How to Increase Capacity as a Nonprofit Coach: Mandy Pearce

Are you enthusiastic about starting and expanding businesses? Working as a consultant, strategy planning, and board development are all possibilities for you. Is there a distinction between coaching and consulting? Mandy Pearce joins us to discuss her job as a consultant as well as a coach. Now she’s launching the Nonprofit Consulting Conference.

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Full Transcript

Hey, welcome to the show, and welcome back, Mandy Pearce. She’s here from Funding for Good and she wants to tell you all the stuff you need to know. Mandy update us on how you’ve been. It’s been a while since we did our executive coaching and development planning conversation last year.

We did, yes, everything is good.

Things are going great. We’re opening back up from COVID, so we’re still doing lots of online content for folks but getting more in person.

We’ve been traveling around the country doing strategic planning and that has been wonderful. We just got back from a week and a half in Wyoming. Getting ready to head out to California. Get ready, go to Virginia, get ready back in Wyoming. So got lots of travel plans for that this year. But we took the executive coaching to another level, and now we’re working with consultants.

So, we’re helping nonprofit consultants learn how to start their business, grow their business, and take it to the next level. And that’s. What are we here to talk about today?

What's new in business?

So, you’re saying your business is doing one thing and now it’s evolved. I thought once you start a business you had to just stick with it, come hell or high water. Is that not how it works?

Now, our business, much like your business, has transitioned over time. We just started initially as grants, only we did everything; grants full service round the clock. Everything you can imagine. That’s what we did that was it?

And then we got into fundraising consulting. And then we got into development work and board development. Then we got into strategic planning because we realized that was where the foundation of stuff was.

And then, as I learned more about being a consultant, I learned that I loved creating businesses and growing them. So, I started doing some work with consultants who wanted to start their businesses, and then I loved that. So, I created a Bootcamp and a webinar and now I’m doing more of that, but we still do strategic planning and board development and consulting, but we don’t do the hands-on let this be our grant writer stuff anymore. We’ve kind of moved past that, a little bit, we do the education pieces that go with it.

What is the difference between a coach and a consultant?

That’s interesting, I know that I interview about a third of nonprofit leaders about a third of businesspeople, and about a third of coaches and consultants which are not the same thing. One does a little more teaching. One does a little bit more doing. It’s interesting to see that so much of my audience does coaching or consulting in the nonprofit arena and is a large part of my audience as well. So, what happened when you decided you wanted to coach coaches, so to speak instead? Work more with consultants.

So, I work with both consultants and coaches, so people that have a nonprofit consulting business very often will provide coaching services in addition to consulting services, and a lot of times they don’t know the difference. So, for those people that may be listening to us that had been otherwise the difference in those terms might be interchangeable in your language.

Consultants are going to share with you what to do and maybe guide you through the steps of learning how to do it. But they’re not going to roll their sleeves up and do it for you, or even with you.

I’m sorry that’s consultants.

Coaches are going to just teach you how to do it. If you were a coach for a Little League team, you’re going to tell them how to hit, you’re going to show them how to catch, you’re going to do those things, but you’re not going to help them. You’re not going to put their gloves on and go catch for them during the game. Right, so that is a coach. They’re going to tell you what to do.

They may demonstrate some piece of evidence on point for you, but a consultant is the one that’s going to be there rolling up their sleeves standing behind you with their hands on the bat, like helping you swing through it. That is the consultants who are going to roll the sleeves; they work with you.

I like to coach and consult with people who want to start a business. People who have started a business or people who want to take a business to the next level. It’s my opportunity to work with a different mindset. It’s a for-profit mindset and its folks have to control over their own business. When I work with folks in the nonprofit world, as we all know, they have a board of directors, which is a lot of bosses. They can’t make just decisions on the fly by themselves. Most of the time they have a lot of different red tape to go through so it’s a different type of work.

It’s a different type of structure and I love the structure of working with business owners. So, while nonprofits are small businesses, it’s not the same as an LLC or an S Corp DBA. And so, it just gives me a different perspective to help people learn a lot of the things that you and I have learned over time, and teach them how to do things easier. Because I learned a lot of stuff the hard way, you probably did too, and I don’t want people to have to make those mistakes to get to the point where I am, right.

I had a coach when I first started. That probably helped me get where I got a whole lot quicker, and I think a lot of people don’t feel like they have the dollars to invest or the time to invest in hiring a coach. But they don’t realize it. How much more quickly they’re going to be successful and how their revenue streams will grow more quickly if they. Have a coach to help them get there.

It's all about freedom

Yeah, how fast do you want your revenue stream to grow? Do you want to take eight years to get to that point, or do you want to figure it out in eight months? Get there, get that thing up. Running, growing, and bringing in those dollars.

When did you decide you wanted? To start your own business, I never asked you that.

I like sharing my knowledge and the things that I’ve learned with people as much as possible I started helping people with finances more than a decade ago and someone said, “you’re doing great, and you’ve saved what for how many people?”

I was like, “well I’ve helped 400 people pay off $6 million in debt” and they were like “this sounds something like worth getting paid for it. That seems like something you should be getting paid for!” And I was like. Interesting and I started doing some reading and some different things like that because I was in the middle of my military career, and I didn’t grow up thinking that way. A lot of us aren’t taught the things that have to do with business, so I started learning about it and got excited. And then I realized the people that I was helping; I didn’t want to charge them any money, which means they weren’t my ideal client and I changed what I was doing based a little bit on the necessity and the desire to not charge those people money and I started doing more things in the nonprofit world and I got stationed overseas and I was like, well, how am I going to keep helping nonprofits over here what I’m going to do that’s productive for my life.

Help keep me out of trouble, you give me too much free time I’m sure I’ll mess it up. The podcast became part of the conversation, and they were like “Travis, you kind of have this nice podcast voice” and I was like “oh do I” like, “Oh yeah, you do”. I didn’t believe him. Because we sound different from ourselves. Then what other people here and someone recorded me, and they played it back and I was like “who is that smooth operator right there” like “That’s you”. I’m like, “oh, is it?” And I got excited and started doing podcast interviews with people helping nonprofits do it better. And had a lot of fun with it.

Nice to see everybody comes to business differently, but everybody has a story, and you can learn how to grow it. So that’s what I like to help people learn.

There are just so many different aspects to it.

What got me growing the business and looking to do bigger things, I was coming to the end of my Navy career, and I realized first off how much I love podcasting and talking to people. But I also love the fact that I can do it on whatever schedule I choose.

I was like, “I do not want to have to get up, shave”, if you’re watching the video, you’re like “Dude, you haven’t shaved in a hot minute,” that’s true, but like do I want to be tied to a building? These are these thoughts that are happening before COVID started and I’m like I don’t want to be tied down.

I don’t want to leave the military and then just trade one master for another. Having to get up and go to some stupid building every day to build someone else is a dream that I don’t care about as much as I care about the things that I care about, just like everyone has the things that they care about.

And if I want to be able to travel, how might I make something that’s portable that allows me to do what I enjoy doing? What makes me money from anywhere I want to and discussed designing what you want your data to look like, and most people including myself.

At the time I had never thought about designing your perfect day. What does that look like? Who do you want to talk to? What time do you want to get up? Where do you want to be? What kind of conversations do you want to have, and when do you start thinking about something like that? For me, nowhere in there was taking myself downtown to some building park and walking in, hitting a time, clock, or waving to the boss by the water cooler like there was nowhere in my stuff.

If I get a public speaking gig and I’m speaking in Rio and I like being in Rio, maybe I just want to hang out for three more weeks. Because I’m in Rio, I don’t want to have to betide to all that nonsense and commuting, and fortunately one of the benefits of COVID; there were a lot of bad, but there were a lot of good people who realized how to use zoom.

People realize the value of remote work and now because of the huge shift worldwide, it’s much more acceptable to be and conduct remote work which is very beneficial to the way I want to live my life.

Yeah, I remember last year I was trying to schedule a vacation for my husband, he has a custom woodworking business and we do shows like art shows and whatnot. And so, his art shows season starts at about the end of April. And I was like “I want a vacation before then”. Because we won’t have another break until November. And so, I was trying to work my schedule around it. And I’m like I don’t know, I can make my schedule. So, I had a couple of webinars I had to teach and a couple of interviews online that I had to do, and I said you know what? I’m going to schedule these for I when I know we’ll get to the hotel in the city at 2:00, so I’m going to schedule these things for three or four sitting down for an hour or two, and then the rest of the day, I’ve got whatever.

And it is creating the lifestyle that you want to have, and you can do that when you own your own business. As long as you can plan for it, and as long as you can identify what that thing is.

So, it sounds like you have finally figured out what that is for you. I love it when people get there.

I’m working, I’m still designing and crafting it right.

Donatello didn’t craft David; he just removed all the things that weren’t David. And I’ve got a David in there and I’m slowly chipping away at the things that are not David to build my masterpiece of what I want to have and create and do.

That was a discovery process right when I started the podcast. Initially, I thought, well, this doesn’t need to be great. I mean all these nonprofit consulting gigs are going to be wonderful for everyone. And I had a lot of people sign up for conversations, but the vast, vast, vast majority of those people wanted me to get on the phone for 15 minutes or 30 minutes and then ask me how to do something and then never hire me. Was that your experience? Did you find out the same thing?

Yeah, so we had to learn everything like that the hard way because I have never done it, so you know you want to try to grow a mailing list. What do you offer? You offer free things on your website. You have funnels you have lead magnets, whatever you want to call them that you use in different places. And then occasionally you’ll have this place where people can sign up for the free, 15-minute call, and usually, you have crafted the verbiage around it to say to learn more about how we can help. You blah blah, which in your mind is to give us money to work with you, and in their mind, it’s who I could pick their brain for 15 minutes for free.

And so, then we’d get on all these calls and get super annoyed because we’d realize, oh, this person has no intention of hiring me, or this person has no budget to hire me. They’re just looking for me to give them the answers and walk away. And so that’s how we created one of our revenue streams.

One of our more recent revenue streams from a couple of years ago. People can book an online consultation, but there’s a fee associated with that, and it’s an hour or two hours. And we do give you answers, and we do help you create solutions to your problems. But we’re also getting paid for our time when we do it and that has become my way of saying my ideal client is not the 15-minute person that wants to pick my brain for free. My ideal client is the one who says, OK, I’m not sure what the answer is, I want to hear from you. I’m going to pay you that and then maybe we’ll work with you, but maybe that’s all we need to grow.

And we’re both happy at the end of the day, there’s been a lot of determining who the ideal audience is over time. My ideal audience at one point in the business was people that want to learn grants. People that want to learn to grant write, grant research. All the things that are not my ideal audience anymore.

Do we still offer that as an educational tool?

Yes, do we still have webinars people can pay for on-demand to learn that. Did we find other ways to optimize and come around that because we had years and years and years of the content we created while? Let it go.

But now we’re moving towards foundational nonprofit work, so there are new revenue streams in the form of forwarding development and education and strategic planning and creating development plans that helpfully fund your organization. And those types of things which is a far cry from grant writing.

Consulting isn't what you think it is

Yeah, it’s much different. It’s interesting how this stuff changes. When I got my first question about podcasting pretty early, we started the show and within three months we were #4 in the EU. And questions started rolling in about podcasting.

I found out that very few people were asking me about nonprofit work and far more people were asking me about Podcasting.

So, I stopped trying to push against this wall. That was nonprofit work. I still have something you created, right? I have a nonprofit in a box. It’s got all the startup documentation you need it’s got an example of a 1023-EZ. Copied in there. It’s got example bylaws and it’s got quarterly minutes, and it’s got all these things. It’s like a disgusting amount of information in one place for a very reasonable price.

It’s there, but like you far long are the days, or ohh I’d love to pick your brain over lunch. Look if you are interested in what a consultant has to offer, and you say the words pick your brain. They automatically don’t want to talk to you. You sound like you’re just going to be a leech or a vampire. They are going to come and suck the life out of us for 15/20 minutes, 30 minutes however long it is. And then leave us empty and upset with what’s been going on.

There are a lot of people that offer free consultations, yes, but figure out use that whatever that time is to figure out what your vision is moving forward, not figuring out how to do the one problem you have to get on a discussion board. Listen to a free podcast where they explain the answer. Don’t just book time with the expert and expect them to fix your problems.

Someone was like, yeah man, I want to pick your brain over lunch. I sent him an invoice for $2500. I did kind of as a joke because I know him, but he got upset. He was like “what do you mean” I was like “well as upset you as you are right now receiving this invoice. That’s how upset I was when you asked me to pick my brain over lunch. Do you think that little of me and my business and my expertise that you think a $25 hamburger and a drink Is worth my time?”

So, I said to someone recently who said they wanted to set up a time to ask me some questions about this without or whatever with the with their board of directors. And they’re like could we take you out to lunch? I’m like sure if you want to pay for my lunch and pay for a cool consultation fee. Or we could just have the consultation. Either way, you know, like I didn’t let them think that it was going to be yes pay for my lunch and you can ask me anything you want. Because I can buy my lunch. Yesterday I was with a friend who they have a consulting company, not just nonprofits. They weren’t mostly with for-profits, but they don’t charge consultation fees. And during lunch, she and I were talking. And she’s telling me about the story of this lady that she’s worked with recently. Twelve hours of work that she’s done, waiting to onboard this lady, and then it fell through. And I was like, “why didn’t you charge for the time?”

“Well, we don’t charge for onboarding, and we were kind of getting to know her and do some behind-the-scenes research to make sure of this and that and that. Wow, and then it came out, really seemed like she wasn’t willing to do anything if she had to pay for it. And then she wasn’t going to go forward with it the this and that”.

and I said, “OK, she’s like a bullet. Win people book then it’s really good revenue and I said yeah, but let’s just say it was $200 an hour If you had changed, or at least that. You’d made $2400 for your time, and she went and booked, but now you didn’t charge her anything. You last 12 hours. You didn’t make anything, and she didn’t book, so I don’t understand why you’re not charging for your time.”

And she’s like “yeah, I think we’re going to, probably rethink this model, but I mean. They’ve always done it in that way, which is part of the problem.

Oh, that’s a cuss word, right?

We’ve always done it this way.

Like if you’re listening to this and you know me and you want to get me riled up, say that because we’re friends, right? If you’re listening, I didn’t realize I was saying that whatever it is that you’ve always done this way, chances are it got outdated years ago. Years ago. There’s no chance that you’re on the cutting edge, the leading edge, and most nonprofits are not big ships with little rudders.

And that’s the thing. These are for-profit consultants. They don’t even work with nonprofits. It’s across the board, nonprofit Consultants, and consultants of every kind have this issue with charging for their time with a consultation. And I said. “I mean, if I feel like I need your services, I’m happy to pay for your time because you can’t just have free calls all day and expects to. Pay your bills, that’s not. The heart doesn’t pay the bills people.”

Well, I have a problem being paid hourly. Like, am I an hourly employee? How do you determine right? There’s hourly-based stuff. Sounds like onboarding time and project-based stuff like as a consultant. How do you decide? What you’re doing in any way.

So, we only have two things that we charge for hourly one is consultations, because it’s either one or two hours. That’s it. And the other thing is, we charge hourly for federal grant writing. When we do it, which, as I said before, is much and much less than it used to be, we always give a quote, pay 50% of the quote, and then the final balance. But it is calculated based on hourly for the client, so they know we’re $250 an hour and we’re estimating it’s going to be a 40-hour process, so they have an idea where that came from.

Everything else we do is project-based and this is what I mean. You as a consultant have to have. This is what I want to make an hour in your head. You have to know what you are trying to bring home an hour so you can pay your bills and put gas in your car and make money and put it in the bank.

And most people they don’t have that and it’s not realistic when they do. You have to determine how long is it going to take me to provide this service, right?

To include research.

Yes, maybe.

It’s a service. this is not going to take me more than 10 hours and your hourly fee is going to be 50 bucks.

Great, you charge $500 for that service. If it takes you 8 hours, If it takes you 12 hours. You’ve learned from that process, right? But people that do coaching and consulting are typically having longer retainer-type work, so six months or a year. Or whatever, so you have to sit down and think of all the things you’re going to offer this client, how much time you’re going to commit, and figure out the total based on your hourly, and divide it by the total of months that you’re going to be working, and that’s how you come up with a project-based price

I refuse to do hourly-based pricing or tell people what the breakdown is of what they’re paying for, and This is why when you go to the doctor’s office and you walk in, you’re going. to pay a fee for your visit. You’re not going to pay a fee if your visit was 10 minutes or less, or if your visit was 20 minutes or less, right? You’re going to pay for your visit and if they provide you with any medications, you’re going to pay for those two.

And if the doctor doesn’t fix you or solve your problem, you’re still going to pay for the visit because they used all their knowledge and expertise. They did the best they could. If they have to refer you to someone else, then you have to go to someone else and pay them too, but you’re paying for their expertise and their time. And not for the number of minutes you were in their office. That’s just how it works.

What’s that old story you’d call an emergency electrician to come into fixture manufacturing?

He’s got a bill, he’s like I can fix it for you, but it’s going to be $20,000. We’ve got to get every minute this is not running. We’re losing $50,000, please, dear God, here’s, $20,000 walks in. He turns one screw, and he comes back. He’s like happy to take, check her card, he’s like $20,000. It only took you a minute. Like how do you even invoice that? So, he wrote an invoice, and he said $1.00. Or for turn the screw in $19,999 to know which screw to turn.

Yeah, that’s really what it is and that’s my thing.

That, that’s why, I think when I explain to people about project-based pricing, your client is paying you for a result, or an end product? It shouldn’t matter how long it takes you to get there. If they feel like the value. You get $1000 and it takes you 5 minutes great. And if it takes you 50 hours, great whatever, they’re not paying you for the amount of time it took you to do it. They’re paying you for the knowledge of knowing. How do get them to that point?

Right, and either way, it’s less time than they would have taken to do it because it’s outside of their zone of genius anyway.

Yes, and so that’s the thing that people don’t understand, and a lot of times people want guarantees about work, products, and things like that. And I always tell people we have this meme that we use some time on social media.

I can write your resume. But I can’t get you a job.

I can give you lots of tools to do the things you need to do, but I can’t guarantee that you’re going to be able to implement them and use them all 100% the way you should. But I can tell you what to do. I can tell. You how to do it? I give you the tools to do it. You still have to do the work yourself.

Yeah, I can give you the hammer, it’s up to you to build the house.

Yes, and that’s why people very often don’t understand they’re like we want to outsource this thing, but sometimes outsourcing still means you have to be part of the process and you have to do some work if you’re trying to outsource a position, you need to hire somebody and internally have an employee on staff.

Yeah, so I mean even as a consultant, outsource people. There are things that you and I could do, like you just said earlier, you have your staff go through transcripts and clean that stuff up and make it possible for you to create blogs and great content to share with the world.

But you could do It, and I’m sure at one point in your career you did do it right, and then you’re like OK I could do that and make numbers up. Let’s see, I could make it $25 now we’re doing that, or I could pay someone else to do it while I am consulting. With someone for $200 an hour, right? So, you’re paying them less than you’re making, and you’re still making more money.

All in all, that’s something you should outsource. It’s not your unique brilliance anymore. You have other skill sets that are the things you should focus your energy on. Even as a consultant, there are times when you’re going to need to outsource.

Have a virtual assistant? Have a copywriter? Have a videographer? Have a whatever, and so that’s one of the things that we talk about with both of our nonprofit clients and nonprofit consultants are learning when to outsource.

How do I know when it's time to outsource?

Well, how do you know what to outsource?

The things that are not your unique brilliance.

Know how you know all the things we do in a day? How do I determine of all these things what I should or should not outsource?

So, I tell people to write, I get a piece of paper and write across on it just, uh an X. And in the upper left corner, you’re going to put all the things that you like and you’re good at. In the upper right corner, you’re going to put all the things that you don’t love, but you’re good at right in the bottom left you’re going to put all the things that that you like, but you’re not good at in the bottom right you’re going to put. The things that you.

Don’t like it. You’re not good at it.

Yes, you know all the opposites.

And at the end, you’re going to circle all the things at the top.

Those are the things you are going to do and everything at the bottom of things you’re eventually, even if you can’t right now today, you’re eventually going to outsource. Because those are not your unique brilliance. You might love to sit down and play in Canva and learn how to design memes for your social media channel.

But you might suck at it might like me. I still don’t get it. It takes me an hour to create a meme. That is mediocre and I could send that to my design team, and it would take like 10 minutes and see something amazing back. Why would I spend my time on that? That’s something I should outsource. Even though I enjoy it. And then there are other things that, like I don’t like analog technology, not good at, don’t like we’ll pay other people to do as much of it as I can.

I have a tech guy that lives in Chicago, and he has access to all my computers. All the time I’m like Mike something broken! And he will log in and fix it for me from afar. Because I don’t want to learn it. I don’t want to deal with it. Right? Just do it, please.

And then there are other things that you could outsource, but if you’re good at it and you know how to do it and you like it, you should do it. Or if you’re just good at it, even if you don’t love it, you should just do it, and you learn those things over time. Like I’m sure when you started your first business, you didn’t necessarily know podcasting was the thing that you were going to be amazing at, but now you do.

Let’s be honest, I’ve always had an idea that I might be good at podcasting.

I do like to talk and have a great voice. So I went through this process that you’re Speaking of, I didn’t do it the way you did it, but since I just recently retired from the Navy and I’ve got all the dollars I wanted, I got to kill what I eat, right? I’ve got to do all the things to make sure the income is where it needs to be.

I went through my list. Someone said to go through all the stuff that you do in a day, in a week, and just a plus or minus, how do you feel when you’re done with the thing? Do you feel energized, ready to go, or can do more? Or is there a minus by it when you’re done with it? Do you feel drained? Do you feel worn out? Do you feel whatever, and I had some things I’ve been doing for money in different little consulting things, and there was one recurring meeting every week that I did that I initially really enjoyed? I don’t know if I changed, I don’t know if the style of meeting or how it was conducted changed if people changed, but the last three weeks had minuses by it. And I reached out to the guy running the show and I said, hey, I need you to look for a replacement for me. I’m not the kind of guy that leaves someone high and dry. And he’s like “what changed?” I was like “I went and did this evaluation of all the things in my week, and I noticed that I had put a minus by it, and I thought back about it every time after this meeting, even though it’s just about an hour, I feel completely drained. I don’t feel like it adds value to my life like it doesn’t energize me and I’m not going to spend, I refuse to spend my time doing things that drain me.”

I did the same thing with the people in my life last year. How do I feel when their name pops up on my phone? How do I feel when I come across their posts on social media? When I’m done talking to this person, do I feel energized, and ready to go, I can take on the world? “Oh man, I and Mandy had so many ideas. We’re going to write this down and build the next big thing.”

Or do I see Mandy come up? I’m like oh man, oh Mandy.

Right?

I don’t feel that way about Mandy, but you have to evaluate the things in your life whether it’s business specifically, you make the cross and you have good – not good – like – don’t like.

No matter how you decide, you have to know. like Marie Kondo says, “does it give me joy?” If not, let it go. Whatever the thing is for you, we have to re-evaluate. Because eventually, just like the stuff in the house, we collect tasks, and we collect meetings weekly, collect people. And just because we’ve collected them doesn’t mean they bring us joy or value. It doesn’t mean they’re worth our time, energy, effort, or emotional state. Whatever the thing is, you need to evaluate it, do you need more of it? Does it kind of what whatever or does it drain the life out of you.

I love that evaluation process, and I think I may start using that a little bit, because really when I do that unique brilliance exercise it’s just for work stuff, but you could do it for anything. I guess.

This past year I’m a little like that. Clinically diagnosed with OCD, but I’m just a super neat freak and I’d like for everything to be clean all the time. And I just can’t get to at all, we don’t have a big house. But still, if it’s going to be clean, I think things should be clean. It’s a lot of freaking work and so last year I decided at the end of the year I’m going to let this go and I’m going to hire somebody every week to come in and help me In-house.

I think that’s a fair comparison, a fair thing to let go and the dollars were equivalent. I’m going to not do this thing that costs as much and I’m going to do this thing that cost as much. And I got to tell you, since the first day that I had this lady helping me out, I was “Oh my God”, I don’t have to worry about the house not being clean or figuring out how to schedule 6 hours into my week just to do it or whatever. And it’s clean all the time and I’m not stressed out about it even with two dogs that live in with us. It has made the biggest difference in my life.

Now when I’m retired and I have all the time in the world, I’ll go back to cleaning my own house. Big, no big deal, but it’s just it made me happier, and it gives me extra hours to just sit and be a person without being I’m going 12 to 15 hours a day and I don’t have time to live a life. Which, I think, Is a huge problem for most people these days? And like I just want more hours of my day and it made me happy.

Priorities

Yeah, there’s a difference between being busy and having time dedicated to Peace of Mind. I think being busy is a terrible thing.

My mom gave me a subscription to our state for Christmas and it had a note on it that said when this comes every month, I want you to take time to read it.

What is our state?

It’s a North Carolina State Focus magazine with articles about places and people and restaurants and all the things North Carolina.

Sponsored by Cheerwine.

There are ones usually in it. But my thing is I have three on my desk and I haven’t read them yet. And I see them every day and I think about that and I’m like “why can I not schedule enough time to read these stinking magazines?” I enjoy it. It makes me happy. I love it. Just crazy.

They’re in the wrong room. They got to be in the toilet room.

There is the room I spend the most time in.

If you’re spending time and they’re doing specific things.

I don’t know. It sucks man. And I have one that I started because I had a whole day off a couple of weeks ago and I got 7 pages in and that’s as far as I’ve made it just. Do you know?

Well, but what’s the reason to even read the magazine?

Is it because Mom said?

No, I love the magazine. Which is why she got it for me.

So, what’s holding you back?

Yeah, I just haven’t made the time to do it. Plain and simple.

Haven’t prioritized it. You don’t think about it right.

If you thought it had immense value, there’s no reason you wouldn’t read it. You must not feel that it’s more important than the other things you already have scheduled.

Yeah, it’s fun stuff.

Well, so there you go. Do you schedule fun? Quality of living things within your week?

I need to and I don’t, but I should. I can be honest.

This has come up for me as people ask me about this. “How do you get so much stuff done?”

Last year I did a podcast every week so 52. Podcasts in a year. But I also spoke at 6 conferences, I also hosted the veteran podcasts awards. I also hosted the Miss Oklahoma pageant. I also was still on active duty in the Navy. Had a wife and kids and finished up my Masters’ degree and changed my business, created a college course that is accredited and available for you to take.

You can learn about podcasting, get college credit, and transfer to any school you’re going

into. Check out my link.

But I did all that last year. And they ask, “How on earth do you get so much done?”

You have scheduled things in my week, but I have time set in my week for specific things. Monday and Wednesday are the only days I scheduled for a nonprofit architect. That’s it, you can’t get me nonprofit architect stuff any of those other times I have certain times throughout the week where I’m a guest on a podcast.

First, Thursdays are dedicated to my networking. Tuesdays are dedicated to my learning and Fridays are a catch-all day and about every other Friday, I schedule golf or outdoor time or friend time or I go to a matinee, or an early movie, right? And go hang out, but I schedule my fun. I schedule my fun. Scheduled time dedicated to that. Saturday morning our family doesn’t go do a lot of stuff that’s just how it is. I schedule some interesting work. Catch up time Saturday morning, because that’s when I have time available and I feel free to do it and then Saturday evenings are usually dedicated to friends, so. Figuring out what block of time works best for you and ensuring you’re inviting yourself to your party is high on my priority list and I try to have a party for myself every week.

So yesterday I took the whole day off and went to see a friend out of town and had lunch and went shopping and went to two bakeries. Yes two, you know so I scheduled those types of things. Those are the things I schedule. I don’t typically schedule though – let me sit down and read magazine stuff – but I should, and I should do more of that so a nice realization to have.

It is good.

I got some friends Steven Kuhn and Lane Belone. I’ve done a lot of business with them. They’re both also prior guests on the show and they always end every meeting with “it’s all about the quality of life.” You are doing something in your business, your nonprofit, your consulting, whatever it is that you call your work. You’re doing it for a reason. One of those reasons is dollars, but it’s not just dollars for your bills, it’s dollars for your life. Are you going to spend the dollars to buy your kid a new football so you can go spend some time in the backyard throwing the ball around? Or are you going to buy those dollars so you can? Get an RV and go camping throughout the US. What are you spending those dollars on? It doesn’t matter how many dollars you have. If some of those aren’t used for you for your fun, you can have all the dollars in the world and buy Twitter or whatever it is that you want to do with all your dollars.

I agree.

How-to design your life

But it’s got to have some kind of fun component for you.

Yeah, it’s all about building the life of your dreams.

Yeah, designing your actual life. But you’ve changed businesses, right? Your business has transformed over time.

It has.

How do you determine who it is you want to work with? How do you even know?

So, you know initially, it was anybody that wanted to pay me just straight up, that was how it starts. That’s how everyone feels if they’re willing to give them money, I’m willing to talk to them.

And now it is more about figuring out what this person needs. What I can deliver, and do I want to work with them, do they have the resources, do they have the structure, do they have the desire, the time to be successful working with me?

I have turned people away. Said, you know what? I’m happy to take your money, but I don’t think that this is what you would need right now. I don’t think this is where you need to start. I’m very honest with people about that because I’m finally at a place in my career and I have been for a while where we have to take every client that comes to the door and that feels good to be able to say, yeah, I appreciate it, but I’m not interested in that right now. Or that’s not what we do. Or we used to do that, but we don’t anymore, and so you know, being able to say to people. We are not interested in being your full-time grant writer. I say that all the time because we are expert grant writers and we do create templates and help people with their grant processes, but that’s not what we do anymore. And I have other consultants I’m happy to refer you to, but that’s not us, and so being able to accept I have let a demographic go from who my ideal clients are.

I like it because now I have all these other people that I want to work with. There’s a consultant that I know, her ideal client is startup nonprofits and founders. I don’t want to work with startup nonprofits and founders. There are so many issues, so few resources, a lot of disorganization, most of the time, and they’re not ready to take those big foundational steps of growing and building capacity and doing those things. They’re just not able. They haven’t got enough years of experience yet that’s her ideal client. That’s who she loves to work with, so I refer those people to her. Most of the time there are exceptions. People that did their homework and have great research and resources are established and the foundation was done correctly, and they are ready and I have taken those clients.

It’s organizations that are a little bit more developed and robust and established that end up being the clients that we work with. For nonprofit consultants, it’s three stages.

People who are thinking about a side hustle. Or maybe they have a little bit of a side hustle, but they still have a full-time job.

People that have a side hustle, they’re ready to go full time. OK, I’m working through two full-home jobs right now I just have to choose and they’re ready to take that step.

And then people who are in a full-time consulting company running their business that wants to make more money, create new revenue streams, go from hourly to project-based pricing like taking all those next big steps. Growing email lists. Creating some passive income. Those are the people that I love to work with for my nonprofit consulting work.

Yeah

And when I think of who I want to work with the things that I really think about are the available resources. Can they pay me? And it’s not that there’s a consultant out there for every budget, and I want the people that are ready to take action today that are going to show up that are going to put their money where their mouth is not because I think I’m worth so much, or this that and the other, what I mean by that payment are they are understanding the expertise that they need in their lives and in their business or whatever that might look like, and they know they don’t have it and they have to pay to get it to that point.

And people think oh, that just sounds so weird. I’m like did you pay to go to college? Understand they had the expertise and the resources. You paid him to go to college.

Most of us have created resources for the people who don’t want to pay or never going to pay or don’t feel like they can pay, right? We have podcasts. Those are free. We have blogs. We have videos on YouTube channels, we have downloaded, we have free templates, we have all these things and that’s where you go when you don’t want to pay for them. Something you use the free resources, and when you want someone to help you, be successful to walk you through it, to be there to answer your questions and to also be your reach stores, that’s when you outsource to someone or when you hire a consultant or contractor or a coach.

You expect to get paid. That’s how it goes.

Yeah, so I look at available resources, mindset, and capacity. Might be the time that might be resources. It might be a team mindset. I made this decision last year. I refuse to have anyone in my life, whether it’s a friend or client, or otherwise, that is not in the abundant mindset. If they have a scarcity mindset or they are in survival mode, I’m not the right fit for you. I’m just not.

I don’t want to have those conversations. I’m not interested. It completely drains me. If you’re in an abundant mindset and you’re having a bad day, hey, completely understand. I’m not going to discount a bad day. If you think, there’s not enough. There are nonprofits out there, right? They’re like, oh, we don’t have enough, or we’re a startup, or we’re nonprofit so we can’t pay for….

Most of my clients were nonprofits, they paid. There is money in nonprofits, let’s not pretend. But if you feel that way, you’re not going to be interested in any of the things that I had to say, because as far as you’re concerned, there’s not enough.

There are nearly eight billion people in this world. There’s food aplenty, not always in the places that it needs to be, but there is more than enough to go around. I’m not competing with Mandy for consulting clients because there are more than enough people that need consulting or coaching or whatever variety you call yourself. If they’re not a good fit for Mandy, she might be like you know what Travis these might be right up your alley if they’re not a good fit for me. Hey Mandy, I have got the person for you. We’re not competing. Not because I’m great and she’s not good.

That’s the wrong mindset.

We’ve always been, “Let’s collaborate”. There’s too much work, I can’t do it all, my team can’t do it all, and I know that for my company I don’t want to grow big enough to do it all. I don’t want to have more stuff; I don’t want to have to manage people I don’t want my work to be my life forever. And so, I know I’m not going to grow this company beyond where it is.

We will continue to help people in the capacity we are. And those are the number of people we can help a year, so yeah, I want to refer people to other amazing consultants. I feel more consultants should have that. If a consultant calls me and says, “hey can you send me a sample of what your contract looks like because I’m new and I don’t know how to block?” Yeah sure, you shouldn’t have to pay a lawyer to help you create some BS when everybody in the world has a contract. Here’s a contract. Make it your own. You know people. So don’t want to ask for a sample of what you use for your intake tool.

It’s a freaking questionnaire people. It’s not that deep.

Google forms, here’s a copy. Make it your own.

Yeah, exactly, and so that’s why we have a template page of over 50 templates people can download on the spot in a Word document. Change that bad boy, make it your own. Do whatever you want to it. I don’t care. I created it for some client at some point and somebody may need it.

Child protection policy, sample bylaws, Blah blah blah whatever. Then there are some that we spent money creating. So, they would be available templates and super professional. So, there’s a fee associated with those, but it’s $37. So yeah, you know it’s Share and helps people out. You said you’re forty, back in the day when you were growing up…

Teamwork makes the dream work. It's the journey.

Back in the day in the 80s.

Right exactly

… someone would say, “hey so and so is moving” and ten people would get together and help him move in five hours today it’s “so and so is moving, I’ll pay you and feed you pizza for dinner if you’ll come to help me move” what the hell is wrong with people these days? Sorry excuse my French, I just don’t understand what happened to our society, where you can’t ask a neighbor to help you with something without offering to pay them. You can’t call and ask somebody a question without offering something in exchange. What happened to that society?

I know, but I know what happened. As people, as individuals, I’m willing to help people, people ask me for help all the time. Help is different than asking me for business stuff, right? Willing to help all the time, right? I’m OK with helping people, but what happens when I need help? Am I not OK asking for help, right? What the heck happened here? Right, it’s OK. for you to bless people in your sphere. But are you saying it’s not OK for people to bless you?

Right?

And when I say that to people they’re completely floored, and I never looked at it that way. I was like “didn’t you watch so and so’s the dog for the week last week?”

“Yeah, I was so glad I could help.”

“Wouldn’t they be so glad to help you this week?”

They could help you.

I had that conversation with my husband all the time. He’s Latino and he just doesn’t want to ask anybody for anything, and I’m like, baby, how many people have you let borrow your trailer to move or to haul stuff? Or do this or do that? Well, yeah, but I mean we already have that. Exactly! So, you’re asking them to do something that you need help with. It’s going to take an hour, don’t you think? Do they want to be able to help you?

I just don’t want to impose or whatever. I’m the first person to call – here can you help with that? Can you help with this?

We can’t do it alone. Someone told me, “I can do it myself. I can’t think of a single thing that I have or that I have done that I needed anyone else for.” I said perfect, where’s the cotton field that you own that you grow and cultivate the cotton to spin it into the thread to weave the shirt that you’re wearing. Well, that’s not what I mean. BS Man, it’s not at all. Everyone has to use everyone else. Don’t take that out of context. We all need things from other people, whether it’s the need the want, the share, the whatever level it is. I did not engineer and create this microphone. I didn’t do it. Someone else did it. Someone used their expertise. There’s owner’s genius, I said. Here are my dollars give me the thing that you’re magical at, please. Dear God, I can’t do it on my own.

Yeah, I just want to help people and I feel like you do too, which is why we create stuff like this. This is why we have podcasts out in the world. People aren’t, oh, I’m going to pay for this podcast today because I want to hear what Mandy and Travis have to say, but I just wish it could extend a little further into our society, I feel I feel like things have changed a lot since you and I was a kid. And I don’t know that it’s all for the better.

I don’t know.

I think there are still good people out there that are willing to help. I think that there are all sorts of these things in the evil media empire. I’m of course joking. They want to tell you the stuff that’s going on in the world that’s bad, the things that are problems. This means all the things they’re not reporting on are good.

I remember getting my passport to get over to the Middle East for a year. I’m standing in line and there was a shooting at an airport in Florida, and I enjoy injecting myself into other people’s lives. So if someone’s having a conversation, I’m like what’s going on, can I help? Is this a bad signal going up? Do they need me? And she was like “I don’t know, I’m kind of nervous like I don’t know if I should fly because there was an airport shooting!” And I was like” hey I got a question for you, I heard what you said about the airport shooting, I know it’s concerning, let me ask you a question. How many airports are there in the world?” She’s like,” Well, I don’t know” I was like, “would it be fair to say there are thousands of airports?” And she’s like, “yeah, I can see that.” “And how many flights do you think are happening in a day per airport 100?” She’s like “sure, we’ll say that” “When was the last time you heard of a problem in an airport”. And she’s like, “oh, that’s a good question. I know there was one in the 90s.” I was like, “so between then and now in the last twenty-five years, there’s been millions upon millions upon millions of flights have come and go without any mention in the news whatsoever. But you’re right about this one, you happen to hear about”. And she’s like “I see your point.”

We wouldn’t have heard. About it, if we didn’t have the technology we have today. My Dad just made that point this weekend.

Yeah, you wouldn’t have even known. You would have gone flying and not cared anyway. Why are we concerning ourselves with these things that are one in a million one in ten million, one in a billion chance, why are we concerned? Why are we taking up any of our brainpower? Any of our bandwidth? Any of our emotional state on this one thing that happened?

Do you know that that’s a perfect what you just said: “Why are we spending any of our brainpower and bandwidth on this?”

I try to get across the folks that I’m able to work with that want to be, or that is – consultants coach whatever you want to call them – to help them understand, once you’ve determined something in your business, whether it’s – I’m going to offer this thing or I’m not going to offer this thing anymore or this is my ideal client or these are not my ideal clients – once you make that decision, confidently go forward with those versions and stop second-guessing yourself and stop spending time wasting energy on rethinking it, rehashing it, should I should not have done that. You made the decision. Just move on because if not, you’re never going to move forward in your business you’re just going to spend time spinning your wheels when you could be helping someone or making money.

You know if I could go back to that time, I would have made a different decision. No, you wouldn’t have. I know because you had all the information you had and that’s what you decided. Knowing what you know now, you would have made a different decision, but going back you wouldn’t have because that’s the decision you made with all your capacity all your intelligence all your experience with all the people you asked, all the consultation that you had, that was the best decision for you at the time. Did it not work out the way you want it to? True, and now you know that piece of information going forward, you’re going to make more informed decisions. And if you have a podcast, you’re going to share a more informed view. Be like, you know what, when I did this last year, I was promoting this in the other, and boy was I wrong. I sucked; I didn’t have the experience I needed to move forward, but now I know. Now I’ve got the secret and I’m here today too. Share it with you.

You know one of my clients said to me we don’t hire you as our consultant because you have all the answers we hire you – and I work with them for four years – we hire you as our consultant because if you don’t have the answers, we know that you have the resources to find them for us.

Yes, it’s not about the answer. The answer is not the soul. The journey towards the answer. The journey towards the answer yes Oh my God. I like it.

And for those people who want to learn more about nonprofit consulting, we are hosting a nonprofit consulting conference in October. I’m sorry, August 25th and 26th 2022 depending on when you’re listening to this podcast. So, Travis is going to put in the notes nonprofitconsultingconference.com that’s a super complicated website and if you want to learn more about it, you can go there and book your seat and join us for a two-day conference and we will share more with you about it on the website. I won’t take up a ton of time marketing it right now, but if you’re thinking about starting a business, if you have one started already, go full time. Or if you’re full-time and you’re ready to grow and make the money of your dreams, this is going to be the conference for you.

I’m excited I can’t wait for August. I don’t know if you guys know this, but I have a little bit into being one of those speakers. It may or may not happen I don’t know what life’s going to bring my way, but you might just find that I’m up there speaking about ways to build passive income in your business. How to make money off the clock, active hours. Just BS. You want active hours. Be a lawyer. Charge for every waking moment in your life you want to. Make money when you sleep. Check out how to make money passively and wake up with money in your bank account you didn’t have when you went to sleep.

Exactly, it’s the best feeling truly and I’m going to be talking all about how to go from hourly to project-based pricing and what you need to know to put in your contracts to make that happen. So, it’s going to be. Awesome well Travis thank you so much for having me today. This has been awesome.

I always enjoy having conversations with you and am so happy to have you back on the show. Again, check out Mandy’s upcoming August 22 conference at nonprofitconsultingconference.com Thank you very much.

Mandy Pearce Bio

In 2009, visionary, Mandy Pearce, founded her flagship company, Funding for Good, to equip organizations with all of the skills and tools needed to become successful and sustainable. She continues to enjoy evolving this company to meet the changing demands of the nonprofit world.

For over two decades, Mandy and her team of experts have shared their proficiency in fundraising through executive coaching, strategic and development planning, seminars, and specialized consulting programs. Mandy’s dynamic teaching style has brought thousands of people to her presentations at conventions, training workshops, and online platforms. Mandy established Funding for Good, Inc. upon the core values of honesty, efficiency, direct communication, and bringing sustainable dollars to local communities.

Mandy lives in Hickory with her husband, Ricardo, and their two furbabies, Dalli and Max. She and Ricardo also own and operate a successful landscaping and custom woodworking company, Two Green Thumbs and More (twogreenthumbsandmore.com). On her decompression days, she enjoys working in their garden, sipping sweet tea on their porch swing with a good magazine, and cooking gourmet meals for their family and friends.

mandy@fundingforgood.org

704-614-8703