621. Hold Fast: Storytelling That Grounds, Heals + Connects - Obiekwe Okolo

6:16PM May 15, 2025

Speakers:

Jonathan McCoy

Becky Endicott

Obiekwe "Obi" Okolo

Keywords:

Storytelling

Hold Fast

Cognitive Diversity

Nonprofit

Mission

Community

Relationship

Ethical Storytelling

Bittersweet Creative

Cultural Identity

Listening

Specificity

Emotional Connection

Narrative

Authenticity.

Hey, Becky, what's happening?

We are in the thick of my favorite topic. Here we are one holding fast. But guess what? We're talking about, how to hold fast while telling your story that is going to scale and cascade across not just the interwebs, but human to human, like cause to cause. And boy, did we bring a really, really impactful and amazing expert to come talk to you today, because we are in the hold fast series. We are coming out of this incredible impact up where we're talking about, how do you hold fast when everything around you feels like it's changing so quickly? How do you hold fast to your mission? How do you hold fast to your community and in this era and this time that we are living in and the craziness of the world that's happening right now, we really feel like telling stories. Not only help us raise money, they help us meet goals, they help us expand our community and y'all, they give us so much cognitive diversity that is going to enrich who we are as a human being, but what if our stories could be more than strategy? That is the question I want you to think about before Jon introduces our incredible guest.

I mean, what a good question. And I don't like to live with a lot of regret, but I have regret that it's taken 615, episodes to get our dear friend, oh my god, okolo, our friend Obi is finally in the house. Obi is a storyteller, a creative director and culture worker to explore how nonprofits can hold fast to their deeper narratives, even when urgency threatens to flatten them. He shares His wisdom from bittersweet creative oh my gosh, we love that team so much. Hi, friends, and invites us to really approach storytelling, not just as a tool, but as a practice of reconnection identity and belonging. And Becky and I got the beautiful chance just a week ago to hug his neck in DC, where he is living this out, where he shows up with deep authenticity and care for the community that he loves. And so I'm so excited for this conversation, and we hope today you're going to leave with some concrete steps to really stabilize and expand your impact. OB, to have you in the house means the world. Welcome to the podcast.

So honored to be here. Thank you for having me. Well, friend. I mean, it's your first time through the podcast. You know, we want folks to know the OB that we know. Will you share a little bit about your story? What are some formative experiences that led you into this beautiful work you're doing today? Yeah, I think off the top one thing that I've borrowed from a mentor of mine who always introduces himself as an amateur human, I feel like it's important to note I've never done this before. None of us have ever done this before. You get one shot, and then that's, that's the show. So I've spent most of my life trying to figure out just how to do this humanity thing. Well, I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. I lived in Nigeria till I was about seven years old, and from there, we moved to San Antonio, Texas. So I am first generation American immigrant, and I think that sort of probably has shaped me. I've realized in the last probably decade that that has shaped me more than any experience of my life, because much of my sort of young life was trying to excavate the story like how Who am I when you move to any new place at, at that age, there's this really weird condition, I think, like seven it doesn't feel like a lot of time, but seven years is like the fiber of your being is formed in that seven year period. And, you know, a lot of things get added to that fiber, and ornament and decoration, but that fiber is there. So I remember, you know, even as a as a kid, feeling deeply Nigerian, even though I was, you know, not in Nigeria anymore. And then fast forward a number of years. I'm 16, and I'm, at this point, been here longer than I was there, but I still feel deeply Nigerian. The dissonance becomes even more because now the logic, it defies logic. It's like, well, I've been here longer. Why am I not more American,

and why am I still feeling this tension, and it just sort of continues. So I think story and understanding story and understanding complex narratives have sort of been ingrained in me from birth and through those experiences. My first love and first career aspiration was music. I was a musician from from a very, very, very young age, and wasn't every band I could be all the way

through instrument. I'm a percussionist. So,

yeah, so orchestral percussion, jazz, and I was a drummer and a few bands through high school and through college. And thought I was going to go to school for music. You know, I do still have West African parents. That was not in the cards, not quite an option. Didn't fit the doctor, lawyer, engineer. And after, you know, procrastinating because I thought, I thought there was hope, for a long time, I sort of was looking, staring down the barrel of a. Out of past deadlines, and I ended up applying to architecture school because one of my teachers, Mr. Peavy, had sort of been saving a portfolio from me for most of my high school career, and I didn't know. And that's another thing that I think is important to note about me, is I, I try to be acutely aware of the fact that I am sort of absolutely nothing without all the people that have contributed to me, and those are obviously parents, you know, my my mom, my dad, to some extent, uncles and aunts, but also teachers, Mr. Peavy Miss Brown, who was my independent study teacher for my junior and sophomore, junior and senior year of high school, whose room I cried in a number of times in crisis, and she was like my school mom Mark Lazard, who was my foundation architecture studio Professor after I got into architecture school, after Mr. Peavy gave me the portfolio that he'd been storing for me, and our first day of architecture, of our architecture and culture theory class, Blizzard gets on stage, puts on miles Davis's Bitches Brew and plays it for the entire class

period. My kind of person, the only

words he said to us that class is architecture, static music, and the sooner you realize that the better off you'll be. And I was like, oh, okay, we are. Somehow I found myself where I'm supposed to be. Yeah, there's just, there's just so many names, and I sort of have a running list on my phone, in a notebook, of the people who have poured into me. And you know, one of those people is case McCoy, who's currently my employer, my boss, my friend, the founder of bittersweet creative and I sort of found myself in this space after graduating from architecture, realized I'm sort of I knew during my junior year that I didn't want to be a licensed capital A architect. And more on that story, I can send you a link to a podcast where I told that full story, but then I discovered that I really loved sort of decoding architecture for the public, which was, I think, the first time that I sort of entered the realm of what I think would be called, you know, storytelling marketing. So I approached my boss at the time and said, Hey, I kind of don't want to be doing this thing. And we have a marketing director position open at the firm, and no one's doing it, and we're really bad at telling our story. Can I do that instead? And he said, Yeah, that sounds great. So I went into that role, did that for a while, really enjoyed it, and then sort of, sort of ran to another wall of, okay, cool. The architecture profession doesn't actually want its story to be understood. Again. More on that, on a different time. So I don't necessarily want to be here either. And my boss, at the time, had a sense of that, so he was like, Well, I can pay you to leave. And I said, that sounds awesome. I had been collecting some clients freelance work on the side, and just decided not to apply for a job after I got let go. So I did that for about six years, cut my teeth in the DC hospitality scene, restaurant groups, restaurant tours, hotels then got hired on by an ownership group called Brookfield hospitality in 2019 they're opening a product in DC called the years truly hotel got to be involved in the design of the hotel the programming. I was creative and culture director on property, yeah, and then we were set to open March of 2020

that's a bummer.

So that didn't happen. I had another form of learning experience, and having to lay off 52 people the day before I got laid off and after having to train 52 people that you know three or four weeks prior. And at that time, I was sort of attending, I was in the church community in DC. Kate was part of that community as well, and I'd known her for some years. She asked me in 2020 to come and rebrand bittersweet, our agency and on our foundation, and that was, you're behind that brand. First introduction into the brand, oh my gosh. And then that turned into, do you want to hang out part time, do some stuff for clients? And then part time turns to full time. And near We are five years, I think five years, almost to the day, we're approaching that time in that season. And that's what I do now.

I just, I want to lift a couple things, because I can't go into talking about story without highlighting what I just saw you do there, which, which is what I think brilliant storytellers do. One you come in early on and say, I don't know, I don't know what this is. I don't know what I am in this world. Yes, I am an amateur human being. I don't know where the story is going, but the level of root, rootedness that you have and who you are and your values is so clear, and it comes through the way that you are endlessly curious. My. Event, to allow the story, the moment, the whatever, to be shaped and to just be in flow with it, I think, is also a great quality of a storyteller. And I think just allowing to be pulled by the current in some way, and being open to the experience, because I'm sure you could have never seen that your path would have been this, this winding, at least. And I have to say, I have the unique position of being coached by OBI, because Obi produced a podcast that I participated in with stand together Foundation. We were breaking down the history of philanthropy, like, where did this come from? And it was just a beautiful experience. So I think you're going to guide us through some really powerful conversation, because there are many stories that need to be told right now in the sector in this world, stories of truth, stories of humanity. And you have been doing this for years in such a beautiful and human way. So what's one thing that you wish more nonprofits understood about storytelling in this moment right now?

One thing is hard

get ready for the one good thing

I mentioned it on on the when we had our whole fast panel. I think remembering that communication, storytelling is rooted in relationship. And you know, any any therapist, counselor, will tell you that the key to a healthy relationship is communication. I think the opposite is also true that the key to good communication is relationship. And that means a lot of things. And I think, like, I wish, I wish we all had more time. Well, not had more time. That's not true. We have the time. We all took more time to sort of take an idea and extrapolate it entirely. So like I say, the key to healthy communication is relationship, and the first thing we think is like relationship to people. Relationship to people, and that's one thing that's true, absolutely, like we need to have the relationship to people, to be able to communicate to them, to be able to communicate about them without being exploitative, which is what happens a lot in storytelling in the nonprofit space, but also relationship to ideas. I think one of my favorite, all of the people who I follow and I study and I love, who create works of art, or even like works of art in commerce, you know, works of advertising, they're first and foremost students of the craft. They have a healthy and robust and evolving relationship with the topic. And I think we oftentimes sort of like, skip that part too. It's just like we want to go directly towards, you know, the ROI. You know, one of the things that I'm also going now, I'm like, here's another thing that's another one thing, money is not the product. Money is the byproduct. Money is not actually the aim, like it's a goal that we can set, but funding is a byproduct of something healthy, and you won't fund. You can't raise the funds if the thing isn't healthy, whatever the thing is, whether it's your communication strategy, whether it's your programming, whether it's your development strategy, I think aiming at its and that's what's sort of beautiful about that, is that kind of should be freeing in some ways, um, because it allows you to look at something else that might not in the in the immediate sense of the word, might not be connected so directly to ROI, which a lot of Boards are asking non profits to prove that ROI, but in the challenges, the quick money in the door is a lot easier thing to point to than a healthy relationship to an audience or a subject or a theme. So we reach for we reach to point to that money and point to those quick hits, the dopamine of big numbers, but what undergirds that is something sort of fragile and super temporal. And then, as we are feeling right now, something comes in and shakes the house, and we have nothing talk about holding fast. We suddenly have nothing to hold on to. It's you can you can only hold fast if you have something to hold fast too. And I find a lot of nonprofits are finding themselves in this place of like, oh, I don't actually know who I am anymore. I don't know who we are. I kind of, I have a vague idea of what we do, enough to, sort of like, do the elevator pitch, or enough to and I have an idea of how to, sort of like, create a formula of what we do so that we can, you know, connect to that ROI as quickly as possible. When I sit in the quiet moments and allow those like intrusive thoughts to take over for a minute, I'm actually really insecure about our message. I'm actually really insecure about our identity. I'm actually really insecure I don't have anything to hold on to, and I think that. Relationship again. It's like, you know, in our current cultural, social upheaval or finding is that something came in and shook our literal, physical houses, our homes, our families, our relationships, our friendships, and we realized, Oh, those aren't as strong as I thought they were. They were anchored to and holding on to something that was a little bit more shallow VAP and fragile than I initially thought. So now it's okay, cool. How do we lick our wounds and reframe and start to sort of rebuild a new foundation stronger relationships to our audiences and our subject matter and our crafts? I've talked a lot.

Keep talking, we're here for it. Yes, I mean, Obi, there's a there's a lot that I would want to dig into, but I'll just say what's lifting for me is the level of intentionality and care that just is so deeply threaded in everything that you do, and your team's work too. Because I look at bittersweet, creative the way that y'all show up in the world, the way that you story tell, it connects to this belief that we have about a core idea of ethical storytelling, is the belief that the way that we tell stories can be indicative of like our values and our mission. It's actually a way to live out our mission, and the way that we story tell, and the words we choose to use, and the way that we're framing the stories that we're sharing all of that. And so I just love the way that you have that care and intentionality with how you step through this. Because I do think it's something that is transcendent in times like these, because we do look for those that that share our values and the things that we do want to hold too fast, and y'all live that really well. So I don't know if you could talk about some of the projects that you all have created at bittersweet that challenge perspectives that evoke emotion, but through doing that in such a dignified, beautiful way, how, you know, what's your approach to crafting stories that go deep without using the quick hook or the, you know, the Things that would actually perpetuate problems in the space. Yeah, I think is an easy route to go that sacrifices everything we stand for. Yeah,

that is a really storied and well nurtured process. And I've got to give credit to Kate and Dave and the rest of our bittersweet creative core, all our designers, all our filmmakers, our photographers, our writers, because we've been spending the last probably like two, two years, but like nine, nine ish months, really focused on honing in on what we're calling the bittersweet way, and that is just for us to be able to sort of codify what we've just been doing for Kate and Kate's case over, over 1213, years now, the first part of the process is challenging. So a little background on bittersweet. We do have bittersweet creative, our for profit creative agency entity. We also have bittersweet Foundation, which publishes bittersweet monthly, which is our online for now magazine. I say for now because print is coming back, maybe, but digital for now, online magazine, then we also have bittersweet collective this whole body is sort of being understood as just like made by bittersweet and they're fundamentally three different products. I think you know, the most pure outpouring of what we do is probably bittersweet. Monthly our Client Services work. We We it the work that we do with our foundation and our storytelling for bittersweet monthly breathes the life into the client services work, and that work sort of the process starts first and foremost once we choose our story subject, which are nominated by our readers, and we've done our pre production call with the organization and the subject of the story. The process begins with a self emptying. It's it's the most challenging part of the process for me, because in addition to being a creative director and sort of being responsible for stewarding the stories of others, I'm also an artist, so I at the same time, I have my own voice and my own thing that I'm trying to say in certain seasons, but client services and storytelling, it's not necessarily the time for my voice. Necessarily. There is an art to it, but it is not my art, and that's one of the things that I find very helpful and important for me when I'm working with clients is to remind them that, hey, you aren't the client. Like you aren't your client. You aren't the customer, always, because one of the things that we tend to assume when we're working in these spaces is like, oh, customers just like me. That's just that's automatically sort of centering you in whatever the product is, whatever the narrative, sort of aim or idea is but to begin functionally with the idea that I am not the customer and I actually need to spend some time listening. So process of self emptying, and then a process of deep, deep listening, asking questions, getting responses, asking more questions, getting responses. Sort of. Repeating the thing. Here's what I hear you saying. Is that right? You know, here are the assumptions that I'm making based on what you're saying. Are those assumptions? Right? Invite people to challenge your assumptions. And the question that you asked me was actually, what is a product? What is a product or piece of work? And here I am rambling. I would say the products that stand out are just all of our storytelling with bittersweet monthly in the last year, we've we've written stories about very, very challenging and very, very divisive subjects, divisive in our cultural landscape, and the way that the team is able to take what is being said by people who are proximate to the problem, people who are experiencing these hardships every single day, and sort of hold them, quite literally, hold them, because the exercise of storytelling is deeply relational and cannot be transactional without causing a lot of damage. So you know, when I come off of a story, I'm exhausted, I'm so excited, I'm just like to the nth degree. I'm done, because I have, I've, to the best of my ability, completely emptied myself and then taken on someone else's burdens, joys, grief, all of the above, so that I can then sort of make something for our audience, within within me and within our team, and then push that out, and it's just an exhausting process, if you're doing it well. So that is some of the, some of the work that's really exciting. And I think also the work that we've done, particularly trying to figure out which which project to tap on. Can

I lift one that I really loved? Please go for it. That happened is it together? Chicago, Chicago together?

Like together Chicago? Yeah,

oh my gosh. I thought I'm like, can you talk a little bit about that one? Because I read that one, and was so deeply moved by it. I can. Community is everything underpinning of that was really beautiful, yeah, break that, break that story down for us, honestly,

that one I can just start that's that's an easy one to tell, because it sort of illustrates the commitment to relationship together. Chicago, I think, was actually nominated, and I might need to be fact checked on my team at some point, but nominated for a story in 2023 and the way our nomination process works out, works out is our stories, our organizations are nominated by our readers, and then that list gets sort of pulled based on a number of criteria, longevity and operation. You know, do they have a formal structure that allows for accountability and leadership, what is, what is their impact look like? How familiar is the community with their work? Once we do that, we take that full list of call it like this year, I think it was like 29 stories or subjects, and we've then gathered together as a contributor, core, our filmmakers, photographers, writers, and they sit, and we they we sit and do what we basically call our story slam, which is just like rapid research ideation, advocating for stories that resonate, to figure out which ones are going to rise to the top. And then we sort of like select, draw a line, and that becomes our slate for the year. So 2023 I believe, was once together. Chicago was nominated, and as you can tell, we're now in 2025 and it just released. And part of the reason why that is is because our the writer on that piece, and Schneider, wanted to go and basically embed herself in Chicago with this community, because she said, Hey, this is a really big subject, and a lot of people are talking about it, and a lot of people have a lot of things to say about it, but we don't want to contribute to the noise. We want to we want to be in proximity, and we want to spend enough time to know that what we're saying isn't trendy or isn't echoing the sort of prevailing narrative of despair that is, you know, the idea of violent crime in Chicago and what's being done about it. We want to tell something more resonantly true, also, when you give things time, then other things can happen. So between 2023 and it might have been 22 and when the story production began, we had a new photographer join our team, who is now, I love corey's work, and he came to us for a completely different reason, but He's based in Chicago, and has grown up in Chicago this entire life. So now, in giving this thing the time that it needs. We now have a lens that is not just in the place, but it's also of the place. It's just, I think these the products that really rise to the top for me, the client work that rises to the top for me is the work that's given the time. Time and attention that it needs to be cultivated. And that doesn't always mean long time. It just means the right time. Everything comes to everything comes to fruit in its right time. I tell clients all the time, I don't care how much money you have, I don't care how rich you are. A baby takes 10 months. You can't take it takes 10 months to see a baby. The full term. Doesn't matter how much money you have, and that's a helpful analogy to understand with products. With creative products, the creative like, if you want it to be full, if you want it to be rich, if you want it to be what you say you want it to be, it takes time. It takes the time that it takes, and you've got to give it that time, otherwise you're cutting a corner, and you have to be okay with cutting that corner, and that has repercussions as well.

And I something I'm hearing again, Jon, there's like a common thread in every one of these hold fast discussions is this need not to panic and rush and create this sense of urgency, this this concept of germinating and and being steady and sitting in your breath and because I think what you're saying is really important here. Obi about the fact that stories are never one dimensional. I don't care if you come in and think you're about to tell a story that you think has a certain arc with a certain hero, if you can allow that germination to happen, the story of one becomes the story of many, the story of one, that person becomes my story. And so I do think that the collective moment that we're seeing right now of grassroots, of people speaking up, standing up, stepping out and away like I think it is such a storied moment for story right now, because I we this was literally a trend that we had in our 2025, trends this year that Dr Tim Lampkin came and talked about it was owning your narrative, and what is the authentic version of your narrative right now, not the version you know when you started, or 10 years ago, or 15 years ago, when you did your brand refresh, it is. What is the story of now? Who is that story? Who's wrapped in it? Why are we wrapped in it? And so I feel like you're hitting some really important themes here. Obi, and I'm wondering, for someone who's really just getting into this and taking this posture of sitting and listening and allowing it to roll, what makes a story stick? And I don't just mean like, how you write it, if it's a video or your friend Corey is capturing it, you know, digitally. But how does something stick emotionally and culturally? What are those hallmarks?

This isn't an original idea of mine. I don't know where it came from. It's sort of an adage of film and and writing and but specificity, specificity and storytelling is what makes a story stick, and it's it's a little bit counterproductive, because the sort of prevailing narrative and understanding will tell you that the more specific a story is, the less someone can see themselves in it. That's actually not the case at all when we do a thing in brand, we oftentimes try to create the thing for the most number of people. And when you create, again, not an original idea, you try to create something for everybody. You've actually just created nothing for no one. And my favorite design, of my favorite design quips is a horse is a camel is a horse designed by committee,

at a hump next exactly

another one. So I think this that the idea to me, you know, I think about like, I am I love art, I love culture, and I love film, I love television. So I think, like, the stories, episodes of TV that have stuck with me over the number the last number of years are like the thanks, the Thanksgiving episode, I think it's a Thanksgiving episode of Master of None season three, the one that Lena we desire, directed and produced, but it basically her character in in the in the show, is introducing her family to her girlfriend for the first time, and it's such a hyper specific story of a queer couple coming home. I'm not a man that belongs to that community. I am a black man in the same way. So like there was some resonant there, but it was told in such a specific way that there is this nugget of universal truth that's about belonging. That's about family, that's about wanting to be a part and not being allowed to be a part. That's about insider, outsider dynamics. And because it was told so specifically, well, it became this like, oh my gosh, I feel it. I'm there. Another one that comes to mind is that these are all holiday episodes. Maybe I've got some untapped holiday trauma, the Christmas, the Christmas episode of the bear from season two. Season

Two gotta watch the bear where, like, everybody,

oh, at the same time, that same season the forks episode, which is right after the Christmas episode, the episode where cousin does the stage at the I think it's called Everly, or in the restaurant in Chicago, and he sort of realizes that he's always had this heart for hospitality, and just never really know how to direct it. And again, such a specific story. But we have this fear as people who create things for other people, that if we get too specific, we'll lose people. And that is the truth, and you're gonna lose the people that you want to lose having I would rather have 10 people who are vocal, 10s in a room for my brand, than 30 people who are just lukewarm threes same every day, because the vocal 10s will bear a fruit that the lukewarm threes won't. And you'll spend your entire energy and time and effort and budget trying to keep the threes entertained and trying to keep the threes happy. Well, they were never going to be happy or entertained, and you're going to continue to warp yourself and create less specific stories, trying to keep those threes in the room at a three, whereas 10s are advocates, 10s are attractors. 10s are people who want to bring other people into the room who might be and I think part of the again, we have this fear. I want people to hear this, because I think the way that we consume is also the way that we create. If you consume from a place of scarcity, you're going to create from a place of scarcity. And I need America to understand that not every story that you have access to is for you,

okay. And again, Sarah, leave that

not every story that you have access to is for you. Not every story that you have access to is designed to reflect you, your experience or your understanding. It might be designed to expand your experience or your understanding. A lot of different examples come to mind the Disney short, Disney and Pixar short, bow, Oh, I love bow. Great, great film, but like, when it first came out, there was a lot of this weird discourse about, like, oh, how weird this is. And like, how why the story of spoiler for those who want to watch it short, but the story sort of goes, you know, this, this mother raises this, this piece of bow, son that is personified in this piece of vow to a certain age, and the son is growing up and growing a personality. And, you know, as the son is getting ready to, sort of like, grow beyond the mother's need for him, she eats him. And everybody was like, Oh, this is so weird. It's so I don't like it, like, why would a mother do that to their son? And meanwhile, and I sort of watched it, I was like, I this is really interesting. I'm not mad at it. I don't I don't necessarily understand it. And it wasn't until I was talking to an Asian American friend of mine who was like, Oh no, that was for me. I We get it. And we were we were all in tears, because it's a deeply it's for us. It was written for us, and you have access to it. And you can either be curious about why it is the way that it is. Another example is a Super Bowl performance. Kendrick Lamar, Super Bowl performance, so much discourse, and be like, Oh, I didn't understand a single word. He said, Oh, rap has no place at the Super Bowl. And that's such a mindset of scare. I mean, let's not even get into the any of that. But like, that's such a mindset of scarcity, when curiosity could actually have been the response of like, Oh, why did he do this? And then it takes you down just such a fruitful rabbit hole of people who are, again, are students of the product and students of their craft. So I think that idea that, like, just because I have access to it doesn't mean it's for me, will help us be better creators when we're in the rooms trying to write stories or create products for our constituents, for our beneficiaries, to say, how do we tell the most authentic story and the most specific story for them and about them, and the sort of the threes be damned like, let's not worry about the people who it's not for. Let's focus on the people who it is for and make sure that it honors them. It's true to them, and then the byproduct of money, I think, follows. That's a bet I'm willing to take every day. I'll go broke on that bet. I agree,

yeah. I mean, it's a core value here that we're not interested in getting more donors. We want to grow believers around our work, you know, like that's gonna be worth tenfold, any kind of transactional way, more than tenfold. Who am I kidding? So I mean, if you're looking for storytelling, we'll definitely link up bittersweet monthly. I mean, if you could just get lost in the storytelling of this group that does this so well, definitely want to check that out. But OBI, we've been challenging our friends listening to have a little bit of homework from these hold fast series, because we hope that these conversations turn into deeper reflection and turn into moments for us to ask better questions for ourselves. What are some prompts or maybe an exercise you would encourage people listening today that could lead them to become better, deeper storytellers at this moment? Yeah,

I would say two things, slow down and make it bigger. Are my two sort of messages right now and slow down in every sense of the word, just slow the hell down. Everybody listening, just slow down. Eat slower, listen slower, walk slower. Don't use Google Maps. Get lost, slow down. The sense of urgency is the thing that's going to kill us. Holy heck, that sense of urgency, like chaos is the point. Chaos is the point. And if we feed into the chaos and we feed into the urgency, that is how, that is how we lose so we just have to slow down. Like, I think, in a culture that is loud and fast, counter culture, protest becomes slow and quiet. We can't counter culture with culture, not how it works. The reason I say this a lot to a lot of young people who have a lot of like, healthy protest energy, and I love it. I love it so much. But the reason why sit ins and loud, vocal protests and and boycotts were the language of the civil rights movement that we like to study is because those were the things that culture did not want them to do. Those were counter cultural. If our culture is loud, if everyone is screaming in the marketplace, then is our protest not to sit in silence and just feel together and grieve together. Had this thought, when, when? When the road decision got leaked, and regardless of where you sit in any in any conversation like this, when the road decision got leaked, I sort of was sort of moved to go down to Supreme Court. Live in DC, and there were 1000s of people down there, 1000s of people. It's probably the largest crowd I've seen sort of spontaneously gather in DC since I've lived here for 12 years. And it's what started off as sort of like, yeah, we're just highly energized. And then the chance started. And then I noticed something that the people didn't like the specific chants that were being chanted. So we had, like, competing chants, and this is a group of 1000s of people who presumably believe the same thing, but it suddenly broke out into this, like chant battle of people who should be on the same side. And I had this thought of like, what would have happened, what would have been the temperature, the energy if 5000 people spontaneously showed up at the steps of the Supreme Court, sat down and just were silent. Just sat down 5000 people in silent protest, just sharing in each other's grief. Because silence is an invitation. The reason why we avoid silence, and the reason why we avoid slowness, is because it makes us encounter things we don't want to encounter. So to be silent with my fellow man, to be silent with my neighbor, puts me in a posture where I have to encounter their spirit. I have to feel what they feel, if it's joy I feel, if it's grief I feel, if it's hope, I feel it. We don't want to feel that. That was a long tangent, but my first thing is, slow down. Take more time to do the thing, whatever the thing is for, this is a tactical one for, like, communicators and messaging, maybe the time for like, punchy two word tech startup be language is dead. One of my favorite pieces of wisdom is from, from the ends in The Lord of the Rings. Which are, you know the answer these, like centuries old beings of earth who have lived through everything that has ever happened. And tree beard, the ant says you must understand young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old dentish, and we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say. And that has, I wish, I mean, that's just like, that's, that's anti Twitter, that's anti threads, that's anti like, if it's not worth taking a long time to say, it might not be worth saying at all. That goes for hot takes. You know, those that's, again, that's such a counter cultural idea. So number one is slow down, and number two is a tactical exercise, is make the thing bigger, and I have this like exercise that I'll sometimes do in my slow moment. I've started I've started a practice of not what I call non vulgar listening. Over the last few years, I have amassed a decently robust record collection. So every. Night that I can bring myself to do it, because it's so hard, because everything in the world wants me not to do this. I will sit down and listen to a full record as it was meant to be listened to from beginning to end, front and back. And that is the activity, no screens, no reading, no it is just sticking to listen to music as its own act, just as an act of slowness and to be a more conscious consumer, and, quite frankly, to honor the product that was created for me to consume. But occasionally I'll doodle or journal or whatever while I'm doing this. And sometimes I'll take an idea and I'll write down the idea, and then my prompt is, okay, make it bigger. What you know, this is a simple idea of, you know, what is it? Man, my notebook is downstairs. I can actually give you an example. But, you know, an example could be, you know, the idea of a tree like and I'm just looking out my window now. So we're doing free association. Here we go, folks podcast, jazz hands. Jazz hands, the idea of a tree. How do we make a tree bigger? Okay, cool. Make it bigger. Trees are part of a larger ecosystem, and part of that ecosystem, I see a carpenter bee. So we go from tree to a carpenter bee. What's that carpenter bee doing and what is its role in the ecosystem? I don't know, but it seems to be flying around. As it flies around, it's pollinating things. It might then, I don't know, probably scare a little kid who thinks that it might sting it. So the kid runs inside, and now we have a little kid as a character in the story. What does a kid do when it's scary? Well, it runs to protection. So it goes inside. Oftentimes it'll run to a protective forest, Mom or Dad, there's a bee there, and now we have mom and dad as a character in the story that started from a tree. And mom and dad are like, hey, carpenter bees don't sting. They're friendly, even though they eat the wood in our siding and they cost us a lot of money and renovations. And so now the kid knows that the bee doesn't sting, but it's still generally afraid to be so I sort of take this exercise and, like, take an idea and start to build characters around this story, and then occasionally, if I can, I try to then scale it back and bring it back to the tree. So in this exercise, it would probably be, which is also, I promise I didn't plan this. But like some to go from the idea of this family to, you know, back to the ecosystem. The family is sustained, like we all are by food, which is provided by the tree, or by oxygen, which is the primary byproduct of so that's sort of an exercise that I do, just to make things bigger, because I think what we've done as society is in an effort to understand we've oversimplified everything. Every single thing we strive to simplify. It's a human it's our impulses. Human is to find pattern so that we can understand but I think there is value as storytellers, as artists, as creative beings, as created beings, in allowing ourselves, just as an exercise, to be overwhelmed by the bigness of all of the things, like we are trying so hard as nonprofit leaders to help people understand these very, very complex problems, and maybe we need to allow room to intentionally overwhelm our audience with how big These problems are, or overwhelm ourselves to read, to reorient to the thing that we're holding fast to right. A lot of nonprofit leaders are so we've talked about this, a lot of nonprofit leaders are so in the trenches and so hard at work

and try not to let anything fall through the cracks, which is a noble pursuit that they've actually accidentally lost sight of the vision for the future that they're working towards. So to sit and take enough time to make that vision big and say, okay, in in, in this utopia that I've created for my community, or that I've contributed to for my community, what does that actually look like, starting from the tree? What's the tree feeling? And then, how does that affect the bee? And then how does that affect the kid who encounters the bee? We need to be overwhelmed in the direction of action and overwhelmed in the direction of expanding our moral imaginations to be able to see the world that we're actually working towards. And I think that begins to feed everything. That's the fertilizer and the food that bears the fruit also, interestingly, fruit is just a byproduct. Like we think about fruit as a product, fruit is a byproduct of a process. And when that healthy, that process is healthy, the fruit is good, and that process is bad. The fruit is bad. Fruit just doesn't become bad. I'm now again rambling, and. You asked me a question, and I think I answered it. Slow down and make the big bigger, make all the things just exercise making it as big as you can, and sit with that, and then go about doing whatever else you need to do. And I think all of that will begin to create sort of new synapses, like all of all of my processes aren't necessarily about the product that I'm working on. I'm constantly in the same way that, like, my story is built on so many other stories that could have never imagined a me. It's just like everyone, Jon, we talked about this briefly, everyone's a miracle. Everyone's a miracle. Yeah, everyone's a miracle, like, everyone's a miracle of of call it a miracle of science, a miracle of magic, a miracle of faith. So all of these processes for me are just to try to help me orient myself, back to this idea that, like it's all gonna happen. All these things are interrelated. All of these things are related. And right now we just gotta listen to the world around us and ask it what it needs, which requires stillness, slowness and just a bigger imagination.

It's always so interesting to me to watch not just an artist, but like a storyteller, go through their process. Because what's what's really surfacing for me right now is that that you have absolutely moved us away from this tactic that is storytelling, this thing to get someone to move from A to B in a certain way, and what you've invited in is an experience, which is what I think philanthropy is it's our experience to come in, to feel something, to be a part of something, to invest time, money, talent, whatever it is, into something. And the ability to sit in the experience is going to allow us to have wonder and wonder. And those are luxuries. Jon, I don't even know that I would fully, that I could fully point back to that in my career, moments that I've had to wander and wonder, and that's what I feel this conversation is leading us to, not just the stillness, not just the rejection of frenetic energy of judgment, because when we feel something and we have that gut reaction, it's typically, I don't like that, or I have opinions about that, and what you're really reorienting OBI, which is why I just think you're so much more of an artist than even a storyteller, is that we find our humanity in ourselves, and when we can sit in that, we see the humanity in others. And then it awakens curiosity, it awakens humility, it awakens the sense that we are so small, and what a privilege it is to be able to come together and make things new, make things better and make the world a little bit easier for somebody else. So I just, I just want to thank you for that, because I've got a lot of images in my mind about stories that I think have done this really well in my lifetime, and not just in nonprofit. You know, whether it's entertainment or whether it's real life experiences, and I want you to kind of just bring it to a crest for us today, like bring it down to a one good thing as it relates to this topic, what? What could you tie this all together with, with a beautiful bow,

look back and borrow, borrow strength from the elders. I mean that in every sense, like I think about we talk about story, and we get really complicated really fast, but there are some stories that have truly been timeless, that have been told for generations on generations, and have iterated and evolved themes of stories that are basically the same and the names are different. We don't tell our kids the story of Little Red Riding Hood across time and space, because it's a true story we tell our kids, the story of Blue and Red Riding Hood across time and space, because there is something true about the story that we are trying to communicate. So I think again, taking a beat and figuring out how you got here, looking at all the ways than people that contributed to that, and allowing them to bolster you, and if they're still alive, talking to them I didn't know either of my grandfathers spent a lot of time with one of my grandmothers, and I find myself Now missing her so much because she went through so much. And, you know, on paper, what she went through was definitively harder than what I'm going through, but, like, I can't talk to her about that, I and so what I'm going through just feels really, really hard. It feels impossible, but I know it's not. So I think figuring out a way. Like, the one good thing is we have, we have all the stories. They're they're all at our fingertips and and maybe this is, this is a season where we all need to stop trying to tell more stories than we're listening to and hearing, hear more stories, oral histories, all of the above. Maybe that's, maybe that's my one good thing. Was that even one good

thing, oh my gosh. I mean, Obi, you are a gift, my friend, the way you show up, the way you share and the way this conversation has led us. I mean, it's fascinating to me that we've recorded probably half of this series, and it's like so much of it comes back to listening, which seems so counterintuitive. When it's like, we want to go fix all the problems. It's like, actually, how can we ground ourselves in creating that space to reflect internally externally, listen to other people's stories like this is the moment for that. So thanks for bringing us back to that. I want folks to find you on LinkedIn, on the places you hang out online. I wanted to find bittersweet. Would you connect us? I mean, where's the best way for people to connect with you? Can we give a plug for your amazing coffee brand that launched, also that I'm completely obsessed

with, oh my gosh, I'm so glad you brought that up. Drop that so

many things talk about, oh my god, a Storytelling Challenge. I might like to the Storytelling Challenge. Where do you connect? You can, yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. That's my full name, O, B, I, E, K, W, E, O, Colo, OK, o, l, o, you can find bittersweet creative at bittersweet creative.com bittersweet monthly at bittersweet monthly.com actually, if you go by made by bittersweet.com you can find all of it. The coffee is taste, coffee, T, A, S, T, coffee.com. You can get that to your home. It's really good coffee, beautifully

packaged, as you can imagine,

these things. So other products,

and then I think my primary sort of outlet is mostly Instagram, given the visual medium and writing on there, so, O, B, I, E, K, W, E, O, Colo is my handle on Instagram, and that'll point you to my website and other things. So, yeah, I really appreciate you all you know the I feel like the three of us could talk for hours years. So it never, never feels, never feels like enough, but we will have other opportunities for sure.

Well, the story will keep unfolding between us and between these beautiful missions that are in this community. And yeah, such a time to listen, such a time to just sit in our grounding, heal and connect and be changed. I'm I'm ready for this moment and thank you for awakening that my friend appreciate

your honor. You.