Redefining Nonprofit Leadership: Lee Wochner on Moving Beyond Conventional Thinking

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There's not a lot of listening anymore from anybody, with anybody. And when you really listen, you learn a lot of things. And I know that there's that the world is filled with need and with opportunity and we could fix all of these. If not fix, we could improve all of these problems. A 10% improvement would be glorious for everybody.

Step into the world of success with your brand Amplified, the ultimate podcast designed to unravel the intricacies of thriving businesses. I'm your host, Anika Jackson, and I'm on a mission to uncover the stories, strategies and secrets that have propelled entrepreneurs and business leaders to success. I had the privilege of meeting Lee through his podcast and I'm very, very excited to have him on mine. Lee Wachner Counterintuity thank you so much for being on your brand Amplified.

It's a delight to be here. I really enjoyed our previous discussion and this feels like an opportunity to have more of that great time and exchange some wisdom and learn some things. So I'm really pleased to be here. Thank you, Annika.

Oh, very welcome. And I forgive me that I didn't even realize until maybe a little bit before we were recording yours that we were just on opposite sides of the same city and you were nodding along when I was talking about Junior League of Los Angeles and different things. And so I was like, all right, we probably have some people in common, more than I. Than I realized as well, which we did find out. And so you. Yeah.

Are people people don't. You know, people don't, including the people who live here, don't realize that Los Angeles is a city of 88 separate municipalities. So yeah, there's a constant discussion about where do you live and. And people not here. You say Los Angeles and for people here, you say North Hills, Venice, Burbank, Pasadena, etc. Etc. And then inevitably you have a discussion about freeways and side streets.

Yes, yes. And the whatever highway or freeway is the 5.

The 405 was impossible. The 5. I took the 134, etc. Etc.

110 to the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Lee, you work with nonprofits. You're the CEO, creative strategist of counterintuitive. But before you had an agency. You are in the world of theater. You are an award winning playwright, theatrical producer, founding president and CEO of LA Stage Alliance. And now you've been on this other side for a couple of decades. What was the impetus for realizing that some of the skills you have in storytelling and theater actually translate really well into marketing strategy?

Well, I don't think they're dissimilar and actually I still do both. I come from a family of entrepreneurs. I started my first business when I was 12. My dad was in business, my grandfather, my brother, my brother in law. It's a family of entrepreneurs. My son, now I'm very excited about what he's doing, my daughter a little bit. My other son did do some selling on his own, but they're both the theater and, and business are really. And nonprofit, by the way, are about storytelling, of course. And as our host of your brand, Amplified, I know, you know that I'm telling you things. You know, it's storytelling and everybody is, basically everybody can tell a story, except for one of my friends from college. He really can. But other than him, everybody can tell a story. And so the thing is like, what story do you want to tell? Whom are you telling it to? What's the purpose of this and what's the point? Which we over educated literary people call thematic unity. Right. So what's the. And what marketers call. What's the message? You know, what's the brand identity and what's the message? And they're very similar. And so what happened with me to cut this short? In the 90s, I started doing a lot of marketing, writing for agencies, for hotels, for government, city of Los Angeles, et cetera. And it just, it was really turning into something. And I was running my theater company and then I just became more and more of a consultant. And then it became, well, can you consult with us on strategy as well? Because most of the strategy, most of human endeavor actually is communications.

Yeah, that's four words were never spoken. And I was also, I was on the board of Shakespeare center of Los Angeles for quite a while.

Very nice. I thought that was a lot of fun.

Yeah. When it was still Shakespeare Festival. And then of course the rebrand, which is something you know intimately, is thinking about the concept of branding brand strategy. We talked a lot about that on your podcast and we were like, it just, I saw the wheels turning of like all these conversations and things we could talk about. So who do you work with? And I mean, you mentioned a few different categories, but like who's your favorite type of person to work with and what are the, the things that you want to take them through to get the results that they want?

Business and the way we work and the way we communicate have all changed radically in the past five years. I mean, you and I are doing this interview over the Internet and five years ago this was far less possible on our budget. I mean, if you, you know, if you had a major international firm, you were already doing that, but not, not the consumer, let's say. And so what I really want to work with is I want to work with nonprofit leaders who want to achieve more. And if they don't already recognize what has changed and what needs to change at their organization, they're open to the conversation of what needs to change. And what I never want to work with is closed minds. The world is never impacted positively by closed minds. And I'll tell you, Annika, honestly, we have the best clients. And that's not just spin everybody because we vet them, we're careful about who we sign. And I, you know, I meet with them, I talk with them a few times. We do an initial strategy and you can tell pretty quickly. And then sometimes people are a little reluctant and I get it a little resistant. Everybody's a little resistant to change. But that initial strategy and the half day strategy session we do, you can see people kind of flower and bloom. You really can. And then from there on it's just a joy. I mean, seriously, it's so much fun.

Well, I have a follow up question, but before I ask it the name.

Of your company, we're trying to bring more business solutions and business strategies to nonprofits. And it took me a while to realize this, but it seems like new and different thinking to them because generally they came up in the industry or the cause that they're trying to help. And so I've spent a lot of time in the arts and I love the arts. Right. The arts have shaped my whole life. So they grew up in a dance or they grew up in music, or they grew up in theater or literary arts or whatever and not really a lot of business background training. And so everything that, that we would tell them seemed a little different and a little counterintuitive. And. Are you sure? And so there's that aspect. And then the other thing is, because it's a fruitful exercise, we like to challenge the received thinking, the. And, and I want My own thinking challenged. So at. At my agency, the. One of the benefits of having a team is the team can challenge your own thinking. And I get my own thinking challenged by our own people all the time. And then we just make it better. And it's. It's really a gift. And so whenever I hear anybody say, well, everybody says dot, dot, dot, and my ears perk up. And I'm like, well, who is everybody? And how long have they been saying that? And is that really true? And let's take a look at that and in a friendly, upbeat way.

And is it relevant?

Is it. Oh, yes. Is it relevant? Who. Who can. Who are these people? These everybody do we care about? I mean, really, who. Like, aren't you one of the people who would dress differently because you look good the way you look and you're not trying to blend in with the crowd? Who. Who is? Everybody. We don't have to follow them. Yeah.

Oh, I love that. And that it just matches your brand perfectly. When we think about change and resisting change, I know one thing that we see in the nonprofit world is people who started organizations who maybe haven't even put in a second command or the second command got tired of waiting, and so they went on to another organization. And they don't have a deep bench, if you will, where in the business world we do want to think about, all right, if this. Or even in the government, right, if something happens to this person, we have these people on deck who can handle xyz, even on a temporary basis, until we can then look for a new candidate. But nonprofits just often don't do that. And that's also a big change. Or like you said, I think leaders and people who started the nonprofits can often have trouble with change and with thinking through new strategies, even if the same things they're doing aren't working anymore.

So times of trouble and turbulence, and we certainly live in one of those right now. We live in a time of trouble and turbulence. They also create opportunities, and it doesn't always feel. Feel good to. To frame it that way. You know, it's like if. If you were terribly sick and. And went to the hospital, sometimes they patch you up and they find something else, and you got lucky. They found the. The something else and they fixed it. Right? And so when you've really. When you've really got a challenge, and there are more challenges now because of the economic social environment, the global economic social environment, it provides the opportunity to reflect on these things more and to see what you can do and how you can do things differently. And you're kind of, you're kind of touching on staffing. And staffing today, as we both know, works very differently than it did five years ago. Because now what we have is, we have, I mean, we used to have a whole bunch of people who came into the office every day, Monday through Friday, and we had a two story office and all these people trundled in and it was a load of fun. And that is over. I mean, I, it's just like I, I was at a party last night talking to a commercial real estate agent and he's kind of laughing about, I mean, how dismal his market is. Right. I mean, just what could he do but kind of laugh? But you know, so now, you know, some of our, our people are remote. We do have space where we meet, some of us once a week, twice a week, sometimes three times a week. But the hours are not Monday through Friday, 9 to 6 anymore. And so that's a big change. And so now what you get is you also have a younger generation that does not want to work those sorts of hours. They want flexible hours. They might want part time, they might want a couple of part time, they might want to be a contractor, et cetera, et cetera. You may have external contractors, you may have external employees, they may be in other countries. I mean, it's just changed radically. And then you add on to that your brand new employee of AI yes, AI is an employee, you know, so the opportunity is if we can get the nonprofit CEO that you're talking about. Who. I mean, I. She's committed, she wants to change the world, she wants to help people. And you know, I love her. Right. But if we can get her out of. She's stapling forms together all day. Yes, because, you know, but just for two hours. Two hours a day, she's stapling forms. And I try to do my best to gently take the forms away and figure out, can somebody else do this? It frees her up to really focus on growing the nonprofit.

And that's what we hope to see. As you said, these are interesting times. So we do have to be. I don't want to. I mean, crafty is the word that comes to mind, even if that's not the correct word. But I like that. Well, thank you. We have to think about our budgets. We have to think about what is the best use of, of the funds that we do have and how are we going to find new donors, new resources, especially with federal funding being cut for a Lot of nonprofits in the United States. So there's a lot of change going on, and you have to kind of navigate all these changes with your clients as a person who's leading strategy. And also knowing that so many times people think, well, we'll just cut out the marketing budget. But that's the first thing that needs to stay.

If you were going to the supermarket every day and you needed a new pair of shoes, and you thought, wow, I could buy more groceries if I don't buy the shoes, would you throw the shoes away? I mean, you need the shoes to get to the supermarket, when you think about it, right? And marketing, I'll give you a different metaphor. Marketing is, is you charged your car or you put gasoline in it, right? And if you don't charge the car, if you don't give the car some energy, you're not going anywhere. And There are about 8 billion people on the planet, and there are ways to find the ones who really would care about what you do and to reach out to them and to spread your brand awareness to them. But if you cut every way that you might reach out to them, you'll never reach them. And here's the thing, here's the saying, Annika, that we've both heard a million times. You cannot cut to growth. You cannot cut to growth. You have to make investments somewhere in your business, your nonprofit business, and you have to determine where to make them. And one of them is in marketing. And I don't have as much of a challenge convincing people about marketing as I do about strategy. And if they don't do strategy as part of the marketing first, which we. We just won't. I mean, we have to do strategy first. And I mean, you haven't asked the fundamental questions, let alone answered them to make the marketing successful.

Exactly, exactly. Well, and interestingly, your. You sent me your cliftonstrengths, which I love. I don't know that anybody has done that. But your top strength is strategic, you know, and then responsibility, activator, self assurance, ideation. So it sounds like who you are, your brand, your essence, the things you've experienced as well, have really shaped what you've seen is the needs of these organizations, whether nonprofits or governments.

So the strengths are the mirror image of your faults and lackings. Right. I have zero organizational ability. I mean, I'm just like, so, you know, lucky for me, I have a business partner who heads that up for us, and she's an incredibly smart, organized build the processes, have teams, do this, et cetera. I Mean, she's brilliant at all of that, right? And so, yeah, so my perception may be colored by my perspective, but that doesn't mean it's not right, because we've seen people. And look, I used to be one of these, right? You know what? I just want to do it. I'm running my nonprofit. I'm just going to jump in and do it. I'm going to do these things. But what happens much later is you realize, oh, I wasted all of this time and money, and I shouldn't have done that. And I try not to dwell in the. In the land of should have done. And I just try to do better moving forward. But strategy saves you time and money because you have the discussion of, what are the goals? What are we trying to accomplish? What's the current status of that goal? What do we need to do to get there? Who's going to help us? How much are they going to help us? What do we need them to do? What are the messages that will resonate with them? And then how are we going to get those messages to them? And what are we specifically asking them to do once they get those messages? And if you don't do that work first, you may as well just be shouting out into the wind.

Yeah, you're just throwing money away.

Throwing money away. And worse. Worse, throwing time away, because you can get more money. You cannot get more time.

Yeah, time, money. And the fact that the money hopefully came from donors, grants, so that people who want to see change happen for the positive see that you're affecting more people, more animals able to put out more performances, whatever the case may be.

So this week, we're sending out annual reports to all of our clients. And Annual report sounds terrible. Like, I don't want to read that either, but. But ours is like, you know, Spotify gives you a 2025 wrapped. You know, here's a fun thing. Here's the songs you listen to the most, here's the podcast, here's the minutes you spent, et cetera, et cetera. And Duolingo does the same. I know where I spent 140 hours this year on Duolingo, and I don't regret it because it's been great. So we started sending that out and to communicate to people the impact of what we've been doing together. And because we're serving nonprofits, if there's no impact, I don't want to do it. We don't sell things to people because they're nonprofits. We guide them to what we think they should do and we provide them options. But I'm not a sales guy. Like I don't want to sell things to people. I want to solve problems and create opportunities. And so if we're in our reporting, we show that we really track it and if something's not working, we want to fix it rather than again have folks who don't know what they're trying to do and then they get frustrated and they're not doing it. And particularly for nonprofits in a time of trouble and turbulence, they need help and it had better work. And we're focused on that.

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And you did say as well that people often will be will cut strategy before they'll cut marketing.

Well, they, you know, just like my far younger self who just wants to jump in. Like I was always, I was always the throw me in the pool guy. Throw, just throw me in the pool. And I. But you do learn to swim, but actually it's better to take the time to learn how to swim before jumping in the pool because you know, it could go wrong. And so I take the time to the other thing here. Here you go. I take the time to listen as well because there's not a lot of listening anymore from anybody, with anybody. And when you really listen, you learn a lot of things. And I know that there's. That the world is filled with need and with opportunity. And we could fix all of these. If not fix, we could improve all of these problems. A 10% improvement would be glorious for everybody. Whether it's the air quality, the price of groceries, saving species, whatever it is. 10% is massive. People are upset about inflation. It's 3.4%. Imagine 10% improvement on the thing that worries you the most. Yeah.

Quite a big change, right?

Yeah.

When we talk about habits and we talk about things, people talk about taking one little tiny step a day. Right. 1% better. All of those books. Yeah. So I'd love for you to give us an example of a scenario where people went down the standard road, you know, they may fail even though they thought, well, I'm doing what everybody else is doing. And when you actually put strategy into play, what can happen? If you have any specific examples that you would love to use from your.

Amazing clients, there's something we redesigned that we're going to be redesigning other aspects of it. It's the whole digital, all the digital presences for a client. And your digital presence exists in context. It doesn't exist in its own universe. It exists in context. And things change in a society. And when you think about the 60s and the radical movements of the 60s that affected some change, they don't match up well graphically with 2025 or 2026. And interestingly, there's all of this fraughtness right now. It feels like in the country, it feels like there's left and right or there's red and blue or whatever. There's this Coke and Pepsi war, right? And when you talk to people like almost no one wants that, they really want to work together. And so we are trying to find where that lines up with clients we work with and bring that to the fore because it's attractive. And I'm willing to bet you that I don't know if it's next election or the one after, but we're going to get back to people who are building bridges because it's, it's a. I talk to people across the spectrum and everybody wants that they. Can we tone this down? Can we stop this? Can we work together? We have real things we could work on. Right? The other answer to your question would be this. And this is the number one thing I think I see. I'll talk to a would be client and she or he will say, well, we're doing social media and Annika will look at it and there's no engagement and it's because they're just posting stuff. And well, we have a, you know, we have a college intern who's doing it for us or what. And you know, no disrespect to those folks, that's our next generation. We want them to be empowered, but there's no strategy behind it and there's no engagement. And you and I both know engagement, that means no one is seeing it. And it, it doesn't matter if they post once a week or nine times a day. If no one is seeing it, there's no impact. May as well go out in the woods and shout it out there. And so we'll say, well, what's the strategy and what are. And with all respect, right? I mean, if you came over to my house you could tell me all sorts of things I could do better. Right. So I take that mind frame into every meeting. I have it because nobody's perfect. I'm making mistakes I'm sure I'm not even aware of. But in this, you're in an environment where I'm well equipped to know how this could work for you. And so we'll say, well, what are the metrics? When you started this social campaign, what were the metrics and what were the goals? And let's look at what they are now. And there are no answers to those things, and no disrespect to them, but, you know, you start with if you've ever run a marathon, for instance, you, you. Well, I'm going to run 26.2 miles and I'm going to train for that for three months. I mean, there's metrics, but then again, I'm just going to jump in the pool and do all this social stuff. I'm going to put posts. She's going to put posts up for me every day and it's photos of our holiday party and here's somebody we helped and whatever, and. But okay, who are you aiming this toward? What do you want them to do? What's the call to action? What's the core message? Et cetera, et cetera? What numbers did you start with? Are you feeding the algorithm to drive new numbers? What numbers do you want to get to? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, that community engagement aspect is so important and so many times just left behind. I've seen it with organizations I've worked with as well, and people don't realize how vitally important it is to talk to other organizations online, to talk to people who are following you, to answer questions that pop up in your dm, to respond to comments, and also to pay attention to what the algorithm is saying about how to best reach that audience in any one time. I think that's another mistake we make is one size fits all. So one type of post or graphic will work on every platform. And that's just not the case anymore.

No, it's not. And the algorithms function differently. And you said answer questions. And Generative Engine Optimization, AI SEO does really well. When you have an faq, when you're answering lots of questions, it'll pull you up and cite the source and there's a link. And in the 2025, 2026 zero click universe where people may not go to your website, this is your best chance at a search result. And who's Doing it. The answer is almost no one. And so right now we're spending time educating clients and non clients, people we love and care about, that you need more copy, you need more questions and answers on your website. We need to get that out so that we're, yes, we're answering it, or an AI bot, but the AI bot will then call you up as a resource and people will find you. Yes.

And while we know that Google and other platforms still have a lot of discoverability, we also know that a lot of people are searching on LLMs to find organizations they want to work with, donate to, volunteer for.

That's right. That of course, is right.

I wanted to ask a little bit about the difference that you see, if any, between marketing for social good versus nonprofit marketing and for profit marketing.

Sometimes there's overlap. There are socially conscious, socially responsive for profits, and you know, we, you and I could name some of them. And then. So there is some overlap with nonprofit, for sure. You have to bear in mind that everyone you're talking to is an owner. We all own the nonprofits. That's how it works. If you're running one, you don't own it. You can take pride in it and should. Right. But we all own it. And so we're all stakeholders and we can talk to different stakeholders in different ways, but we always have to come from the heart and we have to be genuine. And you would hope that corporate America does that as well. And sadly, that is not always the case. But that's a big difference. And all advertising and communications really are based on emotional appeal. But here the driving desire is a little different because most economists and business school professors will tell you is the job of a for profit. The job of major corporation is to return money to, to shareholders. And the job of a nonprofit, the job is to benefit the community overall. And so that's the main difference. And so that affects the marketing, of course. It affects the images you're going to choose, it affects the message you're going to put out, it affects the metrics you're going to work from and so forth. You agree?

Yeah, I really loved that framing of you can work for a nonprofit and take pride in the work that is accomplished, but that we as citizens actually own work. We're the ones who will say, yes, we support what you're doing with our dollars, with our time. Right. Or we'll say, oh, we don't support what you're trying to do in the community. And we, we will not.

Yeah, yeah.

And speaking of communities, although we are in the greater LA area. You have worked with some national organizations. You've worked with so many. Great. The YWCA for Greater LA, Planned Parenthood, PBS in multiple cities, LA, NY, just to name a few. So can you talk about a campaign where you saw your work translate directly into mission achievement, even if it was over multiple cities or states? Because that can also be a little tricky sometimes.

Yeah. So I gave a speech at the national Planned Parenthood conference and leadership at the time was not real open to that speech. And they were kind of unhappy that I got booked because at the time, you know, things have changed since then.

Yeah. And by the way, you're going to have to talk to me about that after, because I was on the board. I was the chairman of the board for Planned Parenthood Gulf coast, and I did a lot of work at the national level, starting with Project Orchid. So, yeah, you'll have to give me the tea. You don't have to do it here.

I look forward to that conversation. And so, you know, I. I just try to be a bridge builder. And I think that they were more interested in being political. So to be specific, you probably know this. You know, the percentage of their product delivery that's abortion is like 1%. And when I came back and told that to a bunch of people and asked them, how do you feel about it now? And they said, oh, well, if I knew that, I would be a supporter because they do testicular cancer screening, they do family planning, they do all sorts of other things. They have a wide range of important. But, you know, they had a different brand identity than I was proposing, so they weren't real happy. But what happened was one of the national board members wanted me to work with four different satellite Planned Parenthood offices, which we did. And they were keenly interested in that message and how to effectuate that in their areas. And that was really fun and they saw a lot of impact from it. So, yeah, off camera, at some point I'm happy to share notes there because I'm with them. I mean, people need health care in all sorts of ways. And, you know, I can afford my family planning healthcare and some people can't. And I want them to have a place to go. Yeah.

Not to keep on going down this road, but it really baffled me that more people didn't realize that if woman or man doesn't have insurance and regular healthcare and they're going to take care of one thing and Planned Parent will do wraparound services. Well, let's take your blood pressure. Let's check your heart, do you have diabetes? Managing all of these other things that are so important for health, wellbeing, less burden on society, you know, all, all the different things you can hear from people. It just baffles the mind that those weren't the messages that are really getting out there, like to your point.

So I will grant that it's hard to self examine, right, to look in the mirror and figure out what you're doing wrong. And again, as I said earlier, I'm doing things wrong for sure. I mean, I don't know what they are, but if you came over, you could tell me, right? And so when I work with clients, one of the things I want to do is I want to test out the beliefs and messages they have now in a positive way and assess the effectuality and offer alternatives. And so I was offering an alternative to national Planned Parenthood. And the core people at the top were not pleased, but some of the board was. You ask about campaigns that clearly had an impact. During COVID the mayor of Burbank wanted, he said, he said, quote, right in front of me in, in a meeting that we had at the Chamber of Commerce, right in front of me, he said, we have to do something to help the restaurants. And that seemed like a fun challenge. Yes, let's help the restaurants. And I've lived in Burbank for 30 years, 30 plus years. And until he said that, I hadn't realized that during COVID I was ordering from the same three restaurants. I didn't have enough familiarity with the other restaurants. And I found out there are 400 restaurants, 400 restaurants in Burbank. So we came up with a campaign that was funded by the city and we made it fun. And if you, if you went to any of these restaurants, you ordered from them, where you went to them, you went, you go to the website. Website, you build a little profile, you shoot a QR code with your phone, you collect points for every order and there are prizes. And every week you were in a drawing for different really good stuff. And it was enormously successful. And we drove a lot of traffic, foot traffic, to new restaurants that were really needed some business. And we won a huge international marketing award for the whole campaign. But the thing that really meant a lot to me was these mom and pop restaurants. Like one was a hoagie shop. I'd never heard of it. And the hoagie shop said we had a lot of business through that.

That's really amazing and heartwarming. And this is part of those stories are Part of why we do what we do. And you mentioned an award. Well, you have won. Your organization is prolific with awards. Winning more than 50 from marcom awards to communicator W3 California small business of the Year. And you personally are also have been recognized as a California Thinker by the state of California. I have never heard of that until I was creating questions and figuring out what I wanted to talk about on this episode. Can you talk to us a little bit about what that means?

Yeah. So it was not recent. I mean now I might be more of a California stinker, I don't know. But in 90, 1995 California there was California Council on the Humanities. So there was California Arts Council and then there was a humanities equivalent. And they funded me to give a speech on a topic and then built my profile as part of this. And again, it was the 90s and I was, I was tying to try together the arts, which I love and change. And they created this roster of California thinkers. And I was one of them.

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Yeah, yeah. And I appeared in a play recently. So not just a thinker, but an actor too. So I. I'd like to take action, not just think about things.

Yes, you can do it all.

Yeah, well, I just. I love being alive. I love every day I want to affect change. When I was a boy, I read our Buckminster Fuller, Nine Chains to the Moon. It's a terrible book. Don't read it, it's unreadable. But when I was a teenager I read that and the thing I came away with was this whole planet is a spaceship. And there are things we could all do to make it better. And we're not going to fix it all. I mean, it would be naive to think you can fix it. But again, that improvement that we could make is very motivating. And especially if you can make an improvement. Help somebody, help some system, help some cause. And then see the impact of that. You just feel fantastic. And you should have that pride. And you and I are. Do we need anything anymore? I don't need anything. And so I'm in that giving phase of life. Like when I was a kid. I want this. I want this. I don't want any of those things now. I just want things to be better. That's it. I just. So I. In my own little way, I work on these things every day. What can we make better through the work that we do and through my life? How can I be a positive force for impact? And it's just fun. It really is. It's fun, and it's rewarding.

Many people don't know that there are different designations of nonprofit entities. Some can be political, some are not. Right. And you have to be very strict about those lines. One campaign you did work on was California's Proposition 21. Yes, for parks. And that is marketing democracy in action. So I'd love to hear a little bit about what is it like to market a ballot initiative versus a product or nonprofit cause. And kudos, because parks are awesome.

Parks are awesome. That year, I love parks. I use parks. That year, California voters voted no for state parks. They're like, I get it. It was a bad economic year. They just voted no. So, you know, sorry to be on the wrong side of that. We brought a lot of awareness to it. The way that worked was a bunch of big statewide environmental groups came together and wanted to do that initiative to support more money for the parks. And so we started with strategy. And one of the things we learned was, here you go. And you probably know this. Did you know that the beaches are state parks?

Oh, yes.

Well, sure you did, right? A lot of people don't know that.

Yeah.

And so we found that if we talked about the beaches, people went, oh, well, I love the beach. Right. And then the other thing we found out was, and I'm sure you can imagine the number one complaint people have about the parks is the restrooms. So we had to deal with that and talk about that. And so we did campaigns about what happens if there isn't adequate funding. And so we went right after the unpleasant bathroom issue and showed how much worse it could be. And don't we want these cleaned up? And then we did a video. We wanted a word for this video. So we did a video, and we took my. My business partner, and she's game for anything. She's great. We took. She was an actor, too, so she was delighted to star in the video. And we. We shot it in black and white. And so she's out there in the beach, in the water, drowning. She's paddling around, she's drowned. We shot it like a silent movie, like in. In that kind of funny black and white. And so she's drowning, she's crying for help. And then my then 19 year old son, very fit and handsome weightlifter, perks up and he sees there's a life preserver and it says, it says Prop 21. State parks. Yes, for state parks. And he picks that up and he runs out and he saves her with it. Right. I mean, just basic storytelling. And around the point of this, the beach is a state park. What if there's no lifeguard here? There was a sign that said, you know, sorry, no lifeguard, no funding, something like that. So he takes it and throws it away, picks up the life preserver, runs out and saves her. Now it's all in color. It all seems great. Right? So we wanted a word for that. We know we moved a whole bunch of people because again, we ran contests. Contests help you assess the engagement of people. We had tens of thousands of people in these contests, very excited about it. So we had one like, how many people can you build in our network? And you'll win something. Right? So one person got us 8,008 new followers and won a state parks blanket that cost $3. That's. They won. You want to win, Right? People are motivated to win. And if you fund the parks adequately, we all win.

Well, and we saw 10 years later, the pandemic, how important national parks were to people's sanity. And then we've seen even more recently when national parks have been understaffed, not staffed at all, closed down. The bathroom issue has arisen as well, with people going to parks and then nobody's there to do anything, you know, to clean up. And so we have. I mean, we've seen this play out on a national level.

So as John Lennon sang, you don't know what you got till you lose it. Yeah. You know, and so we take some things for granted. We've taken our democracy for granted. We should not take things for granted. And you know, the parks are a gift. California is a gift. I love California. I moved here. I'm grateful for California every day. I love California. And you know what? I love the other states I've been to too, but I live here. I love New York City and I've been to Montana. Montana seemed kind of cool, right? I've been down south, I've been all over the country. But if you really appreciate what you've Got you have to care for it as well. Just like your house. You wouldn't let your house fall into ruin. Yeah.

Let's go to the AI question. You mentioned AI as an employee. Where have you seen it be most useful for nonprofits? Because I know in this whole thing, you know, a lot of, a lot of organizations said we need to use AI and they just go out and buy some AI tools. But then there's no training, there's no follow up. So there's failure because you don't know how to implement it successfully. And especially with nonprofits, thinking about our budgets, thinking about every line item. So where have you seen it really help your business and those of your clients?

So on Wednesday, I made a discovery I feel about the company that I've had for almost 20 years through NotebookLM and I just fed it our website and our new draft homepage. And then somebody I work with at our company said, oh, put our LinkedIn as well in. And I just gave it those three feeds and it came up with this whole big beautiful graphic that represents the company. And I'm like, holy cow. Some of the things it says here there, it's all, it's right. It did a really good job. But it also gave me a different way to think about some of the things we talk about. And so our target market is nonprofits. And it said nonprofit is in your DNA because it is. My business partner and I have both started and run nonprofits and we haven't talked about it that way. And that, that was pretty interesting. I will use Claude or Chat gp. I'll use Chat GPT for research, I'll use Claude for different voicing and how something might sound. And so chatgpt for me is kind of a, it's a brainstorming buddy at times. I don't let anybody or anything write for us. We don't want that. But we need thought leaders. We need thought partners. And as a guy who at a great level is somewhat disorganized, I like it when it can put things into order for me and those sorts of things. But the three, we use a whole bunch of them at the company for a variety of reasons. But the three I use are NotebookLM, I use Chat GPT and I use Claude.

And how do you help your clients also weave it into their strategy and their marketing?

Yeah, I'm looking to save them time. And you, you went to this topic earlier because the leadership team or leadership person are always pretty busy and so you want to look at what you can peel off from them and what either a virtual assistant can do or a volunteer or AI. And the answer is they can do a lot. Right. They can do a deck for you, a presentation. They can do. Do a draft of a speech. I still think it's best if you've gone back over it so it sounds like you. They can do a lot of things for you. But we start with the human approach because they are marketing to humans, get humans to support them. And so AI is never going to make a donation or buy a ticket, but humans will. So we have to bear in mind that AI can support us. AI will never supplant us. And that's the approach we take with people.

Wonderful. So I have so many more questions that I could ask you, Leigh, and I know we're going to have continued conversations. Oh yeah, I did.

Not that I've met you. I'm never letting you go.

Yay. I'm so happy to hear that. I want to ask about three non negotiables that you insist on when starting with your clients.

Give us a chance. Be open minded. Open mindedness. And I sometimes I'll be facilitating a meeting and you can see the shutdown person and it's not usually the lead person but something about the shutdown person makes my heart go out to them because I think it's not just in the meeting. And so I try to spend a little more time with them and pick them up and bust them off. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I mean it's just not, it's not good to be shut down. And so but if the executive director, CEO or whatever doesn't want to do it and we're trying to drag them across broken glass to do, I mean it's just so we really, you have to want to do, do the things we're going to do. And we promise you we will do the best we can to bring the fun, to be open minded ourselves, to be productive, to be valued and valuable, to lead to results. But you gotta be a partner in it. That's one of them. Another one is we need to clarify the approval process with you because again, reporting to a committee and the worst, Annika, is well, we have a board committee of nine people and so et cetera, et cetera. And it doesn't get any better from there. The board committee can meet and discuss things and give feedback to a main point of contact who then interacts with us. But we can't respond to nine people because it's just not going to proceed. And the other Thing is, your nonprofit actually has to be doing meaningful work. It has to actually be. And, you know, most of them are. Sometimes they. They really aren't, but they have to be doing meaningful work in a meaningful way. We have to be able to draw a line from these donations to these things will result in this. And if it isn't, then not only is it not going to interest your donors, it's not going to interest us. But when we've worked with trying to help preemie babies live longer, that one, I mean, try to spend a day on that and not cry. But seeing the photos of the baby, like one baby was born, could fit in the. It was a photo, a palm of somebody's hand. And then here was the healthy child in school. It was like, holy cow. Right, Right. So that seems worthwhile. Right. Then there's that. There's the arts, there's the environment, there's species, there's governance, there's social justice. We worked with national association of Public Defenders. That was very moving. I mean, in our society, you get a public defense. These people work really hard and they're very committed to you, and they're underappreciated. So you gotta be doing real stuff, and you have to be in the level of endeavor that meets that. And if somebody on your team isn't, or if we aren't, God forbid, or if you're. If you're not actually doing something, then we don't want to do it. Yeah. And I'm sure you can. You can resonate with that, right?

Very much so, yeah. Very, very much so. I've quit organizations when I realized they were not making decisions based on good governance and transparency. So, yeah, like I said, we have a lot more to talk about. Lee, I'm going to have the website in the show notes. I'm also going to link to our episode on your podcast so that if anybody wants to listen to that, you can get a little dual and maybe, you know, we can talk about. It would even be great for me to publish that on my feed if you would be willing to.

That's a fun idea. And in that episode, you're in the hot seat, so that would be.

This is very true. And this may have been the first time I've used the word awesome in an interview. So it was influenced by my daughter being around. This has been so fun.

It's been really fun. I have huge respect for you and what you're doing and the people you're doing it with, and just huge respect. And I've learned some things from you. I'm impressed by some of the processes you've set up. As I told you, I'm not a good process person, but I. I'm an eager learner and I've learned some things from you and how you've done all of these things.

Oh, thank you so much. Well, I've learned a lot from you as well. And I mean, it's a mutual admiration society here, so.

Well, that makes my day just before I get to take the rest of the year off for the holidays. So that's a good way to end. That's a good way to end my work year.

Oh, yay. I'm so happy. Lee, do you have a favorite quote, mantra, verse, poem, family motto?

I sure like a whole bunch of things. Like, I like Reiner Maria Rilke, and I've been reading him forever. But I'll give you a quote from somebody I don't admire, but I like the sentiment in it. Napoleon said, I found the crown of France in the gutter and I picked it up. And I don't like what he did with it. Like, I'm not a fa. A fan of despots and totalitarianism. But what he's talking about there is somebody else didn't respect the opportunity. And I saw the opportunity and I took it. And I think about that every day. That again, we're in a troubled time and we should all be concerned about a number of things. But there are opportunities here. If we can adapt and do what we need to do the good thing, if we can do it better and more ably with the new opportunities that are available to us.

Perfect way to end the segment. Thank you so much, Lee. And we will have again said it 5 million times. We're gonna have a lot more conversations coming on this podcast and other podcasts and in real life. So I look forward to that.

Thank you, Annika. It's a real joy. And when we meet, coffee is on me.

Oh, the first one. We'll have to, you know, a little exchange. So to everybody who is listening, I hope that you're having a wonderful week and that you are thinking about how you can make a difference, a true difference in the world and how you can look at your. The organizations that you. To make sure they're making a real impact. Is there something you can do to support them? Can you share a post on social media, help be part of the change? I'm going to challenge each of you to think about that. Some small action or a big action or both. That you can take to make all of our lives a little easier and brighter. Thanks for listening or watching to this episode of youf Brand Amplified. Don't forget to leave. Leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast listening platform. And if you want to learn more, check us out@yourbrandamplified.com.

If you like the show, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening. Hello everyone. This is the host of the podcast no Chit Chat Trivia, inviting you to join me every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for some no nonsense trivia fun. Each episode jumps quickly into 10 trivia questions on a unique topic, and with a back catalog approaching 500 episodes, there's a ton of fun to be had. Perfect for road trips or family times. Search no Chitchat Trivia on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your pods.