Transcript Episode 30: How Two Marketers are Disrupting the Nonprofit World with Jonathan McCoy and Becky Endicott
Transcript Episode 30
Stephanie Skryzowski
Welcome to the 100 Degrees of Entrepreneurship Podcast, the show for purpose-driven entrepreneurs who want to get inspired to step outside of your comfort zone, expand it to your purpose and grow your business in a big way.
I’m your host, Stephanie Skryzowski, a globe trotting CFO whose mission is to empower leaders to better understand their numbers to grow their impact and their income. Let’s dive in!
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the 100 Degrees of Entrepreneurship Podcast! I’m your host, Stephanie Skryzowski, and I am so excited to be here today with two of my newest friends, Jon and Becky from We Are For Good. And I just met them actually… Recently, I recorded on their podcast, which just went live yesterday, which is super fun! Jon and Becky, I am so excited you’re here. Welcome!
Jonathan McCoy
It is a huge honor. Thank you so much for having us!
Becky Endicott
And I just met them actually… Recently, I recorded on their podcast, which just went live yesterday, which is super fun! Jon and Becky, I am so excited you’re here. Welcome!
Stephanie Skryzowski
Exactly, I know! I think I said after our podcast interview on your podcast, I was like, “I think I just found like my new besties.” That was like having a conversation with my new friends. So, love it glad we’re here together.
One of my most favorite things is hearing about people’s journeys, because they are often such a winding road. And we often start out on the journey thinking that we’re getting to one destination, but really, we land somewhere else. So I would love to hear how did you land where you are now? And was nonprofits social sector fundraising work… Was that always the goal for both of you? And what did that journey look like?
Jonathan McCoy
Yeah, let’s try to thread both of our stories together. And then Becky adds a lot of wonderful color that I always seem to leave out. But, you know, we both went to Oklahoma State University, we didn’t know each other. Becky graduated and went on and had kind of her little mini career and ended up back at Oklahoma State University Foundation.
And at the same time, I was in the art school about to graduate and I’m walking through the halls and I see this most scary flyer, looking for an intern in the graphic design program from the Oklahoma State foundation. And I was wrestling with the same thing in my head of like, “I don’t know that I want to go to an agency, that’s what my friends are doing, some are moving to Austin and New York, and gonna go work for these big brands.” And I’m like, I really just want to be part of a mission, you know, to some degree.
And so I picked up the flyer and I thought, if anything, I can help them make a better flyer to find somebody else. But I applied and I got the call. And so, I like literally faked a business card in my home office.
Becky Endicott
It was beautiful, by the way.
Jonathan McCoy
It was gluing pieces of paper together to try to look like I had my act together and walked in with the tie. And I’d probably tied like three times in my life at this point. And there sits Becky Endicott and we became fast friends, and I got the internship and we became just really great friends, but just… huge respect for each other.
She was a marketer and writer, and I was this designer. And we kind of started our career there, but in the process completely fell in love with philanthropy – love the power, that marketing could power that. And so we always feel like we’ve been marketers disguised as fundraisers. And that’s just how we approach life together.
So we spent time together at the OSU Foundation, five years actually, maybe more for Becky. And it was at this formative time when they were entering into a billion dollar fundraising campaign. And so we were ridiculously young, ridiculous idealists, building the marketing for a billion dollar campaign, you know, completely unqualified to do that. But cut our teeth and like, again, just stepped deeper into… wow, the transformative power of philanthropy and just became part of our story and something that we wanted to be connected to. So because we are friends, it sounds like we’re like together or something. We are happily married to other people.
Becky Endicott
He’s my work little brother.
Jonathan McCoy
Yes, work little brother’s the appropriate title. But we both decided to leave that job and move to Oklahoma City where we joined a health care foundation. And we spent the last decade there. Becky went the major gifts route, I went in (inaudible) giving. And so we were both in fundraising roles, but using these same principles of marketing and communications and building movements that we kind of were intrinsic to us. And that led us to this really incredible experience there.
During that time, we created this employee giving campaign that became really successful there at the hospital. And we had the opportunity to teach it and as we taught it more people were like, “How are you doing this?” And so it gave us this platform to teach that framework to hundreds of organizations across the country in Canada and so many you have adopted a lot of those principles. And it really gave us this platform of like everything we love threaded together is building a movement based on seeing the very donor, the individual and telling stories and threading that together with passion and impact and all these wonderful things that we felt like drove engagement at an organization. And so we thought that would be our next journey together because I clearly weren’t going to take another step without going together. Right?
But we thought maybe we stand up a consultancy around this idea of employee giving. And that’s kind of the first discussions of We Are For Good, but our dream just kept getting bigger and bigger. And I should totally let Becky take over some because I’m just like making this…
Becky Endicott
You’re doing such a good job! I mean, I just think the journey is very interesting because anybody who has found their spouse in life, like you just click, you have a vision, you want to walk through life together. And it’s like, I found that and Jon found that independently. But then you found like the business spouse… which again creeps people out and it’s probably why people think we’re married, we’re not.
But we just had such alignment, in the way that we were both so curious. We were deeply creative. We looked at the structures around us and said, “That doesn’t jive with us at all in the way we want to live our lives and impact the world.” And so we just kind of built new structures. And just to segue, Jon is this total entrepreneurial mindset. And he’s reading about it all the time, he’s listening to podcasts, he has such a creative vision. And I did not have that. I think I’m creative, but I don’t think that I have ever just had that entrepreneurial mindset where I wanted to go and create something. And it took him probably three years to cultivate me, to get me on board, to jumping from this very comfortable position. And he just kind of did what he exactly should have done to me, which is dangle this carrot of, “Do you want to go change the world with me, because I think that we have something to offer that is not in the industry, that’s not in the marketplace. And if we put our two brains together, think that it could be amazing!” And then we found this unicorn, an individual named Julie Confer, who’s sitting behind me, and she’s our incredible producer. And somehow the three of us just all melded, and here we are 10 months later with this company.
Jonathan McCoy
Yeah. And it’s like the vision of what we wanted to do just kind of grew over time, it started off as, “Let’s do this employee giving thing.” But as we sat down, we started lining up contracts. And we had a contract on both coasts. And we were thinking, we’re gonna be traveling away from our families to do this, and we just kind of had a reality check moment of, “Is the business we’re building the business that we want to live in?” And for both of us, we wanted to build a lifestyle business that supported the life that we wanted to have, and, you know, would accommodate for us to be around our family more. So doing something that seemed opposite of that felt really odd, and not where we wanted to align ourselves.
So, we really went kind of back to the drawing board. And that’s where this vision of We Are For Good, of just serving through a different way. And I just saw this opportunity with a gap in the market of just friends having conversation at a podcast level that could just be welcoming, because so much of professional development in nonprofit and probably in other industries, is so steeped in hierarchy and access. It’s hard to get into you get a pay to get into it. And when you get there, especially as a young professional, you feel like awkward, like everybody else knows everybody, and I don’t know anybody. So we’re gonna create this table where everybody felt welcome and seen. And just a place where you could connect and get pushed to do better. But there would kind of take away some of the barriers to get there. And so that was kind of the heart of this new venture with We Are For Good, but we still love employee giving.
Becky Endicott
We do talk about it a lot.
Stephanie Skryzowski
It’s so interesting, because I feel like a lot of times, when we’re working more of like a traditional job, like you both kind of started out as, there’s not a whole lot of this, like entrepreneurial spirit. And so I love that you really… sounds like from the beginning and kind of approach the work that you were doing within a more traditional structure with this, like spirit of entrepreneurship.
I imagine that along the way, there were challenges. And there were times when you were sort of pushed wildly outside of your comfort zone. And you know, just thinking about a couple like young 20 somethings working on a $1 billion campaign at a massive university. I imagine there were like probably times in there. But also as you were building your current business and kind of disrupting what the normal nonprofit space has looked like by bringing in a fresh perspective, bringing in this entrepreneurial spirit and making information really accessible to everyone. So what were some of those challenges or times when you feel when you have felt like personally pushed outside of your comfort zone? And how did you get past it?
Jonathan McCoy
Big question. You know, I would say even at the beginning of this and Becky’s right, I was entrepreneurial through different paths. And my wife and I had small business for probably five years of our life that took us in that direction, too. And it’s always been something that happened concurrently. So it’s like, I would have a full time job. And then I would do this thing on the side. And I think I had been in that motion for so long, that it was ridiculously scary to put away what felt stable or constant to step into this thing that we created or as a fiction of what we thought we could create. And the world kind of collided and obviously I don’t want to take all the attention of like the world just collided for us. Everything happened in 2020 right for everybody. And Becky and I’ve been talking for a couple of years, and then specifically, probably six months leading up to the end of that year before 2020 of just like, “Okay, this is this is the time.” Like this is gonna happen. And Becky drew a line in the sand. And she was like in June 30 2020, “I jump, I hope you come with me.”
Becky Endicott
No pressure. (conversation overlaps)
Jonathan McCoy
I need to leave at that point and lots of things that kind of lined up with that. For me, I was like, that sounds great. And I love a good deadline that helps me kind of organize my thoughts around it. But as we got closer, it’s like the carrot started like dangling. What’s easy to talk about became very hard to actually deal with and process.
And so I got a couple of different job offers, some that I had been cultivating for a really long time that could have made a lot of sense. I could tell one was a dream job offer that was there. I could have literally taken it in January of 2020 and kind of had this next step, but this clarity that Becky had and then secondly, my wife, to stand here and say, “Jon, you could go do that. Or you can quit giving up on yourself. Like every time you get so close to wanting to take your dream full time, like you always give up. And this is your moment like we’re pulling for you. You’ve got this!” That was like a seminal moment and happened in this room, I remember standing up and just being like, “You’re right, we have to do this.”
You know, I had conversations with both those and told them no, which turned into opportunities to consult because they still needed that person. And so it really turned into things that supported the dream. And so taking that step, and that step into risk, turned into the thing that actually created more stability in our first year of business, which completely gives me chills, and to me is a god moment of confirming that this was the right step for us. But I was scared, I’m not gonna lie, I’m still kind of scared. But I mean, we just learn how to manage it.
Becky Endicott
When you work a nonprofit, there are things that are hardwired in your brain that are just generally accepted that we believe are false. You know, people work from a scarcity mindset. And you work from a “We have to take on as much as we can, with the lowest possible overhead. And the ROI has got to be so tight. And the cost per dollar raise has to be so low.” And there’s all of these things that we have been wired to think are true. And Jon and I are looking at them saying those are not true.
And actually, if you flip that entirely and come at it from an abundance mindset, and you think about what could be? How do we take creative risks? How do we get investment into trying some stuff and seeing if it’ll work, especially in this new digital age. If you look at overhead, not as this horrible thing, it’s like an event (gap in audio). Overhead is people. (inaudible) talks about that a lot.
And so I just think this notion of risk was something that we finally felt comfortable to jump toward, and I will give you the secret sauce to our company, what we decided to do, and it’s like we looked at the first year, and we said, “Okay, we’re really gonna have to have two companies here, essentially. We’re gonna have to do We Are For Good, which is the podcast, we’re going to have a goal of making friends and putting out incredible free content. And that’s going to be one segment. And then we’re going to have We Are For Good consultancy or agency over on the side. And we’re going to fully work our butts off 40 to 50 hours a week on this side, to fund everything that we’re going to do. Because we just want to show up, let people know who we are, what our hearts are, what we want to put out into the world, we want to prove that we can curate really incredible content that is a different mindset shift from these amazing experts in the field,” You being one of them, thank you very much for what you’ve given to our podcast. And so it was just, he decided for a year, we’re just going to work our little fannies off and do what we can, sleep when we can. You know, carve out time to spend with our families, and it is proven to be the most uncomfortable thing that we did, but the most affirming thing that we’ve also done.
Stephanie Skryzowski
I love that. And sometimes it’s so hard. I mean, we can’t see into the future, right? So you’re taking this risk and you’re pushing yourself through something that feels incredibly uncomfortable. And I feel like almost always the result at the end is so much better than you ever could have imagined if you just get past that hump – that uncomfortable piece.
Jon, you had said you had continued to get so close to your dreams and always gave up right before the end. And the end is like where the beauty is. And so I love that you both had the courage to like take those really hard steps and do that and you both talked about your podcast. I was super honored to be a guest. You’ve already in less than a year interviewed some of the top names In the industry in the nonprofit world and beyond.
And one thing as I was perusing your website, I was obsessed that you posted this ungettable get list. And we’re gonna post your website in the show notes. But if you pop over to their podcast page, you will see that they have posted this list of people that they want to interview on the podcast. And there are celebrity names and tons of different leaders in different spaces. And I just love that you are publicly dreaming big! I feel like it’s not something that I see often enough, especially in the nonprofit space, like you said, Becky, there’s so much like scarcity-mindedness. And so I love that you’re like putting it all out there. So I would love to hear the backstory behind number one where the list started. And then how did you guys decide, hey, we’re putting this on the internet.
Jonathan McCoy
That’s Becky’s brilliance right there.
Becky Endicott
I don’t know I I’m a storyteller. And if I had a life goal, a professional life goal, it would be to sit down with as many people as possible, and just hear their story. Like no strings attached. I just want to know who you are, where you came from. And this list just started, I think it was last summer where we were just in that, what you said the draining space of, “Who would be incredible? If we’re going to look 10 years down the line, who do we want to say has been on this podcast? Not because they have notoriety. Not because they have vast wealth or celebrity.” It’s like who are these people who are literally changing the world with how they show up, how they gather and create community, how they galvanize support?”
And so we started this list and it’s taken so many iterations. I mean, I think at one point, we had a top 10 you know, with Warren Buffett being number one, because I love Warren Buffet. But I honestly… After yesterday, I think MacKenzie Scott is probably our number one at this point, she just made her third massive billion dollar. But it was more about, “Hey, these are people that we value and align with. We’ve heard about them, we’ve read about their story, we think they’ve done something really incredible in either the social impact space and the philanthropic space, just do something to show up and be kind and change the world however they do.” And so yeah, I mean, we have Dolly Parton on there. But we also have Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, who is the pediatrician whistleblower for the Flint, Michigan water crisis.
We decided, well, we have this list. And our eighth core value of our company is, “Community is Everything.” And we’re like if we’re really saying that we believe community is everything, we’re going to post this list, because we believe in this world that someone may have gone to summer camp with someone on that list whose mom is in the same knitting club and whatever it is.
And so we just thought it doesn’t hurt for us to post this, we want to put our dreams out there. And it’s been hilarious, because we just posted that maybe like two months ago, for the first time. And we put a slight marketing around it, you know, just talking about it on social channels. And we have people right now trying to get my name dropping if I say this, Dr. Jane Goodall, we have a connection to Jessica Alba with the Honest Company, we have a connection to George Kaiser, you know, at the Kaiser Foundation, and it’s working! And it’s very interesting to watch the people just care. And we love that it shows that we’re not the ones bringing them to the podcast, the community is bringing them to the podcast, because they want to hear what they have to say. And they know that if they come into our… I’m using air quotes “house,” if they come into what we call “Mom’s Kitchen Table,” which is the space around our podcast, we’re going to treat them so kindly. We’re going to make them feel safe, we’re going to make them feel seen, we’re going to have a different conversation that they’ve never had with anybody else. We’re going to talk about humanity. And it’s less about what they can do for us and it’s more about what their voice can do to inspire others to replicate what they’ve done. So it’s really super fun. Go check it out. If you have somebody from camp that you know, on the list, call us.
Jonathan McCoy
I gotta say people want to help, you know, and we teach this and just how you activate volunteers that maybe aren’t donors, but would want to help your mission. And so if you give somebody a specific task, they’re so much more likely to do that. Like, “No, no, I totally want to help.” So the guests that we have that are real prominent, even if they say they want to help, we’re like, “Hey, take a look at our Ungettable Get list. And it’s hilarious that they’re like, “Oh, I know like 30 people on this list casually.” So we’re just planting seeds. And you know, we’re making friends that are authentic friends, and we’re not going anywhere. So we think maybe we’ll get Dolly, you know in eight years and that’s okay. Or maybe it’s 20 years, but…
Becky Endicott
I want to sing with Dolly. Sing some Jolene. (conversation overlaps)
Stephanie Skryzowski
Just another tab in the spreadsheet. I love it. Oh my gosh. I just love that so much because it’s not only inspirational, it’s motivating for you. But it’s also kind of a very strategic move in like, “Hey, everybody, these are the people that we want to have conversations with, so that we can serve you better.” Like it’s also coming from a place of service. So I just love that so much.
Because I think oftentimes, we just don’t dream big enough, I know myself, I have to constantly push myself and have others push me like, “You’re dreaming kind of small right now, like you could go 5x, you could 5x, whatever you’re thinking of.” And so I just love that you’re just setting the tone and being those models for dreaming big, because I feel like at the end of the day, nonprofit leaders, they’re the ones that we need to be dreaming, babe, because they are the ones changing the world. And so you’re that model. And I just love that!
Becky Endicott
Oh, thank you!
Jonathan McCoy
Anytime anyone calls us a model, you know, I just really want to take that in.
Stephanie Skryzowski
So in your work, We Are For Good, the consulting piece and the podcast. How are you really serving like this younger generation of nonprofit leaders, because I feel like there are more and more people really looking to create an impact with our lives and with their careers and with our time. And we are no longer in this place where we’re like, “Yeah, I’m just gonna work a nine to five for the next 30 years and make my money and just live this kind of blah life,” we all want to do more.
And I would just love to hear I guess a little bit more maybe about, I think you have some courses, you’ve courses that you work with nonprofit leaders, as well… as well as your consulting stuff, and really just encouraging people to think a little bit differently and be a little bit more innovative.
Jonathan McCoy
Thanks, Stephanie. I feel like we’re like feeding you the questions that will allow us to talk about our favorite things. We’re marketers, so we’re always looking through the lens of marketing on some level.
We have two key avatars that we’ve really realized are who our audience is and the people that kind of gravitate toward the content we’re creating. And I agree with everything you say about the moment in time, this last year was a reckoning of like, what do I want to invest my life in. And I think it is a powerful time to see a lot of people moving into the nonprofit space or the social impact space, but they haven’t had the training, they haven’t had the years, and there’s not a lot of degree programs, honestly, that support it, and what’s going to happen long term to higher ed space, you know, and how people are educated.
And so one of our key avatars has always been the young professional, it’s these people that I think are more active on podcasts – that’s one of them. But they’re hungry because they want to change the world, so they’re looking for guides that they connect with.
Version 1.0 of We Are For Good is what’s visible today with the podcast. But we’ve been actively in the background building step two, and that’ll roll out this fall. And it’s really our vision of re-imagining professional development for the sector. Because we feel like 2020 pushed everybody, it’s kind of serendipitous to go online. And so that is the 1.0 or maybe it’s the 1.1, it’s like, “Okay, let’s take our conference and put a video camera on somebody and put them online,” we just think that we’re appealing to this generation that grew up with Netflix, and that wants to make an impact in the world. So they have a different expectation as a customer of what businesses and brands should be doing. But also just like how they learn, they’re not going to read a 400-page textbook to learn, they want to have experiences and hear from people and hear stories, and that’d be threaded together.
So we’re really taking the best of the disruptive ideas that work today and not just… We love the basics. We love the core philosophies that are true of development and building movements, but there’s a lot of nuance of like what’s working today? What does a hybrid event look like today? What is the moment in time in creating a platform that we have gathered from some of our podcast guests and some of the disruptors in the space to come and teach on a platform that’s innovative, that’s highly produced in a beautiful way, that’s highly engaging and delivered in a way that’s as seamless as Netflix, because we want it to be as frictionless – that it’s everywhere that you would expect it to be.
I think the younger generation would expect that that exists because it does in every other industry, it’s just that nonprofit is so sorely behind. So we’re really putting our flag in the ground around that. And we didn’t want to do that alone. We’ve never tried to create this because we think we have all the ideas. We just know that there’s so many wonderful, incredible teachers that were just trying to corral everybody to be one place where you have curated the best content. If you’re going to dive in, this is where you could go deep and that’ll be step two for us – launching in the fall.
Becky Endicott
I’ll just add that it has a We Are For Good arc to it. You know, we’re always just trying to be incredibly different. And I will say that it’s got a ton of story threaded in there. So this is how it’s played out in my life. There’s also a tremendous thread of empathy and caring for the individual. I mean, we don’t take very good care of ourselves in nonprofits. So we have a thread of self care mental health in our company where it’s like, “Hey, let’s take a pause and how are you doing? What are you doing to care for yourself? How are you checking in? What’s your stress level? Are you working through conflict? You know, are you having compassion, fatigue?” Whatever it is. And so it’s not just about teaching you how, and giving you all the tools to do the right things, which I mean, every one of our classes has a tool, we think that’s missing in professional development. Nobody knows what to do once they’ve heard the talk, or the keynote. And it’s like, “No, no, here’s a sheet that walks you step by step through, here’s a guide, here’s a toolkit,” and we just want to care for people.
And we think that if it’s edu-tainment, so it’s not just somebody talking on their zoom camera, you actually have some depth and some warmth and some color and you’re getting to know your professor and you’re getting to know their vulnerabilities. It adds a whole other layer to how you’re training. And I love that you brought up young professionals, because if we truly believe we’re going to change the world, and we are intent on influencing the way that the nonprofit sector shows up, then we have to teach these abundance mindsets and these new ways of thinking to this generation that’s coming up because they’re going to be the leaders. And I don’t even think we can start with just millennials and Gen Z-ers, we think we need to be teaching kids in high school, we want to be teaching children and parents how to be philanthropic and thread that into how you operate as a family.
In that way, we don’t have every single person that has come onto our podcast, every single one 130 episodes say, “I fell into nonprofit,” or “I didn’t intentionally go into this and we can shift the lens from I fell into it” to “No, I ran toward it.” And that is the impact uprising that we talked about so often.
Jonathan McCoy
And you know, we also talk about the long game – playing the long game a lot. And to us, I always said that joke about Dolly, like literally comes on in 20 years. that’s awesome. We feel like that with the young generation. I think it’s easy to get… I don’t know, old people always blame the younger generation that you know, they don’t try hard enough, they don’t do this, but like, let’s love on them. Not only because I think that they’re going to change the world, but they’re also going to rule the world in a few years. So it’s like, why aren’t we connecting and understanding what tools and how we can be a guide? Because that relationship is just gonna grow over time. And we are playing the long game. So we’re not going anywhere. So we want to hang out with you until you rule the world.
Stephanie Skryzowski
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Oh my gosh, I cannot express how much I love all of this so much. Because I was looking back at like a blog post I had written I don’t know, a year or so ago. And I was reminiscing upon my own professional development when I worked in nonprofits. And I think I had said something like, I attended two conferences in my 10 years working in nonprofits. And I was like, “That’s pathetic!” The fact that I did not have opportunities to grow and to learn for whatever reasons, maybe they didn’t exist, or I didn’t have the budget to be able to travel to a conference across the country or something. But if we want to get better as a group, and as a sector, we need to constantly be learning. And I feel like that’s the norm in the entrepreneurial space.
I sort of straddle this line between this online business world and nonprofit and in the online business world, people are investing tens of thousands of dollars every single year into their own development, whether it’s working with a coach or like a mastermind or online courses, and that is a 180 from what is the norm in nonprofits.
And so about three years ago, I created an online course called, “Master Your Nonprofit Numbers For Nonprofit Professionals,” and did the whole it got the videos done and like this whole what I was seeing happen in the online space. And I kind of had a little bit of trouble getting the wheels rolling for it in the nonprofit space because people just weren’t used to consuming information in that way. And it’s not like going to a conference, and sitting in a conference room wearing a suit for three days, and taking notes, and then going home, and then doing nothing with it. So I love that you’re just like disrupting this space. I don’t know. It just feels like the nonprofit industry has historically just been like a few decades behind. And so you’re bringing us up to speed.
Becky Endicott
Oh my gosh, I have said this for years. I’m so glad you brought that up. And that is literally the timeframe that I put together. I used to tell Jon back at OSU, “Oh my gosh, we are 10 years behind for profit,” and then we move into healthcare from higher ed. And I’m like, “Oh my gosh, we just slid another five years back, now we’re 15 years behind!” And you’re exactly right. If we can equalize nonprofit to rise, because entrepreneurs are naturally curious, and they’re hungry, and they have hustle. And I also think those things exist in nonprofit, but they’re channeling it into the mission, not into growth of themselves. And if they only understood that, if you can put some of that into yourself, it will grow the mission exponentially.
And so yeah, we are so excited. And we… I mean, again, we’re ridiculous idealist. So we’re always going to be optimistic that we can change the world. But yeah, we need partners like you and all these other content creators who are disruptive and bringing in these mindsets, because we cannot do it alone. So thank you for what you’re putting into the world. That’s really helpful.
Stephanie Skryzowski
Yeah, thank you. If you were to give one tip to somebody who is sort of junior in their career, who wants to make a difference in the world in some way or another? What would you say to that person? I know that’s kind of hard, but what would you say to them?
Becky Endicott
There’s a really great book. I mean, I’m a book reader. And I also listen to them on audiobooks, which is always hilarious to Jon, but I really do love my books. But there’s two women: Tammy Tibbetts and Kristen Brandt, they started an organization called “She’s The First,” which is one of the most amazing organizations, I can see you nodding, you know, it’s really about trying to give girls a future and education. And they wrote this book that I think is so powerful, and it’s called, “Impact.” And I can’t remember exactly the words that go after it. But it’s like building a world that you want to live in. And they literally walk you through, do you have an idea brewing inside you? Do you have something that is on your heart, and we see this so often in philanthropy, where even as we worked in healthcare, we would have someone who worked in pediatrics was working with children all day. But they had a very profound experience because their mom had breast cancer, and they felt such a passion to want to support the work of cancer and eradicating this horrible disease. And so, Kristin, and Tammy, they built this organization that is so successful. Now, you know, they hang with like Michelle Obama and Diane von Furstenberg, and whatever, they go to the White House, but they’re literally like, this is a playbook, you need to look within yourself and say, “What’s the thing that gives you passion?” and here’s a way you can operationalize it and just get yourself off high center, it’s how to get activated. And once you pour into it, you may start off just like as a volunteer, pouring into the thing that really matters to you. And then you might become a donor, you might decide you want to start your own nonprofit, or whatever it is, and maybe you don’t even go to creating, being an entrepreneur and creating your own organization. But just pouring into something that has meaning I think will awaken something very profound within you.
So I would say check out that book, and they talk about it a little bit on our podcast, I feel very self serving, like I’m like, “Go listen to our podcast,” but they do talk about it. It’s really helpful. (conversation overlaps)
Stephanie Skryzowski
I love that. And I will definitely make a note of that book. And I mean, that really applies to anybody who’s looking to find meaning and purpose in their life, whatever that might look like, whatever your career path might look like, or your entrepreneurial journey.
Becky Endicott
Can I share one really quick story because this is what I do? Sorry.
Stephanie Skryzowski
Please do!
Becky Endicott
I’ll make it short. I interviewed someone a couple months ago, I think he was about 70 year old man. He had had his own business, kind of like you he had a financial investment firm, sold it retired, was doing really well. He went to a men’s breakfast at like 8am on a snowy December morning in Oklahoma, because one of his friends asked him to come and he learned about this nonprofit mission to help disabled adults. And they were looking for volunteers and it kind of just piqued his interest. And he goes, meets the executive director, goes on a tour, and really is kind of getting sucked in. And he says to me, “I’m 70 years old, I have never volunteered one time in my life.” And I start showing up to this mission. And he’s a driver and he goes and picks up these adults and takes them to their programming. And he was like, “The amount of joy that has come into my life, at 70 years old, that I had no idea existed was so profound. It’s the thing I just want to keep pouring into until I’m no longer on this earth. So, anybody can do it no matter your age.
Jonathan McCoy
I love that story.
Stephanie Skryzowski
Yeah. Beautiful. I ask this question to all of my guests. Since I’m a numbers person, you know that, I would love to know how you manage your numbers in your business. And you don’t have to get into any details or anything like I’m not asking the actual numbers but like, how do you manage the numbers in your business? And how does knowing your numbers to the degree that you do? How does that really empower you and help your business grow?
Jonathan McCoy
Great question. We’re both not numbers, people, which is really helpful as co-founders.
Becky Endicott
We are terrified of this question.
Jonathan McCoy
But I’ll say from the beginning, we have really tried to surround ourselves with people that do know this. And we have a growth mindset. So we’re trying to learn and grow and step into this space. But amazingly, Kyle is Becky’s husband, has stepped in to kind of help us with business management on that side of things. And so he really helps guide a lot of that for us and make it very abundantly clear. But I do have our legal team that makes that stuff abundantly clear and our actual accountants that clarify things.
But for us, and I was talking about this beforehand, everything feels like an investment right now, because the consulting is very transactional. And that’s the easiest stuff to us, we map out and say how do we know that we’re going to be okay, is we have longer term contracts or retainers and we can plot that out and say, “Okay, I know we’re going to be good cash flow-wise through this date.” And then we have this other side of the business, the second side that Becky described, that we have levers to pull, and we have opportunities. And specifically when we record as my refresh content, we’re taking a little bit of a flyer, because we’re looking at all the opportunities ahead of us, that people that we’ve met in this last year, the different ways we could go and grow. And I mean, we’re investing in people is, the only thing I can say is, we’re looking at where could our investments right now have the biggest payoff and to us it’s either investing in growing their relationships with people, or putting money on people that we know that are going to perpetuate our values and help us take us to the next level. And so that’s where you put most of our focus.
But it is a struggle, like I will say personally, it’s a struggle, being a creative entrepreneur, and trying to manage that, because my accountant gave me one of the best advice that I can say, and we honestly, clash sometimes because I’m a huge dreamer. And she is a huge pragmatic person. And so we have some very funny conversations. But she said, “You’re going to be better off, if you can stop obsessing about the number because I need to focus on growing the business, and not on counting every penny that comes in the door and making sure that it gets in its place, somebody that can do that in their sleep could do that. And you focus on growing the business and building the relationships and doing the actual work.” And that’s really helped, at least in this phase of our business is surrounding ourselves in that way. And just, you know, staying in check of like, where do we want to go next? And do we have the funding to do that, and try to be patient enough for it to come in. Because we have bootstrapped this, we’ve not taken on any investment at this point, which has led to challenges of going slower than we would want to in some regards. But we just feel like, it’s still so early, you know that we want to be able to guide the ship, and feel really confident before we go. If we ever go into the investment space. So, I don’t know if I answered your question, but that’s just my creative heart reacting to it.
Becky Endicott
Good job, Jon, I’m proud of you.
Stephanie Skryzowski
Sorry, go ahead, Becky.
Becky Endicott
I’m sorry, I was just saying I’m an empath, I always have to reaffirm when someone’s being vulnerable. It’s just like a sticky widget for me. So good job, Jon!
Stephanie Skryzowski
I think that the sort of takeaway that I heard was that not everything has to have an immediate ROI. And so, as you’re talking about investing in people and really playing the long game, I think that’s so important to really remember. And that’s how I’ve approached my business as well. I’m not looking for overnight success. And sometimes it can feel a little bit defeating when we’re looking at what everybody else is doing on social media, in their businesses or in their fundraising efforts. And it feels like oh, my gosh, this person just came into the game, how are they already making seven-figures or whatever they’re saying that they’re doing. But I think that’s just a testament to like, sometimes you have to invest in the right things. And it sounds like you’re doing that very strategically, knowing that you’re going to see the result at the end of the day. So I love that, sometimes it can be discouraging if we’re not seeing a quick win. So I like that.
Becky Endicott
The accountant just like gave us good counseling on our numbers. Thank you!
Jonathan McCoy
I do think the struggle is real, especially with the facades we see on social media. It’s like you have no idea what that business looks like, behind the scenes and somebody in the entrepreneur space is somebody that geeks out and has bought some of these $1,000 courses, you know, and there’s so much good there. But you have no idea what they are spending on ads, I mean, they may be converting to seven figures or any be spending more than that to get those conversions. So it’s hard not to react when we see that and we have just stayed so focused that we’re in for the long game that, you know, we feel like we’re gonna get there. We’re gonna figure it out along the way.
Stephanie Skryzowski
Exactly. Yeah, I like that a lot. All right. Well, before we wrap up today, I have just a couple more questions for you like quick questions I like to end with. I feel like we’re all trying to be as productive and efficient as possible. What is your favorite productivity hack or trick in your business or your life?
Becky Endicott
Okay, so our favorite, I’m sure Jon’s looking at me to say the one, you’re big proponents of batching. And so, for anyone that’s not familiar with batching, please watch some episodes, whether it’s a podcast or YouTube, read some blog articles. So we put out three podcasts a week, which is insane to most people. And I want to say Jon wanted to do five, and Julie and I talked him off.
When you put out that amount of content, it demands that you have to be entirely efficient, especially because we have all of this client work as well. So Thursday’s our day to batch podcast, so we’ll do anywhere from three to five, six on a completely bananas day.
So in that day, I mean, it’s like, here’s an example. Jon has two sets of twins. And he and his wife and his family are going to Costa Rica for the entire month of July. So we have already batched up to be able to just not have to batch at all or have any podcast episodes that we need to record in July. So he can go and be remote and work from the tropics, which good for you, Jon – I’m going to the mountains.
Yeah, so everything that we do is about how to get the most out of there. We do our outros. At that time, our producer, Julie, could be doing some of the show notes while we’re doing it. And it’s just about keeping things fresh and automating them in the best way possible.
Jonathan McCoy
I would echo that. And I would say Monday.com is amazing project management. It’s saved our duties and team collaborating and just keeping track of a lot of tasks in one place. And we love it. And we really don’t even understand it fully yet.
Becky Endicott
Actually we’re leveraging it slowly, but we do love it.
Stephanie Skryzowski
That’s awesome. I’ve heard so many good things about it. I have not looked it up because we just migrated from basically nothing to Asana about a year ago. And I’m like, I don’t think I have the mental capacity to change tools again.
Becky Endicott
Your great, Asana is wonderful.
Jonathan McCoy
Full disclosure, I thought people were talking about “a sauna” for the longest time. I’m just like nodding, “Oh, you’re getting in the sauna. Great. Okay!”
Becky Endicott
There’s a lot to digest. But once you figure it out, it’s great. It’s such a good tool
Jonathan McCoy
That’s imposter syndrome.
Stephanie Skryzowski
Oh my gosh, that’s so funny. I love the batching content I’ve learned in my sort of junior career as a podcaster, that that works best for me, too. I can’t imagine having getting three episodes out the door every week. That’s amazing. Awesome! Okay, last question. Imagine that you had a weak day just completely free from work. What do you do?
Becky Endicott
Oooooh! I love this question.
Jonathan McCoy
Oh, Becky talked about like two sets of twins. We want to give them a worldview. And we just love taking them to kind of uncommon things too. So if we were here, we would definitely be getting brunch together and coffee shop and probably go to the park and skateboard. That’s everyone’s favorite things to do right now, strap on the roller skates. Although I’m the one that doesn’t get on roller skates.
Becky Endicott
I was about to say I want to see that.
Jonathan McCoy
That’s a family favorite, that’s how I spend time with the family for sure.
Becky Endicott
I would pack up my kids and my husband and my dog. And we would go to Colorado and we would go hiking, and we would ride horses, and maybe have a picnic at a waterfall, and just completely disconnect where there is no WiFi. I don’t know what that means that we run a digital company and I want to go somewhere where no one can get me. I’m sure there’s something psychological there. (conversation overlaps) And yeah, come home and get in the hot tub. So… with a glass of wine. That would be, that would be the best day.
Stephanie Skryzowski
Oh my gosh, I love this question. Because I’m like, “Yes, I want to do that. And I want to do that too.” And like everybody is involved in some like dreamy outdoors situation. So I love that it’s a little opportunity to dream in the middle of a work day. Awesome. Well, Jon and Becky, before we wrap up, are there any resources that you would like to share with our listeners or anywhere that we can direct them to go? Definitely the podcast, obviously, you have to listen to their podcasts. It’s so good. But where can our listeners find you?
Jonathan McCoy
Thank you, you know, we’ve got the following on LinkedIn for We Are For Good. So definitely look us up. There is a place where we drop content. We have a community that’s free, weareforgoodcommunity.com. And that’s where you can just meet friends that are trying to make a difference in the world and sharing resources.
But I’m sorry if like I’m giving you 12 different things. The last would be, we talked about batching, we put together actually a free course that’s in our workshops. You can go to weareforgood/workshops. And you can watch kind of the… it’s really taking the idea of batching, but doing that with your content. So you spend all your days creating content, but using some really key pieces and how do you share that at scale. It works great for organizations, but also works great for any entrepreneurs. The class is free and floating around out there. But just reach out to us. I mean, get to know me at weareforgood.com/meet-jon
Becky Endicott
Yeah, I mean, come find us on social. I will say that workshop is, if you are someone who just feels like, “I don’t know what to post today. I don’t know what blog I need to be writing,” we break it down. It’s called, “Syndication Mindset.” It’s about trying to figure out, how do you take a really good piece of content and slice it up and put it all over? It’s working smarter, not harder. That would be my tip to you. We love hearing your story. And if you work at a nonprofit or have a passion for something, let us know about it. We might even do an interview.
Stephanie Skryzowski
Yes, oh my gosh, I love it. I need to go take that course first of all, because content is like, I love it. But it’s also the bane of my existence. So definitely heading over there. Awesome. Well, Jon, and Becky, thank you both so much. I feel like I could just chat with you all day. And hopefully, maybe someday we’ll get to meet in person and do that. But it’s been so great having you and I appreciate your time. Thank you!
Jonathan McCoy
Thank you.
Becky Endicott
We’re so honored.
Stephanie Skryzowski
Thanks for listening to the 100 degrees of entrepreneurship podcast. To access our show notes and bonus content, visit 100degreesconsulting.com/podcast. Make sure to snap a screenshot on your phone of this episode and tag me on instagram @stephanie.skry and I’ll be sure to share. Thanks for being here friends, and I’ll see you next time!
Transcript Episode 30
