Nonprofit Radio for January 10, 2022: Nonprofit Software Vulnerability With log4j

My Guest:

Joshua Peskay: Nonprofit Software Vulnerability With log4j

Happy New Year! There’s a software risk gaining attention and there’s a good chance you’ll need help diagnosing and repairing it. You don’t need to horde gas, cash and toilet paper. Just be aware and do the repair. Joshua Peskay, from RoundTable Technology, sorts it out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[00:00:10.04] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio

[00:01:11.84] spk_1:
Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with Producto Sigmoid itis if you inflamed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show, non profit software vulnerability with log four J Happy New Year. There’s a software risk gaining attention and there’s a good chance you’ll need help diagnosing and repairing it. You don’t need to hoard gas, cash and toilet paper, just be aware and do the repair Joshua pesky from roundtable technology, sorts it out And Tony’s take two. Thank you jean and Amy sponsored by turn to communications. Pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o.

[00:01:45.14] spk_2:
It’s a pleasure to welcome back Joshua pesky eh he has spent nearly three decades leading technology change for over 1000 nonprofits. It’s especially dedicated to improving cybersecurity in the nonprofit sector and works regularly with at risk organizations to address digital security challenges. He regularly presents and teachers on topics including technology strategy, cybersecurity project and Change management. You’ll find him at Joshua pesky a and the company is roundtable technology, Joshua. Welcome back to nonprofit

[00:01:54.14] spk_3:
radio It is an absolute pleasure to be here. tony Thank you so much for having me on.

[00:01:58.17] spk_2:
Oh, it’s it’s my pleasure to and it’s been the three years or some since, since 18. NTCC

[00:02:05.47] spk_3:
when you were Yeah, which was that the no that was the second to last in person in TC they did the 2019 1 and then it’s been virtual since Yeah,

[00:02:14.24] spk_2:
2nd the last yes

[00:02:16.74] spk_3:
and Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you as well. Happy holidays to you and all your listeners as well.

[00:02:26.24] spk_2:
They’re our listeners today. Not my listen, they’re ours share and share. That’s fair. Our listeners.

[00:02:30.24] spk_1:
Um all right.

[00:02:42.74] spk_2:
Log four J potential security vulnerability that uh, well it is a security vulnerability that nonprofits potentially have give us the, the the 30,000 ft view before we dive in. What, what is this log for? J?

[00:05:43.74] spk_3:
Yeah. So log four J. First of all, on a technical level is a java based, that means the programming language that it’s written in his java and it’s a logging utility that is used predominantly on servers on what are known as Apache servers which run just a huge amount of the things that run on the internet. And this logging utility um, is a little bit of code that developers used to log things that happen on the server and then generate reports or create actions to help them identify bugs or other things that would go on. So that’s what log four J is and it’s very, very widely used. Um, and unfortunately it was disclosed, I think around December 10 was when it became public knowledge that there’s a pretty rough vulnerability in it that allows an attacker to essentially take control of a server that is running log for J in an incredibly simple way. And the organizations like the center for Information security um and the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency or cisa um they use this um terminology called si ves which is common vulnerabilities and exposures I think um I always forget what that stands for. Um yeah, common vulnerabilities and exposures are cbe, they have ratings of like 0 to 10 for how bad it is. So zero is like that’s not too bad. 10 is this is Armageddon and this is a 10 and the reason it’s a 10 okay, is twofold in the most simple way. One is that it’s a actually, I’ll say three. Okay, there’s three reasons. One is that it the vulnerability is the most, the worst thing possible that the exploit of the vulnerability allows complete takeover of the system that is exploited. So if your server is running this log four J utility and I can send it a single packet of data, I can take it over and now do anything I want on that system. So it’s really bad. Second is that at a rough estimate, uh this is running on something on the order of three billion devices um that are connected to the internet in some way. So it’s running on everything. And the third thing is that doing the exploit is incredibly easy. So a 12 year old can go download a little bit of code off the Internet and automate it and go out and find servers that are running along for J and take them over. So incredibly easy to exploit. And the combination of those three things is why all the security experts around the world started freaking out To varying degrees around December 10.

[00:05:55.54] spk_2:
Okay. And and sister calls it a 10 out of 10. Yeah, this is all very interesting. I just saw the movie. Don’t look up with Leonardo Dicaprio jennifer Adams, Meryl Streep.

[00:06:00.49] spk_3:
Someone was just telling you about this movie. I have not seen it yet, but mixed things about it. But yeah,

[00:07:24.24] spk_2:
a comment is coming to earth. Uh, they this comment is categorized as a planet killer. Uh, and the President Meryl Streep is uh, not initially focused, you know, and she, in the first meeting with the two folks who have identified this comment and its trajectory right toward Earth. You know, she decides to sit tight and assess and, and their estimate is that the comment is gonna hit Earth within six months. And it’s a it’s a planet killer. It’ll it’ll make us extinct. But she takes a sit sit tight and assess approach. Yeah. Right. So, so I’m I’m tempted. Um, No, but I don’t wanna I don’t wanna be that like physical about it. Um, but I want to keep things in perspective too. So, but 10 out of 10, you know, from sister. That’s that’s significant that obviously. So. All right. And thank you for explaining why it’s called log four J and what a logging application is. I’ve I’ve sometimes looked at logs and it’s just thousands of lines of activity that could be incremental, like every every couple of seconds or something depending on what the, what the, what the, what the activity is that the log is logging. Um it mean it means nothing to me but

[00:08:14.94] spk_3:
to write essentially a bit of code that runs on servers. Um there’s a really funny XK C D cartoon. I can, I can send you if you want to include in the show notes. Um XK C D is a cartoon by a cartoonist named Randall munroe. And he created this cartoon like two years ago. That’s like uh you know, the entire internet infrastructure. And it’s like this giant kind of house of cards thing, you know that everything is on top of. And then at the very bottom there’s like this one thing that’s holding the whole thing up and it’s like, this is a bit of code written for free and maintained for free by some developer in a small town in Nebraska. And this was like two or three years ago that he wrote this because he’s kind of like noting how so much of the critical infrastructure of the internet are just open source free projects that people maintain in their free time. And this is, this is almost literally that like this is just a utility that someone made a long time ago that no one pays for that’s free to use that was useful and everybody used it. And then it was like, oh, this has a vulnerability. We we now have to fix it and it’s everywhere.

[00:08:29.53] spk_2:
Send me a link to that that drawing because I know the one you’re talking. Another one you’re talking about. I think I saw it on your linkedin.

[00:08:35.54] spk_3:
Yes, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:08:37.35] spk_2:
But I want to include it. I’m gonna put it next

[00:08:39.11] spk_3:
to your headshot show in our show notes. Yes.

[00:09:35.04] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications Your 2022 communications plan, lots of projects on their, lots of writing. You can take the biggest projects off your plate and outsource them. Free up staff time to devote to the work. It’s not feasible to outsource the annual report does not need to be done in house just because it always has been, doesn’t mean it has to be. How about research reports, white papers, this stuff can be outsourced. Do you need help with your writing projects in 2022? Turn to communications, your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o Now back to nonprofit software vulnerability with Log four J and Joshua Pesky EH

[00:09:44.04] spk_2:
And you also said it’s on three billion devices now, potentially. So it’s not just server level. Right? This could be an

[00:12:36.74] spk_3:
individual works problem. Yeah. And so, so here’s where everybody’s gonna start panicking, right? Which is, they’re like, well, if there’s three billion devices go ahead. Yeah well we don’t wanna panic. Right. Right so so people are thinking oh gosh I must have one of those devices or or more more of them in my home. And so the first thing is just you know calm down take a breath. Um But it it’s the most critical things are you know from a prioritization standpoint are things that accept input from the internet. Now this might be something that non technical people would would have difficulty understanding. But the average computer that you’re using or the printer in your home most likely is not accepting input from the internet meaning someone from the internet can’t just go and communicate with your printer or your coffee maker or your amazon Alexa. Right? Because it’s not accepting input from the internet. The way most devices on most networks and in most homes work is it’s a kind of one way invitation traffic rule. So your computer can get data from the internet and in that respect accepts input because the data comes in. But the only way data comes in is when you request it. So when you type google dot com in your web browser your computer is essentially making a request out to the internet and saying I’d like this information sent to me and then the internet sends it. But the internet can’t on its own. No one out of the internet on their own can send data to your computer without you requesting it. Okay that’s most cases, most people wouldn’t know whether their network or their devices are set up to receive input from the internet or not. But mostly they wouldn’t be they would have to have done something specifically to put themselves in a state where their home devices would be accepting data from the internet. But if you have a server that you’re using for any reason in your organization that accepts input from the internet then that server is if that server has this vulnerability on it by the time you’re hearing this podcast, it’s probably compromised already. And the term that cisa and C. I. S. And other security agencies uses assume compromise and that’s the stance they’ve had for several weeks. Now we’re recording this in december 28th. If you’re listening to this, let’s say january 15th. You know you’re and you have a server or more servers that are X. That are accepting input from the internet that have this vulnerability and you’ve done nothing about it at this point. You would assume compromise and that means um you need help. You need someone who knows how to go look at your server and look for indications of compromise and remediate them meaning fix them and undo them so that your server is not compromised. Um You’ll need help at that point. Okay

[00:13:04.94] spk_2:
let’s start with the first of all, thank you for being a calm voice and and explaining things. So you keep yourself out of jargon jail, which I appreciate our listeners appreciate. I I hate to slap you into jargon jail so

[00:13:09.83] spk_3:
but keep me keep me honest on it, tony If I, if I say stuff that’s like, you know, if I’m either being condescending or you know, you know, saying things that you are not, you know, the folks aren’t gonna understand. Call me out all the time. I

[00:13:53.94] spk_2:
will well condescending, I’ll just shut off your mic and we’ll just end perfect. I don’t I don’t tolerate condescension but jargon that’s recoverable. So let’s start with the case. Uh, you know, our listeners are small and midsize nonprofits. Let’s start with the nonprofit that does not have a person devoted to I. T. Let alone a team or you know, doesn’t have a devoted consultant. Do they need a consultant? Can they what what what should the non I. T. Affiliated nonprofit?

[00:17:13.64] spk_3:
Sure. So let’s say you’re you know f 5 to 50 person nonprofit. Maybe even up to 100 staff. Okay. And you have no dedicated I. T. Person, maybe you have an accidental Tuckey maybe of like a you know joe or jane laptop that helps you out with stuff, you know, as a consultant or maybe you work with a small managed service provider. Um someone who helps you with your technical, but let’s say you don’t have any dedicated resource. Okay. Whether you’ll need help or not, depends on whether the directions that I’m going to give you now are something you could do or you have someone in your organization who could do this. So what you would need to do okay is I’m gonna use two big words and then I’ll explain them. Enumerate and remediate. Okay. These are the two most important things to do in order. Enumerate. All right. Or enumeration is the act of figuring out what are all the things we have that may be vulnerable to this exploit. Okay. So I’ll give you just a simple example. We know uh and there’s a link will give you in the resource because again, C I s has a resource of all of the software applications, products, devices that are known to have a log for j vulnerability in that. So let’s say for example, I’m a typical nonprofit and we’re we have out of our 10 staff. We have five of them that use tableau desktop because we purchased it from tech soup and we used Tableau to do some data visualizations. That’s a really common application that lots of nonprofits would have running on their desktop. They probably aren’t updating it that regularly. Could be an older version Tableau which is now owned by Salesforce. So it shows up under Salesforce is listed in this directory of all the vulnerable applications. So you need to if you know that I have Tableau, I need to go to this list I need to search for Tableau and then I need to follow the links to see if the versions of Tableau that I have are in fact vulnerable and if so what I’m supposed to do about that, which is usually going to be to run some patch that updates it. So you need to do that for everything that you have. So the enumeration part is figuring out what’s all the software and devices that we have. Our firewalls are wireless access points are the operating systems that run on our computers, the software that runs in our computers and for many organizations, you’re already saying we have no idea about any of those things. We don’t have that written down anywhere. We don’t and that’s a real problem. And that that problem, you know, when, when you go to best practices about how to govern technology, they’ll say have an inventory, have it current, you know, having automated, so you can just go look online and right, this is why this is one of the reasons why that’s really important. If you don’t have that, this job at this time becomes extremely difficult for you. But if you don’t do it, You have no idea what vulnerabilities you have. It’s like not going in to get a physical in your doctor’s office for 20 years. You know, when you finally do go in, you’re probably gonna find a bunch of things that you maybe would have wished you found out earlier.

[00:17:20.14] spk_2:
Alright. So even before we get to remediation. Enumeration sounds overwhelming.

[00:17:47.04] spk_3:
If that sounds overwhelming then you need help. If there’s some if you have your accidental tech in your organization, you play them that part of this interview and you asked them could you do that? Apologize for sirens coming by? I don’t know how my Yeah, sorry about that. But if that person listens to it and says yes, I can do that. Give me a day or two. I’m pretty sure I can do that. Hey then you can do it if you have them listen to that and they’re like, I absolutely can’t do that. That sounds totally. Then you need help.

[00:18:01.14] spk_2:
Okay, let’s go to remediation then. So once you found out where your potential vulnerabilities are,

[00:18:07.04] spk_3:
yes, we do this

[00:18:08.04] spk_2:
patching. It sounds like in

[00:19:46.94] spk_3:
most cases exactly. So we’re saying okay, we’ve got five people running Tableau desktop, this is the remediation that we need. This is the software that needs to be updated. This is the setting that needs to be changed. I just whatever the instruction says, I need to go do it and check it off my list. So let’s say we have a sonic wall firewall that’s in our office network and that’s still running and we still have people coming to the office. So we need that to work. I need to go to the C. I. S for the enumeration piece um go see if the model of Sonic wall and the software version that we have on it. That’s our firewall. Is that listed here? If it’s not? Yeah. See we’re good. I can check that off the list if it is listed now. I need to follow the link through and see what is the remediation that I’m supposed to do to fix the vulnerability. Right. The enumeration part is I now know it’s vulnerable because it showed up on the list and then I verified it’s and it’s part of why this is hard for non technical people is you know, sonic wall has I don’t know 100 different firewalls that are out there in the world. Maybe more than that. And they’re at all different software versions. Right? And firmware versions. Firmware is like software that sits on a hardware device so it’s typically called firmware. Alright? But it’s just like software, you update it just like any other software and so I need to both see what model of sonic while I have the software or form firmware version that I’m running on it verify whether that sonic wall and that software version are vulnerable. And if so what I need to do to remediated and I need to do that for everything that I have. All right.

[00:19:56.94] spk_2:
Let’s just let’s let’s just get help. You’re just gonna have to if you don’t have someone devoted who can do this like like Joshua said play it back for them. It sounds it sounds as far into them as it does to me. You need you need you need help. You need help. Alright.

[00:21:38.64] spk_3:
And the urgency is like if if you have again public internet facing stuff, if you have if you know or think you have a server that accepts input from the internet, right? Again, if you don’t understand how to even know that, then you need help. If you have no organization that can help you understand that. But if you do know that that is by far your top priority and again, by the time you’re listening to this, if you haven’t done it, assume compromise. It’s it’s probably it’s not that it’s too late but it’s but you’ve probably been compromised already. And so the question is what do we do from that point? Um and what you’d like to do is learn about it before you learn about it from a ransomware demand. Right? Because what’s what you’re worried about is that that compromise will eventually be exploited by what what Attackers are doing is exploiting systems and then putting in persistence meaning a way for them to stay connected to the environment. Once this vulnerability is patched. So if they’ve done that, once you patch the vulnerability, it doesn’t matter because their persistence is already there on the system. Right? So the next thing they do is exploit you by doing a ransomware attack or installing crypto miner software on your server or doing any of a dozen other things to leverage the resource that they have taken over and what you’d like to do is find out that they’re there and remove them before they notify you by sending you a ransom or notice.

[00:21:47.94] spk_2:
Okay, we need help.

[00:22:04.04] spk_1:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you. Gene Takagi and Amy sample Ward our contributors, you know them, I barely I don’t even have to say it right. You know, I have to honor them

[00:22:05.94] spk_2:
to give them tribute,

[00:22:20.34] spk_1:
but you don’t really need me to introduce them. You know that Jean is our legal contributor and that AMY is our technology and social media contributor, you know this and longstanding to boot

[00:22:22.64] spk_2:
jean.

[00:22:36.94] spk_1:
Gene has been with nonprofit radio and me Since the first several shows, it was 2010 kicked off the show in July 2010. And jean was on very soon

[00:22:40.44] spk_2:
after the very first show

[00:24:03.14] spk_1:
early, early early days, AMy sample ward joined at the 100th show. So that would have been July of 2012 50 shows a year. Mhm I’m grateful. You know, they take time each time they’re coming on. You know, they come up with the topics we we exchange messages about them talk a little bit sometimes, but you know, they’re doing the lion’s share of the work and then of course, you know, thinking about how best to explain it and then spending the time to explain it all valuable for you all great value for you. So I am grateful to them for so many years of contributing to nonprofit radio and helping you listeners. Our listeners thank you jean thank you amy That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got barely a butt load more time for nonprofit software vulnerability with Log four J. This week is short less time to get aware, more time to do the repair. And I’m gonna I’m gonna keep pushing this rhyme until I can’t stand to hear it anymore. Let’s continue.

[00:24:15.94] spk_2:
If you have an I. T. Devoted team, then certainly by the time that I’m playing this that that team must know that otherwise you need to fire your team and and get a new

[00:24:30.94] spk_3:
team if you have a if you have a cybersecurity, if you have someone who purports to be a professional information technology provider, right? Whether they are your own staff or whether they are an outsourced provider And they haven’t talked to you about log 4J. And what they’re doing about it then. I don’t believe that they’re serving you very well. I think that’s fair to say,

[00:24:40.54] spk_2:
okay, well we’ll leave it at that. Well let the ceo and executive directors deal with their C.

[00:24:47.85] spk_3:
IOS and

[00:25:13.64] spk_2:
uh I. T. I. T. Managers. Okay now I looked at the uh the cisa cisa again as the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency. Um just for context. That’s that that’s the agency that Christopher Krebs came out of in the trump administration and said that 2020 presidential election was the most secure election in the nation’s history. That’s that’s

[00:25:16.31] spk_3:
system the cyber summarily fired but that’s a separate

[00:25:20.66] spk_2:
Yes, he was he was fired but he said yes,

[00:25:24.22] spk_1:
I’m trying to stay away from

[00:25:25.78] spk_3:
I’m a huge fan of So this is

[00:25:29.20] spk_2:
offered not for political purpose. This is offered for context.

[00:25:32.74] spk_3:
Yeah, for context. That is that is set to and there there I believe part of homeland security.

[00:26:13.94] spk_2:
Yes, they are part of the homeland Security agency. Yes. And they, you know, they’re the ones who said 10 out of 10. And in at a press release they said quote, this vulnerability poses a severe risk. They called it a severe risk, end quote. So you can go there, you can go to assistant dot gov and they have a page called Apache log four J vulnerability guidance. You can search that system dot gov. Apache log four J vulnerability guidance. Without me giving you full U R. L. Of the page. Just just search that and they have a couple of valuable links as

[00:26:16.37] spk_3:
well. And and we have links to all that from our website. So if you want to start at round table, just go to our website, search log four J. You’ll find our our blog which we update as we have updates and that has all the links in it as well

[00:26:34.34] spk_2:
and that is roundtable technology dot com if you want to follow Joshua, Joshua pes K.

[00:27:00.44] spk_3:
A. Y. Yeah. Although you’re better off following at round table I. T. I’m I’m not on social as a rule like a little thing but I really don’t touch twitter or facebook really. Ever so twitter or roundtables, twitter is at round table I. T. Um And that’s a better place to follow. That’s where you’ll that’s where you’ll get updates of things. You won’t get anything from following me because I don’t post to twitter hardly hell with Joshua pesky.

[00:27:03.63] spk_2:
Don’t follow at Joshua follow at round table I. T. If you’re following Joshua pesky unfollowed, you’re wasting your you’re hurting your follower,

[00:27:13.44] spk_3:
It’s a follower following it. And uh and I don’t I don’t even know if I get notifications if you try to dm me like that, you know if you want to contact me. It’s Joshua roundtable technology dot com. It’s very easy to find me that way.

[00:27:25.94] spk_2:
Alright. Don’t use twitter, you’re hurting your ratios unfollowed

[00:27:29.49] spk_3:
him. If you ever our apologies to all you social folks, I’m just not a social guy in that regard

[00:27:35.44] spk_2:
now you sound very sociable otherwise just

[00:27:37.52] spk_3:
not really. Yeah. In person on zoom over the phone incredibly social online. Unfortunately not so much.

[00:27:44.57] spk_2:
Okay. And humble as well,

[00:27:46.94] spk_1:
let’s go to

[00:27:52.64] spk_2:
Something that you have on January 27. You have a training coming up, tell us about

[00:30:09.64] spk_3:
that. Oh my gosh we have, it’s a mouthful. So I’ll spit it out the sixth, annual, best free one hour cyber security awareness training ever. My colleague Destiny Bowers, who is an absolute delight and also brilliant and who have worked with for a long time. She and I six years ago started doing awareness trainings with the goal of giving nonprofit organizations and small businesses an opportunity to get all of their staff cyber security awareness training at least once a year for free in a way that would be easily accessible for them, would be fun and would give them some incentives to for their staff to attend. So not only is the training free for literally your entire organization to attend, But we offer prizes over the course of our one hour training, so people have an opportunity to win up to $100. We give out typically $100 gift card, $50 gift card, $25 gift card and then we’ll give out other gift cards or, or prizes throughout the training. But at the end we do a quiz that is competitive. And so if you win the quiz, you have an opportunity to win $100. Uh and an amazon gift card is what we typically give out. And so you can tell your staff your, if you’re a nonprofit leader, hey everybody sign up for this, it’s gonna be a fun training Joshua and Destiny will try to make an entertaining, brisk and enjoyable and you have an opportunity to win prizes. And if you sign up with your organizational email, you know, uh, tony at my nonprofit dot org, then roundtable will actually send the organization a list of everybody that attended the training from their organization. So if you have a regulatory requirement that says, we have to train our staff, you know, with awareness training once a year, this can actually satisfy that regulatory requirement. If you’re in new york, new york shield law requires that you provide awareness training to your staff. So you can literally satisfy this regulatory requirement by having all of your staff attend this training, which again, is free and not only free, but you can tell your staff, hey, you can even win prizes by attending

[00:30:14.94] spk_2:
right. Win big prizes, free, epic, best ever training. More, more humility

[00:30:25.64] spk_3:
from Joshua, pesky. Yeah, again, the humility best ever. Yeah. And we say that every year because of course every year is is just a little bit better than the previous year. So it continues to be the best ever training until someone comes to us and says, you know, actually the training you guys did in 2019 was better than this one. So I don’t think this was the best ever, but no one you would, you

[00:30:47.74] spk_2:
would have the best you, they would be saying that you were one upped by yourself, there wouldn’t be any other,

[00:31:00.14] spk_3:
I I can’t conceive that there could possibly be any other training other than ourselves. I really feel like Myspace of best free one hour cyber security awareness training, I feel like we are really are our only competition. I

[00:31:12.04] spk_2:
hope you know what the word means. There’s a nod to, there’s a nod to Princess Bride inconceivable that there could be another another entity offering, offer anything offering anything comparable in cybersecurity. Alright, so where do we go for this damn thing?

[00:31:20.10] spk_3:
It is, I couldn’t make it any easier for you.

[00:31:22.87] spk_2:
It’s very simple.

[00:31:54.44] spk_3:
Go ahead. Best dot r t t as in roundtable technology dot N.Y.C. as in new york city doesn’t mean you have to be in new york city to attend anywhere in the world you can attend? So best dot r t t dot N.Y.C. If you go to that, you are l you’ll go right to our registration page and send it to all your staff again, have all of them sign up and you can all compete together and compete for prizes, have a good time getting awareness training and we, I love doing it, it’s sort of our gift to the nonprofit community to try to provide this training and make it fun and accessible for everybody and we’ve had so much fun, we keep doing it year after year.

[00:32:07.24] spk_2:
Is there a video, If folks cannot attend

[00:32:23.84] spk_3:
On January 27, sign up as with all things, then a recording will be sent to you the day after and you can take that recording and you can add it to your learning management system. If you have one too you know onboard your new staff whatever you want to do but of course you can’t win the prizes unless you attend the live strengthen

[00:32:28.84] spk_2:
you have to be like you have you must be must be present to

[00:32:32.14] spk_3:
win. Yeah

[00:32:32.67] spk_2:
win the big prizes in the in the epic best ever cyber security training. You’ll have to be present on january 27th 2022. At what time

[00:33:04.54] spk_3:
is one p.m. Eastern time? That’ll be 10 AM pacific time. That’ll be noon Central time if there is anyone out there on mountain time I don’t know where you’re at in regards to daylight savings. I forget if you’re on pacific time or Central time now so you figure that one out. If you’re on Mountain time, I’m sorry I wish I knew people

[00:33:12.74] spk_2:
will know people will be able to extrapolate hopefully from the Eastern time disclosure of of one p.m. eastern

[00:33:54.04] spk_3:
and we’ve even had organizations who we know nothing about you know who aren’t clients of ours reach out to us and say you know they found it on Youtube or whatever and they said can we you know use this recording for our on boarding package for our own staff or do we need to pay you or do you have rights or anything and then I’ll answer that question now for all of your listeners tony go ahead. Free take it, it’s yours. So if you sign up, you don’t attend live, you grab the recording, you chop it up and use it to onboard your new staff for the next year. That makes us super happy. Do it with our blessing. Don’t even have to tell us. Thank you. Okay,

[00:34:22.94] spk_2:
we’ve now spent as much time talking about the january 27th training as we have the subject of the podcast and the video, which is the log four j vulnerability for nonprofits. He’s Joshua pesky. They don’t follow him so I’m not going to repeat his, his twitter handle but follow roundtable at round table i. T. The company is at roundtable technology dot com. He’s Joshua pesky eh, thank you very much,

[00:34:23.61] spk_3:
Joshua tony thank you. It’s been an absolute pleasure,

[00:34:26.81] spk_2:
my pleasure as well. Thanks so much.

[00:34:54.64] spk_1:
Next week Legal Outlook for 2022 with our Gene Takagi. If you’re not aware, you cannot repair if you missed any part of this week’s show. I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. That’s the end of the aware repair rhyme scheme. It’s now ended

[00:35:31.84] spk_0:
our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows social media is by Susan Chavez marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein, thank you for that information scotty Be with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for January 3, 2022: Social Media Outlook For 2022

My Guest:

Charrosé King-Mathews: Social Media Outlook For 2022

Charrosé King-Mathews reveals what to look for in the New Year around platform evolution and content trends in the social networks. She’s an instructor in communications at Howard University.

 

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Turn Two Communications: PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is our mission.

 

We’re the #1 Podcast for Nonprofits, With 13,000+ Weekly Listeners

Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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[00:00:03.04] spk_3:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio

[00:00:13.14] spk_1:
big nonprofit

[00:00:14.26] spk_3:
ideas for the

[00:01:42.34] spk_1:
Other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast Happy new Year. I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with Lauren Jill papilloma ketosis if I had to say that you missed this week’s show Social Media Outlook for 2022 Sharos King Mathews reveals what to look for in the new year around platform evolution and content trends in the social networks. She’s an instructor in communications at Howard University. tony steak too. Lots of Good 2022 Wishes. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. Here is social media outlook for 2022. It’s my pleasure to welcome for her first time Sharos King Matthews, she is a strategic communications instructor at Howard University where she’s also pursuing her PhD in communication culture and media studies. She researches and writes about rest and creativity as methods of resistance and healing. Share Jose just left the faculty of N 10 after five years. She’s at Sharos CK Sure Jose. Welcome to nonprofit radio

[00:01:48.94] spk_0:
Hi, it’s great to be here.

[00:02:02.94] spk_1:
Pleasure. I’m glad you are. I’m glad you are. But tell me tell us a little more about your your research and your writing on rest and creativity as methods of resistance and healing. What what what what does that work look like? What is that?

[00:02:05.89] spk_0:
So I am you know, starting out so I’m going to be discovering what that work looks like. But I’ve I’ve always been um very interesting.

[00:02:16.94] spk_1:
I’m sorry, what do you think it’s gonna look like? What do you hope

[00:02:35.04] spk_0:
it’s gonna look well where where I’m starting from is like um I’ve always been interested in in creativity and art and being able to express oneself through artistic mediums and helping other people to do that as well. Um and I think creativity is like a a huge social driver for for change. If we look at like music and art and fashion in the way that people are drawn into movements by the ways that we can use creativity in order to, you know, engage people and get them to think about different things. Um but also on the other side of that that you know, rest is so important to creativity. And looking at the ways that, you know, systems of oppression have stifled communities, abilities to produce creative work by with you know, low wages that require them to work, you know, constantly just to be able to afford a living and you know, um well in my case as a black woman having ancestors who are brought here specifically to work and how that has, you know, our relationships with work and and you know, as opposed to living in more creative and and pleasurable life and how we can, you know, move towards everyone being able to have those more um creative opportunities and how that can change our world for the better for everyone.

[00:04:14.14] spk_1:
Cool, All right. They’re they’re interesting tensions because you’re writing about rest and creativity. To me those are in opposite. I mean, you’re you’re you’re not you’re not at your most creative when you’re resting, creativity is, you know, is activity, stimulation and then and then rest. But then as methods of healing and resistance to me, those are in opposite to, you know, you I don’t they’re they’re, you know, they’re both they’re both critical, but I don’t see them as consistent. Like you when you’re healing yourself, you’re not in a resistance, you’re not in a resistance state state. Resistance to me is, you know, agitation

[00:04:23.78] spk_0:
and

[00:04:30.44] spk_1:
and and advocacy, you know, But that’s not that’s that’s in opposite to healing, right?

[00:04:31.15] spk_0:
Yeah. So it’s like I’m thinking like the balance of the two and how you you you know, need one to have the other and and that kind of thing and seeing how they are synchronous and you know, um I just I want people to everyone to have, you know, be able to live healthier, more fulfilling lives and, you know, all of that stuff

[00:05:12.24] spk_1:
healthy but also productive and resistant when needed. Absolutely, yeah. It’s interesting. Yeah. Like there’s it’s two different spectrums to me rest and creativity, healing and resistance interesting. Alright. This Yeah, I’ll be, look, I’ll look forward to your dissertation in how many years? How many years does this program take you, do you think?

[00:05:17.44] spk_0:
So. Typically about four. I will be finishing up my classes this year and then I’ll be focusing just on my um dissertation proposal and then my dissertation.

[00:05:44.34] spk_1:
Yeah. And research. All right, very good. Welcome. Alright. It’s glad to have you. So you’ve got some savvy ideas coming, coming out, coming off the n 10 faculty as well. So howard faculty and 10 faculty. Uh I’m not sure which is more prestigious. Well, you know, Well one is, one is prestigious in lots of respects and the other has its niche in nonprofit tech. So they’re both,

[00:05:50.89] spk_0:
they’re both prestigious. They’re both quite prestigious in

[00:06:08.04] spk_1:
their own. Yes, that’s right. That’s right. Um Not zero sum by any means. They can both be highly prestigious. So you’ve got some ideas around social media trends. What you see coming for 2022. What do you see happening with our social media platforms?

[00:06:11.84] spk_0:
Some things that I’m seeing are more audio only features um like on twitter on facebook, which would be great for people who listen to podcasts. Maybe that’s that fits in well. Um and even like um

[00:06:35.54] spk_1:
facebook is facebook is coming to audio only a little slow. I mean I’ve been I’ve been podcasting since 2000 10 where they’ve been, where they’ve been, where has facebook been

[00:06:40.13] spk_0:
has been around for a very long time has been around. Yeah.

[00:06:43.52] spk_1:
But where, where they they they’re coming late to the format.

[00:07:09.34] spk_0:
Yeah. And I think so. I think that happens like with technology sometimes we, we like jump ahead and it’s like sometimes we might lose things that were good before and we have to kind of rediscover them and they, they show up in a different way in in some ways, like we see here on, on like twitter and, and facebook also, Tiktok will be um, is working on streaming. Well, it’s released in, in some countries internationally, but it’s another example of, of a platform focusing more on audio only content. Um,

[00:07:24.84] spk_1:
wait, so, so Tiktok moving away from video,

[00:07:26.74] spk_0:
Not away by audio only also

[00:07:51.74] spk_1:
in addition. Okay, okay, Alright. So, alright, so let’s talk about this. This audio only trend. Then you’re saying facebook twitter, Tiktok uh, promoting audio only formats. What do you see? Non profits are able to do? I mean, how do you see leveraging that?

[00:07:53.64] spk_0:
Well,

[00:07:54.79] spk_1:
Like are they all short form like this, Tiktok, you know, like Tiktok audio format limited to 15 seconds.

[00:09:58.14] spk_0:
So on. I know, so each of them is, is a little different. Um, I know on, on twitter for example, you can have like, um, instead of like a live video that’s going on, you can have an audio room where people are chatting, anyone can listen in, but you know, only certain people can chat. So you might, that might be good for like, um, if you’re having a panel discussion or something like that and, and maybe video is not as important to it. Um and you can, you can do it that way, especially if you are uh you know, working, working virtually in people in different locations. Um video is not as important. That can be helpful and um also like when now they have a lot of different ways that they will appear on these different platforms. Um but I think as always, and I want to say this for for like all the transfer that we’ll talk about, you know, you want to think about how it works for your organization in particular because there’s they’re popping up with different features all the time. So you have to think about how, how do we best communicate with our audience. Um so I think, you know, in short form places you might, you might share like specific snippets of your podcast. If you have, if your, if your organization has a podcast, maybe you would share specific snippets or maybe particular quotes or updates that you could share like with the photo and then um like a message that goes along with that photo, which is also, I think the benefit of that is it’s a bit of a lower um you don’t need as much equipment or export technical, know how like you would need to do in order to create a video, you know, with the video, you need to to, you might need to do some editing or you might need to create some graphics, but if you have photos, you can use those in lots of different places and incorporate audio with them, you know, um, on certain posts to enhance the, the content.

[00:10:18.54] spk_1:
Okay, okay, very interesting. Audio, audio only. Do you, Do you envision that, that, that Tiktok audio only feature will still be limited to the, to the 15 seconds.

[00:11:16.34] spk_0:
Um I’m not, I didn’t, I don’t remember reading how long it would be um but okay, so, so Tiktok is also moving into like, because they use a lot of music and stuff on their platform. They’re also looking into Tiktok streaming, like having a streaming service that is a competitor to Spotify. Um and then you also have Spotify incorporating more social media into. There’s so you see a lot of, a lot of um, hybrid things happening um between between some of these like audio and social media in particular right now and I would say we did see this a lot with with video. I mean we had vine was huge and, and you know youtube, of course we still have Youtube. Um but a lot of these things are the things that we, we already used to communicate and they pop up in different ways depending on, you know, what features are available on how the different audiences communicate with one another. Um, on those different platforms.

[00:11:40.04] spk_1:
That’s interesting, you bring up vine, how come vine went away but tick tock. It is, it is, it’s flourishing.

[00:12:39.04] spk_0:
How come, what is that? Yeah, I know, I’m fine, it was right, so vine went away and instagram at that time started having short videos too. So it was like instagram kind of picked up that short video format and then vine, you know, wasn’t needed as much because you have, you have your photos and your video on instagram then, so then we lose vine, but we have olive vines, features on a different platform. Um and I think that’s something that we really want to think critically about when we’re looking at these trends and the different platforms that come up because there are a lot of politics behind it, you know, it’s something it’s, you know, which ones have the most money, like instagram is owned by facebook, so they have a lot more money and resources and facebook is everywhere all over the globe um you know, in, in nearly every country, whereas you know something um for as a, as a um you know, contrast, we have Tiktok which what has been threatened to be, you know, shut down in the US unless they, unless they, you know, sold part of their company to an american owner. So we have things like that that are going on in the background that, you know, we have to make um certain apps, you know, have more ability to reach more people. So it’s also, it’s about how we use them and whether they are service serving people’s needs and you know, that it’s fun to use and all of that, but also we need to think about, it’s not always just, um, the audience that determine which one is a successful platform.

[00:14:29.84] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications, Your Communications Plan for 2022. Does it include social posts, blog posts, newsletters, your annual report, website updates, board reports, fundraising appeals. Acknowledgment messages, staff, communications, process documentation, training, documents onboarding or maybe those last couple don’t fit into your communications plan. They still have to be written. Do you need help with your writing in 2022 Turn to communications, your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o Now back to social media outlook for 2022, does that mean that we should not be pioneers or even maybe early adopters when a, when a platform emerges, you know, that, that we not invest time in it when it may not, It may not survive? I mean like should we wait 18 months before we jump into a new platform?

[00:15:02.24] spk_0:
I that’s a really good question because I mean that’s what we’re talking about here, trends. We wanna know trend because we want to know how do we react to these new things. Um, and two that I, I would say like for if you’re a smaller nonprofit and I’ve worked at many, you know, you don’t have a lot of resources you want to, I would like to think of think of the social media, um, managing that as a, um, capsule wardrobe. So I don’t know if anyone familiar with the capsule wardrobe defined that we have, we have

[00:15:09.48] spk_1:
on non profit capsule wardrobe will definitely land you in jargon jail.

[00:17:48.74] spk_0:
So, right. So, and so a capsule wardrobe if you think of, so you can think, I think a great example is Fran fine on the nanny. She has a very, you know, dramatic wardrobe. However, if you pay attention, she’s pretty much always wearing a black turtleneck, black tights and black shoes and then she’ll put like a fun jacket or a fun skirt on top of those things. And, and so that’s um, you know, a way to extend a wardrobe on fewer, there are fewer pieces and just choosing like a statement piece. So the way I look at that is like, um, in with your social media, you want to have good bones, good structure. You wanna have, you wanna have some image templates that you can use. And then when there’s a, you know, I just talked about images before and putting audio with them. So if you already have great images that you’ve worked on and put a lot of care into curating, you can then add these other things on top of them as these trends change. Um, I would also say as far as new platforms coming up, I think it’s always worth your time to at least create an account so that if that platform becomes more popular in the future, you’ve already claimed your organization’s name on there. Um, so that it’s easy to find you and you, and it’ll be, you know, more cohesive part of your brand. So I think that’s always worth it because that doesn’t take a lot of time. Exactly. Right. Right. Right. Exactly. And that’s fine too. That’s fine too. Because you’re, you’re putting your time where, you know that your audience is and, and you know, what’s going to pay off because, you know, without a lot of time and resources, we have to be very smart about, um, where we’re putting our focus and social media because it’s so vast when you send stuff out, it can just go out into the ether and no one, you know, it might not get traction. So you need to be very smart about how you’re using your time. So I would say like, yeah, you’re right. So you have your, your core images and the kinds of messages that you know, that you can use. Um, also this might be referred to as evergreen content content that you can use all the time. Um, you know, no matter the time of year, but it’s always relevant to, to your organization. Um, I think that’s a very important thing to have in, in kind of your capsule wardrobe, um, of, of social media fashion, you know, your,

[00:18:30.84] spk_1:
your, your capsule wardrobe, your capsule wardrobe. Yes, I scolded your core capsule. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. Um, well, I’m a guy, I want to be, you know, I want to be up. I want to be, I want to be timely. My, my time has long passed. Um, so, alright, Yes, absolutely, of course, evergreen content repurposing, you know, you want to be smart. You know, if something goes on your blog, maybe you can maybe you can pull a 12th, clip, an audio and quoted somewhere, you know, on twitter

[00:18:31.17] spk_0:
or facebook or, or,

[00:18:50.34] spk_1:
or, or Tiktok when, when the audio only features are, are, are available. Um, and then, you know, and then it could be part of, maybe it could be part of an email. Uh, maybe maybe it lives somewhere else on your website. You know, maybe it could be a social media post in print instead of audio. Um, right, so you want to be smart about

[00:19:01.84] spk_0:
right? And one um, uh, an acronym that I use for that, that I’ve heard is cope create once, publish everywhere. Okay, so like your blog post, you created it once. But then you’re using all those pieces of the blog posts in different places on your social media or your website and your blog and your emails and all of that.

[00:19:58.74] spk_1:
I love it create once, publish everywhere. So we got our capsule wardrobe. We have our, we have our cope. Okay, what? Um, all right, So this is interesting. This audio form. I mean obviously as a podcaster and I’ve been a longtime listener of radio and I think radio is just such a intimate format. It feels close. I mean, I got my inspiration for this show from radio shows. Um really interesting, you know, in one respect, it’s a, it’s a step back from, from the video because now you’re only getting really getting half the, not half the content really, but half the half the stimulation. I mean there’s the but but I don’t consider a step backwards, but but

[00:20:01.72] spk_0:
somebody, somebody could

[00:20:02.69] spk_1:
say, well, no picture anymore, what you know, but the video is the trending, but now, now now audio is trending.

[00:20:09.94] spk_0:
That’s why

[00:20:11.54] spk_1:
that’s why we need you on to make sense of this for

[00:20:14.27] spk_0:
us. For

[00:20:15.89] spk_1:
me, I’m not gonna maybe other people maybe more sad, but make sense of it for me please.

[00:21:19.44] spk_0:
So as you were talking, I was thinking, you know how you said like, radio can feel much more intimate than watching the video. And I it kind of reminds me of like reading a book versus watching a movie, the way you described it kind of like, and sometimes, you know, using our own imagination. And and with with the content that were there were there were reading or listening, using our own imagination. I think also helps us build a bond in some way. Whereas when you have a video, it’s like you don’t have to use your imagination, you can see what this person looks like and where they’re sitting and how they’re speaking and all of that kind of thing which I think takes away some of I think that’s part of like our creativity that makes us, you know, interested in having, you know, not knowing everything right away, you know? And and I um especially think like with audio, you know, you’re you’re very you’re not thinking about how you look, you’re just you’re just you’re just really um participating with the content,

[00:22:13.44] spk_1:
interesting. That reminds me of of a host I used to listen to on National Public Radio terry Gross. She she never wanted to be in the same studio as her guests, they always remote and and there was no camera feed. It would she she didn’t want the visual stimulation, she wanted to focus on the conversation and that’s it. She didn’t want the person in the room, she didn’t want to see them wherever they were, whatever studio they were in, she didn’t want to see them from there. It was just the conversation. Mhm interesting. Alright, of course I’m blowing, I’m blowing it here because I I can see you right now and we may put this on Youtube. Uh

[00:22:15.11] spk_0:
well you’re stuck with the lack of choice that people have the choice so to watch or or just listen,

[00:22:21.02] spk_1:
that’s true, you can turn your screen, you can turn off your screen absolutely, you could, you could go for the go for the creativity and, uh, and just listen,

[00:22:29.84] spk_0:
I guess it’s

[00:22:42.94] spk_1:
not so good to just watch though. That’s not gonna be good. Like don’t turn the sound down and try to read the lips that you’re, you’re missing, you’re missing too much content there, that I wouldn’t suggest doing it that way. All right. Um you think Tiktok is growing too, you have a, you have a prediction about Tiktok and instagram.

[00:24:08.44] spk_0:
Um, yeah, so I was reading this and I think, um, hoot suite that Tiktok is growing will surpass instagram um, in the number of active users. Um, and you know, that’s, I mean, we do see a lot of, a lot of the, you know, younger audiences on their like gen Z and stuff like that. Um, and, and I, and I was also reading about, um, okay, well, let me say so, I always want to be like, it’s great when companies can grow and it shows how popular they are. But I do also want to go back to, you know, what we just said about why certain platforms grow faster than others or might succeed where others don’t even though they have the same the same features, But, um, and so, and I start with Tiktok, um, and instagram and, you know, which one is popular is important for our organism, which one’s most popular is important. But we also want to look at where are our audience is in particular. So if you know that your audience is, you know, um this demographic, which is, you know, it’s um boomers who live in Arizona or, or whatever demographic it is, and it doesn’t, it’s not, you don’t see your audience on Tiktok, then it it doesn’t make um too much sense to go on there. But as we said, go and claim your account, make your space. So if you if it ever as the demographics change because that’s important to remember to demographics change over time. Um if we just look at facebook, for example, facebook was only open to university students. Um, so that was a very small demographic, but then it grew and grew. So, so we can see like these are where, where the numbers are for a moment. But that changes. And we can use that information to try to help make our decisions. But we should always remember that none of these are hard and fast rules. And we have to think about ourselves as the expert of our audiences and think about how social media is a tool to help us reach those people that that we know best

[00:25:17.84] spk_1:
and you’re good point, you know, knowing where they are and and knowing that that may shift as well, grandparents were not on facebook 15 years ago, but now it’s common. Well even before the pandemic for grandparents to stay in touch with grandkids through facebook. So,

[00:25:23.17] spk_0:
right. And, and a lot of my students do not use facebook anymore.

[00:25:28.01] spk_1:
Right, well their their grandparents around

[00:25:29.76] spk_0:
it, they don’t want exactly that’s going to look at pictures of your family and stuff, but not talk to your friends.

[00:25:36.74] spk_1:
Facebook is a perfect study in shifting demographics.

[00:25:39.69] spk_0:
That’s an excellent. Yeah, very interesting.

[00:26:26.34] spk_1:
The pioneers were driven off by the by, I think by their grandparents, they were alright, so if Tiktok Tiktok surpasses instagram, alright, so that it’s just, it’s just something I like to be aware of that Tiktok is growing in in audience size that way. And so it might be, might be a place for you to look. Um but maybe not, and we’re gonna get to the maybe not, you know, every right, every platform is not for everybody. Um but again, I love your advice about, you know, claim your claim your spot, get an account in your name, so nobody, nobody beats you to it and then you have to be creative or You know, be Tony-Martignetti two or something, you know,

[00:26:29.19] spk_0:
because

[00:26:38.74] spk_1:
they were the real tony-martignetti you know, All right, so let’s talk about creating, creating content this emerging short form audio

[00:30:11.64] spk_0:
with creating content and especially with short form, I think that’s definitely, you know, a challenge for a lot of social media accounts for a lot of our organizations, especially those that do very complex, you know, work and we want to communicate about it, but you know, this very brief, um, these very brief formats make it very difficult and I always try to emphasize with my colleagues and and reminding myself that social media is a place to direct people to more information. So like, yes, those clips are very short. But you want to make sure you’re using that to direct people where they can get more information. Words, you know, whether it’s, you know, signing up volunteers or donations or or what do you want them to do after? Well, and always have some kind of idea of what you of um, what each of your posts are doing for you. So you don’t wanna, you know, just put any kind of content out there. You have 15 seconds or, or however short the clip is and you want to make sure that you’re, you’re, you know, getting the most out of your time. So, um, when you are like, again, we will go back to the capsule wardrobe, making sure you have those solid foundations, creating some, some graphics that you can reuse. Um, but also, you know, look at what your, your peers um, uh, similar organizations are doing also what your audience is sharing, even if it’s not, you know, specific to your organization, you can see what your audience is interested in and how they are spending their time. Um, I often, you know, in my, in the course that I was doing with the intent, I would often talk about thinking about walking through the day in your audience in any of your audience members shoes and thinking about how are they spending their morning? You know, is that a good time to reach them and, you know, what kind, what are they doing in the morning and how might, you know, your work relate to that in some way. Like if somebody, you know, spends their morning, you know, watering their garden and you are, um, you know, an environmental organization and how you can um kind of show that you have common interests there and relating to what they’re interested in. So looking at looking at what what they are already interested in, but also looking at what some of your competitors and, and similar organizations to yours are doing, and, you know, identifying not just looking at what they’re doing and copying them, but looking at what they’re doing, identifying what works and what doesn’t, and also how you can put a spin on things for, for your brand, um, you know, there’s, there’s a quote, like good artists copy great artists steal that. So, so we want to, so it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, perfectly legitimate to look at what other companies are doing and and try them um, in your own way. Another thing is there’s nothing new under the sun, So all of these ideas are we’re regenerating and, and recreating and which is creativity, you know, thinking of these things from all these different places and they come together to make new things. Um, so when you’re thinking about about your content and how to make it, you know, engaging. You want to go back to the things, think less about the technology and think more about, you know, the very essence of good storytelling and, and you know what makes a good photo making sure that they’re good quality and all of those things can will take you a lot farther than thinking about um friends and and styles because they change so quickly.

[00:31:48.34] spk_1:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. Yes. You have my good wishes for 2022 for the new year. I’m I’m always optimistic at the beginning of the new year. Even when all evidence maybe to the contrary. I still, I don’t know. Uh Pollyanna naivete, blissful ignorance. I I don’t know. But every year I’m optimistic. So I’m optimistic about the new year. And you have my good wishes For your 2022 for you, your family, your work, your nonprofit, all those, all those things that are important. I hope 2022 is very good to you for all of those things in all those different ways. That’s it. My good wishes for the new year. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo. But loads more time for social media outlook for 2022. Alright, that was a lot of excellent. So let’s start with calls to action. You want, you want, you want every piece of content to have some call to action, learn, learn more volunteer, donate, sign the petition.

[00:31:53.34] spk_0:
Even if it’s not a direct call to action, like, you know, sign up. Even if it’s, but even if you know the purpose like, okay, we are interacting with this audience member in order to, you know, build a better um relationship with our audience. Always make sure that that you know why you’re posting and you’re not just spending time sending things out because that’s that’s where you start to, you know, sink all your time into something that might not be paying off

[00:32:51.44] spk_1:
and in in short form audio. I mean if you want folks to go somewhere, maybe two learn more or you know, if there is an explicit call to action, learn more at a landing page, maybe you’re testing the, the, the outcomes so you have a landing page or whatever it is. Short form audio that you have to devote part of your 15 seconds to reading a web address.

[00:33:47.34] spk_0:
So with the, the short form audio, it’s always going to be um in a place they’re gonna have to be looking at something to click on it or have some kind of text with it in order to like it’ll come up in their feet or something like that. So whatever description um or you know, sometimes you, I mean in most places you can comment even beneath yourself. So wherever you see any opportunity to put in that information um is important um to do that. But as far as you know with audio as well, I think it’s also sometimes I see um and that’s actually not, this is audio and text but sometimes I’ll see like very long you RL’s um and I think it’s important to remember to use a U. R. L shorter I think um definitely. And when you’re doing audio, whether you know short for more or a little longer and you want to include a U. R. L. Make sure that you use like um Bentley dot com or something where you can customize it to be something easy to remember and you don’t have to say http excuse, you know, all of

[00:35:08.84] spk_1:
that. Uh I like to go even further. I have, I bought the the vanity domain, you know, tony dot M. A. So I could do tony through M. A. I think is Morocco. I’m pretty sure I bought that. I think I’m every two years I paid the country of Morocco I think I’m pretty sure that’s M. A. Um it’s not Mauritania, I think it’s more, I’m pretty sure it’s Morocco. So yeah, so tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant I can say, you know, non profit radio uh email sign up, you know whatever whatever. Alright so that may be worth investing in a little vanity vanity shorter too but but bitterly of course we like. Yeah, I like free resources. Absolutely. Um and then you mentioned peers, you know, evaluating what your peers are doing, what others see what other nonprofits are doing. So you mean literally looking at there at their feeds and and, and different platforms and see what they’re talking about and how they, how

[00:35:35.64] spk_0:
they talk, yep. And so you should definitely be following your pure organizations. Um, there are also a great resource for creating content. Not just, you know, if you, um, work together sometimes on on a shared project, um, you can help boost each other’s visibility on social media. But you do want to be following following your peer organizations also, you know, as a social media manager. Um, you tend to befriend the other social media managers because you know, you said, you know what other each other are going through. And so that’s actually a great community and um, following each other because then you can reach out to each other. Help. Help because you’re you’re in it for the, for the same cause. So it’s like you’re boosting the same content and and you know, helping achieve your mission overall that both of you want to achieve.

[00:36:27.33] spk_1:
That could even lead to some deeper collaboration. Maybe, you know, I’ve, I’ve had guests talk about the possibility of uh, like doing giving Tuesday, you know, combined campaigns. Mm hmm I don’t remember other examples, but but you know, just shared promotion. Pre shared projects, your promotion

[00:36:38.43] spk_0:
and one of the ones that I’ve had the most success with as far as partnership and shared promotion is um well I don’t see them as much anymore, but for a time there were twitter chats were pretty popular. Um I don’t see them as much as I used to, but whenever I’ve done them, I we would always get like tons more engagement um with our content. That was one of our I will put that on twitter chats and and tweeting at conventions. That is when we would get the most followers, the most retweets the most engagements generally. Um and now I’m thinking, you know, with the twitter um audio rooms and stuff like that. That could be instead of having a twitter chat where you’re typing it out, maybe you have people come in and listen to your panel discussion of experts talking about whatever the theme is and um introducing people to, to your brand that way.

[00:37:32.13] spk_1:
Cool. Excellent ideas. All right. You recommended paying attention to what your audience shares. Mm hmm. So you know what you want to you want to do more of what’s popular and less of what people think? Sucks. Right.

[00:38:48.32] spk_0:
So, um yeah, so, well, before I was a lecturer at Howard, I worked in the office of the Vice President for student Affairs and I was managing the social media there. Um and the school environment especially important to watch what your audience is saying because we didn’t need to watch for any problems that are coming up and stuff like that. Um but that’s the kind of thing I think you you want to look for generally and not just you know, problems um not doesn’t have to be something dire, but you know, what is, what is your audience concerned about that your organization can help answer and um you know, what are the problems that they encounter or the ways that see that they that they feel the issue that you cover, how that impacts their lives. So sometimes it might be looking at, you know exactly what they’re posting, exactly what they’re saying and sometimes it means more about like you know looking at overall and kind of observing, you know what you um you might even notice like challenges and things that come up that that your audience does not. Um but you can perhaps you know show how your work can help with these things that they may not even notice our issues um relating to your organization.

[00:39:06.62] spk_1:
What about the use of analytics to uh to evaluate what what your what your folks are sharing is that can that be valuable there?

[00:41:00.61] spk_0:
Absolutely. You should definitely be um keeping track of your analytics if you so if you don’t have a dedicated person who can look at the analytics every month, you at least want to be downloading them. So you have them um whenever I have started a new position as a social media manager. one of the first things that I do is to go to, um, all of those social media accounts and download as much of their um, analytical history as I possibly can. So if you’re already keeping and, and the thing is some platforms that you can’t go back any farther than a couple of years or a couple of months. So it’s very important to get that right away. Um, even if you can’t look at it consistently, because one day if you, if you do have someone who’s able to dedicate time to that, they have tons of content to go on where they can look at, you know, oh, we had a huge jump in in subscribers um, at this time and then they can go and look at, well, you know, what was going on at that time, What did we post? What was drawing in so much engagement? And so that’s why you really, um that’s why your your analytics are so important and it’s thus about like looking through them every day. Or I’m sorry, every month or so, um, because you know, if you don’t have a dedicated person for that, that takes a lot of time. But being familiar with, you know, around how many followers you have or being able to see the trend of, you know, what is normal engagement for us. So that then you can see when you do have a huge spike, you’ll be easily able to identify like oh here’s where that came from and here’s how we can duplicate that success also because that’s another thing you want to think about. How can we do this again? Um how can we use it for a different campaign or or in what other ways can we can we benefit from you know this content that we that did so well

[00:41:05.01] spk_1:
which are the platforms that you think have the better analytics.

[00:42:49.90] spk_0:
I definitely have opinions about that. Twitter, Twitter has great analytics um you will find so in um in a lot of communications scholarship like peer review journals and stuff when they’re when they’re talking about social media they will often use twitter twitter analytics because they’re the easiest to access. So twitter makes it very easy to to download all of your analytics from your account and put it in an Excel spreadsheet and then from there you can do whatever you want to do with it. Um there are on the on the other end I would say like for example instagram you cannot you have to go to like each individual post and see how many how many had right? So you have to type them in and yeah so and and that that allows um face meta now meta to have you know um more control over that content. Um The facebook analytics I are pretty good but again they are there, you kind of have to keep them within facebook Um So it’s harder to you know take them out and analyze them in different ways. So any platform that’s going to allow you to download them in an Excel spreadsheet is ideal. Um But you know sometimes I have had to go through and I’m writing typing them in individually from instagram. So and and that could that could also you know be a factor in deciding which platforms that you spend most of your time on because you know if you if you are focusing on if you make if you want to focus a lot on your analytics you wanna and and you want to have a platform where you can easily download them and it doesn’t take a lot of extra work. Um So you know these are all things to think about when you’re when you’re deciding you know what works best for for how you present on social media.

[00:43:15.50] spk_1:
What’s another one that’s good besides twitter Analytics one judging the analytics.

[00:43:20.00] spk_0:
I mean I do I like facebook uh the analytics that they that the way that they’re analytics

[00:43:27.47] spk_1:
are in the

[00:44:20.59] spk_0:
classroom right? You can’t export them. So um I’m thinking I mean for the most they tried there so you can I would also recommend. So I don’t know of twitter is the best ones, I don’t know of any other other ones don’t really compare to that but yeah but twitter is also starting to lock down um some of that like it’s not quite as much um data as you could get it before so um but there’s also you know platforms where like Hoot suite for example where you can have multiple social media platforms and see your analytics aggregated there. I do caution though that when you use um you use one of those platforms um the numbers might be a little bit different like there might be like some lag time between you know twitter and twitter on Hoot suite you know so um and also like the labels and the way that data is is labeled so you know on one platform a certain action might be called interactions whereas on another platform they’re called engagements and how they measure each of those things and what they’re called could could be different. So it’s just you know making sure we’re watching for those.

[00:44:52.69] spk_1:
Why would like a twitter start restricting the the robustness of the of the analytics the way you just said they’re they’re they’re tightening that up. Why would they why would they offer less?

[00:45:01.29] spk_0:
You want to charge for it? You want to start

[00:45:03.45] spk_1:
charging a fee to get it or

[00:45:29.19] spk_0:
you know what that’s and you know we we don’t know until they until it’s public. So that is 11 thing that could, I’m I haven’t um I’m not sure why it’s more difficult to get information but you know it’s beneficial to companies you know that information is money to them. So it is beneficial to them when they, you know, have proprietary um keeping content that that is valuable to them. I would um but twitter,

[00:45:43.49] spk_1:
they could have it too and share it with us too. I mean they’re they’re only sharing it with users. Users can only get there there little bit. The company is welcome to aggregate the hundreds of millions of users. They can do whatever you want with your proprietary data. But let me have my little share what are you taking in the era of transparency? What are you taking my little share away for?

[00:45:57.29] spk_0:
You would think, But I don’t know. All

[00:46:36.38] spk_1:
Right. You don’t have all the answers. Nobody does know these black boxes that we’ve all signed onto 2020 years. Sometimes they’re more annoyance than than than than additive but sometimes not not, I’m not, not saying I’m I’m opposed to social media obviously, but they can be very annoying, very annoying. We don’t even, we could spend a whole hour talking about facebook or a day about the annoyances behind facebook and in the shift from organic to paid, it’s just to me it’s just corporate green. All right.

[00:46:39.48] spk_0:
But I think a lot of that is, you know power from the users and putting it back in the hands of the company because users do have so much power and we have a lot of their ideas come from the users that are using the platforms. So I think it’s, you know, wanting to control how, how people use that platform and the information that you can get from it.

[00:46:59.28] spk_1:
Yeah, I mean,

[00:47:03.77] spk_0:
it’s

[00:47:28.88] spk_1:
exploitation. I mean, I’ll use, I’ll use facebook the most egregious example as, as the example, but you think goaded us all in, you know, they have 2.5 billion users now, a third of the planet is they, they brought us in and then they, and then they shepherd uh, you know, much less organic reach now. You want the same organic, you want the same reach, add pay for it, pay for it, pay us pay Goldman Sachs and uh, and you can have that, we have your reach back that we gave you originally and you know, it’s, it’s egregious. It’s uh, just exploitation.

[00:47:43.38] spk_0:
And I, I feel like social media has so much power for bringing people together and, and so that’s why I caution about like with trends and stuff we do need to be critical about, you know, is this trend, was this trend created because it’s something users wanted or because the company needs to innovate and grow. You know, so that’s another reason why you can wait and give yourself some time to see which trends are taking on and what makes sense for you because you don’t want to just be throwing your your time into this machine that is just there to make money for them. You want to make sure that you’re getting the best value out of that,

[00:48:37.77] spk_1:
what a beautiful segue to, to a closing section, let’s talk about, you know, every every platform is not for every non profit you know, you’ve you’ve made the point already, you know, you can uh squat on your account, you create your account and just and just squat it, hold it, but but every, you know, even the bigger platforms, we don’t have to be everywhere.

[00:48:42.07] spk_0:
Exactly, so,

[00:48:43.29] spk_1:
you know,

[00:50:17.66] spk_0:
you definitely right, so there are like you and this is something I say in my class to like in learning about social media and there’s constantly new stuff, you do not have to know everything about it, you do not have to be on every platform, your audience is not on every platform, no single person can manage all of the social media accounts that their social media platforms that there are. So I think the most important thing, you know, is to get back to that good structure and knowing who your audience is and um how to communicate with them and then, you know, using the different quirks of those social media accounts and different features to, to tweak that, but um as far as, you know, you might also want to think of as we’re talking about, you know, these big companies and what data they’re keeping and control and stuff like that, that might also be an a factor in deciding which platforms you’re on like um, back to N 10. Um, and 10 is no longer on Facebook because you know, the, some of the business practices that Facebook has used do um, do not, you know, does not work well with end transmission and the ways that they operate and you know, those are things you have to weigh that. Um, you know, if a lot of your, your audiences on facebook and that’s the only way to reach them, then maybe, you know, you do stay, but you know, you have this understanding of like um, that there are issues and were working around them and trying to make the best of these environments, but you know, they are businesses and so we need to be smart about where we’re spending our time.

[00:51:22.46] spk_1:
Excellent advice, very savvy. Thank you. All right. Sharos King Matthews, you’ll find her at narrows A C K. I’m gonna spell her name so you can find her C H A R R O S C King, Thank you very much. Great, great advice. Thank you my pleasure Next week, the log for j software vulnerability with Joshua pesky, eh, if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C o. It may be a new year, but some things never change. Our creative producer is

[00:51:23.54] spk_3:
claire Meyerhoff shows. Social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is

[00:51:28.24] spk_1:
our web guy

[00:51:41.66] spk_3:
and this music is by scott Stein. Thank you for that. Affirmation scotty. You’re with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out

[00:51:43.14] spk_1:
and be

[00:51:53.36] spk_3:
great.

Nonprofit Radio for December 20, 2021: Zombie Loyalists

My Guest:

Peter Shankman: Zombie Loyalists

Peter Shankman is a 5x best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book “Zombie Loyalists” focuses on customer service; creating rabid fans who do your social media, marketing and PR for you. This is our annual rebroadcast of a show with very smart ideas for you to think about over the holidays. It originally aired 12/19/14.

 

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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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[00:00:04.14] spk_3:
Hello

[00:00:52.94] spk_2:
And welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the embarrassment of Brome Hydro sis if I had to walk through the idea that you missed this week’s show. Zombie Loyalists. Peter Shankman is a five time best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book, Zombie Loyalists, focuses on customer service, creating rabid fans who do your social media marketing and PR for you. This is our annual rebroadcast of a show with very smart ideas

[00:00:57.71] spk_1:
for you to think about

[00:01:19.84] spk_2:
over the holidays. It originally aired December 19, Antonis, Take two Thank you for the year We’re sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o. Here is a zombie loyalists.

[00:02:41.54] spk_1:
Peter Shankman is a well known and often quoted social media marketing and public relations strategist. His latest book is Zombie Loyalists. He wants you to create rabid fans who do your social media marketing and PR for you. He’s got super ideas and very valuable stories. I’m very glad Peter Shankman is with me in the studio. He is the founder of Haro. Help, a reporter out connecting journalists with sources in under two years from starting it in his apartment. Horror was sending out 1500 media queries a week to more than 200,000 sources worldwide. It was acquired by Vocus in 2010. He’s the founder and CEO of the Geek Factory, a boutique social media, marketing and PR strategy firm in New York City. Peter is on NASA’s civilian Advisory Council. You’ll find him at Shanklin dot com, and he’s at Peter Shankman on Twitter. His latest book is Zombie Loyalists, using great service to create rabid fans. I’m very glad his book brings him to nonprofit radio and the studio Welcome, Peter. Good to be here, honey. Thanks Pleasure. You, um, live on the West Side of Manhattan And you and you. There’s a there’s a pretty well known five star steakhouse. I’ll get Wolfgang’s not far from you,

[00:02:44.54] spk_0:
but you pass

[00:02:45.28] spk_1:
it to go to a different steakhouse. Correct? Morton’s correct. Why is that?

[00:04:33.94] spk_0:
I am a zombie loyalist to Morton’s. What does that mean? I, uh love the service, the attention to detail, the quality, the the sort of where everyone knows my name mentality. When I walk into that Morton’s or any Morton’s around the world, they have a tremendous, uh, customer relationship management system. When I call one number, uh, in New York or anywhere in the world, it they know who I am by my cell phone. And, uh, I’m treated with just, you know, phenomenal, uh, happiness to to hear from me and my wishes are granted as it were. I we have a happy hour holiday party coming up at Morton’s next couple of days. And, you know, as always, I forgot to call and make a reservation. And, you know, I called yesterday and said, Hey, I need a, uh, she has to get a reservation for seven people. Um, you know, Thursday night at seven p.m. Which is, you know, the week of the holiday party, and, uh, they looked and they said, Oh, well, and then I guess their computer system kicked in. Of course, Mr Shank, not a problem at all. We’ll get the frame and we you know we’ll have. We’ll have a great booth for you that, um, you know, and we’ll we’ll tell us the names of people attending and, you know, you know, you know, they’re gonna have specialized menus for them and their names on they Really, they have a really high level of service that they provide, not just to me. That’s the beauty of it. You know, it’s one thing, everybody. Yeah, it’s one thing that they just provided to me, but they do that for everyone. And that is huge because, you know, being able to call when a normal person makes reservation. And not that I’m special. I’m actually rather abnormal. But when a normal person makes a reservation and says, Uh, no, Martin says. Okay, great. Are you celebrating anything? So, yeah, it’s my wife’s birthday that’s always asked to anyone who calls. I said, Oh, you know what? It’s my wife’s birthday. Great. What’s her name? And her name is Megan. Whatever. And you go in and they and you sit down on the on the on the menu. It says, Happy birthday, Make it. And then Megan, whoever she happens to be, we’ll spend the next 45 minutes, you know, taking 50 selfies with her menu and and that will go online. And when her friends, you know, want that same experience, they’re going to go Morton’s,

[00:05:04.54] spk_1:
you say, uh, in in the book, you get the customers you want by being beyond awesome to the customers you have. And that’s why I wanted to start with that Morton story, which is in the middle of the book. But they do it for everybody, and then they have the V. I. P. S as well. And there’s the terrific story of you tweeting tell that story. That’s a good story. It’s

[00:07:24.54] spk_0:
a good story. I love stories. I was flying home from a day trip to Florida and was exhausted and starving, and they trip meeting you’re flying down and slow down at six a.m. At a lunch meeting, flew back the same day. You know, one of those one of those days, and I jokingly said, the tweet Hey, Morton’s, why don’t you meet me at Newark Airport when I land with a porterhouse in two hours? Ha ha ha ha ha. Um, you know, I said it the same way you’d say, Hey, winter, please stop snowing. Things like that and I landed. Uh, find my driver and sit next to my driver is a, uh is a waiter in a tuxedo with the Mortons bag. They saw my tweet. They put it together. They managed to bring me a, uh, a steak and, you know, as great of a story as it is, it’s that’s that’s it’s a great stunt and it’s a great story and it wasn’t stage, and it was completely amazing. But, you know, that’s not what they’re about. They’re not about delivering states airports. They’re about making a great meal for you and treating you like world when you come in. And you know, if they just did that, if they just delivered the state of the airport, but their quality and service sucked, you know, it wouldn’t be a story because, you know, you know what they did for Peter. But, you know, my steak is cold. So what it really comes down to is the fact they do treat everyone like kings. And that’s that’s really, really important, because what ends up happening, you have a great experience importance. And then you tell the world you know Oh, yeah, Great dinner last night. that was amazing. I would totally eat there again. And as we move to this new world where you know, review sites are going away and I don’t I don’t need to go to yelp reviews from people I don’t know. You know, if they’re shills or whatever the case may be, I don’t know. Or trip Advisor. Same thing. I want people in my network quite trust and and people in their network who they trust by default, I trust. So that’s gonna be that’s already happening automatically. You know, when I when I land in L. A and I type in steakhouse, uh, you know, not me. I know, I know where the steak house in l. A. But if someone types into Google Maps or Facebook Steak House in Los Angeles, you know they’ll see all the steak houses on Google map. But if any of their friends have been to any of them, they’ll see those first. And if they had a good experience, only if the sentiment is positive. Well, they see those first. And that’s pretty amazing, because if you think about that, the simple act of tweeting out of photo Oh, my God. thanks so much. Martin’s love this. That’s positive sentiment. The network knows that. And so if you’re looking for a steakhouse, you know, and your friend six months ago, I had that experience. Oh, my God. Amazing state. This is a great place. There’s a the sentiment’s gonna be there. And and And the network will know that network will show you that steakhouse because you trust your friend.

[00:07:25.84] spk_1:
And this is where we start to cultivate zombie loyalists. Exactly. Through this awesome customer service of the customers, you you have to say more about

[00:08:22.64] spk_0:
zombie. I mean, you have so many companies out there who are trying to get the next greatest customer. You know, you see all the ads, you know, the Facebook post. You know, We’re at 990 followers are 10 are 1000. Follower gets a free gift. Well, that’s kind of saying screw you to the original 990 followers who you had who were there since the beginning. We don’t care about you. We want that 1000 you know, that’s not cool. Um, the the the companies who see their numbers rise and you see their fans increase and their their, um um revenues go up are the ones who are nice to the customers they have. Hey, you know, customer 8 52. It was really nice of you to join us a couple months ago. How? You know, how are you? We noticed that you posted on something about a you know, your car broke down. Well, you know, we’re not in the car business, but, you know, your your two blocks from our our closest outlet or whatever. And you know, if you if you need to come in, have a cup of coffee when I use the phone, Whatever. You know, those little things that you can do that that that really focus on the customers you have and make the customers. You have the ones who are the zombies who tell other customers how great you

[00:08:35.54] spk_1:
are. And this all applies to non profits, certainly as well in

[00:09:12.94] spk_0:
the system. But even more so, I mean, if you you know, non profits are constantly worried about how to how to make the most value out of their dollar and how to keep the dollar stretching further and further, and you know you have this massive audience who has come to you, who is a non profit? Who said to You know, we want to help here we are volunteering our help and just simply treating them with the thanks that they deserve, not just as simple. Hey, thanks for joining us, but actually reaching out, asking what they want, asking how they like to get their information. Things like that will greatly increase your donations as well as, um, making them go out and tell everyone how awesome you are and letting them do your PR for you. And

[00:09:17.22] spk_1:
that’s what a zombie loyalist does. And this is for this. Could be donors could be volunteers organization who aren’t able to give a lot. But giving time is enormous.

[00:09:25.27] spk_0:
And if you know if they have such a great time doing it, they’ll bring friends

[00:09:29.84] spk_1:
as zombies.

[00:09:49.84] spk_0:
Do you know zombies have one purpose in life? A. Real zombies have one purpose in life that’s to feed. It doesn’t matter. How the Mets are doing it doesn’t matter, you know, because chance that they lost anyway. But it doesn’t matter how, how anyone is doing, you know, or what’s going on in the world and any kind of bad. It doesn’t matter what matters with zombies. Where are they gonna get their next meal? Because they feed and they have to infect more people. Otherwise they will die zombie loyalists to the same thing. All they have to do is make sure that their customer, they tell the world, and we all have that friend who does it. You know that one friend who eats nothing but the olive garden because oh my God’s greatest breadsticks everywhere, you know and they will drag your ask the olive garden every single time they get that chance. That’s a zombie loyalist,

[00:10:04.75] spk_1:
and you want them to do that for your nonprofit, and there’s a big advantage to being a smaller, smaller organization. You could be so much more high touch, and we’re gonna talk about all that. We got the full hour with Peter Shankman. Gotta go away for a couple of minutes, stay with us.

[00:10:35.54] spk_2:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. You’re 2022 writing. Do you have time to do all the projects that you need to do? Like social posts and blog posts, newsletters and annual report Web updates board reports, fundraising appeals and acknowledgment messages. What about your staff Communications? What about your process? Documentation? What about training and on boarding documents?

[00:10:51.74] spk_1:
Do you need help with writing

[00:10:53.52] spk_2:
In 2022?

[00:10:55.64] spk_1:
I mean, you can talk to them about

[00:11:24.24] spk_2:
2023, but that seems premature. But if you need help in 2022, with all your projects talk to turn to, they can create the content for you. They’ll get to know your tone and your messaging. They’ll create in your voice, turn to communications. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o. Now back to zombie loyalists.

[00:11:27.44] spk_1:
Peter, it doesn’t take much to stand out in the customer service world, does it?

[00:11:52.24] spk_0:
It really doesn’t, you know. And the reason for that is because we expect to be treated like crap. You know, if you think that I I I love this example. Whenever I give speeches, I asked, I asked everyone the audience I’m like who here has had a great flight recently, Like at least one person raised their hand. I’m like, Okay, what made it great and without fail. And I said, Well, we took off on time and I had the seat I was assigned and we landed on time. And so you paid for a service. They delivered that service and you’re over the freaking moon about it. Like that’s the state that we’ve become. You know, that’s how bad customer service has been that you are just beyond thrilled that they did exactly what they said they were gonna do it. Nothing more.

[00:12:05.51] spk_1:
Less than 20 minutes in the post office line.

[00:12:24.44] spk_0:
And I’m ecstatic Exactly. You know, it’s so we really are at a point where we only have to be one level above crap. I’m not even asking my client to be good. Just one level of crap. You know, if everyone else’s crap and you’re one level above that, you’re gonna win. It’s my favorite. One of my favorite jokes. Um, the two guys are out in the woods hunting in the woods and or just jogging and was the first one sees a bear and they see these bearings bears raised and he’s about to strike. And the first one reaches down and tightens up his laces on his running shoes and see what the studios don’t be. Don’t be. Don’t be an idiot. You can’t outrun a bear because I don’t need to. I just need to outrun you. You know, I love that joke because it’s it’s so true. That’s the concept. You know, all you have to do is be just a little bit better than everyone else and you’ll win the whole ballgame.

[00:12:50.14] spk_1:
Now we have to set some things up internally in order to have the structure in place to create these The zombie loyalists.

[00:16:14.14] spk_0:
Yeah. I mean, you have a you have a company where the majority of people in your company are afraid to do anything outside the norm, you know? I mean, look at look at the cell phone company. You know, they call them cause you have a problem, right? 18 T or T mobile. You call them, you have a problem. They are actually the customer service people to handle your caller, actually judged and rewarded based on how quickly they can get you off the phone. You know, not on whether or not they fix your problem, but how fast they can get you off the phone. Which means how many more? Cause I remember I worked when I worked in America Online. We all had to do a day of customer service every month just to see what it was like. That was a brilliant idea. But, you know, again, it was a system called Vantive, where you’d sign on and as soon as you signed on, if you want to call, you know, that was tacked against you. And if you were in a call and and it went over a certain amount of time, that was tacked against you, So the decks were stacked Not in the favor of the customer. There are some companies out there who allow their customer service employees to simply be smarter about what they do and do whatever it is they need to do to fix the problem. Um, you know, my favorite story about this Verizon, uh, wireless. I went overseas as in Dubai, and I landed to buy and I turned on my phone. I had gotten global roaming on my phone, Which, you know, $20 for every 100 megabytes. Okay, so I land and I turn on my phone and it says, um, like before I’m even off the plane. I get a text that you’ve used $200 in roaming charges on what the hell you know, $300 by the time I get off the plane. Like something’s up here. So I called Verizon and a nice guy answer the phone and Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, the first thing that was Yes. So you do have global roaming, but it doesn’t work in Dubai, I’m like, Okay, well, that’s not really global. That’s more hemispherical. Roaming, I think is the issue. And so the, uh I said, Well, look, I’m gonna be here for a week. I said, you know what? You have my credit card on file build me like I don’t know. Can you give me, like, 1000 bucks and just let me have the phone for, like, the week? And you know, daddy, you know, 500 bucks, I won’t go over two gigs. Would just do something for me. Sorry, sir. I’m not authorized to do that. Um, you can. I’m like, So what do I have? He’s like, Well, you can pay $20.48 a megabyte. I’m like, I’m sorry. Seriously, which equates essentially two. I will be charged $20.48 seconds, $20 or 48 cents for every I think at the time was for every four seconds of the video Gangnam style, if I decided to watch on my phone Like this is pretty ridiculous. So I simply hung up, hung up on Verizon. I went down the street to do by the mall of the Emirates, which is the largest mall in the world, has a freaking ski slope in it. And I’m not joking. It has a ski slope in the small and, uh, went to one of the 86 different electronic stores in this mall. Uh, but an international unlocked version of the same exact cell phone I have went next door to the local SIM card store, bought a SIM card that gave me 20 gigabytes of data and 1000 minutes of talk for $40. I then put that in my phone because it’s an android phone. I simply typed in my user name and password for Google and everything imported, and Verizon did not get a penny on that trip. Um, how easy would have been for Verizon to say Okay, you know what? We’ll cut your brake uh, they still make a lot of money off me. And I would tell the world how great Verizon was to work with and how wonderful, how helpful they were. Instead, They guaranteed that I will never they will never make a penny for me on any international trip. And I take, what, 15 of them a year. Because now my cell phone, um, my international cell phone that I bought all I do is pop out the SIM card in my land. Wherever I am, put in a new SIM card. So

[00:16:14.85] spk_1:
and you’re speaking and writing and telling bad

[00:17:32.54] spk_0:
stories, Of course. And and every time I tell the story about Verizon, I make it a little worse. Apparently, Verizon, uh, tests out the durability of their phone by throwing them kittens. I read this on the Internet Must be true, but, you know, not necessarily. But you know, the concept that that all they had to do, all they had to do was in power mark customers. And it wasn’t Mark’s phone. Mark was a really nice guy, but he was not allowed to do that. He would get fired if he tried to do a deal like that for me. And so it’s this concept, you know. And the funny thing is, it comes down to if you really want to go down the road. In terms of a public company like Verizon of where the issue is, you can even trace it to fiduciary responsibility because the fiduciary responsibility of any company CEO all the way down to the employee is to make money for the shareholders. Okay, that’s the future. Responsibility means by not allowing me, they’re not allowing Mark, the customer service agent to to help me and take a different tack. He’s actually losing money. Too many CEOs think about the next quarter, so we have to make our numbers. Next quarter, I’m fired. Companies in other countries tend to think of the next quarter century, And they make a much bigger difference because they think, Okay, what can we do now that will have impact in the next 5, 10, 15 years, you know, and really implement the revenue that we have and and augment and companies Americans don’t think about that, and that’s a big problem. I

[00:17:39.24] spk_1:
buy a product line, uh, has a lot of natural and recycled materials its seventh generation and their, um, their tagline is that in in our every decision, we must consider the impact on the next seven generations. It comes from an American Indian.

[00:17:48.98] spk_0:
It’s a great it’s a great line. I mean, just think about how much money Verizon would have made for me in the past three years. Just just in my overseas, you’d be telling

[00:17:55.71] spk_1:
a story about like them about Martin’s like the one of Morton’s

[00:18:19.64] spk_0:
look, a lot of people listen to me and they for a time when you Googled roaming charges variety When you Google Verizon roaming charges. My story about how I saved all this money came up first because I did the math. And if I had not called Mark and bought my own self on and done this, I would have come home with $31,000 cell phone bill and your damn of what I’m gonna do anything about that would be like up Too bad. Sorry should read the fine print

[00:18:23.91] spk_1:
and plus the the employee who sold you the quote international

[00:18:27.56] spk_0:
plan, right?

[00:18:28.53] spk_1:
I’m sure you told her,

[00:18:29.93] spk_0:
she said, where we’re going, I’m going to Canada and I’m going to Dubai. I’m assuming she didn’t know where to buy, was she? Probably. It was near Canada, but, uh, yeah, Long story short, I couldn’t use it.

[00:18:40.14] spk_1:
All right. So employees have to be empowered. There has to be. We have to be changing a thinking too. I mean, the customer has to come first. The donor of the volunteer

[00:20:41.74] spk_0:
Don’t volunteer. You get at the end of the day, where is your money coming from? I don’t care if your nonprofit or Fortune 100, where’s the money coming from? You know, and if you we see it happening over and over again, we’re seeing what you’re seeing right now. Play out every single day with the company uber, um, and uber. It’s so funny because uber makes, uh, you know, they’re valued at $40 billion right now, but that doesn’t mean anything that doesn’t mean anything. If people are running away in droves, which people are, there’s a whole delete your uber app movement. People are God’s people are leaving. What’s the problem? Well, it’s several number one. That uber is run by a bunch of guys who honor the bro code. The company was actually started by a guy who, in on business in business insider, said he started the company to get laid. Um, his goal was to always have a black car When he was leaving a restaurant, uh, to impress the girl he was with that he came out and said that And you see that culture run rampant throughout uber, um, from their God mode, where they can see they actually created. It was, uh I don’t know where I read this business insider as well. It was They created a hookup page that showed or or or or walk of Shame Page that showed where, uh, women were leaving certain apartments like on weekends going, leaving certain place on weekends, going back to their home. Um, it was obvious that they, you know, met some guy like they did that. And then, of course, just their whole surge pricing mentality, which is, you know, two days ago there was a couple days ago. It was a the terrorists of the figures, a terrorist attack in Sydney at that at that bakery and Sydney, uh, uber and Sydney instituted surge pricing for people trying to get out of harm’s way. You know, and and they later refund it. Always a computer glitch. You know, I’m sorry. You have a stop button. And you can when you see something happening like that, this has to be someone in the office, because you know what? Not cool. We’re going to take care of that and and hit the stop button. And it was Yeah, bad tons and tons and tons of bad publicity. You know, I was having an argument with one of my facebook page facebook dot com slash peter Shankman Because they said, Oh, you know, um, so what? They don’t they don’t turn on surge pricing, don’t have enough cabs there, and, you know, people can’t get home. I said I’m pretty sure that the only I’m sure that no one had cab companies there. I’m sure that there wasn’t anyone who had enough cars, their private cabs, ubers, whatever. Yet the only stories I read about companies screwing up during the event where uber not Joe’s Sydney cab company. You know, I didn’t see him screwing up because he didn’t turn on surge pricing. You gotta You gotta respect your customer. You have to,

[00:21:07.34] spk_1:
As we’re training for that then not only, uh, trying to change their mind shift. Well, in in trying to change that mindset rewards for for customers, for employees that do go, do go the

[00:22:11.74] spk_0:
extra mile. Well, first of all, if you give the employees the ability to do it to go the extra mile and I understand they won’t get fired, you’re not gonna get into. I always tell every one of my employees you’re never gonna get in trouble for spending a little extra money to try and keep a customer happy. You’ll get fired for not doing it. You know, you get fired for, not for seeing an opportunity to fix someone and not taking not doing everything that you could. You know? Ritz Carlton is famous for that. Ritz Carlton hires people not because whether they can fold a bedsheet but for how well they understand people. Because in Rich Collins mind, it’s much more important to be A people person and be able to be empathetic. And that is such a key word. Empathy is just so sorely lacking. You know how many have called customer service? Yeah, you know, I have to have to change my flight. My my my aunt just died. I really need to 100. Okay, great. That’s $300. I just want to go an hour earlier. You know, you show up at the airport, your bag is overweight by half a pound. $75. I just Can you Can you just cut me some slack? Nope. So empathy and giving the custom, giving the employee the ability to understand that the customer that sometimes you can make exceptions and it is okay to make changes.

[00:22:18.91] spk_1:
And this is where a smaller organization has huge

[00:22:33.84] spk_0:
advantage. It’s easier to change. That’s what kills me. You know, I go to these. I try to frequent small businesses when I can I go to some of these small businesses and they won’t they act like large businesses, you know, in the respect that they don’t have a like they

[00:22:35.45] spk_1:
want to be respected. Almost. They

[00:23:14.14] spk_0:
Don’t have, like, a 66,000 page code that they have to adhere to. They can simply, uh, do something on the fly. And yet, for whatever reason, they won’t do it. And and it’s the most frustrating things. Like guys, you’re acting like a big you’re acting like Mega Lo Mart here, you know, And you’re not Mega Lo Mart, and you’re just Joe’s house of stationary, whatever it is and you know, Not be able to help me. You’re pretty much killing yourself because you don’t have 85 billion customers that come through the door after me, you know? But I have a pretty big network, and for small business to get killed socially, as social becomes more and more how we communicate, you know, it’s just craziness.

[00:23:23.64] spk_1:
It’s, you know, we’re pretty much in the world. I think we’re something almost hasn’t happened to you unless unless you share it.

[00:25:44.34] spk_0:
I joked that, you know, if I can take a selfie. Was I really there? Um but it’s true, you know, we we do live in a world where, you know, I remember God 10 years ago. Maybe not even not even 10 years ago. I was one of the first people to have a phone in my camera you know, and it was like drinking from that’s what I said. Yeah, I can’t find my phone right. And it was like a I think it’s a 0.8 megapixel, you know, it looked like I was taking a picture with a potato. But it was, um it was this. I remember it was 2000 and two, and I was in Chase Bank and there was a woman arguing with the teller, and I pulled out my video. You know, it was it was the crappiest video you’ve ever seen. But I pulled it out and I said, You know, uh, I started recording, and the woman behind the woman behind the counter was the woman behind the counter was talking to the customers, saying, You do not speak to me that way. You get out of this bank right now and the customers saying, I just wanted my balance, and you and the manager comes over and get this whole thing on my little crappy three g Motorola phone phone. And I remember I posted online, and Gawker picks it up. I gave my email. You know, my headline I put on my blog was, you know, chase where the relationship is that Go after yourself, you know? And it was It just got tons of play. And then Gawker picked it up. It went everywhere. Totally viral. So it’s one of those things here, just like, you know, this was in 2000 and two. It’s 12 years later. How the hell can you assume that nothing is being that you’re not being recorded? You know, I I remember blowing I sneezed a couple weeks ago and, uh ah, not to get too graphic here, but I needed a tissue big time after I was done, anything. I remember going through my pockets looking for desperate, looking for tissue and looking around making sure I wasn’t on camera somewhere that someone didn’t grab that. Give me the next viral sensation, you know? I mean, I went God, I went to high school with eight blocks from here, right? If the amount of cameras that are in Lincoln Center today Were there in 1919, 90 be having this conversation entirely, I’d be having this conversation behind bulletproof himself. And, um, yeah, so you know, you’d be you’d be talking to You have to get special clearance to visit me, probably at the Supermax in Colorado. So, you know, it’s it’s one of those things that you’re just like my kid, who’s who’s almost two years old now is going to grow up with absolutely no expectation of privacy the same way that we grew up with an expectation of privacy. And I’m thankful for that because she will make a lot less stupid moves. You know? I mean, God, the things that I thought, you know, in, in, in, in high school I thought the stupidest in the world. Thank God there wasn’t a way for me to broadcast that to the world in real time. Jeez, thank God

[00:25:59.64] spk_1:
creating these zombie loyalists. And we’ve got to change some. We’ve got to change culture and thinking and reward systems. Let’s go back to the cost of all this. Why is this a better investment than trying to just focus on new donors?

[00:27:20.74] spk_0:
I love I love this analogy and I’ll give you a fun analogy. Let’s look at a bar and there’s a very cute girl across the across the park and she catches my eye catcher. I go up to her go. You know you don’t know me. I am amazing in bed. You should finish your drink right now. Come home. Let’s get it on. I’m gonna impress. I’m that good chance that she’s gonna throw a drink in my face. Go back talking to her friends. I’ve done a lot of research on this. That’s probably understand. Now let’s assume let’s assume an alternate world. I’m sitting there on my phone. I’m just playing like, you know, some words with friends like that. And, uh, she’s over there talking to her friends, one of her friends. Holy crap. That’s Peter. I think that’s Peter Shankman. I’ve heard him speak. He’s in this fantasy world. I’m single, too. He’s I think he’s single and he’s having this amazing guy. I know he has a cat you have. You should totally go talk to him. At the very least, I’m getting this girl’s number. That’s PR. Okay. And what do we trust? More me with my, you know, fancy suit collar Going over the seventies, leaders did. Hi, I’m amazing. Or the girl saying, Hey, we’ve been friends since third grade. I’m recommending that guy. You should trust me on this, You know, obviously that that’s where, uh, good customer service comes into play. And that’s where corporate culture comes into play. Because if I have a great experience with you and at your company, I’m going to tell my friend when they’re looking and I will stake my personal reputation on it. And there’s nothing stronger than that.

[00:27:26.19] spk_1:
And these are the people who want to breed

[00:27:27.55] spk_0:
as it’s stronger than advertising stronger the marketing

[00:27:30.74] spk_1:
and they’re gonna share. People

[00:27:55.94] spk_0:
want to share that. I think about the Internet runs on two things. It runs on drama, drama and bragging or bragging and drama. And if you if you need any proof of that, you know, go and look at all the hashtags with crap that’s happened, you know, bad customer service, bad, whatever. But then look at all the good Hashtags. You know, when our flight’s delayed for three hours and we lose our seat. Oh my God, I hate this airline. Worst airline ever. But when we get upgraded right hashtag first class bitches or whatever it is, you know something stupid like that and the whole because we love to share. It’s only a great experience if we can tell the world, and it’s only a bad experience if we can make everyone else miserable about it as well.

[00:28:54.94] spk_2:
It’s time for Tony’s take two Thank you for the year. It’s been another the second in a row up and down years. But you can count on nonprofit radio, and I know I can count on you are consistent, loyal podcast listeners year after year or some of you. Some of you knew this year. Welcome. Whether you knew this year whether you’ve been with us for a long time. I mean, this is show # 570. So, have you been with us 570 shows? Um, that’s a long time that I’ve been here. I’ve been here 570, however long. Thank you. Thanks for being with us. Yeah. And up and down year yet again. But, you know, you can count on nonprofit radio,

[00:29:00.74] spk_1:
and I know I can count on you.

[00:29:31.84] spk_2:
That’s the That’s the bargain. So thank you. Thanks for the year. We’re gonna be off next week and then and then back in early January. Thanks very much. So glad to have you with me. That is, tony. Stick to We’ve got Boo Koo, but loads more time for the classic zombie loyalists.

[00:29:41.34] spk_1:
Peter, you have a golden rule of social media that that a good number of customers like to share and people are going to keep doing it.

[00:31:15.14] spk_0:
People will always share again. It goes back to the concept that if you create great stuff, people want to share it because people like to be associated with good things. If you create bad stuff and buy stuff, I can meet, I mean anything from a bad experience. Too bad content. People not only won’t share that, but we go out of their way to tell people how terrible you are. Um, you know, how many times have you seen companies fail horribly? Uh, you know, after major disasters when companies are tweeting, um, you know, completely unrelated things after after a random school shooting? Uh, no. It was after the shooting at the theater in Aurora, Colorado at the Dark Knight. Um, the NRA tweets. Hey, shooters, what’s your plans for this weekend? You know, and I’m just going, really, you know, but And of course, the thing was, the thing was retweeted millions of times, you know, with the sort of shame on the NRA. So we we’re a society. Like I said earlier, that loves to share when when great things happen to us, but loves to tell the world when we’re miserable, because we’re only truly miserable. We make everyone else miserable right now, Um, it’s funny you mentioned, uh, generosity series, Uh, the one of my favorite stories, which goes to sort of a bigger picture of culture. And, um, somehow when you’re just doing your job because that’s what you’re supposed to do your job. But you don’t realize there are ways to get around that. I I listened to your podcast, among others, when I’m running through Central Park, Um, and more like, if you know, my body type more like lumbering through Central Park. But I get there. I’m an iron man. I have, I have that. And so I go through Central Park and it’s super early in the morning cause I usually have meetings and I don’t run fast. Um, I run like I really don’t run fast, but But as I’m running, But

[00:31:24.23] spk_1:
let’s give you the credit. You have done a bunch of iron man. I have try.

[00:33:28.64] spk_0:
I do. I do it, you know, my mother tells me that I just have very poor judgment in terms of what sports I should do. But, um, on the flip side. I’m also a skydiver, which is with my weight is awesome. Yeah, I fall better than anyone. Um but so I’m running through central park. Last year it was February, February of of 13 and 14 of this year and it was probably about 4. 45 in the morning because I had a an eight. AM meeting. I had to do 10 miles. So 45 in the morning, I’m running about but around 19, 79th, 80th Street on the east side, in the park and a cop pulls me over and I said, What are you doing? I look at him, you know, I’m wearing black spandex. I have a hat. It’s five degrees. I don’t like what I’m playing checkers, you know? But, you know, I’m like, I’m running and he’s like, Okay, can you stop running? I’m like, Okay, because they give the park’s closed like, No, it’s not like I’m in it. Look around. There are other people who know part does nobody else exam. I’m like, he’s like, Do you have any idea on you? I’m like, No, I’m running. He goes, What’s your name? I’m like, seriously, like I’m writing you a summons. I’m like you’re writing me a summons for exercising. I just want to clarify that you’re writing music, and sure enough, I wrote me a summons for exercising in Central Park before it opened. The charge was breaking the violating curfew. You know, I’m like I get the concept of the curfew is to keep people out after two a.m. It’s not to prevent them going in early to exercise, to be healthy. I’m like, I’m not carrying, you know, a six pack. I’m not drinking a big gulp. I’m not smoking. I’m you know, I’m doing something healthy, and you’re writing me a summons for it. Um, and I said, you know, I’m gonna have a field day with this. I said I I kind of have some fathers. There’s gonna be a lot of fun. I’m not, You know, I know you’re just doing your job, sir, even though you have the discretion not to, but Okay, so I go back home, take a picture of my ticket, I email it to a friend of mine in New York Post. You know, front page, New York Post. Next day. No running from this ticket. You know for that. Great New York Times covered it. Runner’s world covered. I mean, I went everywhere. Gawker covered it, you know? And And my whole thing was just like, Dude, you have to scratch. Look at me. You know, I’m not I’m not even going super fast, for God’s sake. I’m just I’m just trying to exercise here, you know? And of course, I went to court, and I beat it. But how much money they cost the city for me to go to court, fight this thing? You know, every employee you have to give your employees the power of discretion. The power of empathy to make their own decisions. If you go by the book, bad things will happen.

[00:33:36.14] spk_1:
And again, small shops. So much easier to do. Flat line, flat organizations.

[00:35:10.94] spk_0:
I work with a non profit um, animal rescue nonprofit. Um, a friend of mine was a skydiver and shot him out. No, I can’t, but but there’s a friend of mine was a skydiver, and she was killed in a base jump several years ago. And her husband asked to donate in her memory to this non profit. So I said, I’m a check and about three months later, I get a coffee table book in the mail. And I was living by myself at the time. I didn’t own a coffee table. It was more money to spend on my flat screen. And I remember I call I look at this coffee table book. I throw it, I throw in the corner. I look at it over the next couple of days and pisces me off. And how much How much of my donation did it cost to print? Well, and produce this book to me, And so I called them up. Well, sir, we believe most of our donors are older and probably refer to get a print version as opposed to, like digital. You know where they throw it away and like, you don’t throw digitally, but okay, um, I’m like So So you’ve asked your you’ve done surveys and you’ve asked, you know, we just assume that most of them are older. I’m like, Okay, So I opened my mouth, wound up joining the board, and I spent the next year interviewing customers, interviewing every current and past donor about how they like to get their information and shock of shocks, 94% said online. And so over the following year, we launched Facebook page, Twitter page, uh, Flickr account, YouTube, everything. Ps the following. After that, donations went up 37% in one year In that economy is right around 809. Donations went up 37% in one year, and they saved over $500,000 in printing, mailing and reproduction. Imagine going to your boss. Hey, boss. Revenues up 37%. And we saved a half million dollars. You’re gonna buy a really good beer. You know, all they had to do was listen to their audience, be relevant to the audience you have, and they will tell you what they want. We have tons

[00:35:17.89] spk_1:
of tools for segmentation. My God, you’ve got to listen to what segment that you want to. People want to

[00:37:33.83] spk_0:
be in. You know, someone? Someone asked me that they show what? What’s the best? I knew nothing about the company. What’s the best, uh, social media outlet for me to be on? Should be on Twitter should be on Facebook. I said, I’ll answer that question. If you can answer this this this question to ask you is my favorite type of cheese Gouda or the number six? Yeah, they say, I understand that’s not a real question like neither is yours. Like I can’t tell you where the best place to be your audience can. I said, Go ask your audience. Believe me, they will tell you there’s a gas station in the Midwest. Come and go. Um, I just love the name K U M and G O come and go and they’re tackling the book you can read more about. Their tagline is always something extra. I mean, come on, the jokes just write themselves, for God’s sake. But they don’t take themselves too safe. Really love that Come And just knowing the name of the company gas station. And, um, you know, I remember there in Iowa and I went to visit a friend in Iowa and I was like, You got to get a photo of me in front of come and go inside. And the beauty of this is that some of their employees actually look at their customers when they’re on their phones and the stories go. You know what do use Twitter or Facebook? And they say Oh, yeah, And they record that information and they know it. God, customers will give you so much info if you just ask them, because then they feel invested. They feel invested in your company. They feel like they that you took the time to listen to their nonprofit request for their their their questions. And they feel like they did for Harrow. Every month we have a one question Harrow survey, you know, harrowing question survey. And it was like 1000 people respond, and I spent the entire weekend emailing Everyone responded, thanking them personally took my entire weekend. But it was great, because what wound up happening is that, you know, if we took their advice and launched on Monday with the new thing, they go, Oh, my God. Howard did this. They took my advice. Well, yeah, it was your advice to 800 other people’s advice, but we took it and they’d be like, Oh, my God, this is it. And it just it just made them so much more loyal. And they tell hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people we get I mean, there were days like there are days where I was in Temple one morning, the Garment Center synagogue and my phone. I feel my phone getting really hot in my pocket, which is not normal, and I’m starting to hurt and I look at it. It’s almost on fire. It had frozen because we were mentioned in Seth Godin’s morning blog, and at that time I was getting emails. Every time we get a new subscriber and the phone is actually frozen and was locked and and was like overheating, I take out the battery and reset the entire phone because we just got so many new like 14,000 subscribers in, like, three hours. It’s obscene. Obscene,

[00:37:35.25] spk_1:
you say. Excuse me? You say, uh, that customer service is the new advertising marketing NPR?

[00:40:23.41] spk_0:
Yeah, it really is well again. You know, if we’re moving into that world where so imagine a lava lamp and I love that. I can use this analogy. Imagine a lava lamp. Lava lamp has water, oil and heat source. Right heat source heats the oil. The oil flows through the water. It makes pretty colors. I’ve heard it looks really good when you’re high. Now I’ve heard now imagine if Crystal’s imagine if you are, uh, everyone you meet in your network, okay, is a drop of oil. The water is your network. And what is your world? Everyone you meet in your network from from the guy you’re sitting doing the radio interview with to the guy who serves you ice cream with local deli to the guy who does your dry cleaning to your girlfriend to your wife, too, at the same time to your kid’s second grade teacher to your second grade teacher years ago. Everyone you meet is in your network, you know, right now, when Facebook first started, I would see the same weight from a kid with junior high school with his posted at the same weight as like my current girlfriend, Which is ridiculous. I don’t need to know about everything my friend from junior high schools do. We have to talk to the kid. In 15 years, Facebook’s gotten a lot smarter as Google. Now I see the people I communicate with the most, okay, and if I if I reach out and communicate with new people, they start rising in my feet and my stream. If I don’t they fall. It’s just like a lava lamp. Every person you connect with is a drop of oil. The heat source at the bottom that’s rising. Raising or lowering those drops of oil is relevance. So if you imagine the heat sources relevance and the more I interact with someone, the more the higher they go in my network. And the more I see of them, the more trust level there is. When I’m at a bar and I meet someone at a restaurant or conference, I meet someone. I don’t need to, um, connect them. I don’t need to go on Facebook and friend requested, you know, awkward friend. Requesting is when you stop and think. The last time I friend requested some of the real world was second grade. Will you be my friend? My daughter is doing that because, you know, she goes into like, the cat. Will you be my friend like honey? The cat doesn’t wanna be here, but you know it’s this awkward thing. Who the hell friend request someone anymore? If I’m if I’m hanging out with you to bar and we connect again and we talk and we go out to dinner and we’re having a good time with friends. I don’t need to first request that you, you know, that’s going away Friending following liking and fanning is all going away. What will interact is the actual connection. So if I meet with you and I have a good time with you and we talk again if I use your business, if I go to your non profit, if I donate if I volunteer or whatever the network knows that the more I do that, the more interact with you. The more you have the right to market to me and the more you will be at the top of my stream and the more I will see information about you, the less I will have to, uh, search for you. But if you do something stupid or were no longer friends, yeah, you’re going to fade and unfriend, you just disappear. Unfriending is also awkward. I dated a woman we broke up. It was nine months after we broke up. There was one other friend, the other one, because it’s just awkward. So I woke up in front of me anyway. But you know the concept of not having to do that, just, you know? Okay, I haven’t talked to in a while. I don’t see your posts anymore. It’s the real world. That’s how it should be.

[00:40:24.73] spk_1:
And if you’re not feeding zombie loyalists, they can start to defect questions. So I want to I want to spend a little time on. If you’re

[00:41:11.71] spk_0:
not talking to them, giving them what they want talking about their information, helping them out, they will gladly go somewhere else to someone who is. You know, if I have a great experience in the restaurant every week for three years and then all of a sudden over time, I’m noticing less and less that restaurants doing less and less to take care of me, you know, and maybe management to change. And I don’t feel that, you know, I’m ripe for being infected by another company. I’m right for someone else to come see. You know, Peter, Because if I tweet something like, Wow, I can’t believe I have to wait 40 minutes for a table that didn’t used to be like that. If someone else is smart restaurant, they’re following me. And they’re gonna get you know there’s no way. No way over here. Why don’t you come to black storms will give you a free drink you know, you know, and that right there, that’s the first sign of infection, and I might become infected by another by another. Company becomes a lot less for them.

[00:41:22.81] spk_1:
And so let’s let’s take. You have a lot of good examples. Let’s take a one on one situation. How can we start to cure that? The simple act of realizing

[00:41:42.21] spk_0:
following your customer’s understanding when they’re not happy and fixing the situation before it escalates. You know you can contain a small out Brett. A small outbreak small viral outbreak. You can contain that by getting the right people finding out what the problem is getting into one room, fixing their problems, healing them.

[00:41:42.84] spk_1:
You have a good united story. Back when it was Continental,

[00:42:40.50] spk_0:
I was a frequent flyer and booked a trip to Paris, and it was very angry because they charged me $400 and looking for you. Remember what it was and I called the CEO just just for the hell of it. I’m like, I’m gonna I’m gonna write a letter or an email. This was before Social wrote an email to the CEO and like this is ridiculous. I’m freaking tired, huh? And, like, 30 minutes on my phone rings. Hello? Peter, can you please hold for Larry Kellner, CEO of Cotton Airlines? I’m like crap, you know, and the guy gets on the phone. He’s like, Peter, How you doing? How you doing? Sorry, Clinton. These fees, their new, um, we send them a note, I’m guessing it and see it. We’re gonna waive them for you. But if you have any more problems, you know, feel free to call me and I end up the phone for the next 40 minutes, sort of staring at it like Holy crab Larry killed or the CEO of United. Everyone just called me and talk to me, and it was like it was like, God coming down and say you now have the power to levitate your cat. It was just ridiculous. And so, you know, I have been faithful to Continental and now united ever since, and and they continue to treat me with respect and and do great things, and they’re they’re improving. They’re getting a lot of crap over the past several years, and they really are starting to improve. It’s nice to see

[00:42:52.50] spk_1:
And not only, of course, your own loyalty. But

[00:42:54.41] spk_0:
you’re my God.

[00:42:55.11] spk_1:
How zombie loyalist for them And how many times how much it’s

[00:42:58.83] spk_0:
unquantifiable qualified. Dr. Drag, So many friends to united. I’ve made so many friends. Uh, my father, you know, uh, he only flies united now, which means he only drag drag my mom Only in United only drag my wife in United States. There’s a lot of a lot of work that way. Yeah.

[00:43:22.80] spk_1:
Are we gonna go away for a couple of minutes when we come back? Of course, Peter. And I’m gonna keep talking about his book Comes out in January. Zombie loyalists. You have some examples of zombie loyalist leaving and mass like dominoes. Netflix. They’re both They’re both in the book. So it’s so one leaving. If you know, if you’re not starting to cure one leaving,

[00:43:59.20] spk_0:
and then that’s the thing. You know that it will expand the internet with the hashtag everything like that. You know, it doesn’t take a long time. Um, for those things to sort of blow up in your face and, uh, you know, the end of the day, everyone say, Oh, you know Twitter is responsible for for us losing. No, they’re not. You’re responsible for you losing, you know, And And if your product isn’t great and you’re your actions, don’t speak well of who you are. Then there’s no reason your customers should stay with you, you know? And it was so social Media is really hurting us. I know you’re hurting yourself. The only difference is that social media makes it easier for the world to know about.

[00:44:06.14] spk_1:
They’re just telling the story. Yeah, dominoes and Netflix are good examples because they got back, they took responsibility and

[00:44:38.89] spk_0:
they both owned the dominoes, came out and said, You know what? You’re right. Our pizza. We do have a problem. We’re gonna fix this. And they spent millions fixing it. And sure enough, they’re back with a vengeance. Now I’m I’m maybe not even ordered them every once in a while and I live in New York City. That’s that’s a That’s a sacrilege. But, you know, I have the app on my phone from overseas, traveling somewhere I’ll be showing or whatever. And you know what? You’re gonna get it 11. 30 at night when your flight is delayed. You land down. Um, which reminds me I’d probably go exercise. On the flip side, you look at something like Netflix. They they also were screwing up, you know, They were losing their trying to switch between the two. They came up with a new name and everyone’s like, gross public man. And so and again you’re watching the same thing happened with uber right now would be really interesting to see if they’re able to repair themselves.

[00:44:55.39] spk_1:
Listening is important. Both both those. Both those two examples. They listen to their

[00:46:54.48] spk_0:
customers. I think there’s a problem with listening because everyone’s been saying, Listen, listen, listen for months and years and years and years now, But, you know, no one ever says that you have to do more than just listen. You have to listen actually follow up. It’s one thing to listen, you know, I use example, my wife I can sit there and listen to her for hours, you know? But if I don’t actually say anything back, she’s gonna smack me, you know, and go to the other room. And so you really have to. It’s a two way street. Listening is great, but you gotta respond and look, I’ll take it a step further. I was like, Oh, Twitter is so great because someone was complaining on Twitter and we went online, and we we saw the complaint that we fixed the problem and, yeah, how about if the problem don’t exist in the first place? You know, because the great thing about Twitter is that yeah, people complain on Twitter, the bad thing about it is they’re complaining about you on Twitter. So it’s like, What if the problem didn’t exist in the first place? What if What if you empowered your front desk clerk to fix the problem so that I didn’t have to tweet? Hurts is my favorite story about all this? Uh, I used to rent from Hertz religiously. Um, and then I went to, uh, Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport this past April, And I gave it. I was giving a speech, and I go and I my name is supposed to be on the board, you know? So I can go out to my car and it wasn’t it’s okay. It happens. I got upstairs. I wait 40 minutes on the v. line. um, after 40 minutes, they finally say? You know, there’s a, uh, only one guy here. A lot of people might have a better chance to go up to the regular line, like Okay. You probably have told us that a little earlier. Go to the regular line. Spent 45 minutes waiting. The regular line, it’s now been. Are you tweeting while this is happening? Well, I had enough. I was actually not only tweeting I had enough time to create a meme that should give you some idea of how long I was online with myself. And I was okay. Enough time. I mean, I get to the counter how I can help you. Yeah, I was downstairs the V i. P does, and they told me Oh, you’re very preservationist downstairs like, Yeah. Okay. Let’s let’s put a pin in that, um They just sent me up here, like right? They have to help you. Well, it’s not really they You guys are the same company. I mean, I can see the reservation on the screen. You you can help me. Sorry, sir, I can’t help. You have to get the V i p. Next. Like you just next to me. Okay, so if you know anything about Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. Um, all of the rental car company in the same place. So I walked 50 ft. It’s a

[00:46:57.76] spk_1:
bus, takes you to the big the Big pavilion, where they’re all

[00:48:53.37] spk_0:
next to each. I walked 50 ft from the cesspool of filth and depravity that was hurt to the the wonderful Zen Garden of Tranquility that was Avis. And in four minutes, I had a nicer, cheaper or nicer, less expensive car given to me a woman named Phyllis, who was 66 and moved to Phoenix from Detroit with her husband for his asthma. I knew this because she told me, um, she smiled at me. She brought her manager out and said, that’s another refugee from Hertz and I said, This happens a lot. They’re like, Yep, I’m like, Wow, you think they have done something about that? And so on the way out in Avis, um, I I thank them. I walked past her as I shoot them. This, you know, sort of look at the look of the beast. I get my Avis car to drive in my hotel. Once I get my hotel, I write a wonderful blog post about my experience called Peter and Hurts and the terrible, Horrible No book. Good, really bad customer experience. Once you have a kid, you find rewriting titles about your blog post that has to do with kids books. Um, I do not like hurt Sam. I am. And and, uh, I included in this blog post the five things I’d rather do than ever, uh, rent from Hertz again. I think number three was was ride a razor blade bus through a lemon juice waterfall. Um, with just, you know, and so. But, of course, the next day hurts reaches out to me. I’m Shannon. Well, this is the head of North American customer service. So your bike I’m like, they’re like, you know, we’d love to have Nick No. Like, you’re not going to fix the problem. Number one of the Navy’s car. I’m never going back to Hertz number two. There are five people. Yesterday five people interacted with all of whom had the chance to save me and keep me as a customer for life. A customer who had been so happy and I would have loved you. five people blew it so don’t waste your time trying to convert me back. You’re not going to. What you want to do is spend some of that energy retraining your staff to have empathy and to give them the ability and the empowerment to fix my problem when it happens. Because five people it takes every single employee to keep your company running. It takes one to kill it. Yeah, PS Avis reached out, um, to thank me personally. And, uh, I am now just this ridiculously huge, loyal fan of Avis and always will be.

[00:49:02.47] spk_1:
You have a pretty touching story about when you worked at a yogurt shop. Really? You’re really young? Um, we have a couple of minutes to

[00:50:39.26] spk_0:
tell that. Tell that story that was on the East Side, which again is yet another reason why I live on the West Side. Nothing good ever happens on Manhattan’s east Side. So I was I was working, and I can’t believe it’s yogurt, which was a store that I think back in the I c b y. No, no TCB. Why was the country’s best yoga The countries I c b i y was a poor? I can’t believe it’s yogurt I can’t believe it’s not. You can’t live yogurt. It was a poor attempt to capitalize on that. And I’m working at this store, and I go in every day and make the yoga to clean the floors. I do. You know, the typical high school job. And, uh, it was during the summer and thousands of people walking by, I think, like 2nd Avenue or something. And there were these brass poles that hung from, you know, there was an awning, right? That’s something that they’re never the brass poles that held the awning up and they were dirty as hell, right? I’m sure they’ve never been polished ever. And I found some. I found some brass polish in the back all the way back in the back. And one afternoon I went outside and I started polishing the polls. My logic was, if the polls were shining and people saw them, maybe they come into the store. Maybe they want to, you know, buy more screenplays. And the manager came out. What the hell are you doing? I told them what I thought. I don’t pay you to think. Get inside. You know, I’m like there’s no customers in there, like, Okay, I’ll make sure the yogurt still pumping it full blast. And I quit. I just quit that job. I mean, I couldn’t even begin to understand why someone would invest. I mean, do you own a franchise by 50 grand to at least to buy that franchise? Why wouldn’t he invest in the two seconds it took a little elbow grease to make the poles clean? That might bring in more customers. What the hell? You know, But

[00:50:40.04] spk_1:
you’re not paid to think

[00:50:49.76] spk_0:
you’re not paid to think my favorite line. Yeah, um, I I just I encourage if any kids are listening to teenagers. If you if you boss says that to you, quit, quit. I will hire you. Just quit. It’s probably the worst thing in the world that you could possibly do because you have customers who you have customers who every day can be helped by people who are paid to think. And that’s the ones you want to hire.

[00:51:00.56] spk_1:
We gotta wrap up. Tell me what you love about the work you do.

[00:51:44.76] spk_0:
I get paid to talk. I mean, my God, this is the same stuff I used to get in trouble for in high school, but on a bigger picture. What I really love about it is being able to open someone’s eyes and have them come back to me. Um, I run a series of masterminds called shank mines Business masterminds shank mines dot com their day long seminars all around the country. And I had someone come to me and, you know, I took your advice about X y Z and I started listening a little more. And I just got the largest retainer client I’ve ever had in my life by a factor of four. She goes, and I just can’t even thank you never sent me a gorgeous bottle of tequila like I can’t even thank you enough. Oh, my God. Being able to help people, you know, at the end of the day, we’re I’ve yet to find another planet suitable for life. I’m looking So we’re all in this together. And if that’s the case, you know, why wouldn’t we want to help people get a little bit more? You know, there really isn’t a need to be, as do she. As as we are as a society, we could probably be a little nicer to each other, and you’d be surprised that will help.

[00:51:54.56] spk_1:
The book is Zombie Loyalists. It’s published by Pal Grave. MacMillan comes out in January. You’ll find Peter at shankman dot com and on Twitter at Peter Shankman. Peter, thank you so much pleasure as Amanda. Oh, thank you

[00:53:05.15] spk_2:
Next week, As I said, No show you’ll have an extra hour. Have fun, have fun with your extra our next week, and we’ll be back on January 3rd. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o. A creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. The shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez Marc Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty. Be with me next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95 Go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for December 13, 2021: Is A Social Enterprise For You?

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Tamra Ryan: Is A Social Enterprise For You?

What are these and how do you decide whether to take one on—or even consider it—at your nonprofit? What kinds of businesses lend themselves to social enterprise and how do you structure the relationship? Tamra Ryan makes sense of it all. She’s CEO of Women’s Bean Project.

 

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[00:01:55.34] spk_1:
Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with Spagnolo arthropod earthy If you disjointed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show is a social enterprise for you. What are these And how do you decide whether to take one on or even consider it at your non profit what kinds of businesses lend themselves to social enterprise and how do you structure the relationship? Tamara Ryan makes sense of it all. She’s ceo of women’s Bean project. tony state too. Congratulations core africa. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o here is, is a social enterprise for you. It’s a pleasure to welcome Tamara Ryan to nonprofit radio She is Ceo of women’s Bean project, a social enterprise that provides transitional employment to women attempting to break the cycle of chronic unemployment and poverty while operating a food manufacturing business. She’s a former partner and board member for social venture partners. Denver and currently serves as part time interim ceo for the social enterprise alliance. She’s at Tamara Ryan and the enterprise is at women’s bean project dot com. Tamara, welcome to nonprofit radio

[00:01:57.34] spk_0:
it’s great to be here.

[00:02:01.24] spk_1:
It’s a pleasure. Pleasure to have you. Yeah. Why don’t you first explain what women’s bean project is all about because it’s an example of what you and I are going to talk about for a while

[00:03:01.04] spk_0:
Okay We are a food manufacturing business. We started with Bean Soup in 1989 and that’s where our name comes from. But today we have 50 different food products that we sell all across the country. What makes us different is that we employ women who are chronically unemployed. So a typical woman we hire hasn’t had a job longer than a year in her lifetime. Though the average age is 38. They come and work for us as for a full time job for 6 to 9 months. And during the time they’re with us, we teach basic job readiness skills and then we also in 30% of her paid time. We teach her life skills, we teach problem solving and goal setting and budgeting and planning and organizing. And so this whole thing is her job for these 6 to 9 months at the end she graduates our program and moves on to mainstream employment in the community. So we’re kind of two businesses were running a food manufacturing business and a human services business,

[00:03:18.54] spk_1:
which is exactly what the type of model we’ll be talking about. What I admire about that I found very interesting is that you said it. Um Well you’re used to saying it, but I want to call it out for 30% of their paid time. The women’s paid time is not spent working. It’s spent learning the soft skills of employment.

[00:03:39.04] spk_0:
Yeah, we call it the huge job. The y ou job. So she has the being job and she has the huge job and she’s paid for all of it. Mhm.

[00:03:45.74] spk_1:
Uh Well, so I see the value and you’ve had uh you had a lot of success with folks. Women having jobs longer than a year after they’ve they’ve I’m going to say graduated, but

[00:03:56.70] spk_0:
we use that term also the

[00:03:59.88] spk_1:
project.

[00:04:32.34] spk_0:
Yes. So we track them at 6, 12, 18 and 24 months. We track them. What makes it easier to track them is that we pay them for those check ins. So we pay them $50 to check in at six and 12 months, $75 at 18 months and 100 bucks. Said two years to check in with us. And what we found that is that at a year uh 95 plus percent of the women are still employed. And I think what makes what’s significant about that is that again, the women we hire haven’t had a job longer than a year in their lifetime before they come to us. So what we really want to know is are we setting them helping them on a path for long term employment? You know, being able to sustain that employment.

[00:04:58.54] spk_1:
So what kinds of nonprofits are our listeners are all in small and mid sized nonprofits. So I think this is an ideal subject for listeners. What what types of nonprofits could consider having a social enterprise as part of their part of their work.

[00:06:06.44] spk_0:
I think organizations that are serving people who are using, you know, by necessity on public benefits and really who for a variety of reasons, whether it’s because of a felony background or it’s because of uh, low education levels or because of the history of addiction, you know, a variety of things that get in the way of, of getting and keeping employment. And so if you’re serving those people anyway, one way to help them, in addition to helping them build their foundation of, of soft skills is to employ them in a social enterprise. So that’s just one way that a social enterprises run. But it’s, you know, it as adults, we learn by doing so. It’s a really great way to work with the people that you’re working with anyway. Two create a business where you’re helping those same people in the long run be able to be successful,

[00:06:19.34] spk_1:
you’re a partner of social venture partners in Denver. What, what did you look for when you were investing in these types of organizations?

[00:07:07.94] spk_0:
Well, we specifically in Spp Denver, we’re looking for small organizations that both needed some funding, but also needed some technical assistance. And the reality is that we don’t, if you’re, if you’re running a human services organization, you don’t necessarily have somebody on staff that has the skills to launch a business, for instance, you know, even to do the market research to figure out what kind of business that might be um have the operational skills, you’re you’re running a human services business but you’re not necessarily running, say in our case of food manufacturing business. And so Spp really looked for organizations that needed the skill set of our partners and also could benefit from the funding that we were providing that. And then SVP’s model the funding and the technical assistance go hand in hand.

[00:07:42.74] spk_1:
So what what about organizations that uh don’t have the expertise that they need? Uh Let’s let’s let’s assume most of our listeners are not in Denver, so they don’t have access to S. V. P. Denver. What how can they how can they fill that void? And even just start like you’re saying like initial market research, how do they know where to get, how to get started?

[00:09:46.04] spk_0:
Well, every nonprofit has a board and I would venture to say that most nonprofits have business people on their board. So there are a lot of resources either through board members or through people that board members know. The one great thing that I’ve observed and I didn’t come from the nonprofit um world for my entire career. I was in the private sector before. And what I love about being in the nonprofit world is that there are lots of people who want to help and and just need to be need, they need help knowing what you need. And so I’ve been I’ve seen lots of ways we’ve been able to engage, uh, professionals in it for us, in, in food manufacturing, um, who have expertise that we need to sit on fair business development committee and help us look at uh, new product ideas. And I think that same concept could easily be applied to any organization that’s trying to figure out what kind of business they might run because that’s the key. You could decide to start a business, but it still has to be a viable business. The just just starting a business, you’re not going to get the halo effect of, you know, you’re doing it as, as a non profit and therefore it’s going to succeed. All the same market factors come into play that do for any business. And so you, you really do have to still find a viable business. That makes sense. That is needed. That you can price appropriately. Um, one of the things about the research for social enterprises or whether or not consumers are going to buy from a social enterprise, whether it’s a product or service. One of the statistics is that all other things being equal? So in other words, quality, price, etcetera. People more and more have a tendency to purchase products and services from a mission based organization or a mission based company. But the most important part of that statement is all other things, other things equal. All

[00:09:54.18] spk_1:
things being equal.

[00:09:55.24] spk_0:
Yes,

[00:09:58.54] spk_1:
you have to, you have to be able to compete with your private enter, strictly private enterprise, market driven, profit driven competitors.

[00:11:20.24] spk_0:
Yeah. You have to be able to compete. And yet at the same time, you also need to figure out what your competitive advantages yourself. So for instance, in our case we are able to, uh, we’re right now in the holiday season, you know, september to december for women’s bean project, 70% of our sales are made. So, you know, we really peaked during this time of year. One of our competitive advantages is we can bring in volunteers to help us say pack boxes or help us, you know, get shipments out the door or help with with prep of product. And that’s something that is a bit of a competitive advantage because if we were just, you know, in the, in the private sector running a regular food manufacturing operation, we really, I don’t think we could, you know, look somebody in the eye and get and get that kind of assistance. But for us it’s a way to engage donors to get people really invested, get new customers. You know, there are so many ways that, that bringing people from the community in to help us is advantageous not just to get the work done, but to get additional support for our organization.

[00:11:49.34] spk_1:
So you’ve opened yourself up to a whole new set of metrics as, as having a social enterprise and we’re gonna get to what, what the relationship is between the company and and a nonprofit or, you know, how that could be set up by different, by different organizations. But you’ve, you’ve got to measure, you’ve got to measure the company’s profit and the company’s output and productivity, productivity per employee hour or you know, whatever, you know, the, the key metrics for the business are as well as the social outcomes of of your graduates and your employee members and your and your graduates.

[00:12:34.94] spk_0:
It’s a, you know, I joke sometimes it’s a horrible way to run a business, right? Because we intentionally everyday hire women, we don’t know if they’re going to come to work every day. I mean that’s part of their barriers to employment and we work with them and they help, we help them become great employees and as soon as they become great employees, we let them go off and become somebody else’s great employee and we start all over again. Uh, and it’s so it’s super inefficient and we also over higher. So if we were a for profit company and we were trying to be as efficient as possible and, you know, squeeze every penny out of our margin. We absolutely would not hire as many women as we do. But that’s not the point. The point for us is to use our business to advance our mission. So we hire as many women as possible as we can justify based on what our sales are going to be.

[00:13:09.24] spk_1:
So what are some of the things that nonprofits need to think about, uh, beyond all right. What’s a, what’s a viable business? What other, what other factors are important?

[00:13:16.04] spk_0:
Well, maybe the biggest thing is it’s hard. And I joke sometimes with our team, like if this were easy, everybody do it. Do

[00:13:20.79] spk_1:
we really want to do it? Do we really want to do it as an important threshold?

[00:15:30.84] spk_0:
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s hard because you have to have the ability to entertain two opposing ideas at the same time, right? We need to run an efficient manufacturing business and we also need to deliver on our mission. And those two things actually often don’t go together very well. And so being able to both entertain those ideas and acknowledge that perhaps today the business wins. Maybe we, um, the women instead of, um, Spending 30% of today’s time in a class say financial literacy, they’re on the production floor for the whole day because we have a lot of work to do, But tomorrow maybe it’s the, it’s reversed and they’re spending the whole day in some sort of training and not making any product at all. And so our job is every day to, to balance that out. And so that’s, I think one of the hardest things is, uh, is having that ability to understand that if not for the mission, your business doesn’t really exist, but yet your, your business has to be profitable in order for to make sense and contribute to the mission and, and that, you know, balancing act, you know, is a constant. So that’s part of what makes it hard. I would say another thing is that you, you still have to find all the other, I mentioned this before, All the other market forces still prevail. So if you have a product that nobody wants to buy, you’re not going to have a successful business and there’s no amount of mission that’s going to forgive that at least not in the long term. And you know, at this point, women’s bean project is 32 years old and I think in a lot of ways we’ve just been lucky. There was no initial market research that said, you know, being super. I think that’s the key to success. Nobody, nobody did any kind of research at the beginning. Our founder just noticed she was in her late fifties, she’s gone back to school to get her master’s degree in social work and she noticed a lot of her friends who were around her age were eating bean soup for health reasons. And so she invested $500 of her own money and bought beans and put two women to work making 10 bean soup. The crazy thing is that’s still 32 years later, our best selling product,

[00:16:45.14] spk_1:
it’s time for a break. Turn to communications. Do you have all the time. You need to do all the writing. You need to do social posts, blog posts, newsletters, the annual report, website updates, board reports, fundraising appeals. Acknowledgment messages, staff, communications, process documentation, training documents. Do you need help with writing in 2022? Turn to communications, your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. Now back to is a social enterprise for you. All right. That’s a terrific story. But it’s, it’s, it’s more or less than or what not to do in in determining what, what, what businesses gonna survive. Because, you know, you said it, I’m just gonna amplify it. No amount of mission is gonna forgive, uh, bad, bad marketing or a bad bad entry choice or, or any of the, any of the market forces.

[00:17:02.44] spk_0:
Yeah. And I think you also have to have either a product or service that has a decent enough margin margin to sort of forgive the inefficiency. And I also wouldn’t choose food for that reason the ship sailed for us. But you know, that’s not the highest margin. Um, you know, product category. For sure.

[00:17:22.24] spk_1:
Right now, food is notoriously low margin. Um, but you know, you said you gave an example of hiring many more women than you need, then you would. Well, maybe then you do need, then you would, if you were strictly market driven.

[00:17:28.84] spk_0:
Exactly.

[00:17:36.24] spk_1:
Yeah. All right. Um, before, before we move on. Any other advice about the, the opening questions to talk about with your board, with your leadership?

[00:19:18.34] spk_0:
Well, another aspect of balance I think is uh, is balancing being opportunistic and, and um, and not being so bullish on an idea that you ignore, um, other signs. So as an example, uh, years ago we were approached by somebody who had a whole bunch of equipment for canning and they were willing to give us all the equipment, let us have access to the facility, a whole bunch of things. But what we really had to analyze and I think this happens actually a fair amount to organizations that are thinking of starting businesses. Somebody thinks I’ve got a great idea, I’ll just give this to them. But the thing was, we weren’t in the canning business, we are a dry food manufacturer and what it would have meant for us just, you know, pivot and create another business. You know, really wasn’t worth that. What seemed like a super generous donation. Um, it was forgive the pun, but it was a whole can of worms that we didn’t necessarily mean I need to open. But that’s an example because when you start talking about this, all manner of people are gonna surface who are interested and willing to help. And one of the most important things you might, I need to do is say no thank you because you know, sometimes gifts are not always gifts in the, you know, when it really comes down to it, it’s maybe not the best strategy and it’s sometimes hard not to get all, you know? Um Starry eyed about something that seems like a fantastic gift and the next thing, you know, you’re in the canning business and you never intended to be in.

[00:19:42.74] spk_1:
Now you’re doing wetsuits instead of instead of dried soup. That’s a that’s a huge pivot. Um And yeah, I mean, that’s and that’s in the nonprofit, the straight uh non profit sector as well. You know, there are gifts that come sometimes with strings. You know, if you’ll if you’ll adopt this, create this program or

[00:19:46.62] spk_0:
women’s

[00:20:33.44] spk_1:
school, but if you started admitting boys, I’ll give you the seven figure gift. You know, that’s those are the gift size can be transformational, but that doesn’t mean you you sacrifice your mission and transform your mission to accept $1 million dollar gift. Um So All right. But, you know, Mhm interesting. You know, you you you evaluated from the nonprofit perspective, but also from the market forced perspective. You know, now we’re entering, it’s a whole new business. Now we’re gonna be competing with uh um Campbell’s, you know, Campbell’s and Hunts and Hormel, you know, whoever, whatever that be, whatever the soup manufacturers are. Um All right, So value right, important lesson to sometimes the better answer is No, no, thank you, gracious. No.

[00:20:38.85] spk_0:
Yes. All right.

[00:20:47.24] spk_1:
All right. Um advice on types of businesses that that could lend themselves to this.

[00:22:15.84] spk_0:
I’ll start with um service businesses because sometimes those can actually be really great supports for a really great social enterprises and supports for human services organizations. The nice thing about service businesses are very localized. So you could serve one community and then an example of a service business might be a uh, landscaping business or there are several social enterprises around the country that do uh go to business districts and clean up trash and snow removal and leaf removal and those kinds of things. Again, those are very localized. And what’s nice about that is that you could do it in this city and then maybe you pick it up and you do the same thing in another city. Those are really cool ways to be able to employ a lot of people and engage in multiple communities. Uh and there are, you know, other businesses um, like uh, has control is another one where, you know, that’s a pretty expandable business, um, cleaning services, especially in offices and things like that. Um, so those are some examples of businesses that actually could be really great businesses for people. And when you’re selling a service, that’s a really different dynamic than, say, you know, consumer packaged goods where, you know, you’re competing with marketing dollars from companies, it’s just much more challenging um, area to be in. You

[00:22:51.64] spk_1:
also, you also have the advantage of being able to, as you said, start local. So you can say initially the impact of our work is local. And so there’s a there’s an appeal to an appeal to the mission with your caveat that uh lots of mission is not going to overcome bad, you know, uh not being competitive market market wise, but you can say that you have that you have that local impact at least as you’re, as you’re getting started and then as you’re suggesting, you know, you can expand.

[00:24:09.44] spk_0:
And I think, you know, if you’re making a product, one of the potential challenges is that if you make a product that in our case our products consumable, so we can have repeat customers, you know, of course it has to be a good quality and taste good and all of those things. But we have customers we’ve had for 30 years and who keep coming back over and over again. If you end up making a product that’s not consumable. The challenges that, you know, say you’re making uh cutting board, there’s only so many cutting boards, somebody needs or only so many gifts you can give, you know to other people. And so you always have to be finding new customers to be able to grow your business. And that said, there’s, you know, when you start out, your customer base is so small that the world really is, you know, is pretty large of possible customers. But there’s a point at which without spending a lot of marketing dollars or advertising dollars to get noticed that you really sort of tap out the people you can access and that’s, you know, so that’s an interesting challenge of making a product where you can teach some really amazing skills, but at the same time, you know, you might have a limited customer base.

[00:24:21.14] spk_1:
Can I get these uh can I get these meals and just add water? Are they, are they that are there that simple from women’s bean project?

[00:25:19.44] spk_0:
Pretty straightforward like that. So a soup mix, you would at water, you put it in a safe crock pot and let it cook for the day. And at the end you are 10 being soup, you just add a can of tomatoes or you could add vegetables and hope into other things if that’s what you wanted. But just to finish off the recipe, it would just be adding a can of tomatoes. We also have baking mixes. And so in that case it’s everything that you need. You would add an egg and some oil or butter and you’ve got brownies or corn bread or stones. So it’s a nice thing about like a baking mix for instance is you don’t have to buy a bag of flour and buy a bag of sugar and all of those things and then have them left over. You can use our mix and use the eggs that you have and the butter that you have. And next thing you know, you made these yummy brownies and you look like a total baker. No one’s the wiser,

[00:25:20.98] spk_1:
right? You don’t have, you don’t have four and three quarters pounds of flour

[00:25:25.05] spk_0:
over.

[00:25:30.94] spk_1:
Okay. A little digression. But I was interested in and how simple the meals are. Okay,

[00:25:31.49] spk_0:
we do have an instant,

[00:25:33.37] spk_1:
we have,

[00:25:47.84] spk_0:
yeah, we have instant beans and rice cups also, which literally are adding water. Um and then and we also have some ready to eat snacks. So you know, just keep them in your desk and you know, nosh on them whenever you feel like it. So we have a pretty wide variety of different products.

[00:25:58.84] spk_1:
Ok, I’m going to check women’s bean project dot com. Um So, okay, so service businesses were, you’re suggesting service businesses, what what else, what else could folks consider?

[00:27:43.74] spk_0:
Well, there’s some great social enterprises. Again, these are pretty localized that to screen printing. So you think about your inner city and you have your screen printing business, you’re able to employ people and you’re able to serve all the companies locally for, you know, their employee t shirts or you know, races or things like that. Again, very localized but also scalable As well. Um there’s a really awesome social enterprise out of Boston called more than words and more than words serves youth 16-24 who are either aging out of the foster system or justice involved and they sell books, they sell books have been donated from the community and the the youth learned the skill of scanning the I. S. P. N. Number to make sure it’s marketable. And they recycle the books that don’t have uh aftermarket value. And then they sell the books that do and they sell both online. They have a couple of bookstores. The cool thing is all these youth are you know they’re helping them find homes, they’re helping them with their academic goals helping them sort of adult you know into the community. Yet at the same time they’re also learning these skills of running a book business. So they have measurable uh um outcomes that they have to achieve. They have certain sales goals they have to meet for their various channels. It’s a really amazing business that that they’re operating in the youth. Stay with them for a couple of years.

[00:27:47.64] spk_1:
What’s the name of that 1?

[00:27:51.14] spk_0:
It’s called more than words? Okay.

[00:27:53.24] spk_1:
Yeah back on the service side I’ve seen uh copy copy services copy and print and print shops.

[00:28:33.54] spk_0:
Yeah A bank of America actually has their own social enterprise that they operate in the house. And they serve people with developmental disabilities are they employ people with developmental disabilities but they do all the printing for their own needs. Um There’s also electronics recycling. Uh you know the statistic is that people who are on the autism spectrum have an unemployment rate of about 85%. And and yet they are uniquely talented to disassemble electronics. So there there are electronics recycling organizations that employ people on the autism spectrum to just disassemble and um and then they part of so they’re providing the employment, they’re getting the donations of the electronics um and in some instances they’re being paid by the companies to take the electronics and then they also they sell the commodities of all the things that come out of those electronics,

[00:29:00.49] spk_1:
metals, plastics.

[00:29:01.67] spk_0:
Yeah, so you know when you think about that as a we use the term triple bottom line, it’s helping society, it’s helping the environment and it’s you know, it’s it’s making money. That is a really awesome example of of a business that hits at every level.

[00:29:24.54] spk_1:
Yeah, excellent, excellent. Another these are good another example or category.

[00:29:52.54] spk_0:
Well there are some social enterprises that instead of employing people provide employment services. So there is a social enterprise that here in Denver that specifically helps people who are bilingual, english spanish get jobs in the community with employers who need people who are bilingual, but that could apply to kind of any language or not even be bilingual, you know, so they and so companies come to them when they need people who maybe it’s customer service people who can speak another language other than english. Um and so again a service business but not where they are employing people.

[00:30:11.34] spk_1:
Right, right. And and so companies pay for the for the referral for the screening.

[00:30:16.04] spk_0:
Yeah,

[00:30:16.58] spk_1:
the placement basically they’re paying a placement fee,

[00:30:20.94] spk_0:
yep, exactly,

[00:32:45.74] spk_1:
it’s time for Tony stick to Core Africa, the Core Africa Ceo and longtime non profit radio Fan Liz Fanning announced last week a three year $17 million collaboration with the Mastercard Foundation. Outstanding, congratulations Liz, congratulations! Core Africa. This is going to allow Core Africa to expand from four countries, 2, 8 countries in Africa. and initially Mastercard Foundation was funding 56 young volunteers That’s going to scale up to 500. Almost 10 fold. This is, you know, talk about scaling, it’s just terrific news. Um and I think the real lesson here is in what the Mastercard Foundation Ceo cited in his quote, he says quote, Core Africa has proven its impact in rural communities and demonstrated the value of deploying a network of service minded young Africans to solve pressing issues across the continent. Their vision aligns with our young Africa works strategy end quote and he goes on. So he’s talking about the proven impact and vision alignment with what Mastercard Foundation is looking for. It’s just terrific news to scale like that, a $17 million, three year collaboration with a marquee name. Foundation for Core Africa, it’s terrific. You know, it’s a, it’s a testament to the work that they’ve done the impact that they have proven. So again, congratulations to Core Africa on this monumental funding for your important work That is Tony’s take two, we’ve got boo koo but loads more time for is a social enterprise for you.

[00:33:12.54] spk_0:
But there’s, you know, there’s just so many different kinds, there are cafes that’s a fairly popular kind of social enterprise. Um here in Denver we have a cafe called same cafe and same stands for, so all may eat and they, it is a pay what you want model. So you walk in and the menu is listed for the day and you decide how much you’re going to pay. You

[00:33:18.46] spk_1:
have heard of them.

[00:33:37.74] spk_0:
Yes. And, and so you might be sitting down and having, you know, decide that you want to pay $10 for your lunch, but you also might be sitting next to somebody who is um experiencing homelessness and didn’t pay anything and if you decide if you don’t have any money to pay for your lunch, then you work in the kitchen or you clean or you know do dishes and um and so again, it’s a really cool concept that serves people all, you know, it’s beneficial to the community at multiple levels.

[00:34:06.14] spk_1:
Excellent. These are cool examples. Yeah. Um so, all right, so we talked about services, uh some some product, I love the recycling example too. Uh any anything else before we, before we move on to organizing these these entities.

[00:35:37.54] spk_0:
Um well, the last one I’ll mention is one that’s been around for a long, long time, like women’s bean project is called Grace and bakery. They’re out of Yonkers new york and they make the brownies for Ben and jerry’s ice cream. So a big, the bulk of their business is brownies for Ben and jerry’s and they also have now gotten into doing some retail sales and corporate sales. So you might see your listeners might have seen them in some for instance whole foods at sort of a point of sale or point of purchase with a little brownie and it says these brownies changed lives, but Grayson is a for profit company. So this is a nice segue into the next part of our conversation. They are actually a B corp a benefit corporation and they they have an open hiring model. So instead of specifically going out and trying to recruit people experiencing chronic unemployment, like we do, they are always accepting applications and when they have an opening they just hire the next person on the list. So they hire, they don’t, you know, interview or you know, look at qualifications, they just hire the next person and uh you know, so they will have more turnover than a normal company would, but they’re also within that community in Yonkers, they’re they’re really changing people’s lives give by giving them an opportunity for employment that they might not otherwise have had.

[00:35:42.64] spk_1:
Okay, that’s interesting. First, that’s Grayson, G. Like

[00:35:46.56] spk_0:
G. R E Y S. T O N.

[00:36:23.63] spk_1:
Kristen bakery. Yeah, these brownies save lives. Okay, so listeners, we might, we might see those at at checkout sounds like point of sale places. Okay. Um, but then, you know, there’s the issue of, you know, giving a job versus teaching job skills in addition like, like, like women’s bean project is doing, it seems to me that the, the training beyond the skills for the job is more empowering than then giving a job and just giving a job.

[00:36:49.83] spk_0:
Well, I think that’s consistent with our philosophy at women’s bean project that there are because we acknowledge that there are lots of things that get in the way of somebody being able to get and keep the and keep I think is the important part, right? Like in a weave prior to the pandemic and I think we’re back to a, there’s a lot of jobs, but um, and so you could go from job to job to job in an environment where there are lots of jobs. But the important thing is, are you going to a job where you are a contributor where there is opportunity for advancement and benefits and all the things that make it more of a career than just a job. That’s what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to change the, are the women we serve. That’s the trajectory we want them to be on when they finished.

[00:37:27.13] spk_1:
All right. So, you know, of course, different missions. I mean just like nonprofits that Grayson has uh, has a different model, but but there there generously hiring, they just hire the next person on the list.

[00:37:33.13] spk_0:
Yeah, Yeah. Sorry?

[00:37:34.33] spk_1:
All right. So, yeah, as you suggested, and I wanted to talk about the how to organize and structure these, you know, like what’s the relationship listeners already are in non profits? Most of our listeners are uh, you know, how what would that relationship look like if they did start a social enterprise?

[00:37:52.13] spk_0:
Well, I know as as the interviewer here, you you will hate to hear this answer, but it depends. Okay, listen

[00:38:00.16] spk_1:
now, don’t hold back on. Don’t

[00:38:02.29] spk_0:
don’t tell

[00:38:04.31] spk_1:
listeners of nonprofit radio what you think they want to hear?

[00:38:06.87] spk_0:
It’s

[00:38:07.71] spk_1:
an educated self selected group.

[00:38:09.80] spk_0:
So yes, so nuanced

[00:38:12.28] spk_1:
answers are very welcome.

[00:40:13.71] spk_0:
Well, it it does depend and it depends on what you want to do and how you might want to structure it and and honestly tolerance, risk tolerance of your board and you know, of your team. So, um Women’s Bean Project is a five oh one C three. A big reason for that is because we were founded in 1989 and if you wanted to do good, that was the choice, right? That’s all you had. Um, today there are lots of different structures. You could, or opportunities. You could be a for profit company, um, and become a benefit corporation, B Corp you could be a subsidiary of a nonprofit. Um, you could be an LLC, you know, there are just so many different ways. And so generally what I tell people is first figure out what you want to do, then figure out what the corporate structure makes the most sense. What I will tell you is that I wouldn’t necessarily change our corporate structure because we’ve made it work for ourselves. Our the way we have structured ourselves by having everything under one roof. The huge job in the beam job is that we what that’s done is that it has allowed us to have a mixed revenue uh pie, so to speak. So about 60% 60% of our operating budget comes from our product sales. What that does is it supports the business that supports women’s time while they’re working in the business. And it gives us the ability by the beans and the flour and all those things and makes a small contribution to our program operations. And then we fundraise to support program operations because again when a woman is in a financial literacy class or working on a resume or even in job search, looking for the next job, we’re paying her still. So we fundraise to both support those classes but also to be able to pay her. And because we’re five and one C three we have the ability to do that. It also probably gives us a little bit of wiggle room in terms of our inefficiency. Um you know I would if we were if if all of our revenue had to come from our product sales. We would probably have to compromise the mission a little bit and hire fewer women because we have to run a business with much better margin than we currently do

[00:40:27.55] spk_1:
more efficient.

[00:41:28.61] spk_0:
Yeah. But I will also say that there are plenty of situations where the, a board of a nonprofit, they might be interested in this idea of having revenue that’s basically unrestricted revenue, but they don’t want to risk the larger organization or they do or they want to just sort of run it on the side as sort of a separate entity and maybe not have it be a distraction within their main business, so to speak. There there are risks in that as well though. I’ve seen lots of uh, non profit big human services organizations that run social enterprises and they sort of treat them like the red headed step child. And, and look at him like what have you done for me lately? Little, you know, business, Why are you not contributing more when the reality is they’re kind of stifling the growth of that, that business. Um, and, and perhaps, um, you know, causing it to, you know, not prosper. Yeah, that’s

[00:41:48.11] spk_1:
a mistaken, well not only organization, but just in, in culture, in you think that the way board members and I guess the organization collectively thinks about its social enterprise as, you know, as uh, the ugly step child.

[00:41:50.51] spk_0:
Yeah. And that’s the risk, right? If of creating a structure where you sort of set it off to the side. I mean I understand that sometimes that’s done to avoid risk, but sometimes it creates more risk for the survival of the business. One of the things I worry about having been in this field for a long time is that, you know, uh we’ve now come to a point where social enterprise is kind of cool. It’s kind of come into its own, I joke that it’s like women’s bean project has been wearing a velour tracksuit for 30 years and now suddenly velour track suits are in uh but you know, so

[00:42:24.27] spk_1:
stay behind me with bell bottom suit.

[00:42:27.61] spk_0:
Yeah, exactly. Behind long enough, if I hold on to these

[00:42:30.51] spk_1:
things long enough they’ll come, they’ll come my dozen bellbottoms suits will come back.

[00:43:14.10] spk_0:
It turns out that’s happening for social enterprise. But what I worry is that organizations will start a business and do that and sort of cut it off at its knees and not even maybe recognize that and it won’t survive and then they’ll look back later and say, yeah, we tried that. It didn’t work. But I can tell you that if it it’s not always because it’s a bad idea that it doesn’t work. It could be because you just didn’t give it the opportunity for us, we in the nonprofit world are notoriously risk averse. That’s not a news flash to anybody I know. And so the challenge is to be willing to take some risk and balance at risk. You know, it’s a risk reward ratio in a business and balance that risk a little bit um With with what the benefit could be a long term.

[00:43:36.70] spk_1:
Yeah you started the transition again. I love it the way you segue easily uh lessons you know, lessons learnt things to look out for things to be sure you you’ve considered You’ve been doing this for 30 what 32 years?

[00:43:39.70] spk_0:
30

[00:43:40.60] spk_1:
two years.

[00:44:59.49] spk_0:
Yeah, Well I often say we have 32 years worth of mistakes. We could totally help somebody else avoid and leave them free to make all their own mistakes. Um you know it’s I would say the lessons learned are are consistent with what I’ve been saying, which is you really do um If you want a social enterprise to survive, you really do have to embrace it as as being a means through which you’re going to deliver on your mission and not set it on the side and say well you know someday you’re gonna make me some money and I’ll be able to use that money to advance my mission. They have to be interwoven. Um so you know, we don’t exist to make bean soup yet we can’t exist without it. And that idea that the two are inextricable um is probably the most important thing and the most important, honestly lesson that I’ve seen. I watched a social enterprise um be formed out of an organization that was providing initially providing the same service for free. And then they formed the social enterprise too monetize the service, but yet they kept offering the service. So they had this business and they kept offering the service for free. So

[00:45:01.07] spk_1:
yes.

[00:45:46.09] spk_0:
And um, and then eventually decided that the social enterprise wasn’t working. And the, the problem I thought, you know, it’s, it’s easy monday morning quarterback, admittedly, but you know, was that they set it up to be a complete, you know, be its own competition. So of course it was, there was always going to be that tension and that conflict. You’ve got enough tension and conflict, just trying to advance your mission and advance your business without setting yourself up for failure. So, you know, that’s another lesson which is be prepared for there to be tension between the business and the mission. But be okay with that because that’s part of what you’re doing is you’re trying to change the world by using market forces. Uh, and you know, we are, we’re a country of consumers. So let’s take advantage of the fact that we are a country of consumers. Everybody needs to buy products and services. So what a great opportunity to, um, to, to, for lack of a better word, exploit that.

[00:46:16.38] spk_1:
I love the way you say, you’re working to change the world by using market forces. Um, all right. Any anything else? You wanna, you wanna leave folks with anything that we didn’t talk about that you feel is is important. Anything I didn’t ask about,

[00:47:21.58] spk_0:
you know, I would say, uh, the last thing would be that if you are thinking about, um, starting a social enterprise, start looking at other models and seeing what other groups are doing. And especially if they’re localized, there’s, you know, there’s no reason to that. You wouldn’t be able to learn from their mistakes. Um, so you we have been asked often whether or not we would expand women’s Bean project out of Denver across the country. What we have chosen instead is to be more open source where we look forward to sharing the things that we’ve learned because I think ultimately, if we want to lift up the whole field, not just, you know, aggrandized women’s Bean project, that’s not our goal. Our goal really is to help other organizations create or prosper with their social enterprises, not just have us get bigger and bigger. There’s enough need to go around.

[00:47:27.88] spk_1:
Mm hmm. What about social enterprise Alliance? Is that a resource for folks?

[00:47:41.68] spk_0:
It absolutely is. And that might be a great place to start to figure out what is out there. They have social enterprise alliance has, uh, you know, members all over the country who are involved at various levels of social enterprise. So they might be running social enterprises or they might be consultants to social enterprise. Um, if you need an attorney to talk with, for instance about what your corporate structure might be their resources there. Um, but the nice thing about that is if you’re in the initial stages of just doing research is a great place to start.

[00:48:12.47] spk_1:
Okay, good value. You can have conversations with folks, you can, you can, it’s a good place to start your research and, and, and grow if you decide to

[00:48:14.13] spk_0:
mean, you

[00:48:23.87] spk_1:
might start your research and decide. It’s not really, you know, you can’t tolerate the risk or the tension. Uh, it was just something you don’t want to take on, but at least you do it, make that decision informed.

[00:49:44.67] spk_0:
Yeah. I always think that fear is not a reason not to do something right. Like you can acknowledge the fear and sort of do the things that, that you need to do to, um, to try to overcome or, you know, address the fear, but staying noticed something just because you’re afraid. It’s maybe not the best reason. Uh, and I think also, you know, we have a tendency to sit at the, at the starting line and try to anticipate all the problems we’re going to have. And, and I guarantee, first of all, we’ll be wrong about what problems we think we’re going to have and whatever solution we decide it’s gonna not be appropriate for whatever problem you end up having. And so ultimately you just got to start and and have faith that you have gather the resources and the expertise enough that you can address the problems as they come up. But I think that that tends to be and in my experience, just going to lots of, you know, speaking on lots of panels and talking with lots of organizations that are thinking about starting social enterprises is they, they often get stuck at that starting line and have a hard time pulling the trigger. Um, the reality is, it might not work, but think about it. I, I think you learn more from failure than you do successful a lot of times.

[00:49:57.67] spk_1:
Yeah, too much ready, aim, aim, aim and, and, and no firing. All right, outstanding. Thank you Tamara, thank you very much.

[00:50:00.34] spk_0:
Thank you

[00:51:23.16] spk_1:
my pleasure. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for sharing the women’s Bean project story and and beyond. Uh, tomorrow Ryan Ceo women’s being project. It’s at women’s Bean project dot com. You want to look at their dried foods and other products, especially now around the holidays and Tamara is at tomorrow Ryan. Thanks so much Tamara next week. How about our annual replay of zombie loyalists? I think. So, if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c. O our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows social media is by Susan Chavez Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Stein. Mhm. Thank you for that information, scotty You with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for December 6, 2021: Purpose Driven Marketing

My Guest:

Stu Swineford: Purpose Driven Marketing

Stu Swineford reveals the principles and pillars of purpose driven marketing that will keep your donors engaged and wanting to support your mission. He’s co-author of the ebook, “Mission Uncomfortable.”

 

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Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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[00:01:45.54] spk_1:
Yeah. Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with scabs if you invested me with the idea that you missed this week’s show purpose driven marketing stew. Swinford reveals the principles and pillars of purpose driven marketing that will keep your donors engaged and wanting to support your mission. He’s co author of the book, Mission uncomfortable On Tony’s take two planned giving accelerator were sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o here is purpose driven marketing. Yeah, it’s my pleasure to welcome for his first time on nonprofit radio stew Swinford. He is a mountain fellow, cinephile and co founder of Relish Studio, a digital marketing firm that creates conversion focused marketing solutions for nonprofits with Aaron Rixon, he’s co author of the book mission uncomfortable how nonprofits can embrace purpose driven marketing to survive and thrive. He and the company are at relish studio and relish studio dot com. Welcome to nonprofit radios

[00:01:46.65] spk_0:
to well thank you so much for having me on today. tony

[00:02:00.34] spk_1:
pleasure pleasure. Uh we got to take care of the most obvious things first before we get to your book and purpose driven marketing. You’re a mountain fella. So I mean you live in the mountains.

[00:02:17.74] spk_0:
I do. We live up here at about 9000 ft up kind of west of Denver Netherland is kind of the closest biggest town. Um, but live in a little cabin that was built in the 40s here in the woods with my wife and our are slew of pets, which hopefully will not interrupt us today.

[00:02:22.78] spk_1:
That’s okay. We’re very family friendly on a

[00:02:25.12] spk_0:
nice family embracing,

[00:02:28.94] spk_1:
not just family friendly family embracing. So 9000 ft. So you’re so you’re one of those people who follows the uh the high altitude directions on baking?

[00:02:38.34] spk_0:
Absolutely, yeah. Okay. And those are actually mostly geared for Denver, which is about 50 400 ft. So we have to make even more adjustments usually when we’re doing things up here.

[00:02:50.44] spk_1:
And do you need special cars or special equipment on your cars to drive at that altitude?

[00:03:11.34] spk_0:
No, not really. Not really. Everything’s electronically controlled at this point, so you don’t, you don’t have to make too many adjustments. I think an older car or older motorcycles for sure you have to reach it um in order to perform well at higher altitudes, but older ones. Okay. Yeah. Are you

[00:03:17.25] spk_1:
skiing there in the mountain?

[00:03:31.84] spk_0:
Well, not currently. Uh we we don’t have, we got a little bit of snow last week, but it’s mostly gone. Um I believe a basin actually opened last week. So they are skiing up a little higher than we are located. Um And El Dora, which is the local ski area is threatening to open here toward the end of the month, but we’ll we’ll see what happens. It’s been a little bit warm.

[00:03:42.24] spk_1:
Okay, this is uh we’re recording in mid october

[00:03:46.52] spk_0:
Yes, yes. Okay. Okay.

[00:03:48.66] spk_1:
Are you a cross country skier?

[00:04:06.64] spk_0:
I do I know a Nordic ski and backcountry ski. I don’t go to the resorts all that much anymore. I used to be a big resort guy and um I used to ski about 80 days a year. Um and I I would say last year I probably got 20 or 25 days a but it was mostly back country skiing.

[00:04:09.84] spk_1:
Okay. And cinephile. Yeah, I have a favorite director genre.

[00:04:30.54] spk_0:
Well I love the Coen Brothers, they’re probably my favorite directors. Um And I used to write for film threat and I was I was a critic for a short period of time. Um And I just love watching movies and uh that’s something that I enjoy.

[00:04:32.24] spk_1:
Yeah, wonderful. You have a favorite Coen Brothers movie? That’s hard. That’s hard. It’s tough. Maybe asking you a question that I couldn’t answer

[00:05:06.74] spk_0:
myself many of their films um have something to be enjoyed. I would say my go to favorite when people ask is Miller’s Crossing, which was one of their earlier films um starring Gabriel Byrne. And uh it’s just a you know, it’s it’s a it’s a fun little movie but you know, I’ve watched the Big Lebowski. I don’t know how many times and um you know they have a great uh collection and selection of movies for people

[00:05:46.94] spk_1:
o Brother where art thou Burn after reading these are some these are something but Miller’s Crossing that with Gabriel Byrne. I’ve I’ve seen that a few times that I think I might have that one in my collection. I’m pretty discerning about which movies actually purchase physical copies of so that I can watch them when I want to, streaming services decide that they want to have them bond for six months. And I think Miller’s Crossing is in there because that that’s uh it’s an early one but he’s uh he’s a he’s a it’s an interesting gangster um gangster profile

[00:05:48.37] spk_0:
I suppose. Yeah, it’s kind of a gangster movie set in the prohibition era. Um It just has great, great dialogue and uh and it’s you know, it’s not for the whole family for sure, but but it’s definitely a good one if people haven’t checked that one out,

[00:06:03.74] spk_1:
Hudsucker proxy

[00:06:04.70] spk_0:
to great name

[00:06:08.24] spk_1:
that often. But paul newman

[00:06:10.64] spk_0:
uh tim Robbins, tim Robbins. Exactly.

[00:06:29.14] spk_1:
Yeah. The circle, it’s a circle for kids. It’s for kids, you know, circle, you know kids so alright, so coen brothers fans, you will get that, you’ll get that reference if not you can watch the Hudsucker proxy and uh and you’ll get it all right. Um So purpose driven marketing, why don’t we just define this thing. What is this first?

[00:08:35.64] spk_0:
Well purpose driven marketing in our minds is here it relishes um is really marketing that has a goal in mind. And then also we really try to work with purpose focused leaders who have something bigger than just making money in mind for their organization. So whether they’re a 1% for the planet partner or a nonprofit or a B corp um, those are the kinds of people that we really like to work with and, and uh, you know, I sort of, I guess I grew into this over the years, uh, At relish. We started in 2008 and in about 2013, my business partner and I started thinking, Wow, you know, we’re, we have this opportunity as entrepreneurs and business owners to, to really create something different than just uh, an organization or a business that that is here to make money. We can actually kind of mold this in, in our own fashion. And so we started looking for ways to create some giving back here at relish and that was when we joined 1% of the Planet Colorado Outdoor business alliance organizations like that, that colorado non profit association that enabled us to, to start to kind of codify or, or formalize are giving back as well as, you know, really meet and um, and be able to serve those people who are doing a lot more in the world than just, you know, funding, uh, the owners next vacation home or yacht or something like that. Um, in terms of, of conversion focus. However, you know, that’s another piece of the purpose component um, is really making sure that people’s marketing is aligned with a goal and that we’re helping them achieve that goal. So it’s, it’s just a thoughtful way of approaching the whole marketing space um where it becomes, you know, something that you’re investing in. Um it’s not just an expense, it’s something that’s actually creating a return on that investment. Mhm.

[00:08:41.24] spk_1:
And you, you focus a lot on building relationships through purpose driven marketing. How, just as an overview, we’re going to get to that, we’re gonna get to your four pillars, but how do you see purpose driven marketing contributing to relationship building?

[00:10:11.74] spk_0:
Well, we look at marketing is really, that’s all marketing is, is building relationships and really, instead of attempting to sell all the time, um, we see marketing that works as as an opportunity to create a relationship, to build a connection as opposed to just trying to sell something. Um You know, usually in in any kind of transactional relationship, um you have to get to know the person trust like them. Um and then move on to kind of being able to try and, and by and then hopefully people move into the kind of this repeat and refer proportion of their, of their life cycle. Um But ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s all about creating this atmosphere where people, um not only know who you are, but but really get to like you and to trust you in order to uh take that next step, which is to try and to buy your services or your, you know, your organization’s um, uh, benefits that they’re bringing, that you’re bringing to the, to the marketplace and to the nonprofit space in particular. Um, and so that’s that’s kind of how we see marketing is is just really creating opportunities to build upon um interactions and create a really strong, solid relationship with people.

[00:10:27.84] spk_1:
And you take time to, hey, make sure people are not thinking of marketing as a pejorative, you know, that it’s that it’s I don’t know that you use the way, I don’t think you use the word sales. E but you know, you uh you’re you’re making sure people are, are looking at marketing the way you and Aaron are, and not the way, you know, an amazon looks at looks at marketing.

[00:10:44.44] spk_0:
Well, it’s interesting even in the amazon space, but the short answer is yes. But even in the amazon space, they’re trying to create opportunities for um for relationship building. So there is there are some

[00:10:56.86] spk_1:
lessons to be learned from

[00:12:06.84] spk_0:
the Yeah. And that’s how we just kind of see marketing. So whether that’s selling a widget where you have to convince somebody that this is a durable, um, you know, tool that will solve whatever problem it is that they’re trying to solve. Um, you’re you’re always trying to build a relationship there. You’re always trying to create an opportunity for somebody to get to, to know that company, um, understand why they’re doing things and uh, I believe that that this transaction is going to result in a positive, um, outcome. And, and whether that’s a long term kind of approach where you are trying to convince a donor to give, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars to your organization or a very short term relationship where you’re just trying to convince somebody to, I don’t know, buy a soda because they’re thirsty. Um, you know, it is all about creating that, uh, ability and opportunity to, um, for, for people to start to know like, and trust you in that in that connect and um, and convert face of the, of the scenario.

[00:12:33.14] spk_1:
Yeah. Know like, and trust Trust is when you can build trust with folks and uh, then, uh, there are so much more likely to open your, open your messages, uh, follow your calls to action, you know, when there’s trust with the brand and the work, that’s uh, that’s a pinnacle in a relationship.

[00:13:00.84] spk_0:
Yeah. And ultimately relationships are built through interactions over some period of time. And so whether those interactions are, you know, commercials that are aired, um, or emails that are sent and uh, questions that are answered. Um, or even, you know, social media outreach and uh, back and forth when you can create when you can create that interaction, when you can create that, that back and forth, that then solidifies and builds and strengthens strengthens that relationship. And so those are the kinds of things that we help our clients and partners facilitate through marketing.

[00:13:21.94] spk_1:
It’s interesting the back and forth, not just the one way, you know, messages going from us to those, we’re trying to build trust with

[00:13:27.91] spk_0:
a little more

[00:13:29.10] spk_1:
about how it’s how it’s two way communication, not not one way.

[00:15:02.54] spk_0:
Yeah, so that’s actually one of the things we see people, one of the bigger mistakes people make in the social media space is that they use social media as kind of a soap box where they get on and they present their, you know, whatever whatever it is of the day, whether it’s a sales pitch or even a an item of value, but they fail to try to build those relationships. Um and you know, social media is at its core a social component which requires back and forth, which requires um you know, companies and their, you know, they’re the people who are working with them to go out and and create opportunities to start those conversations on social media. So instead of simply going to your particular platform and posting something, um you know, really one needs to be out there um interacting and and commenting and posting on other people’s materials as well as posting on on your own materials and answering questions. Um google reviews is actually a great, another great example of a place where people have an opportunity to create a back and forth, whether that’s a positive review or a negative review that someone is left about your organization. Um, you know, making sure that you answer that and even try to create, you know, opportunities for back and forth. So ask open ended questions. Um, you know, comment on how beautiful that photo was on instagram and then ask them a question about what inspired them to take that or what camera settings they used or you know, whatever the whatever the the thing is that inspires those conversations and and gets people going back and forth, that tends to create those opportunities to build a relationship.

[00:17:41.34] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications, content creation, content is king. The medium is the message birds of a feather, flock together. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. So well the first two of those apply, we don’t, we don’t need the birds and the apples, but content content if you need content in the coming year, for for what? For digital, for print for an annual report for some other report to the board content. If you need content for your social channels, they can do all this turn to, they’ll help you hone your messaging. And as far as press, get your messages out in the channels that you’ve heard me talk about like Chronicle of philanthropy new york times, Washington post Detroit, free press etcetera cbs market watch. So content. If you need content for whatever purpose, think about turn to you need help get this off your plate there. The pros they write it, they’ll, they’ll get it off your shoulders because your story, is there mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. Now, back to purpose driven marketing. Okay. In that spirit, the reason I was attracted to you reached out to you to be a guest is you posted something interesting on linkedin. So I looked a little further in linkedin and you had a phone number that folks could pick up and say, you know, if you want to chat, reach, reach me here, uh, let me chat with the guy, I’m gonna pick up. Sorry, uh, like five minutes after I had read your post and did a little research, I said, I’m gonna talk to the guy. So you created an opportunity for people to reach you. Uh, uh, you know, and I grabbed it and I thought, first of all, it’s very unusual for someone to put a phone number and it didn’t go to google mail. It was your voicemail or google voice. I should say. It was your it was your it was your voicemail. And uh, you know, you called me back and we chatted. So you’re you’re you’re walking, you’re walking your

[00:17:51.84] spk_0:
walk. Well, I hope so. You’re walking your talk, I guess. I hope so. That’s one of the challenges of, of running uh running a marketing agency as we have the cobbler’s kids challenge a lot of the time where we we can do a really good job for our clients. But we tend to uh neglect our own outreach in our own websites and those types of things. I’m happy that that that that actually worked. Um we’ll do this. So yeah, it was great. I’m curious. Which do you remember which post it was that that you found compelling?

[00:18:24.54] spk_1:
No, it was too long ago. Okay. No, it was over a month ago that we first connected. I don’t know if it was about your book, but was it could have been the release. Had your book just come out recently or No,

[00:18:32.95] spk_0:
the book dropped in uh february last. All right

[00:18:48.74] spk_1:
then. I knew you had when I well, I knew you had written a book when I called you because I left you a message saying I’d like to have you on the show and talk about the book. Um I don’t remember. I don’t know. It’s

[00:18:50.19] spk_0:
okay. I was just curious to know if you if you remember what what thing I said that that made you want to pick up the phone. There was you know,

[00:19:14.64] spk_1:
you you know, I think you might have commented on something that I commented on to. Uh and so obviously I appreciated your comment. I think I think it was that I think it was a comment not a post of yours because you weren’t weren’t connected. So I wouldn’t have seen your. Yeah, I think it was I think you commented on something that I commented on.

[00:19:54.94] spk_0:
So so there’s a really great example of of how that relationship building peace can actually function to create another relationship opportunity. Um where you know, if if I were just using my, you know, linkedin platform to to espouse information and hopefully give some value driven stuff you and I never would have actually or it would have been less likely for us to have connected because uh what it took was me going out to someone else’s post and commenting about giving them some more information or saying nice post or whatever it was that I said um that they gave you got me in front of you. So um that’s a really good example of how one can can leverage that power of social media to to expand their network.

[00:20:07.37] spk_1:
It works so be social

[00:20:15.94] spk_0:
exact conversation. It is socially, it’s all about creating conversations. Yes. Let’s

[00:20:16.73] spk_1:
talk about your four pillars of of purpose driven marketing. Why don’t you just give us an overview and then uh and then let’s go in and I, you know, I got some things I want to talk about for each one but

[00:20:28.29] spk_0:
acquaintance

[00:20:29.42] spk_1:
with them first.

[00:23:23.94] spk_0:
Sure. So the four pillars as we see them in in terms of kind of this this client or customer lifecycle um is really starts with attraction. And that’s how do you get people to come to your properties, whether those are your social properties or your website or your storefront, How do you get out there in the marketplace and uh, and enable people to find you? And then we move to the bond phase, which is really the, the next step of that conversation where you’re not only have you brought people in. So you’ve, you’ve created an opportunity for them to find out about you, but now you’re creating this opportunity for them to actually get into the fold to, um, to kind of be part of your inner network. And um, and the connection phase a lot of times requires um, either a value exchange of some, some sort of information. Um, you know, what we’re really trying to do is help build those relationships and help not only, you know, take these people who have now found you and enable them to uh, to have an ongoing relationship, an ongoing conversation created. Um, so that’s kind of that bond phase and then the next phase is kind of this convert phase. And that would be the sails easiest part of this uh kind of system where essentially this is where we get people to either try or buy from you and in the nonprofit space, this would be, you know, getting someone to either, um, you know, really take advantage of something that you’re offering. So if you think about the nonprofit stakeholders, typically there are donors, there are volunteers, There are actual um, recipients of the of the nonprofits benefits. And then, um, you know, there could be kind of sponsors and and people in that frame as well. So how do we get those people to actually take some sort of an action either make a donation, volunteer, some of their time, etcetera. And then in the final phase, which is kind of this inspire phase, um, that’s where we’re trying to get people to either escalate their engagement. So you take a one time donor and get them to become a, you know, a monthly donor. You get someone who perhaps is a monthly donor or maybe as a one time donor and get them to bring their their business in as a corporate sponsor. Um, you get someone to escalate um, and repeat. And then also evangelize for your organization and get out there and really refer you, uh tell people that they should be a part of this organization as well, um or um, or even just shouting it out on social media about, you know, some great volunteer experience that you had. So those are kind of the main four pillars. And again, kind of heard me talk about them in a different framework earlier where, you know, we’re really trying to get people to um, to know like trust tribe. I repeat and refer those are kind of the seven components of those four pillars. Okay,

[00:23:49.64] spk_1:
so before we dive into each of these, these four, but let’s let folks know how they can get your, your ebook mission uncomfortable.

[00:23:52.67] spk_0:
Sure they can, they can download it online. It’s, I decided to not publish it in a printed format at least this current time trying to save some trees. Um, but it is available at mission uncomfortable book dot com.

[00:24:19.54] spk_1:
Okay. And we’ll make sure we, I say that again at the end. So so attract connect bond, inspire when, when we’re, when we’re doing attraction, we’re attracting folks. You talk a lot you and Aaron talk a lot about personas, you’d like to rely on those, explain the value of how they work, what their value

[00:25:50.84] spk_0:
is. Yeah. So persona is, it can also be called an avatar. It’s essentially an ideal audience. So when you start to think about who you’re trying to attract to your organization. Um one of the first things we recommend doing is really doing some exploration in terms of personas and and really getting an understanding of the motivations for your target audience groups, um, what their demographics might look like. Um, you know, what, what makes them tick and why would they want to come. Uh, and, and uh, you know, connect with and participate with your organization. And so when you think of all, there’s usually more than one persona. Um, you know, a volunteer might be a completely different person than a donor for example. Um and and then a recipient of your of your benefits, would you know, potentially be even even different persona. Um So build what you can do is build out as many of these as you think you need to in order to get a feel for who it is that you’re kind of trying to reach a lot of times when we build out personas for our clients and partners, we really create a visual um you know, person that people can wrap their arms around. We name them, we find a stock photo that’s representative of representative of that person. You

[00:25:59.33] spk_1:
go to photos even I’ve heard of naming, giving, giving them names, but you go to photos.

[00:27:58.94] spk_0:
Yeah. Picture somebody. Okay. Yeah. Trying to create as much of uh of something that you can wrap your arms around when you’re talking about this audience group. Um and you know, I would say don’t go overboard, don’t try to overthink it to start because you know, you can get kind of in the weeds with persona development where All of a sudden you have 15 different personas that you’re trying to to reach and it just becomes confusing. So one of the things that we would recommend is just starting simple and just think about, who you know, if you were thinking of an ideal volunteer, just one of them and we know that there are many who would that person be um you know, would they be uh woman between the ages of 35 42 who has um, had a career and now has, you know, maybe has a little bit more free time in that career or perhaps even works for a company that offers uh, you know, matching for volunteer opportunities. Um, does she have Children? Is she married? Does, what does she, what does she look like? Who is this person? And you know, maybe her name is Jill and you can just really start to talk about and think about who Jill is when you are planning your marketing outreach. So does she play and find information and spend a lot of time on facebook or is she more on instagram? Is she out? Um, you know, in certain places in the local community where you can can reach her farmers markets for example, or um, you know, or perhaps other types of, of events where where would you need to go to run into and connect with uh, with Jill and get her to understand who you are and a tractor to your organization. And so it really that persona development really helps you map out your marketing strategy so that you’re not spending a bunch of time trying to attract, you know, boomers by posting on Tiktok.

[00:28:30.34] spk_1:
And when you’ve so identified the the folks that you want to connect with, that, that’s what the purpose of the personas is your identifying different different categories of people you’re trying to to connect with and you, you want to focus on delivering some content for them to connect with. And you have lots of examples of blogs and social networks and podcasts and white papers, etcetera. Talk about, you know, matching the content I guess with with with for your personas.

[00:29:48.04] spk_0:
Yeah. So when we talk about content, we really start with trying to create value exchange here. So this is actually the first transactional piece of the transactional relationship that you’re that you’re attempting to build. Um, the end goal may be to get uh, you know, a donation or get somebody to exchange their time to volunteer with you, which is something of value. But at the onset, um, it’s really about getting into this kind of try um, trust and try phase um, there’s a little bit of the like phase in there as well, but at this point they know who you are now. You’re really trying to get them to like trust and try your organization. So in this phase of the relationship, um, you know, coming up with things that might be beneficial to this person. So for example, um, Leave No Trace is a, is a nonprofit organization that is trying to get people to have a better understanding of how they can interact with our open spaces and natural places more effectively. One of the things that I’ve seen from them in the past are are these great cards that have the leave no trace principles. And and so they’re right there handy. You can have them attached to your pack or in your pocket um that that really give people

[00:30:16.38] spk_1:
presumably you don’t you don’t leave these cards behind at your

[00:30:18.88] spk_0:
campsite. Yes, exactly. These come with you uh the

[00:30:21.61] spk_1:
letter with the card.

[00:31:32.24] spk_0:
Yeah, Yeah, but but a, you know, a convert phase, you know, kind of opportunity here might be um either an online version of that card. So people could give, you know, give them their email in order to get this card, get access to this information or even uh, you know, provide your address and they might send you on. I don’t know exactly what leave no trace is doing with these these types of informational items. But that might be uh, you know, a tactic that they could use to get people to feel like there had been a value exchange and just to continue building that relationship and and essentially convert them from a stranger to. Now there’s somebody that you kind of know, um you have some information about them. Uh Now you can actually ask them questions through email. You can ask them to donate. You can ask them, you can, you can escalate that relationship by giving them other items of value. Um that’s where that connect phase comes into play. That then you kind of escalate that uh, into the, into the bond face.

[00:31:39.84] spk_1:
Yeah. All right. so let’s let’s spend a little time with with connecting, you talk

[00:31:40.60] spk_0:
about the I’m sorry, Bond Bond comes first and then the connect

[00:31:44.98] spk_1:
so, you know, in the book, you have a track and then

[00:31:48.57] spk_0:
yes, you’re right, I apologize. Yeah, I got it, I got it all confused. My own,

[00:31:55.75] spk_1:
you are a co author of the

[00:31:56.91] spk_0:
book, right? I am Aaron,

[00:32:03.64] spk_1:
you’re not a ghost writer to the I mean he’s not your ghostwriter? No, you actually did contribute. Okay, so, we can wrap it up right now, if you’re not bona fide, you know, then that’s the end. No,

[00:32:10.31] spk_0:
your bona fide. Okay, so

[00:32:17.14] spk_1:
yeah, so connect um you talked about the consistency principle uh that people like to as you’re connecting to get people to say yes or taken action, say a little about that, I like that consistency principle. Can you define that for me?

[00:34:50.14] spk_0:
Yeah, so the consistency principle is really getting opportunities to to make sure that you’re being um intentional and consistent in your outreach. Um one of the things that we find people do is they tend to go in sprints and they’ll get really excited about about building a relationship or or creating opportunities for outreach and then they’ll do it for a little while and then they’ll drop off for for months at a time and um you know, essentially creating an intention and creating a commitment to uh to outreach and to these activities and then sticking with that is something that we we talk a lot about one of the things that people tend to do is they set their goals too high and they say, okay, I’m gonna, I’m getting all excited about this, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do a blog post a day and uh and then they look at that that goal that they’ve set and they say, I can’t do this and we have this tendency, people have this tendency to think that That missing a goal is a total failure as opposed to, you know, you got part of the way there. Um and so what tends to happen is if we set a great big goal and then we start missing that goal, we think, okay, well, I might as well do nothing because, you know, zero is as big a failure as 75%. So one of the things in terms of goal setting that we really recommend is starting slow, creating an opportunity to create a smart goal, something that you can actually achieve. Um and uh and and start to feel what a wind looks like and then, you know, as you’ve built that consistency, go ahead and elevate that goal a little bit as you as as you get better at it. So I’d much rather see uh one of our clients, um, you know, set a goal of of one blog post a month, if they’re not doing any, let’s do one a month, get good at that until that feels easy. And then then we can talk about doing two a month or, or one a week or even, you know, a couple, a couple of week. Um, but what tends to happen is people get really excited about things and say, I’m gonna, I’m gonna knock this out of the park and then they don’t, they haven’t built those consistency, um, habits and so things kind of fall by the wayside and then they end up doing nothing. But

[00:36:48.53] spk_1:
It’s time for Tony’s take two planned giving accelerator. I’m recruiting for the january class right now. If you’d like to join me, like to learn together step by step how to launch planned giving at your non profit planned giving accelerator dot com has all the information that you need. Of course, you could be in touch with me through the site, ask any questions you might have. The course is six months, you’ll spend an hour a week learning how to launch your planned giving program and not only learning from me, learning from your classmates, the other members who are in your class with you. The peer to peer support is phenomenal. The way folks open up, they ask questions about challenges. They’ve got, you know, I haven’t tried everything. So we, it’s open to the, to the class to help each other. I mean, I’ve got my ideas, but everybody’s got theirs too. And you get that peer support, One member says she calls it her safety net playing giving accelerator. So if you’re not doing planned giving or if you have like a more abundant plant giving program, which is really no program, you know, deep down, if you admit that there’s really just not a program. If you want to take a look at plan giving accelerator, I’ll get you going launch your program and grow it between me and your peers. It’s all at planned giving accelerator dot com. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for purpose driven marketing and what’s happening in our relationship as we’re, we’ve moved from a trac to connect what’s happening there.

[00:38:28.22] spk_0:
Yeah. So in that in that attract phase, you’re essentially hanging your, your sign out and saying, hey, we exist, come check this out. And, and then in the connect phase you’re really trying to provide valuable information that enables people to, um, to take an action that gets them kind of deeper into the fold. So that’s one thing about email. People think for example, and particularly the nonprofit space email is an amazing tool. Um, yes, we all get a ton of junk email on a daily basis. And we also get a lot of non junk email but depending upon who your audience is and for non profits a lot of times that audience, particularly in the donor seat are kind of these people in the boomer, um age range, that demographic really still does rely very heavily on email. It’s kind of one of their chief modes of communication. Um They email is one of these places that feels like you have some control over it, you can kind of choose to read it or not read it, you can unsubscribe if you if you would like. So there’s a little bit more of a feeling of control with email and then also um this is a place where people have actually raised their hand. So it’s not just social media where you know maybe you got into somebody’s feed through some algorithm or or magically or got referred in, there’s a sense of people have actually taken an action. So that’s why we find list building and trying to create that connection and trying to get people into your um your your email list is a really valuable um component of this kind of four pillar system.

[00:38:45.72] spk_1:
And then bonding

[00:40:07.11] spk_0:
is next. Yeah bonding is really where your solidifying that relationship and you’re providing ongoing. Again, consistency is key here, ongoing opportunities for value driven uh exchange uh systems within the within the bond phase. So um we talked a little bit about this earlier in terms of creating opportunities to um to share information to share physical items to uh you know to provide people with solutions to their problems and in the nonprofit space this gets a little um a little I guess nebulous, it’s a little hard to figure out how uh to create these types of value exchange opportunities, but this is where mhm there are a few things that go into come into play here. One is if you can create an opportunity to position your nonprofit as kind of the guide in this story where your constituent your donor, your volunteer, even even the people that the beneficiaries are the heroes of the story and you’re just facilitating this opportunity for somebody for a donor to be the hero in this beneficiaries story that then creates this kind of experience in our minds where we we start to see ourselves as the as that hero and um and really feel compelled to continue uh kind of serving that role in that in that kind of relationship.

[00:40:57.51] spk_1:
You have a tip in the book. I think it’s mostly related. Well, no, not not necessarily to websites, but I’ll use the website example you say if some if you pre ask someone, if they want something, you get them to sit and they say yes, then at the next step they’ll be more likely to do the thing that you actually want them to do because they said you sort of you got them in the habit even though it was only one step, one step removed. You got them in the habit of saying yes, so they’re more likely to do the real thing that you want. Can you flesh that out a little bit? It was an interesting yeah strategy.

[00:41:10.11] spk_0:
It seems counterintuitive. I think that most people who have studied marketing have heard they reduce the number of clicks to purchase for example,

[00:41:13.22] spk_1:
don’t yeah, it’s possible.

[00:43:20.10] spk_0:
Yeah. And and this is where I would encourage nonprofits to try different things. But um the example that we believe I used in the book um was essentially instead of giving people a form to fill out immediately, give them a yet an actual action to take. So if you say would you like more information instead of just having, you know, this is an example instead of just having a form there where I put in my name and my email address and click, click yes, go ahead and say would you like more information? Yes, no and when people click yes, then it takes them to a page with the form on it and again it’s a little counterintuitive but the conversion rate on that form if you, if you put it behind that yes, no kind of gate yeah, it can actually be higher than the conversion if you just put the form out in front. Um there’s a interesting psychological thing that happens and one of my coaches, his name is Townsend Wardlaw. He’s a really great guy. Um he always asks per michigan before providing any sort of information. So for example tony if I had just sent you my book out of the blue without you asking for it. The likelihood that you would have done anything with that would be a much lower than if if I said, hey, would you like my book and you say yes and then I say okay and I’ll send it to you. Um, similarly Townsend always says ask permission, you know, would you like, would you like my help with that? Would you like me to share that with you? Um, you know, I have a story that I can tell about this, would you like to hear it? And, and that’s priming the pump for you to say no, I’m not interested. Which saves us both a bunch of time because now you don’t have to listen to me ramble on about a story that you weren’t interested in. And it also primes that pump for, for you to be even more receptive to the story once it’s once it’s delivered. So it works in, you know, not only in just marketing, but even in just conversational um, interactions.

[00:43:43.80] spk_1:
I’ve had folks talking about permission based soliciting for, for gifts, you know, in a couple of days, could I be in touch with you about investing in whatever you know, the work or the program that’s there of interest to them could be in touch, you know, in a few days on that. Yeah. Ask their permission. Exactly exactly in line with what you’re saying, you know? Yeah, that’s their permission and then be in touch in a couple of

[00:44:42.89] spk_0:
days assuming they said yes. Yeah. That’s, and actually a really great kind of cold call, um, tactic where instead of, you know, cold calls are very disruptive. So in the sales in the sale space. So for any executive directors out there, who are, who are, you know, soliciting donations from, from either, you know, big big corporations or, or, you know, seeking to get larger donors into the fold. One of the things that is more effective is to acknowledge that this call has been disruptive and try and get something on the calendar as opposed to trying to pitch them in that moment. And so similar, similar thing. You know, can I, can we, can we talk on Tuesday at, at three? Um, instead of saying, well, I’ll just jump right into the, to this thing that you didn’t actually ask me to pitch.

[00:44:47.87] spk_1:
Yeah. And you didn’t know what’s coming. Yeah, permission based I guess. I think Seth Godin has been talking about permission based marketing for years and it’s pervaded other areas. Yeah,

[00:45:00.35] spk_0:
absolutely.

[00:45:06.79] spk_1:
Yeah. Well, you know, why not? And you’re right. If the person says no, then you’re saving both of you the anguish of going through a, going through an exercise that neither one of you, it’s gonna be fruitless for one of you and the other person isn’t the least bit interested. So yeah. You want to do something that’s an interesting and fruitless.

[00:45:34.89] spk_0:
Yeah. And you’ve also created, you’ve created an exchange. Um, in terms of a back and forth. And so that’s, you know, that works as a um, you know, there’s a conversation that’s happened there. You listened. So you, you know, it positions you just a lot differently.

[00:45:37.12] spk_1:
You listened and you honored the person’s choice. So I I called you here. I am calling Tuesday at at four o’clock. Yeah. Alright. We’re inspiring. Next to

[00:48:12.27] spk_0:
separation inspiring. So yeah, after after this bond phase where you’ve actually gotten somebody to become a volunteer or make a donation or um, yeah, get get on your list of corporate sponsors or something like that from, from a non profit standpoint. Um The inspire phase is really where we’re attempting to get people to take another action. So um, there’s an old again kind of sales adage that it’s much easier to sell to someone who’s already purchased from you than it is to sell to somebody new. Um We tend to get really excited about new relationships and new sales tend to be the thing that get people excited. How many new donors did you bring in um, last year? You know, those, those types of things get get pretty exciting. However, it’s a lot easier lift to get somebody to donate again than it is to get to somebody to donate for the first time. So in the inspire phase, uh, you know, let’s just use donors again as an example. Um We’re really trying to get people to repeat and refer. Um, so get people to become a regular donor. Um, get people to donate again. Um, you know, thinking about escalation here and and again, if you think about your, um, you’re different kind of audience types and I do some volunteer work with volunteers for outdoor colorado and they’re a great organization here in state that does a lot of trail building and advocacy, uh, for kind of outdoor spaces. And I believe the first interaction that I had with their organization was as a volunteer. And so I decided I wanted to volunteer on a project and then I became a donor. Um, so essentially they gave me opportunities to, they inspired me. Um, you know, through not only all of the fun things that we were able to do during our, our, uh, our day of digging in the dirt. Um, but also, uh, you know, just just through all of the great things that they’re doing around the state, um, inspired me to become a donor and then inspired me to take an additional volunteer step to become a crew leader. And so essentially they’re doing a really good job of kind of escalating that engagement um, through this inspire phase. They also, um, you know, encourage all of their volunteers and all of their donors to share, uh, share their stories to, uh, spread the word about their organization. So that’s that kind of refer phase. So, you know, really

[00:48:30.47] spk_1:
like you’re doing right this moment.

[00:49:22.77] spk_0:
Exactly, yep, yep. Using them as an example of, of a great organization. Um, so that’s what, that, uh, you know, that’s where that kind of inspire phase comes into play. You know, getting people to evangelize about your organization, Getting people to, to, you know, share stories to come back to move from, you know, just giving you $10 at some events to giving you, you know, $10 per month. Um, so, you know, just getting really creative and staying in touch with people. That’s the thing that tends to happen is, um, you know, people fall off on the, on those activities because they’re, they are a little less, um, exciting than bringing a new donor into the fold. Um, but you know, really making sure that you have a referral program, you have something to get people to leave reviews, you get something, um, for people to share their stories and have a campaign associated with that, that keeps people keeps you at top of mind and then keeps people kind of coming back for more.

[00:49:54.57] spk_1:
You make the point of thinking about this as investment, not expense, not to look at the cost of a new cost of a donor acquired or cost of sale or something like that, but as an investment in the organization. And, and, and these relationships,

[00:51:17.76] spk_0:
we hear a lot in the nonprofit space would, particularly when it bumps up against marketing that any dollar that I spend that isn’t spent directly toward the core mission is a dollar taken away from that core mission. And we’d like for people to approach marketing for non profits a little differently where they see non they see their marketing uh, as an as an investment in that core message and an opportunity to expand and um amplify that message so that it becomes, it enables them to reach even more people. Um, and so that slight mindset shift can be really important when one starts to undertake marketing endeavors because, you know, it is money being, um, you know, coming out of the out of the program, but really making sure that you have to have a plan, you have goals, that they are reasonable, that you’re measuring that you’re tracking that you’re actually looking at this expense, um or this investment as uh, as something that’s going to grow your mission and and just keeping tabs on that and and making sure that you have those systems in place so that, you know that the, you know, whatever money you invested in marketing um, is creating a return on that investment.

[00:51:49.96] spk_1:
Yeah, yeah. Please get past this insidious myth. That myth of overhead, you know that marketing is overhead and technology is overhead needless, you know, these are investments in your future. You and I are talking about investments in relationships, relationships are only going to grow and as as folks refer, you talked about repeat giving and referring as folks refer you, the relationships are going to expand beyond what you can imagine, but it takes investment. So

[00:52:11.65] spk_0:
yeah, that’s why why having a system in place is so important and and that’s what, that’s one of the reasons I wrote Mission uncomfortable was to enable people to have some kind of understanding of a system in place for their marketing so that they could feel more empowered with that investment and and more comfortable with that investment that they’re making in in their outreach.

[00:52:19.05] spk_1:
That’s the perfect place to leave. It’s too

[00:52:21.05] spk_0:
well, thank you so much for having me on the show. Absolutely my pleasure.

[00:52:43.05] spk_1:
The book is mission uncomfortable. How nonprofits can embrace purpose driven marketing to survive and thrive. You get it at mission uncomfortable Book dot com stew Schweinfurt. The studio is the practices relish studio and he and the company are at relish studio and relish studio dot com. So all right now, I’ve just said the word relish 35 times in the past two sentences. Why is it relish Studio

[00:53:01.75] spk_0:
Relish Studio came about as a kind of a play on words where this is something that is that little extra spice on top that makes things extra good as well as something that we love to do. So you know, one of the things that really inspires me to work with nonprofit leaders is um just, it’s really easy to get out of bed in the morning and and work with these types of clients because we know that everybody’s out there trying to make the world a better place.

[00:53:28.45] spk_1:
That’s cool. It’s a great double play. Relish the condiment Condiment studio. Alright. Relish studio dot com stew. Thank you again. Thanks very much.

[00:53:36.77] spk_0:
Thanks for having me on

[00:54:20.45] spk_1:
my pleasure. Next week is a social enterprise for you. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein, thank you for that. Affirmation scotty be with me next week for nonprofit radio Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95 go out and be great