Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 221. What Matters Right Now: Think Like a Business - Jonathan McCoy, CFRE, Becky Endicott, CFRE and Evan Feinberg

Transcript

221. What Matters Right Now: Think Like a Business - Jonathan McCoy, CFRE, Becky Endicott, CFRE and Evan Feinberg · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Becky Endicott: Hey, I'm John.
• 0:01
  Becky Endicott: And I'm Becky.
• 0:03
  Jonathan McCoy: And this is the we are for good podcast,
• 0:06
  Becky Endicott: nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:15
  Jonathan McCoy: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:23
  Becky Endicott: So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:34
  Jonathan McCoy: So let's get started. Hey, Becky,
• 0:37
  Becky Endicott: Happy Friday, everybody. So glad you're back.
• 0:40
  Becky Endicott: We are in the the trend game, and we are loving every single second of
• 0:45
  Jonathan McCoy: it. Yeah, I mean, the feedback has just been so cup filling, you know, we're taking time to really unpack these trends that we don't want to just be trends, we want these to be some core philosophies that really matter. Today, it speaks to the middle of the pandemic, it's feel like speaks to where we've kind of come from over the last couple years, and how we can really move forward confidently, and really, in the presence of just who's the best, like, who is really showing up Well, right now, and doing that together in community, like it's kind of fun.
• 1:15
  Becky Endicott: And so today, we're talking about thinking like a business, do not turn us off, you need to hear this, because business mindsets are such incredible avenues, that you're going to help you chase growth and success because it's gonna allow you to expand your thinking, work smarter, not harder. And there's mindsets.
• 1:35
  Becky Endicott: And there's diversification of revenue that we can talk about.
• 1:40
  Becky Endicott: And we have got such an expert that is coming on, and he is going to blow our minds.
• 1:46
  Jonathan McCoy: But here's the kind of cool thing with this whole concept of thinking like a business. Today's conversation, I hope you notice it is deeply rooted in humanity, in just this idea of chasing these business mindsets are going to help us accomplish more mission. And to do that at scale in a way that we couldn't do. Otherwise, it's all about trying to grow the impact that we're doing. So that's why we get so geeked out about this. But a little bit of tone setting of places we want you to dive in. And then we want to lead into this just incredible guests we've got today is just how are you cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset. And what does that mean is just showing up and being curious, you know, curious for how you can innovate, and how you can show up differently, or maybe just in a more comprehensive way than you've ever shown up before. And that's at every level of the organization. We think that this is a trend that everyone gets to play in, you know, everybody has a great idea, everybody can come to the table of how we can improve how we can, you know, spend less time doing things that aren't moving the needle, and focusing on the stuff that really does matter.
• 2:46
  Becky Endicott: And it's also about embracing failure, think about failure as failing faster forward, or failing up, we've heard this concept before. And it's really about getting your mind around failures, not the end point, failure is actually could be the beginning. And if you can move from that space in your head, we can actually move faster through knowing what doesn't work. And we can run toward what actually does work.
• 3:12
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, all of that opens up the ideas, it opens up your mind that there's more than one way to get to that goal. And that might look like opening up new streams of revenue, you know, maybe starting that monthly giving program that you've never done.
• 3:24
  Jonathan McCoy: You look at the business side, so many things are moving to subscription models, because there's just this solid base of recurring people that are giving to the business because they love some service, the same idea applied. Just imagine the rabid fans that you're growing, as people give more regularly, even a smaller amount. And that's things you can really activate upon. So some of these business ideas we really want you to think about, but we think it's going to lead to building a stronger overall infrastructure.
• 3:54
  Jonathan McCoy: And that is what the name of the game is with our guest today. So we can like hardly contain the excitement. Because as we started to think about this whole concept of pushing the nonprofit sector to really think more like a business this year.
• 4:05
  Jonathan McCoy: There was really only one person we could talk to it wasn't that right, anyone? I mean, so we had we had our draft list. And the top of the draft list was Mr.
• 4:11
  Jonathan McCoy: Evan Feinberg. And he has said yes to coming back on the podcast today. You may remember him from a couple seasons ago, we had him from the stand together Foundation. And let me just tell you, this is an organization that you have to follow immediately, like literally pause the podcast and go follow find them and dive in because they are threading not only just business sense into it, but really identifying and finding the most disruptive organizations and people that are doing something that they believe could really change the world. And they're just trying to resource and equip them and put them on a platform to teach others. And so if there's anybody that knows how to scale, how to identify talent, and how to just make the magic for the sector that does really moving things. That's Evan and so, Evan, we are so delighted that you're here today. Thanks for coming back on the podcast.
• 4:59
  Evan Feinberg: Well, I could be more thrilled to be with such good friends again, and to get a chance to talk to you again and interact with us, we are for good community. And I'll tell you, John, if I could just take you on the road and have you share the stand together foundation vision,
• 5:13
  Jonathan McCoy: please, we've been waiting for you to ask.
• 5:15
  Becky Endicott: It's just such an empowerment Foundation and the way that you all get to the root of the problem. There's so many causes, and people who want to do well in the world. And they just kind of take care of the surface level things that are right in our face, but you guys go deep. And you do it with such a heart of intention. And you see the person at the end, and you lift them all the way up to the top and you make them the hero, and then you replicate it.
• 5:37
  Becky Endicott: I mean, it's just like all the fields. And so we're just so excited to just tap your brain and say, how can you help nonprofits, think more like a business, get into some of those entrepreneurship hacks, and then just put that mission on fire in a way that's just sort of going to be revolutionary for you're only brave enough to take that first step. And so, so excited, you're here, Evan. So I
• 6:05
  Jonathan McCoy: mean, let's just dive straight in. And I want to give a little bit of context to how y'all are organized, and then you please correct me or, you know, come back and explain this better. But, you know, you'll have the catalyst program, which is really identifying these incredible thought leaders and impact leaders that are already doing the thing. And then you put them and replicate them, and you put the, you know, kind of the concept on fire by sharing and spreading that message. So I just think there's so much there of what are you looking for, you know, what are the kind of mindsets and the business kind of acumen that these impact leaders have that you're like, Man that is scalable, that it has the nuts and bolts to really be transformational? For the sector? What are you looking and seeing?
• 6:47
  Evan Feinberg: Well, yeah, I mean, look at the beginning, at the beginning, we're looking for organizations and people that are capable of not just doing some nice things to help some people, but are able to transform communities at their core, the way that they look, feel and operate all over the country, which means we need the disruptors, the innovators, those people who are not trying to just implement today's best practices, or some evidence based approach that they read about in a book, but instead, the social entrepreneurs that are discovering those things that can truly make a difference in many people's lives, and that everybody sort of learned from and innovated on top of their innovation. We have the kind of social economy that is delivering over and over again, things that are helping people to discover their full potential, overcome barriers and communities, and so on and so forth. So we are at our, at our core, we're looking for what we call social entrepreneurs, right? They're not just organization leaders are not just agencies or nonprofits. In the traditional sense, they are those organizations that are discovering new and better ways of transforming lives.
• 8:04
  Becky Endicott: Okay, cue Becky doing the Arsenio Hall, like fist pumping, because we just need like 100 More stand together foundations, because this mindset is such a shift for us. And the level of disruption that it can provide. Thank you for just even talking about disruptors, and I don't want people I think that has some negative connotation, sometimes.
• 8:27
  Becky Endicott: This is like disrupter for good.
• 8:27
  Becky Endicott: My friends. I mean, these are people who are so passionate about the thing that drives them, that their passion is just so ignited, that they want to do whatever it takes to either solve the problem or get help to the person who needs it. And so I'm just curious, your opinion, like, psychologically, I don't even know metaphorically, philosophically, what is holding nonprofits back from embracing the sort of entrepreneurial like social entrepreneurship that you're talking about? And being a social impact leader? You know, I still think nonprofits can do that their tax status does not preclude them from doing that. I would love to know what you think is holding them back and maybe just a couple of, you know, things that you would suggest on how to start moving in that direction.
• 9:17
  Evan Feinberg: Yeah, well, look in the in the for profit sector, creative destruction, as Schumpeter called A is the name of the game, you have to come up with a new and better way of creating value for customers long term value for customers in order to get into business and to stay in business. And it says it's a really healthy type of destruction. It means that if I'm offering something that my customers no longer value, as much as something that somebody else can provide, I'll go out of business and they'll thrive. But in the nonprofit sector, that's very rarely where you hear people start, and it's very rarely happy to hear how you hear them talk about what they offer. They talk about their donors as customers rather than the people that they serve. They focus on with fidelity executing and evidence based best practice or replicating something that a random control study said works as they're trying to get all of their staff to comply with the the sort of standards of that evidence, which to me is nonsensical, because the problems related to poverty and social barriers in our communities. They're ever changing their dynamic. What worked yesterday won't work tomorrow. And frankly, if we look at the evidence across our sector, the majority of what's done in the name of our sector actually doesn't have much evidence at all, that it's making a difference. Yeah, there's a recent review that we we did with one of our partners of publicly available random control studies, there's about 3000 publicly available ones we could review, just 60 of them showed a statistically significant positive result on the margins that the study cared about, let alone whether those things actually mattered. High school graduation rate
• 11:12
  Jonathan McCoy: percentages that 60 out of 3000.
• 11:16
  Evan Feinberg: Yeah, 2% 2%, just 14 of those 60 showed the highest level of statistical rigor and evidence of the 60.
• 11:25
  Evan Feinberg: Right, so for most of what we're doing, that's not to say that all those nonprofits aren't doing incredible work, there's problems that they have of product market fit, are they offering their services to the right people, and so they're probably delivering huge impact for some people. And then they've got a random control study that then drowns that out with people that they're not creating any value for. And, and I could go on and on about the deficits that we have in the sector. But again, I think there's so much good happening in the sector, that that's not the point of the story. The point of the story is that we need social entrepreneurs that say, the solutions to barriers and communities and social problems are not known and just need to be pushed out. They must be discovered every day. And if they have to be discover that to be discovered by people taking risks, people with proximate knowledge, people that have experienced the problems themselves and have discovered something that worked for them or their loved ones or friends.
• 12:21
  Evan Feinberg: We need a dynamic social economy that matches the more dynamic economy of the for profit sector. That's, that's laser like focused around, how do we create more value for the people that we serve for those problems that we're trying to solve in communities? Mike?
• 12:42
  Jonathan McCoy: Yeah, such a Mic drop. Because what I love about your response there is it's just like laced with humanity. And it's laced with making sure that the end impact the person that you're actually trying to serve is served with dignity, and understanding. I mean, the proximity piece, I think, is probably one of the most powerful points of you know, we're not making decisions in some ivory tower somewhere. But it's people that have come up from the grassroot standpoint, that have proven that something can work and really change your life holistically. So what a much better and healthier place to start from the from the beginning. And so marrying that with business mindset. I mean, this is not like capitalism that's driving over people or something. This is those principles paired with true human to human impact. You know, it's beautiful. And
• 13:29
  Becky Endicott: it also makes me think of just the fundraising process, that what I feel you saying as well is, before we ever go out and even talk to a major gift prospect. What is our first step discovery? Well,
• 13:44
  Evan Feinberg: I'll use an analogy. My wife used to work for a very large media company, they had sort of the dual market that a lot of nonprofits have, they had advertising and advertisers that were a customer that were the primary revenue of the business, then they had journalism that would bring in readers of the content, the way that they would sell the advertising is to have more engaged readers and rich content that would engage those readers more. And somewhere along the line, the company struggle, because they were they were losing advertisers. And so they were they as less money came in.
• 14:29
  Evan Feinberg: They were they were cuddling, cutting journalists and Ryan cutting back on the product.
• 14:31
  Evan Feinberg: Well, you know that that's a company in a death spiral because you have to focus on the customer being the person consuming the content, and then the advertisers will come. I can't tell you how many nonprofits I talked to that they just give this huge story. If I just had all these resources, here's all the value I could go create in communities. And I always believe that If you start with creating the value and communities that the resources sort of catch up, right, they flow toward where value is being created. And if that's not happening, we've got to make some changes in the, in the culture of funding in this face, no doubt. But at the end of the day, the truly transformative nonprofits resources start flowing their direction. And so I always have you struggling on the fundraising side, it's probably not some they should listen all your podcasts, all your how tos. But it's probably not the how to have the fundraising. That's the primary problem. It's what are you doing that's differentiated and transformative for the people that you serve. And that relentless customer focus is I think, what will help nonprofits look and feel a whole lot more like, like businesses?
• 15:50
  Jonathan McCoy: Yeah. And it just feeds itself because then you do have these incredible stories. And you do have these believers. You know, that differentiator we'd say, between a donor and a believer, like somebody that's actually seen it, and is going to tell their family, their friends, their community, all of it, because they really do believe in what?
• 16:07
  Jonathan McCoy: What's happening. Hey, friends, this episode is presented by virtuous and they just happen to be one of our favorite companies. Let me tell you why.
• 16:13
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• 16:29
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• 16:58
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• 17:23
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• 17:29
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• 17:33
  Jonathan McCoy: Be the Pro and get started today with a 14 day free trial head over to we're for good pro.com/free. Okay, let's get back to this amazing conversation. Okay, so let's kind of transition into some real tactical advice. And I got to just think, Evan, you getting this seat where you get to sit and learn from and I can just I know from spending time with you, that's just your postures, you're always listening, you're always reading, you're always learning, like what sets leaders in these organizations apart?
• 18:08
  Jonathan McCoy: How are they showing up? And how are they? What does that presenting back as it's in some things that we could all implement? And how we show up?
• 18:16
  Evan Feinberg: Well, first of all, your most recent episode was fabulous and brilliant, and a great guest that you had on that culture is everything right? Culture is everything.
• 18:26
  Evan Feinberg: The old quotes, culture eats strategy for lunch culture gets around the world twice before strategy puts its pants on all that stuff. 100% true, right.
• 18:32
  Evan Feinberg: And when we talk about management culture, the biggest thing that sets apart the groups that we look for and work with for many others is that they seek to implement a principles based culture, rather than a rules or process based culture.
• 18:51
  Evan Feinberg: What does that mean? If you want to create, I think your last guests call it an alignment, you have to make very clear the stated and explain explicit principles of the organization, both the values of the organization, but the clear way that you go about your business, and people can align to and practice general standards of conduct that are expected of them. But the second that you turn it into a rules based culture, this is the way we do things, you check off these lists in your job, you deploy our program with fidelity in this way, you suck the culture out of the room, and you create a bureaucracy. And once your nonprofit is a bureaucracy i For us it's it's a we've sort of put pushed you off to the side because we don't think bureaucracies are going to change the world. So I'd say the first thing is that a principles based culture and those principles are more than just integrity and respect and humility those those principles are absolute critical, but they also have to be principles that you expect entrepreneurship, you expect transformation. It has to be about how you seek and gain knowledge to make better decisions. It has to be a prince principle based thinking around, you know, sort of economic thinking how you make decisions.
• 20:18
  Evan Feinberg: And so as you push principle based approaches, you can then trust and empower your team to be where you discover new and better ways to serve your customers, so that you're no longer just as strong as the smartest person, the dynamic leader, but you now create a principles based culture where the solutions to problems percolate from the bottom up.
• 20:43
  Evan Feinberg: And that's when that's when the real when you start cooking with raw gas.
• 20:49
  Becky Endicott: I mean, my favorite thing on the podcast, besides hearing just an incredible story is when people come on and just blow my mind. I mean, we're talking about things that I have never thought about in the context of how we get traction in our nonprofit, how we grow. Can you imagine the outputs of that like just the growth, mindset, culture, vibrancy, the success, you can bring in more innovation, I mean, this is where we are truly trying to get nonprofit to level up. And there are some people doing amazing work. And for anybody that's interested Evans episode, where we talk a little bit about this at the high level, it's episode 167. And I remember this story that you told us about Shawn, from Phoenix, I don't remember the name of the gym. But I Shawn's name is like, in my brain forever. And I love that story.
• 21:42
  Becky Endicott: encourage anyone to go to the podcasts and listen to it bring your tissues. But I think people want to know who's doing this well. And what are some case maybe a case study or a story or two, you could point to of who's implementing this and what has been the impact of it?
• 22:32
  Evan Feinberg: Well, you brought up the Phoenix in there that John was, is on is one of my good friends who, who's a staff members of Phoenix, incredible personal story. But the Phoenix is a great example, because they have built a management culture like this. So for a long time, we were working with the Phoenix to try to scale up their efforts all over the country, they had been running gyms and a few cities and they wanted the Phoenix, they wanted it to be a recovery movement all over the country. The Phoenix is an incredible peer to peer physical fitness, recovery effort to help individuals overcome addiction barriers in their life. Their price of admission is that your 48 hours clean and sober. But the community offers hope and resilience to one another as each person is part of the recovery journey of everyone else. It reduces the stigma around recovery, they proudly wear their sober shirts and their Phoenix gear. But essentially, it's just working out together. And then through intentional and supportive community, helping each other overcome problems related to addiction. They've got half to a third of the relapse rates of best clinical approaches in the country. And it's really incredible Scottsboro their founder in recovery himself, just the the perfect example of the social entrepreneurship that we've been discussing today. But the Phoenix does a good story in that they're I went to one of their board meetings, and I hope they don't mind me sharing some of this. The board was like, hey, this efforts exploding all over the country. And, and maybe we need to bring in some season, nonprofit leadership alongside of our current leaders like a, an experienced COO, because Scott was a dynamic founder. And you know, this is your last guest talked about the strengths and drawbacks of founder led organizations. I'm a huge fan of founder led organizations, if we can bring the right culture alongside them. And so they were trying to manage this growth, and they were just playing Whack a Mole. And they were struggling to manage this explosive growth.
• 24:42
  Evan Feinberg: But what they did was they really worked on vision. And they made really clear, this is the vision of the Phoenix. This is what it means to do Phoenix, right? And they said, Well, within that here are points of view of where we're creating value today. But But what else might we do? And it unleashed this incredible period of innovation, where the Phoenix has changed and morphed in all kinds of new and different ways.
• 25:09
  Evan Feinberg: And I wish I could tell the whole story, but the conclusion of it probably tells a lot of it. Today, they launched a technology product where they went from managing gyms and multiple cities to a new tech platform that I hope anyone who struggle with addiction or anyone working on addiction will go check out called it's called the Phoenix. The the app now enables individuals that want to join a recovery community in their community anywhere and everywhere to join this platform and be a part of the Phoenix.
• 25:41
  Evan Feinberg: And the next iteration will enable any buddy in recovery, who wants to be a volunteer and lead Phoenix program in in their community, to through the virtual program, get trained and certified and then use the app to run programming. So this in this vision update and their culture focus, then now has enabled the Phoenix to truly dream about going from a few 1000 people a year to as many as a million people a year over the next few years. So we're super thrilled that we would say that it wasn't the innovation of the technology. That was the secret sauce. It was the culture of innovation that came about when they made very clear their principles and their vision. And now it's exploding. Hack.
• 26:34
  Becky Endicott: I mean, emoji hearts in the eyes, like I don't know, I'm just so inspired by that nonprofit, and how progressive
• 26:44
  Jonathan McCoy: Can we just all be challenged to this is why we talk about getting really clear about vision, like, it's such a big topic around here. And I think, you know, it can seem like we're starry eyed dreamers always pushing it back to that.
• 26:56
  Jonathan McCoy: But we really I see this in that story is that it enabled people to dream and use their expertise and their talents and their creative energy to show up for that vision. And there's so many nonprofits, and this is what's gonna be, you know, kind of a byproduct of this, the present day is that they're not going to make it if you don't have a vision that excites people, and that is actually transforming people. And I do appreciate that this is pushing the envelope on that. And what a beautiful story. What can I say? We didn't know, that was the No,
• 27:29
  Becky Endicott: we had no idea that was left.
• 27:32
  Jonathan McCoy: And to me, that's one of hundreds of organizations that y'all interact with. And I think that speaks to yells methodology, that of course, they're having ridiculous success as we check in six months later, you know, what a beautiful testimony to living this out? Well,
• 27:47
  Evan Feinberg: and I'll share it just to make it one step more concrete. When we train on culture. And we train on something like vision, for example, we use it as a term of art. When we say vision, we believe that vision is capabilities based and opportunity driven. We think that too often people use vision as just a big mission on the wall, right? Just this is what we're trying to accomplish way out in the future, we're trying to end poverty, and addiction, right. And that's important to have a North Star, you know, the, the light that you can always look up and move toward.
• 28:21
  Evan Feinberg: But for us vision is much richer of a concept. It's a it's a principle for us that each of us has unique gifts and talents to contribute. The way that we can contribute the most is by fully understanding and developing those unique capabilities to create value for others. And we have to find the very best opportunities for us to deploy those gifts and talents to do so. Well, that works at an individual level. First, it's how you transform someone's life if you're a nonprofit, for example, but it also works at an organization level. When you look around your organization, you say, Well, look, we exist for a reason, right? Not to elbow our way into a busy nonprofit space. We exist because we believe we have unique capabilities to create value for people in society more value than anyone else. And we we want to promise the people that we serve the donors that give us money, that we can uniquely offer that value. Once you understand your capabilities and find ways to create that value, then you discover new ways, right? And you say, Well, wait a second, we just had these new capabilities alongside of our existing ones, we could create that much more value, instead of becomes a virtuous cycle for your organization of really being clear on on your capabilities, the opportunities, and then importantly, back in your organization that comes back to specific people that you're trusting and empowering.
• 29:45
  Evan Feinberg: Because your capabilities as an organization are really just the result of the individual unique capabilities of each person that you have working for you, as long as you're unleashing them to offer them.
• 30:00
  Jonathan McCoy: I got it in the there's a danger that people are just listening to this while you're washing the dishes or something, which is when I typically listen to podcasts, right? And this has been a nice feel good conversation and there's lots of takeaways, but it is a huge literally could cost. You know, the opportunity to change so many lives if you don't really take what was just said, and sit down if you're on a leadership team, like how do you plow through that discussion of of the opportunities of how we're going to activate people around this and the capabilities like that is a new Level Blueprint that I can assure you, the majority are not enduring. I mean, because, you know, Becky and I spent our whole careers and nonprofit and never had that level of conversation around a vision statement. And so thank you for that. But I truly hope that this spurs conversations and leads people and points, people that connected with you to join your catalyst program, and I want to give a plug and we'll wrap up with a one good thing. So don't think I'm missing out that. But this is just such a natural segue. If this is like stirring something, and you're like, Man, I'm that person, you know, I've got that idea. Nobody knows about this impact. How does somebody get connected to catalyst and give us a little plug for that?
• 31:10
  Evan Feinberg: Yeah, help folks go to San together foundation.org. There, they can click on catalysts. And there's a place to apply for our catalyst program. We individually that every organization through interviews and site visits and relationships, because we are looking for Social Entrepreneurs, not just an application on paper of the glossy proposal that people might put together for another donor. It's an incredible program. It's a peer to peer program. So we we take cohorts of around 12 to 16 groups every quarter. So and as in the six month program, we offer training on how to build a principles based culture that believes in and empowers the people you serve and believes in and empowers your staff to create the most value. It's a it's it's a growing network, once you've gone through the program, you're a part of our catalyst network.
• 32:06
  Evan Feinberg: And it's a platform as you put John to, to really bring out the best and each of these leaders, and in a shared way, work together as a catalyst community to catalyze change that really reshapes the social sector, around believing in people and empowering them from the bottom up.
• 32:25
  Becky Endicott: And I will layer on to that. Not only do you get all that, but you get this empathy that comes with the stand together Foundation team that we have seen, not only in Evan, but in his staff, you get lifelong connections, you're going to get so much care in what you're going to do, and people that really want to see you succeed. And so I could not, you know, be more effusive in the way that I want people to come in, because these are the things that when baked in, they create radical change that can change the world and change your mission. And so I don't know how we're going to distill it down.
• 33:03
  Becky Endicott: But I would love to know, what is your one good thing that you would offer the community today, Evan?
• 33:09
  Evan Feinberg: Well, you know, I've been writing a high for some time now from an in person meeting at the end of last year before Omicron, or like kicked up, we did one of our catalyst closing summits. And at those closing summits, at the end of their first six months experience with us. Each organization stands up and get when they take their stand with us, which is where they get up.
• 33:31
  Evan Feinberg: And they give a TED style talk, where they share the the sort of the core insights and principles that that everyone needs to learn from their organization, essentially. And we had 13 Incredible presentations. Not a dry in the room storytelling was off the charts fantastic. And maybe I'll just pick one to be my truly one good thing. Lorenzo Lewis with an incredible nonprofit called the confessed project. It is a an organization that's working on mental health, particularly in black communities. And the way they do it is by training and equipping barbers in barber shops all across America, to essentially be frontline, lay mental health workers. And Lorenzo got up there on the stage and shared that vision and shared what a movement could be in. And what I think about our country right now, I think about the deaths of despair on the rise, and I think about how addiction and mental health problems, particularly minority communities, growing at a much faster rate, I think this is an urgent and life or death problem for us to be solving.
• 34:43
  Evan Feinberg: And you know, every one of those speeches, but when Lorenzo got up and gave that speech, that's what gives me hope right now that we're going to be okay as a country, because we have social entrepreneurs saying that, obviously, the solutions that exist today aren't enough.
• 35:00
  Evan Feinberg: They're not good enough, even if they're great. They're not good enough to solve our problems.
• 35:02
  Evan Feinberg: And so the Renzo steps into the breach, try something new, grows it and is now applying the principles and values that we were able to share the cultural frameworks we're able to share.
• 35:15
  Evan Feinberg: And hopefully over the coming months and years Lorenzo's team will be able to do a whole lot more. I
• 35:21
  Becky Endicott: mean, this is what happens when you pass the microphone to someone who is on the frontlines, understands the problem, and can come up with an innovative solution. I'm just so inspired that you do that, and the fact that you did that at year end to completely recenter, your purpose of why you do what you do is just so brilliant. And I think the challenge that just keeps coming to me that I'd like to just pitch out to the community is, what are you doing to build principle based leadership and foundations of strength in your organization, if you can come together with an innovation first idea, and I would love you to sit around as a team and talk about what does innovation look like here? Who who's thinking about something?
• 36:09
  Becky Endicott: What are you reading? What are you hearing? And do some research with your people and listen to them? Because Wow, it would have been different even if you had gotten up there as the president or the CEO, and said, This is what happened. And with Lorenzo, but when you give the mic to Lorenzo and let him do that, that takes it to an entire level. And then it's all community based. And it's bottom up, which is what we're all about. So gosh, Evan, you're so great. So smart, so wise and so kind, we're just rooting for Stan together Foundation, one extraordinary organization, please go check it out, friends.
• 36:49
  Evan Feinberg: Well, thank you so much that I mean, I just love having these conversations, I really believe that what you're doing here is sharing principles with so many incredible people that if they can be listening to the two of you and your incredible guests on a weekly basis, they're going to be able to go independently apply those things in their organizations.
• 37:10
  Evan Feinberg: And this is how real social change happens. It doesn't happen because somebody snaps their fingers or there's some big top down sweeping solution to problems, it's going to happen because people like you all and your listeners are seeking to with a great deal of humility and, and and humanity as you always put it right love of others, desire to serve others desire to make their communities and people's lives better. Truly and earnestly listening and learning and then going out and seeking to apply.
• 37:39
  Evan Feinberg: So I'd love to be helpful to whatever of your listeners can come to us for some of that support. But I know they're also in good hands if they keep tuning in.
• 37:50
  Jonathan McCoy: What an honor.
• 37:50
  Jonathan McCoy: Evan, thank you for everything y'all are doing and just encouraging conversation. This was today.
• 37:55
  Becky Endicott: Thank you, Evan.
• 37:55
  Becky Endicott: Wow, just so glad to have you back on our orbit. This was awesome,
• 37:59
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• 38:24
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• 38:27
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• 38:35
  Julie Confer: Thanks friends. I'm our producer Julie confer and our theme song is sunray by Remy Boris boom