. Eventually, you know, things come full circle. You start throwing things my way and being genuine about it. You can brand yourself as well as you want, but you also need to be, in terms of networking. You need to be conscious of that rule. It is a great book, by the way. He also talks about; you have seen all these masterminds pop up in the last 5-10 years. I mean, you have seen that everywhere. Right? Steve Rush: Yeah. George McGehrin: So the original idea for, I guess, concept actually comes from that book. I think it is the number one, the most sold book ever, you know, business, self-help book ever. I don't know if there's another book that's sold more copies than that book. So it's a terrific book, so Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill written in like 1920s, but there's so many things that are relevant to today. Steve Rush: Still holds true! George McGehrin: Oh yeah. It is a terrific book Steve Rush: Thinking about then having created my brand, I have been really thoughtful about the stories I'm going to tell. And I'm now to take me to market, how do I do that without appearing needy, without appearing I'm selling or overselling myself? George McGehrin: Well, I think the first thing, and this sounds pretty basic, right, but I think you need to think about what is your end game and what kind of client is your end game and who you're selling to. I think that is the first piece, right? I mean, in our case we target executives. So our messaging is a little different than if I were to targeting, I don't know, 18 year old kids, right. Or 17 year old kids, so I think the first piece is you need to figure out who your audience is right before you even start. The second thing is. I see this problem a lot, right. So somebody will start, you know, they will start a YouTube channel and a LinkedIn page and this page and that page, and then they don't do anything. You know, they work it hard for about three weeks and then they leave it alone. I think the second piece is consistency in terms of the brand. So I think you need to constantly, you need to be out there and active and that is a way not to screw it up. The third thing is I highly recommend this. I mean, you need to fish where the fish are. You might be able to sell your brand better in a Facebook group. Right. You might be able to sell it better in a LinkedIn group. You need to fish where the fish are and where the correct fish are. So make sure you do, you know, do your research to figure out where your audience is hanging out. I would probably dig in with one platform and just be the subject matter expert without taking, just give advice, advice, advice, advice. I mean there is technique where they will go in and they will answer a question, right. About something, and then they will say. How do I know the answer to this? I know this answer because I run a successful executive branding company. That is why I am able to give you some great advice. There is no sales thing. You know, like if you need advice, call me. You are just a very subtle PS. I am giving you this advice because this is what I do for a living, and that is a great way. Steve Rush: I call it brand gifts. In other words, I am going to give you a gift of information and I am expecting nothing back in return. So I saw this, it is yours. Here is my gift of information of insight and it strikes them as thought leadership, doesn't it?   George McGehrin: A hundred percent, but you need to make sure that you are giving the advice to the right people, right? Like you're not, if you're a vegetarian, you know, giving, you know, you're not, if you're, you know, if you're, let's say you're a meat eater, you are going to make sure that you're in the right group, right? And maybe the advice is spot on, right? What you and I are talking about right now for a 17 year old is probably, they are 17 going on 34, right? You have to make sure the audience is correct as well with your brand. That is the one thing. I think one of the big mistakes is people. They sell this brand. Like they are going to conquer the 7 billion people in the world. And I don't know if you need to conquer 7 billion. Conquer the 300 people that might buy your product later on. Steve Rush: So, this part of the show George. I am going to ask you to turn the lens a little inward now and learn from your leadership because whilst you have been an ambassador and advisor and a coach to some of the top U.S. execs. What would be your top leadership hacks that you would share with our listeners? George McGehrin: And this is what I do and this is what other folks sort of very well paid executives do. I would say they are experts at delegation. I mean, just without facts, just they are just experts at delegation, right? So I think the first thing is, you know, figure out what you make hourly. If you really, if you want to think about it, you can divide it by 2080 hours of work hours in a year. Let's say like to make a million dollars a year, that's $500 an hour, roughly. Be conscious of that task. You know, of even basic thing like email, right. You know, one hour of email for you would cost about $500. You could probably find somebody cheaper for 20 or $30 an hour, right. They delegate, but with a purpose, they know exactly what their hourly rate. They know what their costs are, right. They know what their hourly rate is. The second thing I would say is. I am a big fan of the 80/20 rule. I mean, focus on two or three things that you are great at, and then the rest, let somebody else do it. That is the second thing, you know, and if you get caught in doing things that you're not great at, then don't do it. That drives revenue unbelievably well. And the third thing is, I think you just need to let go, like you need to not micromanage your team. Like your team develop their own skillset, let your team develop their own habits. You will find eventually that they can do the task much better than you can. I was joking. I was on a call a couple days ago and I had to log into a website. I did not know the password to my own Gmail account. Right. You know, we use we used Google Business Apps for the business. But this is account, I didn't know my own Gmail password because my team manages my email, right? So I don't do email, but you need to let go and let other people do some of these administrative tasks. I think that is the number one thing I see for entrepreneurs and leaders. The ones that are like in the weeds, it just does not farewell for them later on.   Steve Rush: Super great advice. Thanks, George. This part of the show we affectionately call it Hack to Attack. And it's where we are able to explore with our guests on the show. Times where they may have screwed up, things have not gone well, but they have used that as a learning experience. Now you have intimated a couple of those already on the show today, but what will be your Hack to Attack? George McGehrin: Right, things I messed up on, I mean, number one, and I learned this the hard way, you know, 2000-2009 cash flow king, right? If you have none, you have to make sure they have some sort of reserves. You know, so cash flow is king. The other mistake that I have made constantly, you heard this before. Be very slow to hire people, but you know, fast to fire. I think, you know, the hiring process, you need to take your time and do your due diligence and make sure you get the right person because it is a disaster when they don't work out well. Right. My team retention rate, I mean, I have not had somebody leaving and literally, it must be like six years now. And we haven't had anyone to go. It just because we took our time to hire people, right. That was the number two mistake that I made over and over. I mean, I must have made that mistake a hundred times, right. Hiring the wrong people very quickly because I like the guy or the girl, or I just thought they were cool and they were energetic and they just didn't have the skillset. And the third thing is to have diversity in your clientele, right. So just don't get sucked into like I did, with the Banks, or don't get sucked into one type of, you know, you needed to have a different type of portfolio so that. Steve Rush: Yeah. George McGehrin: If one industry, you know, sort of hits the fan, you've got another industry to fall upon from a revenue stream standpoint. Those are the three things, so the cash flow, be careful to hire too quickly and then number three is diversity in your portfolio and your client portfolio, right? So just, don't have one type of industry. All of these three things literally cost me two years of my life. Right, because it took me two years to rebuild, right? Just disasters, problems I don't have now, but problems I had because I didn't have that advice. Steve Rush: Big lessons. Well learn as well. George McGehrin: Oh yeah. Steve Rush: Final thing we want to do with you George is just explore a little bit of time travel. And I'm going to ask you to pump into Georgia 21. What would be the advice that you would give him?   George McGehrin: I mean, at 21, my stupidity was greater than my intelligence. I would say, you know, maybe be wiser to the people that were giving you great advice and listen to them a little more and understand that they have been around for, you know, 40, 50, 60, 70 years. So I would say, listen to some of the older advice. Number two, especially as a businessperson and even if your work for a company. Focus on process improvement and focus on to some extent automation, right. Where everything today is really a big math problem and most of it comes down to process improvement, right. And continuous improvement and if you can slowly improve something, you know, 1%, 1%, 1% then later on you. The third thing I would say would be to make sure that you take. I probably take more risk. You know, I mean, I think I was a little too safe with some of the things I had done. I would have thought a lot bigger, you know, like, you know, for me thinking big was I'm going to make 200 grand next year, right. And then I made 200 grand. I was like, okay, I am going to make 300 grand and I am going to make 500 grand. You know, I never thought of; let me make a hundred million dollars. You know. I mean, let me make 300 million. And I think if you're an entrepreneur, you need to think bigger and I would do that all over again and you know, if I could, I think bigger, Steve Rush: That is great advice, and I am sure those people listening can resonate with that too. Final thing I want to spin through with you is that firstly, it has been super chatting with you, George. It has been really fascinating. You have a super handle on branding and placement and it goes without saying that, you know, in order to get into the space of competing at the top U.S. executive search firms, you get a lot of this right. If people want it to connect with you from today, whether they be future clients or indeed people just interested in the work that you do, how can they best do that? George McGehrin: Right. So they can, so there is two ways. So first way is just to send a basic email, right? They can email us. It is George, G-E-O-R-G-E at, and then my surname, right. McGehrin, M-C-G-E-H-R-I-N, group.com. That is the first way. The second way is my LinkedIn is literally as 30,000 connections on it. It is maxed on LinkedIn, so now we are moving things to Instagram. Instagram it's just exec_headhunter, right? So it's e-x-e-c_headhunter. And those are the two ways and they can just google me. If they could just Google me, if they spell it 75% correctly, then they will find me. Steve Rush: George, we will make sure that we put all of your contact details in our show notes, along with your email address, as long with your Instagram handle too, so that when folks are finished listening to us, they can click on them straight away and bump into you much quicker than having to search through Google. And from my perspective, I'm just delighted that we had the opportunity to meet George and thanks ever so much for appearing on our show today. I wish you every success with McGehrin Group and what, happens next.   George McGehrin: Steve I appreciate it and thanks for having me on, and then you are doing great stuff and I appreciate all that you are doing for everyone else as well, so thank you for that. Steve Rush: Thank you, George.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler their @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker

Today's guest is George Aye, the co-founder of Greater Good Studio and an Adjunct Full Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. We talk about creating a design studio driven by social impact, how to make facing the hard, ethical questions part of how a team functions, and what it means to design and lead with a deep awareness of power and its absence. Dawan Stanford, is your podcast host. Show Summary George's path to design began in England, where he studied mechanical engineering at university before being fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to work with IDEO in their Chicago office. It meant packing up and moving overseas. For George, his time with IDEO was pivotal, both to his understanding of what design was, but also for what it felt like to work as part of a world-class team. During his time at IDEO, George was already noticing questions about the work, why we do it, and why certain projects — those with a clear social mission — engendered very different feelings in him than those without that mission. He wondered how he might focus this work on the social mission projects. Seven years on, he would leave IDEO to work at the Chicago Transit Authority, where he designed a bus and researched bus ridership. When the political environment shifted and he was let go from the CTA, George started teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago. It was here that his idea for a design studio focused solely on the social sector began to take shape. Since co-founding Greater Good Studio, George has continued to ask the hard questions, and encourages his team and his students to do the same. George talks about why these questions are important, the dynamics of power and how it can offer insight into people's motivations and behaviors, and how to incorporate these discussions into the daily functioning of your design team.  Listen in to learn: Some of the ethical questions George and his team tackle when approaching a potential project with a client Why it's a good thing to always be asking “What are we doing, and why?” How questioning assumptions is essential for good decision-making The importance of creating a “psychologically safe” workplace George's thoughts about power and understanding how it shapes behavior and outcomes Ways to bring learned expertise and lived experience together in teaching design Why the idea of “saving people” is problematic Our Guest's Bio George co-founded Greater Good Studio with the belief that design can help advance equity. Previously, he spent seven years at global innovation firm IDEO before being hired as the first human-centered designer at the Chicago Transit Authority. Since founding Greater Good, he has worked across complex social issues such as criminal justice, civic engagement, public education, public health and youth development. He speaks frequently across the US and internationally. George holds the position of Adjunct Full Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Show Highlights [02:16] George talks about how he got into design via engineering. [02:54] His move from London to Chicago to work at IDEO. [03:38] George discovers a preference for projects with a clear social mission and impact. [04:50] Leaving IDEO to work for the Chicago Transit Authority. [05:13] George realizes he wanted to work at a place with a clearly stated public mission, something larger than himself. [05:52] How George got into teaching. [06:13] The ideas that drove the founding of Greater Good Studio. [07:37] Greater Good's commitment to designing for the social sector. [07:55] George talks about Greater Good's project vetting process and determining whether they have the right to do a project or not. [10:08] George recounts a time he and his team wrestled with whether they had a right to take on a project, and the process the team goes through during those discussions. [11:35] The ways the team interrogates a project, and how they share power. [13:14] The ethical questions George had around a project for automated vehicles. [14:27] Rigorous questioning as a normal part of Greater Good's process. [16:37] How George handles onboarding someone new to the team and Greater Good. [18:57] Breaking through ingrained assumptions and making constant efforts to create a workplace of psychological safety. [20:20] The idea of “hosting” with regards to a team member's career. [21:40] The impact of endings, and how they can color your entire experience. [24:44] George talks about power and powerlessness, and continuing to learn what they mean to him and how they affect the work. [26:16] Using power as a lens through which to view the world, to better understand how people operate. [27:46] The desire to understand behavior is a core component of the work Greater Good does. [28:04] Power as a framework to understand motivations and diagnose behaviors. [28:47] George gives an example from his time at CTA of viewing a situation through a power lens. [32:25] The devaluation of lived experience when compared to learned expertise. [35:30] How George is changing the way he teaches and works with students. [38:04] Teaching students the problems associated with the idea surrounding “saving” people. [38:46] Ways in which George guides students in choosing their design projects. [40:00] Examples of the interesting projects George's students have done. [41:50] Some of the difficulties surrounding charity, altruism, and lasting social change. [45:47] The dangers of neocolonialism in design. [47:37] Books and resources George recommends. [51:07] Where to find out more about George and Greater Good Studio.   Links George on Twitter George on LinkedIn George at SAIC Greater Good Studio Greater Good Studio on Medium Articles by George: Why designers write on the walls (and why you should, too) Design Education's Big Gap: Understanding the Role of Power It's Time to Define What “Good” Means in Our Industry The Gut Check, by Sara Cantor Aye The Reductive Seduction of Other People's Problems by Courtney Martin The Perils of Using Technology to Solve Other People's Problems by Ethan Zuckerman Book Recommendation: White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo Book Recommendation: Dare to Lead by Brené Brown   Other Design Thinking 101 Episodes You Might Like Leading a Design Thinking Consultancy, Betting Small to Win Big, and Driving Business Growth with Design Thinking with Natalie Foley — DT101 E5 Design for America: Students + Design Thinking + Community Impact, Part 1 — DT101 E36 Design for America: Founding + Present + Future, Part 2 — DT101 E37 ________________ Thank you for listening to the show and looking at the show notes. Send your questions, suggestions, and guest ideas to Dawan and the Fluid Hive team. Cheers ~ Dawan Free Download — Design Driven Innovation: Avoid Innovation Traps with These 9 Steps Innovation Smart Start Webinar — Take your innovation projects from frantic to focused!  

Today’s guest is George Aye, the co-founder of Greater Good Studio and an Adjunct Full Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. We talk about creating a design studio driven by social impact, how to make facing the hard, ethical questions part of how a team functions, and what it means to design and lead with a deep awareness of power and its absence. Dawan Stanford, is your podcast host. Show Summary George’s path to design began in England, where he studied mechanical engineering at university before being fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to work with IDEO in their Chicago office. It meant packing up and moving overseas. For George, his time with IDEO was pivotal, both to his understanding of what design was, but also for what it felt like to work as part of a world-class team. During his time at IDEO, George was already noticing questions about the work, why we do it, and why certain projects — those with a clear social mission — engendered very different feelings in him than those without that mission. He wondered how he might focus this work on the social mission projects. Seven years on, he would leave IDEO to work at the Chicago Transit Authority, where he designed a bus and researched bus ridership. When the political environment shifted and he was let go from the CTA, George started teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago. It was here that his idea for a design studio focused solely on the social sector began to take shape. Since co-founding Greater Good Studio, George has continued to ask the hard questions, and encourages his team and his students to do the same. George talks about why these questions are important, the dynamics of power and how it can offer insight into people’s motivations and behaviors, and how to incorporate these discussions into the daily functioning of your design team.  Listen in to learn: Some of the ethical questions George and his team tackle when approaching a potential project with a client Why it’s a good thing to always be asking “What are we doing, and why?” How questioning assumptions is essential for good decision-making The importance of creating a “psychologically safe” workplace George’s thoughts about power and understanding how it shapes behavior and outcomes Ways to bring learned expertise and lived experience together in teaching design Why the idea of “saving people” is problematic Our Guest’s Bio George co-founded Greater Good Studio with the belief that design can help advance equity. Previously, he spent seven years at global innovation firm IDEO before being hired as the first human-centered designer at the Chicago Transit Authority. Since founding Greater Good, he has worked across complex social issues such as criminal justice, civic engagement, public education, public health and youth development. He speaks frequently across the US and internationally. George holds the position of Adjunct Full Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Show Highlights [02:16] George talks about how he got into design via engineering. [02:54] His move from London to Chicago to work at IDEO. [03:38] George discovers a preference for projects with a clear social mission and impact. [04:50] Leaving IDEO to work for the Chicago Transit Authority. [05:13] George realizes he wanted to work at a place with a clearly stated public mission, something larger than himself. [05:52] How George got into teaching. [06:13] The ideas that drove the founding of Greater Good Studio. [07:37] Greater Good’s commitment to designing for the social sector. [07:55] George talks about Greater Good’s project vetting process and determining whether they have the right to do a project or not. [10:08] George recounts a time he and his team wrestled with whether they had a right to take on a project, and the process the team goes through during those discussions. [11:35] The ways the team interrogates a project, and how they share power. [13:14] The ethical questions George had around a project for automated vehicles. [14:27] Rigorous questioning as a normal part of Greater Good’s process. [16:37] How George handles onboarding someone new to the team and Greater Good. [18:57] Breaking through ingrained assumptions and making constant efforts to create a workplace of psychological safety. [20:20] The idea of “hosting” with regards to a team member’s career. [21:40] The impact of endings, and how they can color your entire experience. [24:44] George talks about power and powerlessness, and continuing to learn what they mean to him and how they affect the work. [26:16] Using power as a lens through which to view the world, to better understand how people operate. [27:46] The desire to understand behavior is a core component of the work Greater Good does. [28:04] Power as a framework to understand motivations and diagnose behaviors. [28:47] George gives an example from his time at CTA of viewing a situation through a power lens. [32:25] The devaluation of lived experience when compared to learned expertise. [35:30] How George is changing the way he teaches and works with students. [38:04] Teaching students the problems associated with the idea surrounding “saving” people. [38:46] Ways in which George guides students in choosing their design projects. [40:00] Examples of the interesting projects George’s students have done. [41:50] Some of the difficulties surrounding charity, altruism, and lasting social change. [45:47] The dangers of neocolonialism in design. [47:37] Books and resources George recommends. [51:07] Where to find out more about George and Greater Good Studio.   Links George on Twitter George on LinkedIn George at SAIC Greater Good Studio Greater Good Studio on Medium Articles by George: Why designers write on the walls (and why you should, too) Design Education’s Big Gap: Understanding the Role of Power It’s Time to Define What “Good” Means in Our Industry The Gut Check, by Sara Cantor Aye The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems by Courtney Martin The Perils of Using Technology to Solve Other People's Problems by Ethan Zuckerman Book Recommendation: White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo Book Recommendation: Dare to Lead by Brené Brown   Other Design Thinking 101 Episodes You Might Like Leading a Design Thinking Consultancy, Betting Small to Win Big, and Driving Business Growth with Design Thinking with Natalie Foley — DT101 E5 Design for America: Students + Design Thinking + Community Impact, Part 1 — DT101 E36 Design for America: Founding + Present + Future, Part 2 — DT101 E37 ________________ Thank you for listening to the show and looking at the show notes. Send your questions, suggestions, and guest ideas to Dawan and the Fluid Hive team. Cheers ~ Dawan Free Download — Design Driven Innovation: Avoid Innovation Traps with These 9 Steps Innovation Smart Start Webinar — Take your innovation projects from frantic to focused!  

'the Netflix of Personal Finance': Try it FREE - http://bit.ly/best789 - Thanks to your advice I have enough saved to weather this storm (Craig, Canada) - Where are the deals during this time? - Why a home inspection brings peace-of-mind (Justin) - Will removing myself as an authorized user increase or decrease my credit score (George) - Why we should be optimistic about the future PE for kids: https://openphysed.org/activeschools/activehome https://www.gophersport.com/blog/gopher-live-episode-2-at-home-resources-and-activities/

Tim, Sarah and Mike are back together, while maintaining a safe distance. Is everything a simulation? Is Caleb a George? Why are there so many swastikas on TV now? We dive into the season premiere of Westworld. Watchers on the Couch Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/BDBCNF2 Shop on Amazon using our link: https://amzn.to/33rlxYS For more Watchers content visit […]

Tim, Sarah and Mike are back together, while maintaining a safe distance. Is everything a simulation? Is Caleb a George? Why are there so many swastikas on TV now? We dive into the season premiere of Westworld. Watchers on the Couch Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/BDBCNF2 Shop on Amazon using our link: https://amzn.to/33rlxYS For more Watchers content visit […]

Does Zoe REALLY know how to do a sleep study? Christine is joined this week by Ashley Bissette Sumerel (Founder and Editor in Chief of Tell-Tale TV!) to break down the second season classic, "Walkin' After Midnight," and take on another one of Christine's Gilmore Girls or Hart of Dixie challenges! Are we Team Annabon? Is sleepwalking George the cutest George? Why is Lavon doing dirty politics? Is Hubert Thibedeau rollin' over in his grave right now? We also dive deep into Zoe & Wade's "special" tape, and Christine has an observation about the wardrobe of Bluebell's men. Don't forget to join the conversation on Twitter @HartOfDixiePod, on Instagram at longlivethehartpod, or e-mail the show longlivethehartpod@gmail.com! Link to our Hart of Dixie "Rammer Jams" Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4Xebgdnbwl37yeOK4b1xJH

Join our gang once again fighting for their lives in this actual play D&D campaign. Featuring Sam Went as Dungeon Master, Lachlan as Durr Thomas, Emma as Lilliput Cogglenut, George as Hijo Deunamujerenferma and Alex as the Moral Ghost/Rules Monster. Edited by Amy Larham. Story Following an incredibly rare long rest, the party are ambushed by far more soldiers than they would like. Their master plan of distracting enemies with a giant centaur seems to work, but will this less-than-stellar start to the day improve? Or, more realistically, is this just the first of many horrors in store for them this day? Quotes Sam: The other three are going to be shooting at the giant, fuck-off centaur. George: Why?! Sam: Cos you’re a giant centaur! *** George: I’m not leaving you behind! I’m leaving everyone except for one of you behind! Find us on social media! Facebook:@infinitedeer (https://www.facebook.com/infinitedeer/) Twitter: @infinite_deer (https://twitter.com/infinite_deer) Instagram : @infinite_deer (https://www.instagram.com/infinite_deer/) Cast and crew: Sam Went: Writer/ Dungeon Master/Producer George Hughes: Cast/Producer Lachlan Bennett: Cast/Producer Emma Gadsdon: Cast Alex Tansley: Assistant Writer/Cast/Producer Behind the scenes: Amy Larham – Editor/Producer/Technician Wildboris - Music (https://www.fiverr.com/wildboris) Hugh Ingamells - Artist (@CaptnBrowncoat) Dag Simeon-Corbett - Outro Voice A huge thank you also to our new patrons - Lawful Stupid (@StupidLawful) and Zachary Sheppard (@GingerLoaf). You guys are the absolute best and we’re so incredibly grateful for your support! And finally, thank you to our fans and listeners! If you like the Infinite Deer podcast please don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe to future episodes. We’re also always happy to hear from fans on social media, so please feel free to let us know what part of the centaur is your favourite, and we’ll be sure to pass it onto George.

What were the early days at Harvard Divinity School like for Timothy George? How did Heiko Oberman and George Huntston Williams influence George? Why is it that the Reformers were the focus of George? What was at stake for the SBC while George was at Southern Seminary and how did it play out in his… Download Audio

In this episode, we’re joined by special guest, Jesse Felder, from The Felder Report & the SuperInvestor Podcast.  Jesse describes his journey into the markets, if he uses Trend Following strategies in his portfolio, why he thinks we’re in a Bear Market, and in the middle of a major ‘topping process’, what he thinks about Passive Investing, his go-to timing tools, and if Value Investing can be applied to non-equity markets such as Gold.  We also ask Jesse: does he use the VIX index for hedging? What is a normal day is like for him?  Jesse tells us why he considers Trend Following a good forecasting tool, gives us his thoughts on predicting versus reacting to price moves, and also lets us know what he’s currently reading. You can download your free guide to Systematic Investing, and subscribe to our mailing list by visiting TopTradersUnplugged.com Get a free copy of my latest book "The Many Flavors of Trend Following" here. Send your questions to info@toptradersunplugged.com Follow Niels, Jerry & Moritz on Twitter: @TopTradersLive, @RJparkerjr09 & @MoritzSeibert And please share this episode with a like-minded friend and leave an honest rating & review on iTunes so more people can discover the podcast. Episode Summary 0:00 - Intro 1:50 - Weekly review 5:20 - Jesse reviews his background/influences 8:00 - Jesse describes his process 12:45 - Question from Francois: Would Jesse discuss his view we’re in/entering a bear market? 19:30 - Jerry asks Jesse’s opinion on passive indexing 25:40 - Niels asks how float reduction impacts passive investing 28:00 - Jerry asks if ZIRP impacts valuation-based investing 30:10 - Niels asks Jesse how a transition to an inflationary environment will impact investing 34:40 - Moritz asks if/how Jesse applies the value approach to all asset classes 36:50 - Moritz asks if Jesse trades the VIX or otherwise hedges tails Book reference: The Tao of Capital by Spitznagel 40:10 - Jerry asks Jesse’s thoughts on TF as a tool benefitting diversification 42:00 - Jerry asks Jesse’s opinion on the market not broadly recognizing the evidence supporting Trend Following 47:20 - Jerry/Jesse/Niels discuss forecasting and TF 50:00 - Question from George: Why is knowing what’s happening fundamentally better than just responding to price (i.e. trend following)? 56:20 - Niels asks Jesse’s view on Tesla 1:00:20 - Moritz asks how Jesse spends a typical day 1:01:30 - Niels asks what Jesse is reading now 1:03:20 - Moritz asks about Jesse’s interests/hobbies 1:04:40 - Niels asks about following Buffett/Munger and shifts in markets today 1:08:45 - Niels asks if Jesse applies analog analysis to markets 1:11:50 - Niels asks Jesse’s recommendations on things to read/listen to to learn about investing 1:14:00 - Performance recap Subscribe on:

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) is a film about a good man, George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), living in a modern world of greed and corruption. George has big dreams for his life, but one thing after another prevents him from leaving his quaint hometown of Bedford Falls, where he lives an honest life with his wife (Donna Reed) and children and often puts the needs of others above his own. Things go from bad to worse for George, and when the town’s ruthless tycoon (Lionel Barrymore) sets out to destroy him his thoughts turn to suicide. However, that’s when an angel from Heaven intervenes to help George, and also hopefully earn a pair of wings… Michael Wright, CEO of Amblin Partners and former president and head of programming for TCM (Turner Classic Movies), is our Audience of One as James and Lara discuss this beloved Christmas classic. But how did a film with some very dark themes end up as a holiday favorite? Is it true that Cary Grant almost played George? Why is Jimmy Stewart sweating throughout the film? And what about that $50 bet between Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore that involved a cow? Join us and go deeper with IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE and its timeless message that no man who has friends is a failure, life is a gift, and we all have an impact on those around us.

RESUBSCRIBE NOW - bit.ly/sharkliveroil in your RSS subscription section! It's the big finish - la grande crescendo - el grand culminacion: and this is A Song of Ice and Fire, so it's bloody. Join us as we sprint into Season 6 of Game of Thrones, and share our astonished delight at the continued survival of the original badassed grandpa; surely he can't be long for this world? He's doing better than most people, though. Mentioning no names. On an unrelated topic, this podcast marks our final embrace of the fact that George RR Martin is not misunderstood after all, and is in fact as much of a bastard as everyone thinks. Why, George? Why?! As ever, get us your thoughts on the books, the series, and the fate of certain people at sharkliveroilpodcast@gmail.com, or on Twitter @sharkliveroil. For the watch!

It's the big finish - la grande crescendo - el grand culminacion: and this is A Song of Ice and Fire, so it's bloody. Join us as we sprint into Season 6 of Game of Thrones, and share our astonished delight at the continued survival of the original badassed grandpa; surely he can't be long for this world? He's doing better than most people, though. Mentioning no names. On an unrelated topic, this podcast marks our final embrace of the fact that George RR Martin is not misunderstood after all, and is in fact as much of a bastard as everyone thinks. Why, George? Why?! As ever, get us your thoughts on the books, the series, and the fate of certain people at sharkliveroilpodcast@gmail.com, or on Twitter @sharkliveroil. For the watch! 

Option Bootcamp 35: Lessons from the Trading Floor Basic Training: Lessons from the Trading Floor Paper flow rules all - Go with the flow! Being obstinate and refusing to adjust to changing market conditions will only cost you money. Don't step in front of the train! When in doubt, palms out!! There is such a thing as an upside crash. Calls are puts and puts are calls. Mail Call:  Schooling traders, one question at a time. Question from George: Why were puts so expensive when TWTR options launched? Question from Niles F., Montgomery, AL -  I saw an article recently touting a "synthetic covered call strategy" that essentially involved buying an ITM call and selling an OTM call against it. It was really just a vertical call spread. What am I missing? How is this a synthetic covered call? Question from Mr. Gif - Great show on volatility skew. What do you guys think of this piece? Should I, as an investor, avoid these volatility ETFs? Question from Buckeye - A question from John - Can I buy a stock on margin then write covered calls against it? Or does a broker like SogoTrade remove the 50% margin and make you pay the full price for the stock when you sell the calls?

Basic Training: Lessons from the Trading Floor Paper flow rules all - Go with the flow! Being obstinate and refusing to adjust to changing market conditions will only cost you money. Don't step in front of the train! When in doubt, palms out!! There is such a thing as an upside crash. Calls are puts and puts are calls. Mail Call: Schooling traders, one question at a time. Question from George: Why were puts so expensive when TWTR options launched? Question from Niles F., Montgomery, AL - I saw an article recently touting a "synthetic covered call strategy" that essentially involved buying an ITM call and selling an OTM call against it. It was really just a vertical call spread. What am I missing? How is this a synthetic covered call? Question from Mr. Gif - Great show on volatility skew. What do you guys think of this piece? Should I, as an investor, avoid these volatility ETFs? Question from Buckeye - A question from John - Can I buy a stock on margin then write covered calls against it? Or does a broker like SogoTrade remove the 50% margin and make you pay the full price for the stock when you sell the calls?