069: Dr. Ken Thiessen - Value Lessons Learned Between Entrepreneurship and Non-Profits
28 Jan 2026 · 31 min
Ken Thiessen, founder of Power One Consulting, explains how nonprofits can steal from business playbooks: one-page strategic plans, clear business models, getting the right people in the right seats, and measurable outcomes. He's coached everyone from the Salvation Army to United Way, and learned these lessons through his own path from entrepreneurship to ministry to consulting.
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All right. This week's show is all about the big secrets that entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders can learn from each other. There's a surprising amount of blind spot learning available when entrepreneurs and nonprofits look at each other and learn from each other. Today's show is all about some secrets that you can take away right away for your business. Foreign. Welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host and Gazelle's business growth coach, Bill Gallagher. On the show with me today is Ken Thiessen. Ken is the well, he's the founder of Power One Consulting. He's a senior Gazelles coach. But Ken's focus is on social sector and nonprofits. So I thought I'd invite Ken on because he has lots of interesting ideas. And Ken is up in Regina, Saskatchewan. On Ken. Did I say that right?
You got it right, Bill. Thank you very much. Good to be on your show.
Well, welcome to the show. So we spent a lot of time together at the coaches conferences and I've been through the power the Power One, the social sector training because I've done and regularly sort of do work with social sector clients. Not a lot, not like you, but like one at a time. Usually One of maybe 10 clients is in the social sector. And then I have a little bit that I touch every now and then. And I think there are some definite lessons to learn from each other that I'm going to come to. One real big secret that I think businesses missing out on that they could pick up and apply today in the social sector. And I know a lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs. But then there's the flip side also, right? They're both entrepreneurs who are growing businesses who sit on boards of other things that they impact on nonprofits. But then there's the nonprofit listeners as well that are in our mix that are looking at how to apply the business. So we're going to actually talk on some surprising connections for both. So thanks for being on the show today.
I'm happy to do that.
Yeah. So you're up in Canada, so especially like Regina, right? That's not just across from Seattle or anything.
No, we're. We border North Dakota. And to put it in the context for some of your audience, you know, in the U.S. i mean, we are the green bay of the NFL when the Canadian Football League. We are the, the Green Bay. We're the small city that shouldn't have a football team. We have a football team. Our fans are every bit as rabid as the Green Bay Packer fans are. So I kind of try to set the tone for, you know, some of my American friends to say this. That'll just give you an idea of our city. And I'll tell you, in our city, people go nuts over our football team. And you don't dare wear any other colors other than green.
That's awesome. Character and passion.
Oh, yes.
For that. Right. So as I often like to do, I think before we get into the big secrets and things like that, let's share a little of the journey and some examples of some of this work in process. So how did you get started as a gazelles coach? Working with nonprofits, all that? Why don't you take us through a little bit of your path?
I mean, let me go back to graduating from high school. I graduated and at age 18, I bought a restaurant. I had no business plan. I had no business plan. And what's even more surprising is a bank gave me money to do that. So I had been an entrepreneur right from the get go. Two years after I bought my restaurant, I was bankrupt. You know, surprise, surprise, because I had no plan. Went into retail store management and then went into territory sales. Got headhunted away from the company I was working for as a retail manager. And when I was 29, I did a major career shift and I did something that I vowed I'd never do is I went back to school because I barely graduated from high school. I wasn't a keen student. And 29, I go back a minute.
So you're not a stellar student. You're 18, and you talk a bank into loaning you money and you buy a restaurant. What did that. Did you have pictures, compromising photos of the banker? What was the. How did you get into that? What. What inspired that?
That's a good question. There was a, you know, back then, it Was called the Federal Business Development bank, and it was a government banking that, you know, kind of loaned money to, you know, kind of young entrepreneurs. And like, I, you know, foolish enough to give me the money, never asked me for a business plan and. And yeah, gave me the money. So you were a lot of valuable lessons. I learned a lot of valuable lessons in the two years in business, but, yeah, didn't make any money at it at all, so.
Fascinating. And what, so what did you learn from that? I mean, I guess I learned. I guess you learned you needed a plan, right?
Yeah, I learned I needed a plan. And basically I learned a whole lot of what I didn't know. I went into it thinking, hey, I can nail this, you know, I mean, I know how cook and. But running a business and leading staff is a whole different thing, you know, and so, yeah, those were some valuable lessons. And those are the kinds of lessons that no university or college education is going to give you. Right. Those are on the job lessons that you learn. And.
The pain of failure is tuition.
Oh, yeah. But at 29, I went back to school to become a minister. And, you know, and So I spent 20 years as a minister. Now, there's a challenge that with a. Comes along with that is because, remember, I'm an entrepreneur. Churches don't tend to be entrepreneurial. They tend to want to maintain things the way they are. But I got, you know, the churches I was in always wanted somebody who was a change agent. So I did that and then eventually ended up in a. In an executive position with the denomination here in Canada. So I was working with a collection of churches in two provinces here in Canada. And yeah, that. That was interesting too, because basically what I was doing is I was coaching these church leaders who had no plan I. What they could be, but I saw what they were, and there was a huge gap between what they could be and what and where they were. And, you know, long story short, that that job came to an end and I became.
Wait, hang on a second. How many churches were you working with at that point?
45.
Oh, so that's a lot of churches and pastors and their administrative teams and that kind of thing. And how long. How long were you doing that?
I did that kind of executive role working with those 45 churches for five years.
Oh, yeah. That's a while.
Yeah. And I did a lot of traveling and saw a lot of different situations and, you know, saw a lot of good people who meant well but, you know, couldn't plan their way out of a, you know, A wet paper bag if their life depended on it. And you know, as an entrepreneur, I kept pushing the window of the envelope and I realized, you know, that there was more that I wanted to do. And so I was, I thought about going out because a lot of what I was doing with these church leaders was consulting and coaching work. You know, I was coaching them through some difficult situations, problems helping them draft, vision and stuff like that. And, but I wanted to do more. And I was introduced to Vern Harnish's book Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. And I read the book and realized, yeah, this is written for entrepreneurs and business, but the principles fit for nonprofits. And yes, to tweak some of the language, but this model would work really, really well. And so, long story short, my brother is a partner in an accounting firm out on the west coast of Canada and one of his partners is a Gazelle's coach. And so I talked to my brother and I said, hey, you've got this Mastering the Rockefeller Habits on your website. What, what is this? Well, talk to Casey. He says, all I know is we got a coach and it's totally changed how we work together as partners for the better. And so I talked to Casey and Casey introduced me to, you know, the Gazelle's coaching kind. And so seven years ago I started out my own consulting company, Power of One Consulting with a focus exclusively working with nonprofits and taking burn Harnish's four decisions planning model and customizing it for nonprofits and helping them scale up their growth and their impact in terms of the work they were doing to bring change to their communities.
Yeah, really clear. So you, so five years working with churches, then you adopt the Gazelles framework, you begin to expand out to all kinds of purpose led organizations and, and then the last seven years in, in that whole world.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
What have you noticed in that process? What are the big things that, that hit them, that surprise them, that they struggle with?
I mean, I think there's a couple of themes. One, I mean what I saw in churches, a lot of good people who mean well but don't necessarily, they're in a role where they don, have the skills and the tools that they need to really excel at that job. So as I started connecting with nonprofit, you know, I met a lot of good people but you know, they'd risen up to the ranks of executive director or CEO of their organization, but they'd never let a team didn't know how to run, do a business plan, didn't even some of them don't even know how to read a, you know, a financial statement, you know, but they've risen up through the ranks because they're passionate about the cause, you know, and so you have teams of people who are driven by a real clear sense of purpose. You know, we care about what this organization is about. We want it people. We want to make a difference. I think the other thing that really surprised me is that. And my approach has always been to work with the executive leadership team of the organization as well as the board, because the board is responsible for owning the strategic direction of the organization. And, I mean, I've seen this, you know, in almost every board organization that I've worked with is, you know, I'm walking the board and the executive leadership team through a strategic planning process. And, you know, all of a sudden, you see these business leaders, their eyes start to light up, the palm to the forehead where they're saying, oh, my goodness, I know this stuff from my business. Why have I not thought about bringing it into this nonprofit? You know, and so seeing business leaders who have so much more that they could bring to the organization and really help the organization build a stronger foundation that in the long run will make them more sustainable. And a lot of nonprofit leaders will say, well, we're not a. We're not a business. I say, okay, nonprofit is a tax category, not a business model. I come at them and I say, you know, you owe it to the people who fund you, whether they're donors or, you know, foundations. You owe it to them to employ the best business practices and how you use the resources and the money that they're giving you, the people you're trying to help, you owe it to them to run your organization as if it was a business. And you can do that without in any way compromising your core purpose or your core values of your organization. And for a lot of nonprofit leaders, that's a big paradigm shift. But when they get it, they scale up their growth and their impact. And, you know, they start measuring things other than just how many dollars did we bring in and how much money do we have left in the bank? They start measuring, okay, what is the impact we're trying to make, and how would we know what constitutes a win in terms of the program and service delivery and the change that we're trying to bring to our community and the group of people we're trying to serve?
Well, you know what strikes me right away, one of the first big takeaways for business leaders, entrepreneurs, from this is that is a parallel, right? You Said nonprofit is a tax model or a structure and not a tight business model. Not a business model. Right. And I think that's a really useful thing. There's a parallel that we hear from, especially from new clients, early stage clients, is you don't understand my business, oh wait, you don't understand my industry. And a lot of people will be like, well, but does your scaling framework apply for tech or healthcare? You name it, pick any industry. Oh, you don't know about gift or manufacturing or services or et cetera. No, these are universal things that we do. This is a non specialized overall framework, drawing and living and breathing organic kind of thing that we're continually evolving that brings the best of practices in each area of people, strategy, execution and care. It doesn't have anything to do with your industry and within your company, within your business. We frequently think that we need to do something different or things don't apply to us and it's just nonsense. Right. So that like I say it virtually all the time and that is that the coach being outside your business, coming from an experience of multiple industries or even look, if you're not working with a coach, somebody else, a mastermind, group member, an advisory board member, a friend, mentor, a forum mate, whatever it is in your world, the things they see and point to are enormously valuable. But our first instinct is to sort of discount them that input because they'll be like, well, you don't understand. And in fact that's a very powerful thing. I tell people I'm a coach by virtue of my commitment and some experience, but it doesn't mean, and I'm not a good coach because I'm smarter than you, more successful, richer, etc. I'm a successful coach and we are collectively right, not just focused on me, because we are outside your business with a set of practices. We are not swimming in your water. And the phrase or the saying is that we'll never know who discovered water. But you could be pretty sure it wasn't a fish, right? Yeah. So there you are in your business, your non profit or whatever and you think, well, it just makes sense to have all these weird people doing all these weird roles and organize where you are and you don't stop and look at what are the key roles that need to be covered and how should that be organized? Forget titles and reporting structures, but what, but who needs to be accountable for what in any business, right? That was one that you were speaking to. And then what is your business model and what are you measuring? And that kind of Thing like having a plan. I frequently deal with very, I mean business. Just in the last year alone, businesses over $400 million that and hundreds of millions of dollars that they have these vague things. It's not written down. It's remarkable how far you can get with no alignment on what the goals are, the plan is or how you're going to get it done. Nothing quite written down or things written down, but continually changing, complex. No owners, no metrics. Right. All the things that you're talking about, that's not a plan. And what the nonprofit says is, well, you don't understand, we're not a business. And the business says, well, you don't understand. This is some special industry category, regulatory, etcetera, etcetera.
Yep. And guess what? They all need a plan.
You know, it's all self delusional though.
Yeah, it is, it is. And we come in as coaches and I mean for me, I know a lot of their pain points and their backstory so I can start putting my finger on some things and start asking the kinds of questions that start surfacing those. But like you said, I'm, I'm not swimming in their water so I can ask some of those questions and without kind of being controlled by some of the fear that they have internally because they're afraid to face some of those things and they don't want to really take the look in the mirror. But we can hold the mirror up in front of them and say, what do you see? We can help you, you know.
Right. So we talk about a plan and some people hear a business plan and they get all overwhelmed and they think about documents that some bank or investment partner, maybe not the one that lended you money at 18, but perhaps more typical ones, they want to see these big documents, supporting evidence and things like that. We're talking in this case about the one page strategic plan, which is one big page or even our small page vision summary where you're knocking down what are you trying to accomplish, why, who's doing what and when, what are the goals and what are the major things we're going to do to accomplish it. Right. Very simple one page kind of things.
Absolutely.
So clear plans. Right. A business model that makes sense, getting the right people, not just taking anybody because they share your passion. And then you were talking a little bit about alignment. Say more about that.
Well, one of the things, I mean one of the exercises I use and it's been profound when I've done it, I was, this goes back early when I was starting out, I Worked with one organization, and the board and their key management team were in the room. There's about 20 people in the room. And I said, okay, I'll, you know, I said, do you guys have a. Do you guys have a mission statement? Oh, yeah, we do. I said, well, what is it? Well, they all looked at the floor. Nobody would maintain eye contact with me. So finally one guy, you know, who, you know, he was an mba, and he said, he says to anybody, have our, you know, our. Our board policy manual? Yeah, the board chair says, yeah, I do. Well, the mission statement's in there. So the board chair gave me the mission statement and I read it. And it was one of these flowery statements, you know, that, you know, a lot of these organizations have. And I finished reading it. The same guy says, wow, I'm inspired. And one of the exercises we use is we get everybody in room to take out a piece of paper and say in one sentence, write out your strategy. So I did it with this group. Guess how many statements I had? 22 different statements, but they had all come into the room, assuming that they were all aligned, pulling in the same direction. Now, there were some nuances in some of the statements that were similar, but there wasn't one overriding statement that was governing this organization. And so part of what we do is we start walking them through this planning process is that we surface some of that stuff and we get them talking about the stuff that is really foundational and important. If you think of it as a house, it's the concrete footings and foundation that the whole organization is going to rest on. And if you don't do that foundation well, and if it isn't solid, everything else is going to collapse in on that. Right. And so getting them clear and aligned on terms of what is our purpose, what are our core values? Are these values just slogans, or do they actually shape the cultural DNA of our organization? And what I found is a lot of them, their core values are slogans. They don't really shape the DNA of the organization. You know, what is the big, hairy, audacious goal that we're pursuing? You know, the destination? Are we clear on what that is? You know, have we talked about what our most pressing priorities are? And are we aligned around those? And do we know what we need to do to make tangible, concrete, measurable steps of progress towards our big, hairy, audacious goal and realizing that goal? And so by, you know, facilitating that, you know, conversation. And I. And the way I work is always collaboratively. It's not like I had one client say to me, well, we'll pay you to write our strategic plan. And I said, if I wrote the strategic plan, how much, how much ownership do you think you'd have? They said, zero. I said, that's why I don't do it. I said, what I do is I'll lead you through a process where you develop your strategic plan. And if you develop it, how much ownership do you think you'll have? And they said, we'll own it. I said, yeah. And so, as you know, you walk them through that, what you do is you surface some of those, you know, alignment issues where they're as, they're assuming they're aligned, but you actually help them get aligned, pulling in the same direction. So it's not, you know, eight different legs of an octopus going in different directions. It's a team of horses all pulling in one direction. And that's how they can scale up their impact and make even bigger change in the world. Because that's ultimately what they want to do. That's what they, that's the, that's what's driving them.
So I'm going to still tease and hold back the, the biggest thing that I think that businesses can learn from nonprofits. So we'll just table that for a minute, let people know. I haven't forgotten that, but I think coming alongside some of what you said, there's some really important things here that I see again and again. I mean, even the last week with clients, they're like, okay, we've done mission, vision, values, or we've done your purpose thing, right? We do purpose versus mission or vision. Sometimes we'll do a more expanded version of vision, like a painted picture or vivid vision kind of thing. So we'll do that especially in the near term. So companies may or may not have done that work, but then we look at, does anyone know it? Does it make any difference? Right? So we go to work on not just articulating these things in the customer's own, the client's unique words, your organization, your business, but then we work on bringing them to life, infusing them into your culture and your day to day operations. And this is something that I think people forget a lot of times. They want to just put them down on the paper. Even our clients, they want, okay, we did that, great, we're done. No, you've got to grapple with it on a daily basis. What are your values? What's your purpose? What's your bhag, your big hairy, audacious Goal, right? JIM COLLINS so that's really purpose quantified, set in time. I take my purpose, I really look and it's surrounding something that I'm really good at. I add a metric to it and a date and I say, okay, by this date I'm going to have this kind of impact. But purpose, the first piece of it is the why of the work. Simon Sinek writes and speaks well on this in start with why and in his even his 17 minute TEDx talk. So the why is something like, I don't know, just off the top of my head, right? Ours is helping leaders build a better world world or said in your world for the, for the listener. Our purpose is helping you fulfill your vision. Right. And then some of our clients are like providing unique and awesome experience, solving real business problems, restoring the lives, business communities of the world, keeping the world working. There's a variety changing lives. There's a variety of different purpose statements that immediately spring to life. And we want to see those are deeply motivating. And then there are the values. Right? Values are, as you pointed out, not just some slogans like integrity, teamwork, communication, but descriptions of what you do unique to you. What really matters, your DNA, the way that you work. Right. The why and the how. The BHAG gives you kind of a what, a specific destination, a mountaintop to go conquer. But then we have to bring those into the culture, right?
Yep.
And what do you see when you go to do that? How do they do it? What, what's your approach in a non profit world?
Well, let me, let me tell you a story. I worked with division of the Salvation army here in Canada and we work through their core values. And you know, I mean, we have the mission to Mars exercise that comes out of Jim Collins stuff. And I find that to be a profound exercise. And so I, I had them walk through that as a team and they started to name people that they, if they were going to start their organization on Mars, they name other people that were, were in the room. And the impact it had was it had a profound team building aspect among them as a team, as they said, well, I would put you on the ship to Mars because you embodied this. But what was more profound is after they've got their values nailed down, they had a management team meeting a couple weeks later and they always did a barbecue for people in their community and they did it outside of their building. They had a nice grassy area and everybody, they had everybody sit on the grass. You know, you get your hot dog and your Hamburger, and you sit on your grass. And one of the team members said, one of our core values is dignity. Is that what dignity looks like? And they all looked at each other and they said, no, you know, we should. You know, it would be. If we want to treat them with dignity, we would give these people tables and chairs so they could sit down and enjoy their meal. So they did that, and the impact was shocking. You know, they had more people come. The people that came stayed longer. They developed connections with other people know, from the community, and they were shocked by that. They also did a weekly lunch program where people could come and have lunch for free. And they served all of these people lunch on paper plates, plastic cutlery, plastic, you know, drink glasses, you know, styrofoam mugs for coffee. And again, as they're looking at this and thinking through their core values, they said, is that what dignity looks like? And they said, well, no, you know, we have to get real dishes for these people. Let's, let's. Let's feed these people off of, you know, glass plates, real cutlery, glass glasses, mugs. And they said, well, what if they break them? And they said, well, that's the core value. We have to be prepared to pay the price. So they went out, made the investment, bought dishes. The first week they had the dishes out, and they weren't serving off of paper plates. They had. One of their regulars came in and he always had coffee. In the first week he was there, he sat and he had wrapped his arms around his mug for the whole lunch and didn't even touch his coffee. And one of the volunteers said to him, you know, aren't you going to drink your coffee? And you know what he said? He said, I can't remember the last time I held a mug in my hand. I mean, you know, that story still tears me up. I mean, you think about how that person was impacted by that. They'd been doing this for a few weeks, and they had a newcomer come in one day, and he tried to walk out with some of the dishes, and one of their regulars just gently went after him. He said, you know, we keep those dishes here so that they're here next week when we come back. The only problem they had with breakage was with volunteers who broke the dishes, not the customers who came. You know, the people who were cave and having careless with him. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so, I mean, that's where you see where these values really started to shape their culture, you know, and where they. They said, okay, we're delivering this Program and this service, you know, how do our values shape how we do what we do? That's really profound.
So you recently had a breakthrough in working with the United Way and started doing some work with that. Can you say just a little bit about what that, what that been like?
Yeah, I mean, you know, I've been, I've identified them as kind of a strategic partner that I wanted to kind of connect with and was hoping to be able to have, you know, the opportunity to have an introduction to them because they service a lot of nonprofit organizations. And I'm a member of local Rotary Club and the CEO from the United Way came and spoke at our, at our club. And so I went up to her after the meeting and introduced myself to her and said, this is what I do. Are you interested in having coffee?
And.
And she said absolutely. So we met and had coffee and I gave her a copy of my book. The entrepreneurial nonprofit brought along our one page strategic plan to show her kind of the process of what we do. And you know, she said, she said, ken, she said, I want to read your book and take a look through this. And I was heading off for a month of travel between work and some vacation time. She says, let's have coffee when we get back. When you get back. I said, okay. So we met again to have coffee. And she had read my book and looked through the strategic plan. And she said, ken, I've had lots of consultants come and talk to me about doing strategic planning with us. She says, but your model is so different. I can see how it would really help an organization. And I said, great. She says, we do these kind of lunch and learn sessions for our organizations and we bring in local professionals. She says, are you open to doing a session and we would promote it? I said, absolutely. So I put together some marketing stuff and did a two hour session. I called it From Surviving to thriving sustainability. The four decisions every nonprofit must get right. They had 40 people from 20 over 20 different organizations in the room. And the interesting thing is, is two weeks before I did my thing, they had another agency in our city present a thing on strategic planning. So they were blown away with kind of the response. And you know, coming out of that, I, you know, I said, one of the, to this night away, one of the things that I do is I do a one day workshop where I walk leadership teams through, you know, a planning process process. And they said, would you do one and we'd sponsor it. I said, sure. And so they were planning on coming. It's coming up here in a few weeks in the end of September. But I was down in San Antonio at our Gazelles conference and I get an frantic email from the CEO of the United Way saying, Ken, we can't wait until September. Can you give us two days in June? So I did a two day planning session with their management team in June and they kept saying this is so different than anything we have ever done around strategic planning. This is, you know, we've worked hard, we're tired, but we're energized, you know, and coming out of that, they've just signed on for an annual contract because they said, we realize in two days we've just started to scratch the surface and we know there's more work to do. And out of that session that I did with, you know, those 40 people that showed up, I've had a couple of organizations who have already signed up for an ongoing coaching relationship because they said this is so different than anything we've seen and we can see how we need this and how it can help us grow our organizations and help us get on the same page.
It's really great. And what a great organization to begin to work with because they're connected and have such a footprint for bringing our work to their work. So that's fantastic. And way to go on.
Well, and one of the things I think that's, I want to mention this about the United Way is one of the things that's really key with the United Way is that they have a heavy focus on evidence based research. And so they're doing, you know, and so they're measuring stuff and, and their agencies that they're funding, they want those agencies to have a plan and they can't be just fuzzy plans. I mean, they want to say, okay, what's the change you're making? How are you going to measure change? And so they're big on, you know, both the metrics and executing, you know, and identifying real issues, not just treating symptoms. And so yeah, great organization to connect with.
Absolutely. So let me give folks so a couple things to remember. One applies to both get the right people in the thing. Don't just take for granted that these are the people I've got. Go ahead and just suffer with whatever, even if they don't know how to do this particular role or whatever. But get the right person in the right seat doing the right kinds of things. And that's fundamental to some of our people decisions. And don't just hire them based on their passion, which is what you, you talk about seeing in the nonprofit world. But we see it also in for profit and growing business organizations too. They're like people who aren't right and they go ahead and keep them on because they're producing some results, but they don't really fit the team and the values or people who aren't really producing results, but they're like, hey, I just need somebody who can fog a mirror over there. I need anybody to do that work. It's not actually true. We take people out routinely from roles like that and we see the productivity of the whole team go up because the energy that people who don't fit and aren't performing take out of the team far outweighs whatever contribution they have. So we see that on a regular basis. Then just get simple, clear, executable plans and bring good execution discipline to following through on your plans. And the last thing is get the people aligned. So I said there was a huge lesson and that is this purpose, right? So. So purpose led organizations, nonprofits are purpose led organizations. And that's the thing that you see right away is there's lots of people who are passionate. They may all have a different idea about what it means. It's sometimes taken for granted or assumed, but people pour their heart and soul, they give their waking hours, they work late into the night around their nonprofits. And we don't see the same kind of volunteerism, passion, energy in every business that we work with. Because the why of the work, the purpose, is unclear. But I have never failed to work with a business and not articulate a purpose with that team that everybody was passionate about and those that weren't, just so that they were on the wrong team and left. But there's no team. And I have had CEOs go, oh, this touchy feely purpose, like, I don't really know. I've thought about it. He never can get it right. I don't know what it is for us. I've heard variations on that comment again and again. But when you dial it in, you attract retention, retain the best people, and you get the best effort out of them. So declare, create and articulate a purpose and then reinforce it again and again. Your recruiting and your onboarding and your daily operations and your weekly meetings throughout your business. This is why we're here. This is, yeah, we get paycheck and yeah, we have investors and things like that. But the why of our work is this purpose. And then the variation on it that's also motivating is that BHAG piece, right? Which is the 10 year goal that that's both profit, nonprofit, what are we trying to accomplish at some big time horizon out there in the future? And both the purpose and the BHAG are highly motivating for people to do their great work. And even the people that aren't going to be there forever, right? People that know, hey, I'm just here for the next two years because they walk away knowing they contributed to someone conquering a mountain. And when you do hit that goal, they know and they look back and they say, I was part of that, that team. I contributed to that. And the difference you get in the quality of work is palpable, is measurable. So those are the big takeaways, I think. And they apply both to nonprofit and for profit. And there are some of those key lessons that we can see that we can learn in for profit business. Looking at the social sector nonprofit organizations, let me just tell folks where to learn a little bit more about you and your work. So Ken's book is the Entrepreneurial Nonprofit. You can find it on Amazon now. The key to Maximizing sustainable impact. So it's really the application of this work and the related stuff that is an expression of your experience in this field. And then his website is ThePowerOfOneConsulting CA, right? PowerOfOneConsulting CA. That's where you can learn about Ken and his work. If you'd like to connect him with someone or get in touch with him. Of course, he's at all of our Fortune summits where by the time people listening to this will be headed off to the next one. So I want to point to that. And then on our website, the main thing I'd like to tell you is if you go to scalingupbusiness.com you'll find a free download there that contains an overview. The first roughly 18 pages of the Scaling up book. They give you the beginning of that. Now you'll want to. Then if it's a fit for you, you'll want to buy it. Because the rest of the book is like a manual for running a growing business. But. But we give you the overview and then we give you both worksheets and a template for starting your own planning sessions and doing it on your own without even hiring a coach. So you can get started now doing some of that work. And of course you can look, if we've got a workshop coming up in your area, register for a workshop that fits. Bring your team to that as well. But the main thing I would tell you is go get that growth kit, start to learn and see what missing that would make a powerful difference in your your business. I hey Ken, I want to thank you for coming on the show and sharing some of your experience with with our listeners and of course it's great to talk to you. As always, I want to thank our listeners for showing up. We'll see you next week for another show and thanks everyone. Talk to you next.
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