Stop Interrupting. Start Empowering. How to Grow Fans + Donors Exponentially - Jeff Rosenblum

8:40PM May 2, 2022

Speakers:

Becky Endicott

Jonathan McCoy

Jeff Rosemblum

Keywords:

people

nonprofits

jeff

self awareness

advertising

podcast

friends

becky

donor

create

story

world

book

content

donations

point

build

brands

talk

journey

Today's episode is sponsored by feather feather provides digital marketing tools and strategies for nonprofits of all shapes and sizes, including the Humane Society of North Central Florida. Stick around for the break to hear how feather power their $300 digital ad campaign that raised nearly $6,000 In just one day. Hey, I'm John.

And I'm Becky.

And this is the we are for good podcast.

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.

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.

So welcome to the good community, where Nonprofit Professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.

So let's get started. Hey, Becky, what's up, man? You're grinning. Oh my gosh, I love when we can just like completely geek out on marketing for an entire episode. And this is going to like, challenge your mind challenge some of your preconceived notions. You know, we love to do that on the podcast. So we've brought together one of the foremost experts in advertising space, that really is speaking to the way that maybe we're typically approaching this, he's worked for some of the biggest brands in the world is dead wrong. So we're trying to talk about shifting from just kind of the glossy advertising that we talked about to this empowering movement. And this is what we as nonprofits need to lean into. And so we're talking to Jeff Rosenbloom. Today, he is the co founder of quest. This is this digital advertising agency that you know, has just casually built, you know, Starbucks as website among all these other incredible brands, Apple and Capital One and Disney. And so he really has the pulse on the industries that are really awake to this moment of how to really build movements, and not just stuff, marketing stuff, but really empower people and allow and invite them into the story. And so he has channeled his thought leadership into two amazing books, both friction and exponential. And they kind of really unpack what I've just kind of talked about, but just really creating a system for embracing transparency and engaging audiences, creating evangelists. That's what we call believers on this podcast all the time, and unleashing yourself for unprecedented growth. And so as nonprofits, I want you to really think past the walls that you typically think in this scarcity mindset, and lean into this conversation because Jeff is gonna challenge us. But he's also deeply involved in volunteer work. He is an advisory board member for the Make a Wish Foundation, and the special spectators also he and his family had built a school in a remote village in Nepal while working with the build on organization, one of our favorite organizations on so I have to circle back on that too. But he lives with his family just outside of New York City, they just moved to bear land bear country, he can tell us all about that. And his wife and kids, two kids who are much cooler and better looking than him. So we are delighted to have you on the podcast. Jeff, thanks so much for being here.

Thanks for having me. I gotta tell you, I'm already frustrated because you guys stole my idea. I wanted to do a we are for good podcast and a whole news outlet. Like I thought about that forever. I've been thinking about this idea forever, right down to the game we are for good. Have me on any time. Because I'll tell you the reason I think about is not necessarily for nonprofits specifically, but for just human beings in general. And like, you think about news nowadays. And I kind of feel like I've got a bit of a responsibility for how polarized the world is right now. Because it really does come down to news and advertising. Like if they can just keep making us scared and addicted by sharing negative news. We're going to watch more of it, and then they're gonna sell more advertising. So I've always sort of carried that guilt is a guy who works in advertising when the world is for everything. That's bad in this world, there's something really good. So I think it's really cool that you guys are creating content, not just for nonprofits, but content in general with this awesome title. We're for good. It's perfect. I love it. Oh my gosh. That's it. We're done. I'm out of here.

Guys. This is the shortest episode we've ever released. Thank you. Jeff, take us back to little Jeff, how did you end up leading this incredible firm that obviously is impacting millions of people around the world. Now, take us back to your story in your journey.

Oh my god. This is a little different than most of your other hosts because I'm going to start with little Jeff. I'll start with the earliest memory of my entire life, which is I'm in the kitchen. And I've got a 10 inch steak knife in my head. It's serrated. Its razor sharp for cutting into the thickest pieces of meat. It's got two tips at the front for stabbing into those hunks of meat. I'm up way past my bedtime. I'm in my superhero pajamas. I am out of control laughing the way you can only get when you're a little kid up way past their bedtime, maniacally maniacally and I've got this knife pointed right at my brother's torso. You He now has a chef's knife. The classic one that we see on all the cooking shows also razor sharp, and it's pointed right at my torso. I trusted him a little bit he steps back. He trusted me a little bit stepped back. My babysitter is right there. To my right. I love this babysitter. He didn't smell weird, like my previous babysitter. He doesn't know what to do. He thinks we're about to kill each other. He doesn't know that my brother and I are best friends and that we're just feeding into that maniacal laughter and we're just going a little bananas for the evening. And he screams No. And I scream Yes. And he screams No. And they scream. Yes. He had to do what he had to do. But what he should have done is grabbed my wrist. Instead, he grabbed the knife. As he grabbed the blade, I pull it out. All 10 inches of this serrated blade, go through his thumb and cut them down to the bone.

So stick around have this true crime podcast

or about the size. It's not where I thought this was going words conversation, but I'm loving it. I want to know the where's the punctuation? Yeah,

I'm sorry, did I walk into the weir for good podcast? I got confused. I'm gonna land this plane. But here's what's crazy about it. Right? I remember the exact pajamas. I remember exactly where my babysitter was. I remember exactly where the knife drawer was. I remember the sound of the laughter. Here's the one thing I don't remember, was any punishment. Because there absolutely was no punishment. We took rolls and rolls of paper towels. The ambulance came, they took away my babysitter. Eventually my parents came home. We never talked about it again. And the reason for that is my grandfather was a gangster. He was in the Jewish mafia. He was part of Murder Inc, where they literally were known for killing over 1000 people if you read up on it, I don't know if he ever killed anyone in the stories are incredible. My father had an uncle Charlie, by the way, I got the name wrong in the book. I said, Max, the name is Charlie. Charlie took a hatchet to his forehead. Somehow he lived and he took a cigarette all the time at like Thanksgiving. And he liked the cigarette and he put the button to the cigarette into his forehead just to entertain the kids, right? There's all these crazy mafia in entertaining and gangster stories, which are awesome, except for one fact, which is my grandfather was actually a monster. He beat the hell out of my father regularly like my father tells the story about time moving in slow motion, because at one point, he felt his backside hit the ceiling. And you realize it's going to be a pretty big drop from the ceiling to the floor when his own father picked him up in threw him in the reason that this is all important is the fact that I cut off my babysitter's thumb and I wasn't punished was the greatest gift ever. Because my parents decided at that point, we're not going to be perfect, but we're not going to pass along violence. And maybe they made a mistake of not punishing me for that or anything else. But I've spent my entire life not ever having to worry about the downside. If you can cut off your babysitter's thumb and not get punished. You can look at everything through a slightly different lens. So as you can imagine, I wasn't a good high school student, barely graduated, gotten a ton of trouble, wasn't a good college student barely graduated, gotten a ton of trouble. Nobody wanted me to work for them. But I begged I always had a great work ethic. I found this company run by these Harvard Business School graduates. I begged and begged them to beg for a job with these guys. They finally gave me a job and inside of three months, I'm like, Everything you're doing is wrong. You realize like the internet is coming and everything that you're doing is going to be completely wiped out. So make a long story short, I helped pioneer the field of internet research. When I was still a young zit face kid I wound up with Microsoft Netscape, Sun Microsystems, Levi Strauss, all is my client, because I was the one guy that was like, hey, everything's wrong, which I don't see any downside and shifting to the internet, right? Eventually, I got really bored. Eventually, I just started decided to start an advertising agency. I turned to my college roommate, like, Dude, we should start an advertising agency. He's like, Have you ever stepped foot in one? I'm like, Nah, man, have you? Like, no, I'm like, Screw it. Let's do it. Right. And now we've had everyone you name it. Apple, Amazon, Disney universal capital, one American Express Starbucks, we've all been our clients. Because we've looked at advertising really differently. We've realized that it's not about interruptions. It's not about superficial messages. It's not about flow from progressive or some iteration on that. That's so darn annoying for either profits or nonprofits. It's about how do we empower people? How do we improve people's lives? How do we create content that's so compelling, we don't have to interrupt people. We can create content that's so powerful, people will seek it out, and then they'll share it with others. And that's how great brands are built. And that's how great nonprofits are now built.

Okay. I gotta I gotta react to all of that. I used to think I was a good storyteller. And tell I just watched someone talk about cutting off their babysitter's thumb and In thread to the point of nonprofit empowerment, that was a, I absolutely loved every moment of that story in this fearless component of yours. And it's almost it seems like it's paired with a high, high level of self awareness and an awareness of what's going on. And I just think, holy smokes, you're interesting, Jeff, that's one and two, I, we are here for everything you just said, because we believe so much in the disruption of what we're sitting in, we look at something like nonprofit and there is limitless possibilities, when you're an organization that is fundamentally changing the world. And just as I'm up here on my soapbox, I just gotta say, I mean, the power dynamics are the exact opposite of what I feel like they should be, we have the power to, to save lives to stamp out hunger to get rid of disease, and yet we have the scarcity mindset. But I love that you talk about brand empowerment and how that does lift. So I want to talk to you a little bit just about this connection that you're seeing between consumer journeys, and donor journeys and nonprofit organizations you've worked with all the brands that we're celebrating over. I mean, what can nonprofit listeners learn from these brands? Apple capital, one Disney, NFL, Samsung, what is there to take away from that? And how do we step into our power?

Yeah, so first of all, thank you for the kind words, I appreciate it. And I'd love to touch on self awareness in a couple of minutes. But let me first ask answer your question. There's one piece of research, here's what's great about writing a book, it's not about putting everything I know, on paper, it's about being like Holy smokes, I actually don't know much. So I better conduct a ton of research to put it on paper. And we hired these amazing interns who have a much better attention span. And we literally had 10s and 10s of 1000s of pages of research and hundreds of 1000s of points of data. And I'm looking for nuggets. And here's the nugget where I was like, this is the one this is the mind blowing one. And it comes down to the automotive category. And the reason that it's for the automotive category is because there's so many dollars in automotive advertising, that they're able to get the data, but it's totally 100% valid for nonprofits or any other category. And the research is this. People spend 13 hours conducting research before they buy a new car, they get to the point like I'm ready, I'm gonna buy a new car, the clock is ticking at that point, then they spent 13 hours over six months, you can look at travel category, which is kind of similar, people just go over to 35 different websites before they make their purchase. Right. Now, if you're going to make a $10 donation, a $50 donation, obviously, people are not spending 13 hours. But if people are going to make sizable donations, corporate donations, lifetime donations, get their hands in the mud and actually hands on do the work. They're going to spend hours and hours and hours. So when you think about automotive, how many ads do we see we're trying to watch our favorite drama, we're trying to watch our favorite or favorite football game. And it just the same add up. We can't even differentiate the companies. But let's say they're amazing ads. And let's say you see 10 of them, which is more than enough for us to say they're wildly annoying. Well, what about the other 12 hours and 55 minutes? So the answer is if you're running a nonprofit, and you're trying to get people involved with their time, their dollars, their energy, their recommendations, their evangelism, how do we create content that shows up in the right place at the right time along that 13 hour journey, it's not going to be a print dead, it's not going to be a TV ad is not going to be a banner ad, it's not going to be a social media post. And it's not going to be your website, it's going to be a combination of all of those tools, working together in understanding what everybody's unmet needs are at each point in their own journey.

Like drop. My head

just exploded. I forgot we were having a podcast, I just want to hang out and have coffee with Jeff and talk to him about all of this.

We've talked about donor journey on the podcast. So I think I hope our listeners are really well aware that it's not you can't just broadband one giant one message because people are at different places, you know, you maybe six hours in Becky maybe 12 hours into her decision, whatever it may be. How do you functionally stand that up with maybe a limited? Everyone's got a limited marketing budget at some extent, I'm sure. Where do you how do you play to all those at the same time? What kind of shifts doing to have mindset wise to create that level of content?

That's that's a great question. I hope I'm not too technical in this nature. But that one way that we look at it as sales funnel, right? It's called a sales funnel because it's shaped like a sales funnel. And there's a lot of people that you're trying to get aware among some of them it's smaller, you're trying to make them interested interested among them at smaller you're trying to convert them into donors and among them you're trying to convert them into loyalists or evangelists who tell their friends about it right shape like a funnel. The audience may go down that funnel in some form, right? It's a lot faster now than it used to be, but you still go were interested, converted, etc. But when you think about the budgeting, John, to your question, start at the bottom right, there are people who are raising their hands. I call them digital hand raisers more technically, we might say that they're giving intent signals, they're up on your website, hey, that's an intent signal. They're following you on social, hey, that's an intent signal. They're searching on Google for your brand name, or at least your category name, those are intent signals, figure out what those people are looking for, and build your messaging to meet their needs most specifically, because normally what people do is they start focusing on the consumer journey in way too much awareness. And then they're putting it in places where people may or may not be interested, that's fine. But more efficient investment is go after the people who are already telling you didn't really interested.

Okay, that's brilliant, because let's circle back to one of the data points that just haunts us in nonprofit is this retention number. So it can be like churn maybe on our subscription based service on the business side. But I mean, the industry as a whole hovers at like 40% retention of donors year over year crazy, which means you're losing 60% of your annual donors, which is also mind numbing. But I think if we focus the funnel on, obviously, it's easier to keep a donor than to get a new one. So how do we dial in that is really brilliant advice of really looking at that part of the funnel.

In the good news about that is those tools are relatively close to free, right? If you can find a way to keep them engaged on social, if you can keep them engaged on email, if you can keep them engaged on your website, if you can share inspiring immersive stories that get them spending more time, if you give them tools that are free, like hey, why don't you share this, this video with friends, all of that stuff is basically close to free, as opposed to trying to get new customers, where you either have to spend a ton of money because you're buying ads based on Facebook, Instagram, programmatic TV magazines, or even if it's donated, that stuff becomes expensive, even if it's donated, because it takes a lot of effort just to work through the mechanics of all of it. So you know, creating content that actually engages people is really important. Let me tell you something that sounds stupidly obvious, right? Create content that engages people, but like most brands, don't get it like you and I let's forget about the category of nonprofits. And let's just go through our email. And you don't even remember how all these companies got their email addresses, but you get their newsletters, you get their, you know, try to buy your new T shirt or whatever the heck they're selling, then you look like, Dude, where's the value in any of this, like you just interrupted my day, you're taking my most important resource much more important than money is time for most people, particularly if you're in your target audience of having enough discretionary income to make a donation time is the most valuable asset. So don't interrupt people don't waste their time, don't create content for content sake, make sure you're giving something valuable. And the way I look at it is it's a value exchange, right? Modern advertising used to be about storytelling. Think of it as a value exchange, people are giving you their time, their energy, their dollars, their recommendations, they're reaching out to you across all of those channels, email, and social in website, etc. Give them more that they're expecting. The brain loves something called homeostasis. We love balance. So when you can knock that out of balance by giving people more than they expect, their brain is going to seek homeostasis. How do they do it by giving something back? If they give you an ounce of effort, and you give them more than an ounce in return, they're going to start telling their friends, think about all the brands that you've recommended outside of your category of nonprofits. But think about every time you recommend something to somebody. Why is it it's not because they're great ad, it's not because they're great interruption. It's not because they're great advertising message, somewhere along the way, they've surprised you and delighted you with more than you're expecting.

Yeah, I just love this conversation so much. And I have to just tell you that I am living proof of the fact that all of those brands hit I've got 26,000 emails in my Yahoo account that I check maybe once a week to make sure that grandma hasn't said anything in there because she can't figure out the new email address and it it is overwhelming. But I love this equity discussion in here. Because I think that is such an accelerant for someone to become a believer if you can come in at the beginning, folks, we've talked so much about the warming, the warming cycle of a new donor of a new follower of somebody who's interested in your brand you have I mean, I just I'm hearing my mother and my voice if you never have a second chance to make a first impression if you can really lean into that value exchange. I've never heard that before but I love it and I'm going to be using it and I will copyright it to you my friend. But I think that there's just such power in that because someone does feel seen they feel the generosity of it. And when you come from a space of generosity, hello, that's what we're doing. We're trying to pour ourselves into these problems and these systemic issues, if you can show up with generosity, that is disruptive, to give something, and I want to go back and give you a chance to talk a little bit about emotional intelligence and self awareness, because I actually think that that is one of the greatest skills that someone could possess to create something that is incredibly vulnerable, authentic magnetic. And so please talk about that a little bit and what your thoughts were around that?

Sure. I'll talk about two things. I mean, let's first talk about culture. Because I think self awareness is is part of it, right? And a lot of folks come in want to talk about advertising, how it relates to their category for today, how does advertising relate to nonprofits, but I found one of the more important tools in this world is the power of building great culture, like all companies are now completely transparent in the audience. They know the truth, they know it in real time, they're going to seek advice from their friends, they're going to see ratings and reviews on all different websites, like they know the truth, they know it in real time. So if you've got this great culture, which you guys have with, in most your nonprofits have this great culture where they really care about making the world a better place. Well, people are gonna want to gravitate towards that. But I used to think that culture was about fun, right? And people in my organization would be like, Hey, man, the culture is a little broken. I'd be like, Oh, really, I got this covered, right? And I go to the stereo, and I crank up the volume to 11. We listen to the Allman Brothers, I bring in some beers, we go out to dinner, right? There's this amazing restaurant in New York City called Russian samovar where they put a vodka bottle on your table. Right? That's how you start the night we get blackout drunk. It was crazy. It was like fun. And you can't even do that stuff in today's world, but it was so much fun. And then the next day be like, dude, let's keep it going. Right? So I go to McDonald's, and I bring in egg muffins because everybody loves nagrik muffin on a hangover, and everything's great. Problem solved. And three days later, somebody's like, Hey, man, the culture is broken. I'm like, What do you mean, the culture is broken? We just had the greatest time it was so much fun, right? And people like, Yeah, dude, that's, that's fun. That's not culture, right. And we see that a lot like, companies invest in foosball tables and ping pong tables, I remember there was this agency, they built a bar in their agency, and they connected to Twitter. And every time he drank a beer, it would tweet something like at three o'clock in the afternoon and be like, sounds like someone's having a bad day at 7pm. We like today, it was a great day. It was really cool. But that's fun. That's not culture. And what I've finally learned is great culture is about putting people in position to do their best work. That's what people want. If you're hiring the right, people, at nonprofits, they're looking to make a real difference in this world. And they're making looking to make a real difference in their own career. So it's really about giving people the tools and the processes and the resources, and the other great A players so they can do their best work in more important and focusing on advertising and marketing. That comes second. First, you need to focus internally on your own culture, in your own behavior. And then from that, when you've got that established, you've got the right the permission and the ability to focus externally, on your own advertising and your own messaging.

Hey, friends, this episode is presented by virtuous and they just happen to be one of our favorite companies. Let me tell you why. You know, we believe everyone matters. And we've witnessed the greatest philanthropic movements happen when you see and activate donors at every level. And here's the thing, virtuous created a fundraising platform to help you do just that. It's much more than a nonprofit CRM. Virtuous is committed to helping charities reimagine generosity through responsive fundraising, which is simply putting the donor at the center of fundraising, growing giving through personalized donor journeys, and by helping you respond to the needs of every individual. We love it because this approach builds trust and loyalty through personalized engagement. Sound like virtuous, maybe a fit for your organization? Learn more today and virtuous.org or follow the link in our show.

Hey, friends, are you ready to take your digital engagement to the next level, but kind of feel stuck about where to start? Let us introduce you to feather feathers, an amazing tech startup focused on making nonprofit outreach more impactful by connecting you to your audience wherever they are online, from fundraising to program awareness, they've got you covered. And rather than telling you we just wanted to show you for years, the Humane Society of North Central Florida has participated in a local online giving day called the amazing give. It's a competitive landscape for donations. So in 2021, the Humane Society knew they needed to stand out in order to maximize donations for $300 in ad spend their retargeting ads brought 119 visitors to their amazing gift donation page and generated nearly $6,000 in donations in just one day. With feather a small amount of ad spend can go a long way. Learn more about their story editions for nonprofits@feathered.co That's feather without the last e.co. Now let's get back to this amazing conversation.

Okay, goodness, this is just like so many chapters. I don't know how we're going to title this episode because there's so much good. That's happening here. But I just like to throw this back to something that we talk about a lot, is that we're really into ethical storytelling, we feel like the sector needs to awaken to this, and some are doing this incredibly well, I will say, but it seems like shifting the lens and saying how am I painting this picture? How am I telling the story of this family that we're impacting the beneficiary of all of our work all this pomp and circumstance in raising money? How are you painting that in person in the best possible light for their own sake for their own story for their own hope? And I think that even aligns with what you're saying here, too. It's like getting everybody to show up at their greatest self and get the opportunity to thrive in that, and how things just come alive. And I think that's true in our lanes isn't a three person company of we're for good. We're best when we can stay in the lanes that we thrive in. And you know, I just got to think that makes a company come alive. And I'm curious how you've seen that play out, you know, as you've made that shift in your own company, and maybe other ways you show up?

Yeah, totally. I mean, we'll go back to Becky's comment about about self awareness. Man, it's it's such a powerful tool, and I'll be the first to admit that, you know, I probably thought I was really self aware. I was like, delayed self aware, meaning I do a bunch of stupid stuff. And then later, I be like, that was stupid and apologize or something. Right? You know, self awareness is something that is incredibly powerful. And one of the, one of the seminal moments for me is, is, you know, I'm a sports fan. But the older I get, the less I'm interested in, like the big hits and the action, like I'm much more interested in, like the life lessons and the stories. And I remember like, in the on the football team, and this isn't fair, but you know, Offensive Tackles are not known for being the smartest guy on the team, right? They're like 340 pound behemoths, right? But I remember reading this article, and this offensive tackle was like, one of the great moments he had as he got older, is he said, I realized my greatest strengths, or my greatest weaknesses. And it made no sense to me. I'm like, I don't know what this guy's talking about. But it's stuck in my mind for a while. Like, I think there's something profound going on in it took me a while to figure it out. It needs absolutely right. Your greatest strength is your greatest weakness. His point is like, Yeah, I'm 340 pounds. I'm really big and strong. It doesn't make me that nimble, right, a really physical thing in his example, but for the rest of us, we all have our strengths. We all have our weaknesses. I've got a best friend, a college roommate, we started this business together. I'm sure you guys are dear friends. And the more you start realizing like, Hey, John, you're really good at this. It back. You're really good at this. These are the things maybe we're not that good at, we probably don't enjoy. We started on this whole thing that we call divide and conquer. Jordan call me the other day. He's like, Dude, you realize we use that totally wrong. Divide and Conquer usually means you're dividing the enemy and then conquering. Well, we talked about it with ourselves like, divide, man, take away the crossover, you really, really good. He's really creatively gifted. You go to the creatively gifted stuff. I'm happened to be a little bit of a math dork. Let me go be the math dork guy. But you know, self awareness is incredibly powerful. And then I'm older than you guys. Let me tell you this, I'm going to get you. Eventually, you're going to hit this point, you're like, Oh, dude, Jeff told me about this 49 and a half sucks. It's the worst. Nobody wants to be 49. And it reeks you out. Then when you turn 50 It's the greatest thing in the world. It's like a drink in a tall glass of I just don't care every morning. So I put in this major initiative, spreadsheets talked about all this cool stuff. Two days ago, I'm like, terrible idea is terrible. Like I lead this whole thing. I analyze it a strategize that I conduct the research, we implemented it in inside of three months, this idea stinks. And let me tell you why these ideas stinks. Now, we can fix it, right? self aware, like I was on it. I put my heart and soul into this idea. It was terrible. So you know, if you can have the wisdom at 28 years old to have the self awareness of a 50 year old person. It's extraordinarily powerful. And it's not something I had, literally it was like the marker of I when I turned 50. I'm like, oh, maybe I'll try being self aware. Now.

I love this topic. Emotional Intelligence is one of my most favorite topics. I'm seeing so many threads of Enneagram in here as well. And I just think that, you know, it's it's not enough community, to dive into professional development to hone your skills. We have to work on soft skills. We have to we talked so much on this podcast about mindsets. We talk about empathy, we talk about, you know, I think self awareness is is a great tool, because it allows you to put yourself in somebody else's shoes, it almost extracts you out of your own body, and allows you to see the world as others see you. And when you can figure that out, your communication will become so much more authentic, it will become so much more punctuating, you will see that person, and they will feel like, wow, there's an instant connection where somebody gets you the power of threading that into a donor journey, even one on one. I just think that with fundraising is like a limitless potential if, if our organizations could figure that out.

Yeah, absolutely. Now one of the questions that may be sitting in the back, your mind is like, Dude, why are we talking about this? I thought you're talking about marketing and advertising, right. So I'll give you an example that you guys are probably remember, remember, a few years ago, there was somebody on United Airlines, and he wouldn't leave the plane. And then United winning in the physically dragged him off the plan, no empathy, using I love that word that using Becky like, no empathy, just like physically drag Mothra wasn't TSA, they were united people involved. They looked at it, they saw it. What was amazing is not that it was captured on film, if you actually watch the videos, and like, everybody's got a world class camera in their pocket. So it wasn't that one person, like it was filmed so many times over, and then immediately went viral. And everybody saw it. So United Airlines can run an ad campaign and tell me they care. They can give me a call on the phone, like a donor call and be like, I really care. Like, dude, I saw the video, you don't really care. So you can literally and they will do this when 10s and 10s and 10s of millions of dollars, telling them how much they care about the friendly skies or whatever their tagline is. I don't believe it. I've seen the video. Now. That's a pretty crazy example out there. But I like it because it's so tangible. And we can all relate to it. It was just, it was tearing guy got physically dragged off the plane. So you might not ever I must, I'm assuming have that experience as a nonprofit. But the same thing is true. If your culture is not right, then your behavior is not going to be right. And the behavior is not right. It's going to offset whatever world class marketing and advertising that you create.

It's so good. And I mean, we lifted culture as one of our focuses for the year. And we really believe as you kind of build that internal culture, that one that you're describing, it's actually going to attract people to like, because you become this vibrant source of living out the values that you say that you care about. And it just it all kind of has to work together. And so really love this moment of awakening, that marketing is no longer just a shiny object. It's reflective of what's valued, and people can sniff it out if that's not true. So will you talk for a second about just this idea of moving from the idea of moving from just interrupting or interruption to this idea of empowerment? And what does that look like? Kind of in tangible terms?

Yeah, I mean, we all we all wake up in the morning, wanting one thing. We want to be better than we were the day before. It's at the heart of capitalism. It's what drives the entire human experience. We all want self improvement in our own humble, authentic way. So when brands seek out to empower people, to give them the tools to improve their lives, they're drafting off of 1000s and 1000s, and 1000s of years of evolution, unlike interruptions, where it's safe to assume nobody likes to be interrupted. So what does empowerment really mean? It means giving people the tools to improve their lives, one small step at a time. It can be as simple as something that you were talking about earlier, John, which is tell a story. Tell a story about a family that's being impacted by donations. It makes it easy to find and make it easy to share. It can be just about the donation process, right? Are you donating online? Is it super user friendly? Is it mobile friendly? It could be a little things like hey, setting an appointment to go meet with a major donor, and making sure you're making those tools as user friendly as possible, because major donors don't have a lot of patience, when people are wasting their time. Right? So how do we create these tools, not just that improve people's lives, but tools that help people improve their own lives? Education is really, really powerful information is really powerful. Inspiration is really powerful. And the other one that's really powerful is facilitation, which is my last point of making things as user friendly as possible.

Okay, this is like the basis of your new book, exponential, which I'm going to run to my local bookstore and get because I just think what you're saying is, it's an evolve level of thinking and I want you To go deeper, I want you to get into some tactics like how can people start to embrace I'm when I think about the tiny nonprofit, you know, where they're juggling a million balls all the time, and they, and maybe their culture is great, but they're trying to figure out, how do we either automate? Or how do we build systems where people do feel seen where I can tell that story, I gotta compliment you. Because the way you tell stories, transforms me to the place where you're at, I can see the Egg McMuffin, I can see your Superman jammies. And I think that the way that you story tell, is the way that we connect and pull people in. So give us give us some maybe some steps or some tactics that people can employ. To really embrace this ethos of what you're saying about, we're going to start to empower instead of interrupting.

So let's talk about some truths, right? One Truth is, we're exposed to 5000 branded messages every day, that's approximately a freshman every 2.7 seconds that we're awake, we're under assault. If you look at your brain, your brain is exposed to 11 million bits of information, every minute. So we pause right now. And you listen, there's a car driving by outside, maybe often the distance, there's a horn honking, maybe you can hear the squeaking of your car of your seat, right? Maybe you can hear your air conditioning, your brain filters it all out, right? It only processes of those 11 million bits of information, it only processes 50. Your brain is a cognitive spam filter. So what do we need to do? If it's filtering out all the noise, we need to create signals, we need to make sure that that content is actually valuable. And we need to make sure that we understand how short people's attention spans are the book that I wrote, In the very first paragraph, I've got my knife out, and I'm cutting my babysitter's bum off. Because I needed to capture people's attention, I need to get you through the first paragraph to get you to the second paragraph. The second paragraph gets you to the second page. It's not to like page five, where I'm finally like, Hey, man, let me give you some advice. But if I just come off on advice on page one, people have that you need to engage them. So to be really specific, Becky, there's a couple things that I would recommend. One is make sure in whatever you're developing, you're telling that story, or excuse me, you're engaging people within the first six seconds, right? You need to make sure that you're capturing people's attention as quickly as possible. That's one action item to I would make sure that even before that you're being extraordinarily functional, just like major brands out there. Nonprofits, there's a lot of competition for those dollars. So you need to make sure first and foremost forget about my first piece of advice. This the first one, make sure everybody clearly understands what you do. from a functional standpoint. Yeah, you want to make people laugh? Yeah, you want to make people cry. Yeah, you want to inspire people. Guess what Nike is trying to do that, as are 10s of 1000s of other brands, make sure people really understand exactly what you offer in a succinct, in few words as possible. The third thing I would recommend, is recognize that a lot of those tools out there don't work nearly as much as you would think they do. For example, social media. Everyone's like, oh my god, social media, it's a free platform, you can reach your audience. If you look at your social media metrics, everybody who's listening to this, I'm going to tell you right now, I'm going to scan with my brain across every single listeners, social media platforms, right now, I'm going to tell you exactly what they find. You're posting multiple times per week, in a typical post, you're getting 13 engagements. The same people are looking at your posts every single day. Mark Zuckerberg is one of the richest human beings on planet Earth, because he pulled one of the greatest scams on planet Earth, which was, hey, I'm gonna give you a free platform, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Bringing all these people we're going to call them friends, then you can publish and all of them are going to see that it's not actually what happens. There's an algorithm involved in this whole thing. And he's not giving you 100% of your friends get to see it. Only a small percentage of the people that are following you on social media get to see the same post. And you tend to be saying the same thing over and over again to the same people. Meanwhile, you're not only investing in that content, but there's so many meetings that you're going through internally over and over and over again, time is money, and people are trying to win it in that social media game. They're trying to do the next Ice Bucket Challenge, which was a complete quagmire for every other company that tried to try some viral concept after that. There's nothing wrong with social media, but remember that your time and your resources are limited and you need to make sure that you're investing in places that are actually really making a difference because you're Are we in social media screaming into an echo chamber? Nothing wrong with that. But I think most companies can reduce their budget a little bit and create some of that great anchoring content. I'd rather see a great video. To your point earlier, John, a great video that tells your story, and then make some some text to go with it. Now it's search engine optimized. Now you've got content that we call evergreen, and people can find it forever. A good piece of content can last for years and years and years and draw new eyeballs in there. And people can take it and share it with others.

Jeff gets us. Yeah, I mean, what? Everything.

We should be friends forever, and you should meet my parents, Becky,

I will actually, I will have them on the show, I will send him the BFF necklace where you take the B, I'll take the FF I've actually been thinking about your parents, as you've been talking. And I've been thinking about that moment that you talked about where they said, We're not going to choose violence, and we're going to let these children fly. And we're going to let them soar. And everything that everything that you've said, since you said that I see such positive evidence of that. And so we do owe them a bit of a debt of gratitude. I think

I thank my father every single day now. It was a tough ride. He's so pissed at me, because I've got two kids now. And they're great kids. And my year is the payback. You're supposed to arable kids. Sorry, Dad, I was a nightmare until I finally became an adult, which was like, a week ago.

I mean, we could we could talk to you for hours about this stuff. But I think you know what coming out of that piece that you just shared, I do think it comes down to this idea of value. And if you're really valuing the people you're trying to talk to you're valuing the the impact you're trying to make, like it pushes you to making better decisions about where you are investing. And I think that that is not lost on me that we all need to take a hard look at that. And do stuff that's really meaningful for the connection and engagement and all the things that we're trying to go to social media for in this bottomless pit. Not to say that we shouldn't use it, but I do you think that your advice here is really sound.

I agree. I've just been thinking like about like, just nonprofits and marketers out there that live in the churn, you know, and they've got their content calendar, and they're just we're gonna plug this and this and this. And you're right, Jeff, some of that just become such white noise. And unless you really spend some time, I mean, we've really kind of just squatted in video this year, because we just think video is such a powerful storytelling mechanism, you can write as much as you want. But with video, you're gonna, you're gonna hear a motion, you're gonna hear a voice crack, you're going to see a lip quiver, you're going to notice how their hands are moving around. And it's going to add to the emotion and the drama of what you're trying to say. But I just think this, this concept of content has always been king. But I would say the 2.0 of content is like meaningful, value driven content, is the way that you're going to get some scroll stopping attention right now because it is noisy I'm, and I have to say I'm like hyper analyzing every sound in my room right now. Like deciding, I'm hearing my printer running and the dog is sniffing. And if you're right, like the brain is overloaded now, and I just think that putting something out there friends, that is so impactful. That is a story of a human being who has seen struggle, and come through uplift. That's something that makes our brains pause. I mean, the dopamine rush of cheering for an underdog is something that we never, ever, you know, stop chasing. And I just love this concept so much. I really recommend anybody if you are gelling with this conversation, please go check out exponential. Your book just sounds like fire. And which is ironic, because your first book friction has matches on the cover, which John was geeking out about the cover art for that?

Can I Can I throw a piece of advice out there, Becky, because I want to make sure that I'm not so 30,000 feet that people can have a takeaway. So when we started our agency, my business partner and I, we started literally, we had two desks in one chair. That's how broke we were like one person had to sit on the floor. We share the chair, right? They

invented the standing desk.

So my business partner, we had one project that would get us through three months. And at the end of three months. If we didn't score another client, we're done and we had to call our friends we had to call her parents are like, we're going overhead. We're the total moron she thought we were so like we had to nail this first one. So we sit down. I've got Photoshop, and I create this incredible advertisement for our very first client ever worked my tail off on this thing. It's frickin genius in my book. So I called Jordan over I'm like, Dude, I gotta check this thing out. And he looks at and he's like, here's the deal, man. Take Photoshop off of your computer right now. If you ever install it again, we're closing up this shop. He was the one with real skills like he had art gallery openings he had like Johnny Depp was buying his paintings. He was like People Magazine, all this stuff. And I'm okay with that. I'm self aware. He made me self aware, right. But like, I don't have those natural skills. So not everyone does. So what are some of the workarounds? So the reason I bring it up is I just want to give one piece of advice, I think it's been really actionable for me at a very tangible basis, which is if we want to tell stories, look up on Google and do a little research on the three act structure. Because if you're not a natural storyteller, and or you're not a natural video creator, if you want to find a shortcut to make sure the video works, they break through that cognitive spam filter and everybody's brain to make sure that you're emotionally engaging people in functionally engaging people understand that three, act structure. Now some of them are titled, I don't even have it memorized. But as soon as you start making three acts that don't have to be equally long, the first and the third, very often are a little bit shorter. The second one's a little bit longer. Something's called like rising, whatever the heck, who cares, you can find it on Google. But as soon as you start thinking that way, this is what I first want to do. This is what I second want to do. This is what I finally want to do. Maybe I'll have three pieces of music or find a piece of music that changes at three intervals to emotionally engage people. Now, all of a sudden, you're saying, Look, you might not have that God given talent. But now you've got the tools to get pretty darn close to great content.

Oh, my gosh, I mean, the frameworks, this is so good. So you know, we created this company, because we believe in the power of philanthropy, we love telling the story of that your family's journey of being involved in philanthropy is beautiful. Would you share a story that's really stuck with you or changed you as a person, just through that lens of philanthropy?

Well, you mentioned it earlier. I mean, if you want to have one of the greatest experiences of your entire life, like, go build a school with a build on organization, I did it a while ago, my kids were quite young, my son was like three or four, or my daughter was like seven or eight. And we went off to Nepal. It's hard to describe what that's like, we flew into the biggest city, then we took a tiny little airplane that brought us to some tiny little city, then you get on a bus for like six hours, like in when I say we're at the, the absolute middle of nowhere, you were in the absolute middle of nowhere. And I'm thinking like, well, is this a wise thing? Do they really want me there? Like, is this my value system and something for my ego? Maybe they don't even need us. They're like, life is good for these people. I've got hours and hours and hours and hours and hours to think like, Am I just trying to put my values on these people, and then we get there in they've got a festival, waiting for us, like women in children decked out in makeup in their nicest dresses and saris and music and dancing in science, they are so excited for us to be there. Because there's not actually a lot of men out there. Like there's just a lot of women and children fast forward the next day, like, they don't have multiple outfits, like they don't have, you know, they've got one outfit, which happens to be in a lot of ways. Oh, sorry, a dress, it's colorful, it's beautiful. And you're in the trenches, man, you get up at sunrise and you're just, you're just digging and you're digging alongside women who are in saris and they're out digging you and outperforming you in building because they're like, Hey, man, education is the key for our for our family, right? If I want a better life for my kids, I have to get them in education. Like we saw the schools that they had. And they were, they were sad, and they were scary and build on is out there not purely building the schools. But giving them the foundation, helping them build the schools, and then empowering them to have a brighter future was mind blowing, best thing I've ever done. But by far, you know, now it's 10 years later, almost. And we're actually thinking about signing up for another one. So matter of fact, I'm going to say we're going to do another one because now I can't back out.

We have we have a commitment right here.

Totally. There it is. Now I can't back up. Darn it stuck. Alright, I'm doing this thing. But like it I'm serious. But it was it was it was mind blowing. It was it was totally life changing. Build on is one hell of an organization.

What an experience what a story and the power of just global community to you know, you realize that we're all kind of fighting the same battle in different places as you as you get these experiences. So I love that so much. Well, our third act of the podcast is coming down. And we always want to end asking what is a one good thing that you could offer our community and it could be a mantra, it could be a habit be really tactical or it can be really philosophical. Jeff can't wait to hear your one good thing.

As you could probably tell, I have lots of things I can spew out there. I'll say the one thing that I've been trying to work gone a lot lately and it's not a it's not a heartwarming nonprofit type of mantra soul for anything but I do work on this concept of when the morning when the day. If you listen to a lot of podcasts if you read a lot of books or content about high performers, so many of them just come down to when the morning when the day like there's that dude, he built his whole career on this concept of make your own bed, right? Like, because that's it like, dude, I'm not making my own bed. That seems like a complete waste of time. But reading between the lines, when the morning when the day you want to make the world a better place because you work at a nonprofit, get up and start grinding right from the get go.

Jeff, we need to hang out with you more. Certainly our audience is gonna fall in love with just your energy, your positivity and the way that you look at the world. Tell us where they can get your book, where can they follow you? And absolutely, if there's anything that we can do to connect people with quest us give us those links to

totally Well, first of all, I love this is great. I love your positive energy. I love working with nonprofits or anybody who is associated with nonprofits because they're all just such a wonderful human being. So thank you for bringing all the compliments and positive energy and laughter and smiles. I love it. i So, so appreciate it. Thank you. Um, to answer your question, if you're interested in the book. Turns out I published a book the same exact time that a nother person published a book called exponential. And he's got a great Harvard podcast and whatnot. So you have to look for exponential by Jeff Rose and blue mines, the white cover his is the black cover. I'm sure his book is great. I haven't read it. We are donating 100% of our profits to charity. So if there is anything that you want to do to help on this journey, leave a rating leave a review for the book because that's one of the most powerful tools out there. It's called the theme of what we've been talking about. But the more reviews the more we can donate to charity. If you want to learn more about our agency it's quest this.com Qu e s t u s.com. I'm on Instagram at the Jeff Rosenbloom. I'm on Twitter at JR questors. And I basically stink at both Twitter and Instagram but I'm there and

I wish we could bottle up whatever is Jeff Rosenbloom and just replicate it because it feels like the world would just be a more energetic, harmonizing value and equitable driven place. Thank you so much. And yes, I will be sending my BFF necklace to you soon. And the next thing Oklahoma

would love to do it. Becky and John, you guys are awesome. I really appreciate this every moment of it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jeff.

Thanks for joining us. Today's episode was brought to you by our good friends at auth zero. Without zero your nonprofit can do more with a login box. Greet prospects and rabid fans of your mission with authenticity simply make it easier for your team to manage data. There's so much at odds zero login experience can do visit policy route.org For more info.

If you enjoyed this episode, we know you'll love being part of the we're for good community. It's like our own social network where you can find like minded friends, ask questions, share resources and find inspiration anytime. Sign up today at we are for good.com backslash hello

thanks friends.