637. How to Build Movements, Not Just Campaigns: Unlocking Agency, Belief, and Community for Nonprofit Leaders - Eric Brown, Whiteboard | Otter.ai

637. How to Build Movements, Not Just Campaigns: Unlocking Agency, Belief, and Community for Nonprofit Leaders - Eric Brown, Whiteboard

Sabrina Li31min

Jonathan McCoy

00:00

Yo, Becky, what's happening?

Becky Endicott

00:01

I feel like we have our creative brother from another mother on the podcast today, and I'm so excited about it. Stack the deck. Yeah, big time. Eric Brown is about to take you on a ride today, and he is one of the greatest humans, and I am so tickled to get to introduce him today, because he is such a creative visionary who's not just building brands, he's building the movements behind the brands, and he is also the co founder and CEO of whiteboard, with their purpose driven creative agency helping some of the world's most visionary organizations translate that mission, that story, into meaningful action. And did we also mention that whiteboard is one of we are for goods ecosystem partners who's been helping fuel this movement that you are in. So we just adore their people. We adore their brilliant evolve creativity. And I just need to spill a little bit of tea about some of the stuff that they have done in the past, like launching digital campaigns for news story and Ted to partnering with startups, ministries and social enterprises. Eric's work really just sits at the intersection of storytelling, strategy and service. But it's not just all about beautiful design, even though it totally is. And if you know Jon well enough, you know he gave the matters, yeah, yeah, kerning does matter, letting all these things that you've taught me, Jon over the years, but Eric is really deeply committed to ethical innovation, like relational leadership and advocating a better future through our conscious creativity. So he's got this amazing book out alongside his co founder, Taylor Taylor, we can't wait to meet you someday. It's called agency, the antidote to a culture obsessed with self, and it's like this fresh vision for influence that's rooted in humility generosity, and this belief that our gifts are meant to serve something bigger. So we're going to be diving into what it means to lead with integrity today, how to design with agency and intention. And we want to know why Eric believes the best movements are sparked by people who know who they are and who are here to serve. So Eric, get in this house. We are so excited to talk to you. It's pretty much our favorite topic, so let's get into it. Well, it's a joy to be with you both and excited for this conversation. Well, we've heard a little bit of your story, but we want the community to get to know the Eric behind the brand, the human. So take us back. Take us back to little Eric growing up, and what was he like and what led him to do this work today. Oh, yes, so little Eric, I actually grew up in a log house in north Georgia that my dad and like 12 of his friends built in 1986 Believe it or not,

Eric Brown

02:46

so we were in the wilderness. But my parents were actually in special needs pretty much my entire life. So dad was a special needs teacher for 20 plus years. My mom was a special needs bus driver, and they both retired not too long ago, but I would say so much of my upbringing was about watching mom and dad was sort of the catalyst for a ton of empathy around these families that they would serve on a day to day basis. And that empathy, I think, was, I didn't know it at the time, but was probably a driver, at least, or at least, what was the beginning of a catalyst at a young age for for what has become such a core part of what we do at whiteboard. But I loved baseball pretty much more than anything growing up. And I could probably talk about Little League baseball for the you know, this entire, this entire podcast episode, but you might have to

Eric Brown

03:41

explain that's here. Let's I was, I was, I was a lead off center fielder. I mean, it was, it was life for a season. And now, now I coach some nine year olds, which is, which is a blast and hilarious and stressful, and all the things that we sign up for as little league parents and and so anyways, yeah, so went to college. Actually met my co founder in a dorm room, Taylor. He was the only friend that I knew at the time that had an iMac and, you know, we were, I was sort of part of the college class that everybody who came into college, you know, they typically had a Dell laptop. But by the time we all graduated, four years later, everybody had Mac books. And so we sort of saw this evolution of Mac, sort of taking back their throne, as far as you know, being a design first. And, you know, it was beautiful, and it was white, and it was, you know, everything was so clean.

Eric Brown

04:38

And and Taylor was an accounting major, and I was actually a ministry major, and we sort of just built this sort of collaborative spirit around the web and, you know? And this was sort of a time and space where the 960 grid was the standard for website creation. Facebook wasn't a public company yet, so there was such thing as organic traffic that you didn't have to buy.

Eric Brown

05:00

SEO, there was a big piece of the puzzle of just like, hey, let's just put the keywords in the footer. And that's what search engine optimization is.

Eric Brown

05:07

Video backgrounds were foreign and and mobile. I mean, our first clients were, why would anybody ever look at a website on their cell phones? That sounds stupid to invest in. And I think for us, like we really sort of started to fall in love with just sort of digital first storytelling, and how do we sort of maximize, or really throttle what you could do in a browser without it crashing on you? Yeah, we've been in this game for 15 years now. Bootstrapped, deleted team of 40 based everywhere. We have a headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but we've got team members in New York and team members in Atlanta and team members and Wisconsin and Argentina and all over the place, so we're having fun. I mean, I love hearing your founding story. It's it connects. It tracks with you know how we've gotten to know you over the days. And I gotta say, if you haven't seen whiteboard. Like, don't just, like, listen to us. Like, go check out their site, because we're talking a different level of the way they show up for these clients and the type of work that y'all produce. So it's really cool to just check out the case studies that y'all done. But Eric, I couldn't miss, like, in your story community was just throughout, like, from how your parents showed up to you and, like, the little league into everything that y'all do as a team now, and you know that's core to us. Like it's we've made this saying famous and we are for good world of like, community is everything. Like, we really believe that we try to show up and live that out day to day. But we noticed your unique take on this, too is really beautiful. I've heard you talk about community as a carrier, not just the recipient of a mission, but the carrier, which I think is really cool. How do you help clients shift this mindset, maybe, of building something for an audience versus building with the audience? Yeah, absolutely. So our first love, actually, when we first started building web design, or building websites, the catalyst for us was we had two college acquaintances. Their dream in 2007 because we were sophomores in college, was, how in the world are we going to get enough cash to buy iPhones? And so their brilliant idea was, hey, is there a way to actually digitize our mom and dad and grandma's old home movies. So you think eight millimeter tapes, film reels, photos, all these sort of things. And so from a garage, they started digitizing these assets, and they were 100% e commerce. So they needed help. We actually had all sort of convened in and around Chattanooga at the same time, we shared office space together, me and Taylor and their two founders for the first four years of our company's lives. And it was sort of a testing pad for Hey, y'all are going through a lot of challenges that we're going through. So it was a form of community every day, of like, hey, how do we you know, this was in the days where, you know, an email subscription. Everybody was scared to send emails because of unsubscribes. And then we sort of realized, hey, if we actually run campaigns that generate new subscribers, it doesn't matter who unsubscribes to us over time. And so it was a season of experimentation, you know, and this was also kind of like, again, Facebook was organic. A lot of sort of the conversations that we were having is, how do we leverage Facebook? How do we leverage Twitter? How do we build audiences? Oh, hey, our audience actually isn't on Facebook just yet, because this was 2010

Eric Brown

08:30

but they are on the radio, and radio was a huge catalyst for a ton of work with them. And so community for us as carriers, it's really built on customer feedback. So one of the things that we did early on with legacy box, which is that company's name now, which has grown to a multi, multi million dollar brand, is, how can our customers actually help us build the thing that we're chasing in the world? How can we actually, how can we actually invite them into a feedback loop that informs the direction of a company. And how can we actually eliminate as much best guessing as humanly possible? One of the fascinating things about this work is so many people who who send their their these digital assets, or these, these assets, these old eight millimeter tapes, they would get emails that were like, Hey, this is the last artifact that I have of my mother's voice, what happens if you lose it?

Eric Brown

09:24

You know? What happens if this is the last thing I have of my grandfather's voice? What? What happens if you lose it?

Eric Brown

09:31

And so we had to sort of build like, okay, at, you know, we did the version one where we built this sort of scanner code again. This is 2011 2012 but when these things were hand digitized in their in their space, at every single scan, a customer wiki to get emailed at sort of every station the process until it was delivered back to the customer. And so one of the things that I just love is, I think so many brands, the sort of the thing that we're all trying to leverage.

Becky Endicott

10:00

Control, we have always sort of said, Hey, we're not trying to control. We're actually trying to co create with our audiences and with our people and and, and that's really just been the perspective that has driven so much of our work over the past 15 years. But it all happened in the context of four founders in a room for the first four years of our companies, and the same time too, sort of saying, Hey, how can customers be invited into the brand that we're creating? I'm just, of course, so amazed by that story. I mean, you didn't just answer the question. You illustrated it through story. Of course, you guys are so brilliant at what you do. But I also just think about showing up in that way, with the repeatability, which is offering assurances and offering, I mean, when you keep talking to people, when they see their feedback actually being applied, it's like, oh, I have value here. Someone is listening. And I definitely think that is the way. And I think you're talking about moving into this shared responsibility. We have to co build things that matter together. And I you talk about this a little bit in your book, and I really hope we're gonna put a link to your book in the show notes. I want people to check it out. It's called agency. And you talk about this notion inviting people to really shift from this sort of self absorbed, self self obsession to shared responsibility. And I want to know how you see that playing out in movement building today, especially like within the nonprofit sector. We would love for you to dive into that absolutely. And the way that I'm going to frame this is also in I'm going to talk as a designer and a person who shapes brands, but I'm going to also talk as a dad and a husband who's navigating an almost teenager and all these sorts of things. And so we had a mentor who leads one of the, you know, the largest female led venture capital firms, who sat on our advisory board for a season. And one of the things that that we talk about, you know, you have agency noun, the industry term and, and one of the things that started coming into a lot of our conversations was, what is white boards perspective on agency as verb

Eric Brown

12:17

and, and for agency nouns. You know, the way that you see our work is, you see the portfolio, and you gage the work, all these sort of things. But to embody what agency actually means, there's actually not a lot of there's not a lot of content about and so her, her challenge to me and Taylor, which became the book, was, how would you guys define agency when it has, you know, apart from the work that you're doing at whiteboard, and the truth is, it is, it is embodied in tension. And I actually think most nonprofit leaders that we work with, tension can be a dirty word, and it can feel like a bad thing. But the truth is, tension, actually, more often than not, means we're in the right so we have this thing called the agency access. You have self others on the horizontal line, and then you have mission mastery on the vertical line. And I'm a very simple I was not math. Math is not my thing, and so, but I can get down. I can get down with a Venn diagram really quickly,

Eric Brown

13:24

you know. And so one of the things that we've sort of described in the book is The problem is, there's these traps, you know. And so, for example,

Eric Brown

13:35

if, if I only focus on myself, and I feel attached to this vision, but, you know, I'm my this work is not a part of others or a piece of their lives. And I actually have forgotten the thing that I was good at, the mastery piece of my life, the vacuum of society. And that sort of upper quadrant is vanity, you know? And then you look at all the statistics around, hey, the emerging generation, one in four want to be a social media influencer for their career, there's a huge noise machine. And the sort of the awareness that we're that we're aspiring to have is, how are we actually pushing to agency, which is this tension in the middle of self, others, mission, mastery, and are we feeling that tension all the time?

Eric Brown

14:18

So the aspiration there is, is, is it's the awareness that that that brings that, that sort of posture, to life, and it's certainly the pursuit and the and what we're trying to sort of answer in the book, oh my gosh, I'm just like, obsessed that y'all went off into your cabin in the woods and, like,

Unknown Speaker

14:37

back to The

Speaker 1

14:39

Log Cabin, very central. And Eric story over here.

Jonathan McCoy

14:44

But I love that, because I love the juxtaposition of how we can think of agency in different ways. But it's such an empowering word, I think, in especially in the work that we do, because so much of our work is helping people have that agency and never and partnering and not taking that away. So I think.

Speaker 2

15:00

Y'all living in that space is so beautiful well, and to sort of even, to even sort of talk like there's if I'm only focused on self and I'm only focused on what I'm good at, but others aren't included, and I don't necessarily feel connected to the mission that's isolation, right? The rise of remote work, you've got the isolation piece. And then, you know, like, if I'm really good at something, and I only focus on others, and this is where a lot of nonprofit leaders that we work with are sort of sitting, you know, and I don't know how to be an advocate for myself. And this mission that I was on, like, I'm just in the weeds, like that bottom quadrants burnout, right? And then another one that a lot of nonprofit leaders and executives that we work with faces. I'm really attached to the mission. I'm really attached to others, but I don't know how to advocate for myself anymore, and I'm not doing the thing that I was doing that I was really good at. It's this sort of ineffective, ineffectiveness, sort of loop that you sort of feel. So we just say, hey, like, how can we how can we sort of lean into the center knowing there's you're never You're never in the target. But it's more of like, hey, that tension that you feel is a good thing. Yeah, as you're talking, I'm like, everyone listening, are you not feeling like you're definitely in one of those buckets right now? So it's like, definitely want to pour into this book, and we'll have to link that up in the show notes. I want to keep chasing this thread, because y'all work with a lot of amazing organizations, and I remember the first time I met Nick on your team. Have we shouted out to Nick yet? By the way, Hi Nick Blackman, we love you. Such an awesome human and representative of the type of culture that you all have as a team. But you know, Nick categorized, the type of people that whiteboard works with is just visionary organizations or visionary founders. And I love that broad stroke approach that y'all keep it open ended. Enough of you want to help perpetuate good in the world, and it's allowed you to work with some amazing missions. And I'm just curious from the sidelines of this, what have you seen? You know, because organizations listening. Want to build movements of the likes that y'all get to work with on an average Tuesday. You know, I'm saying, What? What is it beyond the marketing campaigns? What are the first steps you recommend for really rooting strategy and community instead of conversion?

Eric Brown

17:15

I think there's so the language that we use a lot at whiteboard is this, is this phrase of, how do we embrace the visionary journey? The interesting thing about most agencies that that operate is agencies are trying to create linear processes to get sort of predicted outcomes, you know. So the process is very point A, point B, point C, point D, you know. And they should, you know, should everything should be plus plus plus plus and it equals this sort of result. The problem is, anybody who's ever experienced a global pandemic or economic uncertainty, you really realize, like A plus B doesn't always equal c. And so for us, we've sort of adopted this sort of thing, of like, our job is to actually come alongside the visionary leader and understand that the opportunities today might change over the next couple of weeks, over the next couple of months, or the next couple of years. We're going to try to plan to the best of our ability. But the truth is, like our job as agents is to be with and alongside our clients, no matter what they're facing. So 50% of our of our clients are in the nonprofit space. 50% of them are in the corporate space, which actually gives us, again, a lot of testing ground to say, hey, what lessons from the corporate world can do nonprofits need to lean into and understand better and the same for our nonprofit clients. What? What lessons from the corporate world? You know, it's, it's Frank Lloyd Wright, we say it all the time. You have this battle and design this, is form more important than function, or is function more important than form? He's got this quote, form and function have been misunderstood. They should be joined together as a spiritual union. And so it's, it's what we're trying to figure out, is less either or, and what both and can we bring to the table in our process? We got a call from a fortune 500 client that had done a two year.com revamp with a fortune 500 agency. And basically, two years down the road, they get it to the C suite for final approval. C suite sees it. They say, this is an abomination. We're not launching this. You need to let go of that fortune, 500 agency, find a new agency, and then we had a designer colleague that was on this client's team that just text me and Taylor and was like, we don't know each other well, but I got your numbers from a friend. Can y'all come meet with our C suite tomorrow? Thus we had the directive was, hey, we've got to launch a new website from scratch in eight weeks, or we're all or jobs are on the line. So, you know, that was the directive. It was crisis. That was the first sort of realization that we had around agency. Work can be processed to death. And the truth is, to it, it just doesn't work like that. If we're really honest.

Becky Endicott

20:00

And so for us, so much of the work we do is actually coming alongside the visionary leader who's got this idea that they're chasing in the world, and figuring out, how does the operating model line up to that vision, and how are we built? How are we trying to achieve a culture that can make that that vision possible? And then the backbone of so much of that work is the brand and the web and the digital and the marketing, Pete, the storytelling stuff that we do, but it's really understanding like, Hey, what are what's the driving motive behind these leaders that we serve, and how can we serve them well in the moment? I think that's what really sticks out to me, Eric, when I look at your campaigns, when I look at the words you choose when I look at the photos and how you position them, there is, there is such a deeper question there for me, then execute this campaign. For me, it is so much deeper about alignment and culture and then values and in where we're heading and how it hits the deeper narrative of why. And I just think there's a lot of movement makers and like nonprofit professionals who are listening today who really struggle with balancing all of that, because it's a lot to balance in terms of what I want to execute. How do I uphold brand and identity? How do I make sure that my community feels seen in this and so I'm curious if you could distill it down to, like, a small step that somebody could take this week to grow their and I'm using air quotes agency and, like, fully step more into the mission in an aligned way that leads to that movement. What is that one step you would leave with our audience, I would say, because so many of the nonprofit leaders that we work with have been beat up over the past five

Eric Brown

21:48

years, is going back to the basics.

Eric Brown

21:52

Choose belief, not cynicism

Eric Brown

21:55

and and I think, in a day and age where it's so easy to get swayed by a headline or see a social media or, you know, we Doom scroll

Eric Brown

22:06

for me to be jaded as like, hey. I'm trying to chase this big idea, but I'm also trying to raise a teenager who all she wants is a smartphone, and I don't want to give her one yet to there again. So so much of life is is tension.

Eric Brown

22:24

But one of the easiest things to do is just way towards cynicism, without challenge, or just with, Oh, I'm just going to wake up today and it's going to it's going to be a drain. And I think one of the hardest things, and what energizes me with so many of our clients, is so many of them, regardless of whatever challenge comes their way, are choosing belief anyway, and and so yeah, for anybody who's listening, who's tired and exhausted,

Eric Brown

22:53

I hear you choose belief anyway,

Jonathan McCoy

22:56

giving me chills over here, my friend, that's so poignant and like ties into the ethos of why we started this podcast, when we started this community, is that it's it is our core value. Like it starts with belief, and that's the end game too, not necessarily how many followers you've got or how much this campaign raised. It's like we're trying to scale belief, and that takes time and tension, and it's deeper than that. So I just love this conversation, my friend. Love how you show up in the world. You know, we're storytellers over here too, and we can't miss an opportunity to invite you into sharing a moment of philanthropy that's moved you. You had such a fascinating life, worked with amazing humans. What's a moment of philanthropy that you've witnessed that's going to stay with you, you feel like. So, yeah. So, I mean, we were invited.

Eric Brown

23:46

This was 2011 2012 when we were first getting started, we had a we had an acquaintance who ended up becoming a client, because there was somewhere in the neighborhood, a few 100 families in in a in a place called outside of Phnom Penh. It's called Andong. It was this village of 500 families who were displaced for a six star hotel to be built there. So I didn't even know there was such thing as a six star hotel. But one of the things that was the catalyst in this whole story was we went there for 10 days. We didn't really know the campaign that we were building. We had a couple hunches and ideas. We had a colleague acquire the domain, build a city.org which is not up anymore, but I remember we were sort of filming all this B roll, and Taylor and I were sort of like, Man, how interesting would it be if we actually, like, did background videos, if we come back with all these, these assets, we sort of compiled the story. And there was sort of one donor in the mix that everybody was nervous to talk to, just but really wanted him to contribute. High net worth individual had a lot of capacity. But the biggest thing was, is those high net, those high capacity, those high net worth individuals, they're getting pulled at sort of every string to say, hey, we give to my thing. We give to this thing, we get to this.

Eric Brown

25:00

Thing. So there was just no promises. But one of the thing that made me believe in creative work was when he saw the rollout of these creative assets, he immediately committed a seven figure sort of moment. And that was a driver early on. I mean, we were two years into this whiteboard journey, and that was sort of the moment of like, oh man, we really need to sort of come back to the power of storytelling and and the power of these little devices in our pocket and what they can do and how they can sort of intercept people's attention, you know, because the truth is, whether you're at a red light or whether you're in a you're at a dinner table conversation, or whether you hear about these sort of opportunities and event, you really never know when people are going to cross paths with your work. And are we actually pushing our best foot forward to inspire the people who want to give to big ideas

Eric Brown

25:53

the opportunity to do so? I mean, a few other examples that just sort of come into the mix are, and some of these aren't known, but you know, we have a client who he was adopted as a, as a, as a infant, and for 40 years, his mom, who put him up for adoption, actually lived in this guilt and shame of that decision. And Jon actually reached out to her one day and wanted to meet her, and she had lived her entire adult life in that sort, in that sort of, I think, I think my this son that I birthed, that I gave for adoption, would be mad at me, and all John wanted to do was thank her for that decision and tell her it was the best decision that she could have possibly made for his life. So John's got this amazing ability to just buy incredible domains. And so one of those domains was, I am that kid.com

Eric Brown

26:45

so I am that kid.com is this sort of, this sort of hub for all these kids who just are simply thanking their birth moms for making the decision that they they made. And some of those people include Scott Hamilton and some of those decisions, some of those stories include people like Run DMC,

Eric Brown

27:04

and it's just, you just never know.

Becky Endicott

27:09

Wow, there's plenty we don't talk often just about what a gift it is to sit at the feet of these strangers and hear these stories to feel utterly changed by them, to feel your life enriched because of something you had no idea even existed or even happened. You know, two minutes before this story is so beautiful. I've actually talked with Nick about this whole build the city.com. Y'all, if you could Google this and look it up. It is bananas. It is a bananas case study in the most beautiful way in humanity. And you're being very humble about it. But I do think that that intersection of creativity and story and big vision, it can come into a high wealth donor, it can come into someone who maybe doesn't even have high wealth, but they have high network, or they have high ability to give something else. And so what a beautiful responsibility to lift these stories and put them on fire for others to add their own story to. So

Becky Endicott

28:19

yes, okay, we got to close this out with a one good thing. And I'm curious what your one good thing would be, Eric, it's a, usually, a piece of advice or a life hack, something that you would leave with our listeners. What do you say? Oh, well, this one's actually become easier over time, as I've as, as I talk about this a lot,

Eric Brown

28:40

especially, yeah, the organizational therapy is, is a lot like actual, you know, personal therapy. It's just a different it's just a different form. We had a mentor, executive coach early on in in our journey, where Taylor and I were sort of talking to him about our aspirations for the culture that we aspired whiteboard to have, and the work that we sort of aimed to do and he challenged us. And he was like, Guys, I see and hear what you want. He was like, Have you written any of that down?

Eric Brown

29:09

And we were like, well, no lives in lives in our heads. And he just said, if you haven't written it down, it doesn't exist. So the hard part is, is now we have things like chatgpt and things that can manufacture words pretty great. Like, it's pretty good at that. But don't let that type of exercise just because it's easy and disposable, you know, because you can just prompt it like, do the work of actually writing what you want down and knowing how to transmit that across your team and your donors and your board and yeah, don't let anything live in space and certainly not in your head. Eric Brown, holy heck, this Convo uplifted me, challenged me, all the things I love, the way that you are walking through.

Jonathan McCoy

30:00

This world. Love that we can write down what we want to see in the world. I think it's an empowering conversation, and one that I know is going to resonate with this community. So thank you. I know you show up in a lot of ways online. What's the best way for people to find you that are listening? They're like, Oh my gosh, I need Eric, of course, obviously, the

Eric Brown

30:17

book whiteboard that is, is probably, is sort of the digital home. So whiteboard.is

Becky Endicott

30:26

is that's, that's really the hub. That's the main one. We won't push you down social media channels, but you can find them if you're looking for them. Definitely. Please check out whiteboard. Please come follow Eric. We just think you are such a good dude, doing incredible work. Thank you for the way that you and the company have supported this movement of change makers. We're honored to be in it with you, and we are rooting for your work every step of the way. And I am also rooting for your 13 year old daughter and the Smartphone Challenge godspeed on that one as well, which may be even mightier. Hey, grateful. Honored to be in this conversation, and thank you so much.

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