It's like a TED talk for Mentoring

Living a life in full is a conversation you always wanted to have with that person who gave an amazing TED Talk or the author of one of your favorite books, or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. It's graduate level conversations with those making a difference in the world and in the lives of others. This show brings you new ideas and approaches so that you can live a life in full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout and I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by the new fellowship and certificate programs now being offered by the center for Global Initiatives. As you may know, the center is an all volunteer organization and the same is true for the faculty in these programs. So all the tuition goes to support the work of the Center. It has always been our ethos to open source humanitarian intervention and these programs use the same approach in that all the materials we use are freely available all the time to anyone, everywhere, even if you don't take a course. We have built a world class faculty and contracts with other universities, medical schools and partnered NGOs. There are two fellowship tracks, one for those wishing to start their own nonprofit or non governmental organization and one for those seeking mentorship for career development and advancement and humanitarian work. Our initial certificate programs include humanitarian intervention, social entrepreneurship and global health practice. Please consider taking a world class masterclass with us. Visit alifeinfull.org and click on the CourseWorks tab to learn more. Thanks. Welcome to another episode of Living a Life in Full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout. This is a special in between so that we do periodically and generally specific to humanitarian work. Doctors Param Singh, a Carnegie Bosch professor of Business Technologies and Marketing at the David A. Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, and Rohit Aggarwal, Associate professor and Ph.D. coordinator of Information Systems at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah, have built a site they call mentor students@mentorstudents.org the idea is to have a multidisciplinary site where mentors are invited to respond to interview questions to help students and new grads with their career readiness, to provide insights on various job roles and for me in the humanitarian space and how to prepare. I also discuss in this episode how to get published and a few other areas. The goal is to be like a TED Talk for mentoring and and I'm honored to have been invited a couple of technical notes before we start. First off, this podcast version includes hearing the interviewer's questions. He did not have the best connectivity in the world so that may sound a bit hinky at first, but I think you'll get the gist as an alternative way to listen or watch is to see the YouTube version, which omits hearing the interviewer's cueing question and is edited down for just my answers. The YouTube version includes not just the video but also a transcript. That link is in the show notes, or you can simply look for it on my YouTube channel. YouTube's transcript is a digital conversion, so it's not perfect, but a help if need be. You can also go to mentorstudent.org for their version of my transcript and view many other interviews as well. I highly recommend it for all the tools and links I discuss in this episode. Please go to a lifeinfull.org and now on with the show.

How did you get to where you are today? What incidents and experiences shaped your career path and what inspired you to work on the startup on this nonprofit idea?

I've written a variety of different places about what I call being an accidental humanitarian. I first I had a goal some years ago to climb the Seven Summits, the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents. And I was doing Tanzania, which is a good starter one back in the early 90s and met a fellow who was a porter on the on the climb with me. And in that process we got to know each other. He wanted me to try and teach him some English. I wanted him to try and teach me some Swahili. And we really kind of bonded around that. And he was working as a porter to kind of put himself through school to eventually become a priest. So we kept in touch. Back in the 90s it was very primitive pre email and things like that. So we were kind of wanting to do things to be able to be helpful with him. We kept in touch and over time he got he became a priest and got involved with working with orphan children in Tanzania. And one of the things that we wanted to do was to be able to help support them. So we would send over materials, education materials that then evolved into funds, and with those funds then they were able to develop a kindergarten and some other projects that I'm sure we'll talk about in this conversation. So it really was by any strategic kind of way that I wanted to go out and create this. It just sort of organically happened and hence I call it accidental humanitarian. And basically I was kind of funding everything out of my own pocket, which was fine, everything was all very modest. But my mentor at the time said to me, you know, you can keep funding this. But what you really need to do is, you know, kind of step it up a notch and become a legitimate 501C3. So I said, I have no idea how to do that. And he said, contact my wife, who was an attorney. He was an attorney as well. And they then helped pro bono put through all the forms and paperwork and things that you have to submit for us in the state of Illinois to incorporate and then to subsequently send off to the federal government, to the Internal Revenue Service, Department of Treasury, to get certified, get vetted and certified. And then that was really the start of becoming an official 501.

So can you also walk us through your first few weeks when you started working on this project and how did things change over the next few months?

I'll probably maybe dial back the scope of things. Our ethos was and continues to be that we are the people that someone might contact if they need help. We didn't go out searching for projects or anything like that. We didn't throw a dart on the map and say, let's go to Tanzania, let's go to Bolivia, etc. We had some kind of contacts or some kind of way through our network of friends and colleagues that said, hey, we know that you do this kind of work, or we think you do this kind of work. Could you help us or could you connect us with somebody that could be helpful with that? So we started off with a number of projects over the first couple of years. None of them were exactly full time projects and we're again an all volunteer organization. So myself and everyone else that works at the center are all donating our time and volunteering. No one gets any kind of compensation for it. Which again is kind of part of our model that every dollar that comes into the center gets spent on the work of the cent. It doesn't cover overhead and things like that. So anyway, we got up to about our sixth project and someone had come to us and said we want to do a project in Ukraine. They wanted us to partner with them on a USAID grant. They told us about what they needed and it was a three year commitment if the grant was funded. And it would require one of the members of our center, probably me being trained as a psychologist, to go over each quarter, so four times a year over the course of three years to do evaluations in these orphanages. And you know, I kind of like look sideways at my colleagues because the time there would be probably about two to three weeks. And I didn't have, you know, I had a day job I didn't have two or three weeks every quarter to, you know, to go to Kiev and work on this project. So. And nor did anyone else in our organization. So the outcome of that was that they didn't get funding, which is not good. But the other outcome was that we did a. Our center did a major pivot. We realized that relatively quickly. We had kind of maxed out on our capacity, our scalability. And I was thinking, well, this is great, you know, kind of tripping right out of the gates. So we put our board together, put our brains together, put our heads together, and came up with our pivot of saying. The board had said to me, you guys, you have put together a lot of tools, a lot of things. You've learned a lot. You've learned how to become a 501C3. All of those are tools that can help others go out and do their projects or can help others become and build their own 501C3. So take that concept and what we then kind of framed it as is open sourcing, humanitarian intervention. So everything we do in those instances of sharing materials, et cetera, are all done free of charge to anyone that, you know, comes to our website and looks at that or reaches out to me. So that was kind of our. Our first start was really kind of. Kind of tricky and difficult, but all sort of organically starting.

Awesome. Okay, so what the challenges in building the initial team and how they overcome and how the team's composition, dynamics, time, and resource commitment evolve.

We. When we first started, we had to put together a board, as, you know, do all nonprofits do. And we had a kind of a director's board and an advisory board. And so really, kind of the first things that I did, it was sort of like, I started off on project and was kind of doing that all by myself. And then once we became a 501C3, we enlisted the help and brain power of others. But again, it was just sort of organic. I went out to people that I knew, that I knew had worked in this space, maybe in a different kind of area, maybe more nonprofit education, but generally internationally involved, and asked them for help. I was also teaching at a graduate program that had an opportunity to have students be involved in research. So I got about. I forget if it was four or five students that were just excellent. And we went out and started interviewing some of the nonprofits that I had felt were really terrific places. Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, et cetera, some of the big names, but then also some of the smaller organizations as well. And we put all that together and created a book called the New Humanitarians. And the New Humanitarians sort of became our guidebook to say, here are some models of kind of what we could do with that and how we could start developing our own projects. We learn from people what didn't go well, and then what we could then do to try to avoid that. Awesome.

Okay, so who are the target beneficiaries of your nonprofit? And can you share a few stories about how your nonprofit has made a difference for them?

Sure. Back to Tanzania. So we really kind of winnowed down our focus to being just those people that were kind of most colligial with. We really couldn't take on any new projects. So we thought we'd kind of double down on the people that we were already working with and the partners we already had. So we always left it, always still do, leave it up to them in terms of what they define, what their needs are. And then we look to see if we can fill those needs. There was a, as I had mentioned, the. The aspect of working with some kids in an orphanage. We then started providing funds to be able to help build that, and they created a kindergarten. So one of our outcomes that we're very proud of and continue to support to this day are the students in that kindergarten, the building of that kindergarten, the materials, the faculty, staff, etc. And then also my colleague and friend who is there, the priest in Tanzania, his name's Alois. Alois then got involved in A2 Hospitals in Tanzania that he's the chaplain at. So they also have education, kinds of needs for training nurses and staff and other kinds of professionals. And one year they had a. Just a very bad malaria outbreak, so to speak. And a number of people were hospitalized for it a variety of ages. And while it's still the most economic thing to do is to have treated mosquito nets. But it was too late. These people were already sick, so they needed care. So we did a fundraiser for that and then got those dollars over there, got them converted to Tanzanian shillings, and found out that an entire treatment protocol for those patients with a very good treatment outcome wound up costing 73 cents a life. So we were just sort of amazed with all that. They sourced all the medications, they did all the treatment and things like that themselves. So it really felt like a partnership. The things that they could do and do well, they were able to do. And the things that we could do to be able to be a support of that was. Was also key to us. So we always then Take a look. I come from background of evaluation and outcomes. So we always have an outcomes focus with what it is that we do that we want to see. You know, measure what, you know, what was it, you know, how many lives saved or how many kids were able to get through a program or how many nurses were able to be trained, things like that. They also identified that they needed an ambulance. And one of our volunteers, kind of all on her own was able to put together an approach to be able to get them an ambulance in 2019. So those are the kinds of outcomes that we, you know, tend to be able to take a look at. A little bit of public health, but a lot of it more clinical, outcome based.

So what are the profiles of people who volunteer for your organization and how do you recruit, engage and retain them?

Great question. We, I think by virtue of I give a lot of talks, I write a fair amount in this space, I'm a LinkedIn influencer and write a lot in there about activities and projects and humanitarian intervention and global health. So we try to get our name out there in any which way that we can. And then people will sometimes in graduate programs or in medical schools have heard about us or some of their faculty know about us, so they'll connect us in doing that. That's kind of how we recruit our volunteers. On the staff side, again, there's no paid staff, so those are really kind of our advisors and they're sort of a, you know, we have annual meetings and stuff with our directors. But in terms of kind of the more overarching, connecting kinds of advisors or people that we can specifically go to to get help on a project, or if there might be a project where we don't have an expertise, like maybe more of an engineering project or a project to do drilling or build a bridge or drilling for water bridge or something like that, that's not really our focus or skill set. But we have colleagues or friends of colleagues that are able to do that. So our advisor group, we reach out to them for those kinds of questions and then circle back to whoever it is that's in need to try and make those kinds of connections. Awesome.

All right, what type of donors, foundations and grant making agencies do you target and what approaches have been successful in raising funds from them?

That is probably my big weakness. I really hate asking people for money. It's very difficult for me. I think that's why my mentor sort of kicked me in the pants and said, are you going to fund this whole thing yourself forever or do you need some Help. So we have gone after grants, somewhat unsuccessfully with some partners in Benin, a very competitive grant by the Rolex Foundation. So we've gone through those processes and again, it's just, it's sort of some, a lot of the grant kinds of things that we would look for in terms of funding maybe only happen in a cycle of every two years or something like that. So that, that also makes it difficult because if someone that you're partnering with to help get a grant, doesn't get the grant, they either, you know, they're not going to wait two years to do their project, so, or they get sort of, you know, just such, such a level of disappointment. They say, well, I don't even want to try this again. Or this was, that was hard enough the first time. You know, why put all this effort to that, which I totally get. So part of our other fundraising ways to try and be fun and clever was that since how this all got started as Tanzania is part of a climb, subsequent climbs that I have done I always make as a fundraiser and awareness raiser for the work of our center and for those that we work with and collaborate with. So I had one colleague that said that he would donate X number of dollars for every thousand feet that I climbed. So sort of like I made it to the top, it would equal $9,000 or $900 or something like that. So people have fun with that. And that's been a fun creative thing. As I mentioned earlier, I also write a fair amount and a couple of the books that I have done, one with Wiley and one independently. All the profits and proceeds of that, of the royalties then go back to. And most recently just within the kind of. We haven't had our official launch, we're going to do that in January, but we've had kind of a quiet opening is that we're developing a certificate and fellowship program. So the certificate program is a 10 week course that two different kinds. One is in global health, one is in humanitarian intervention. So all of the materials for all of those courses are free, but the tuition cost in terms of the working with one of the faculty is where the funding comes in. And all of that funding again would go 100% to supporting the work of the center, not to cover anyone's salary because all the faculty are donating their time. And then also we have a fellowship program that's kind of two tracks. One track is for those that want to have a more intensive mentorship experience with myself or another faculty member. And the other is to then very in Depth help someone develop their own 501 nonprofit. Awesome.

Okay, so how do you hire and manage your marketing team, including agencies and part time workers, to increase awareness about your efforts and any marketing tools that you use?

Well, we don't hire any marketing team. I think you're probably talking to the CMO here again, because we don't use any of our funds to pay for marketing or websites or anything like that. So, you know, all of the dollars that we have get spent on, you know, on our projects. So what do we do? What do you do if you don't have a marketing budget or a marketing staff or anything like that? We do. And if, you know, people are listening to this and they're involved and want to volunteer for us and help us out as a volunteer with our marketing, we would certainly welcome that. But nevertheless, I use tools. We have a pretty good presence in social media on a variety of different platforms. Like I said, I write for LinkedIn as an influencer, so a lot of those posts are in the healthcare, global health, humanitarian technology space. We have a very strong presence on Facebook. We have an open Facebook group if anybody wants to follow with that. We also I have a podcast, Living a Life in Full, which oftentimes has someone that specifically works in the humanitarian space. Or if not a specific thing, it's usually part of who they are and what their projects and things are. So we really try to kind of broadly base across a variety of different kinds of social media and social channels to be able to provide free, if you will. Like a podcast could be kind of considered a lecture. We also then have all these other kinds of blog things that are available on LinkedIn. We have a daily basically news feed that happens on Facebook.

Awesome. Okay, so how do you quantify the impact made by your programs and what kind of key performance indicators do you use to track your progress?

Part of it's what we talked about a little bit before in terms of like looking at how many kids. Like our key performance indicators could be things like number of children that make it through the program and graduate number of new teachers that have been recruited into that program. Every year there's going to be kids that graduate, but not every year. Do you need to hire new faculty? Because once you get your faculty set and if they don't leave, they're good. So we look at those kinds of measures and metrics. How do those graduates then do? Do they go on to other kinds of secondary and tertiary levels of education? And if so, what do they then do? And now that We've been doing this since like officially for about 12 years and unofficially for close to 20. A lot of the former students, or kids as I would call them, have graduated now. They've come back to mentor there in Tanzania or help support the programs with their donations as well. We also, like I noted, the 73 cents of life. So every time we fund, provide funds to our partners, they give us an amazingly down to the penny of a shilling accounting for what that work has done. So we oftentimes will then send that back out as part of, we have a mailchimp mailing list. If anybody wants to be a part of that, they can certainly get on that. But we also let our donors know in terms of what the metrics are of where their dollars got spent and how they got spent spent. So it educated X number of kids, it funded Y number of medications and treatment, it got us a, an ambulance for our partners, that type of thing. So there's always kind of a very specific kind of accounting. We never tell our partners what it is they need or what it is we'll fund. We always provide the funds and then they tell us how they've done, what they've spent it on. They've always been very good stewards of those dollars and funds.

That's great. Okay, so what are the most pressing needs or issue faced by our organization and what are your organization's short term and long term plans

right now? These are such great questions. We have done a, I wouldn't call it a pivot, but we've kind of shifted. One of the key things that, you know, we're dealing with is, you know, the, the pandemic. So that is very much a global health, you know, period, full stop kind of issue. And it's hard to, we felt it like, you know, do we do a, like a newsletter and well, you know, by, if you send out the newsletter on a monthly basis, it's going to be out of date, you know, by the time it gets out to people and etc. Etc. So we decided to take advantage of our Facebook group and then we basically anywhere from one to five or six newsfeed posts from vetted non fake news, might be science, scientific journals, Lancet might be World Health Organization, it might be Johns Hopkins, Bloomberg School of Public Health, et cetera, any kind of legitimate source that has expertise in this area. We then post on that. And then oftentimes that will cue other members of the group to, you know, ask questions. Other members of the group might answer those questions. So it Creates kind of our way of having a thumb on the pulse. And it's not just for people that are healthcare professionals. It's for everybody. Any, every, anybody and everybody. Some stuff is very scientific and scientific journal, peer reviewed kinds of stuff. Other things are like, how do I deal with the holidays and social distancing, how do I deal with the job loss and subsequent, you know, anxiety, you know, so any and all of those kinds of things are in there with very actionable suggestions and tips. So that's, that's been a little different for us and that's a short term shift that we've done long term. You know, it's always an issue of funding. We all, we will continue to do what we can for fundraisers. Developing our fellowship and certificate program is again something that's going to be a more long term thing for us. We hope so. People will get involved in that and people will take the courses and join the fellowship, become fellows of our center. And we'd like to grow that and expand that, get more faculty. We've got a number of contracts with a number of medical schools and universities. We'd like to expand that out and grow that and build it. And that would simultaneously not just do more good work, but also be able to support our projects a little bit better. And we also kind of subscribe to the Covian philosophy of begin with the ending in mind. We don't expect that the center for Global Initiatives will go for 200 years and sort of the perspective of creative destruction. And at what point in time do we say, you know, we've done what we can, we've partnered with a number of other people, it's now time to sort of, you know, for the band to break up, so to speak, to disband and then what do we do with, you know, continuing to support and launch the partnerships and things that we've done? How do we transition those kinds of things? So I think it's important that we never ever get jaded or get to the point of thinking about we exist for the reason to keep ourselves in existence. It's like no, we exist to get projects done, to help other people do their projects so that they're not dependent on us and then continue to kind of rinse and repeat and grow that. So at the tail end of the activities of our center, that's probably the approach that will, we'll keep in mind. But we always, you know, we don't have any fantasies or delusions that the center will exist forever. So what can we do with the most sustainability to get our other colleagues sustainable and independent and not, you know, not to abandon anybody, but just also to have a level of scalability and sustainability with every. Every person and project that we're involved with.

Okay, okay. So what were the major exciting and memorable moments? And were there also any moments that almost got you to quit? And how did you get past them?

Oh, goodness. I'll just mention a couple of highlight things and then give a more granular answer. The pivot was probably a big deal. We've kind of already talked about that. Of thinking that the center was going to go out and be involved in a bazillion projects and manage all those kinds of things. Things and, you know, realizing that we weren't. So there's other ways to be able to provide benefits, that people can do it for themselves. But like, I have worked in a Bolivian prison. Two different. Three different ones, two different female prisons and one male prison. I got dysentery while I was working there. So that was quite a memorable and unpleasant experience. I'm a big fan of Cipro ever since. Since then. So sometimes some of the projects that you get involved with are very, you know, you kind of put yourself out on the line a little bit. I was invited to our center myself, and our center was invited to do a project in Rwanda. And I invited a colleague to come along with me. And we were heading over there and we were stopped in Nigeria. We were. The flights were restricted to go from going from Nigeria to Kigali, Rwanda. So we were kind of stuck there. So we. Long story short, we got on the next plane that we could that was kind of heading towards Kigali, and we. That we were dropped off in Burundi. And at the time, Burundi was in civil war. So we landed at this airfield. A stair step thing came out to, you know, let us. I don't know where the guys went that were managing that, but they sort of disappeared. My friend and I and a few of the other people that were on this plane went out into the. The airport, as it were, and no one was there there. And it's like where there used to be a payphone, the payphones are ripped out of the walls. There was like birds flying around. All the glass was broken out. And we had no, like, forward ticket to know, like, well, what's going on? So we were just literally kind of, you know, out in this. This outpost. So finally a plane came and, you know, we thought, well, we don't know where this plane's going, but it's going Somewhere and we're not going anywhere. So there's a variety of different kinds of things like that where it can get a little dicey. I've had challenges with thefts and pickpockets and kind of border guards that didn't want to let you through without bribes. And just, you know, there's story after story of those kinds of things working in areas where it's relatively desperate and desolate. You combine that with going on climbing trips where there's very little infrastructure and support, and it makes for a lot of kind of crazy times, I guess. The other maybe to end on a nicer note, that was a nice surprise, was that with all of the development that we did for the starting of this kindergarten with the kids, the orphan children in Tanzania, they named the kindergarten after me, which I. That totally caught me, you know, off guard. I was like, that was never a goal, that was never a request. It never even occurred to me that, you know, that. What. Why would you even think of that? So again, that was just like one of those things that I feel like the work, doing this kind of work, it's very easy to do it without, you know, doing it for a paycheck or a salary or anything because there's so many other kinds of, you know, interstitial rewards and these kinds of things, things that, you know, that just makes you feel very proud and very committed to the partners that you have.

That sounds amazing, sir. All right, so can you also talk about your research feedback sought and time spent in writing your latest book? And how is this process different from the one for older books, if any?

I love your questions. Gosh. The latest one is why Global Health Matters. And it was really sort of a compendium of kind of where we're going, where my work has evolved to. The background of a lot of the other work that I had done was specific to psychology. It started to branch out. Like when I did the New Humanitarians book with those graduate students that I was talking about, that was starting to get away from psychology. Although there's a lot of organizations and the new humanitarians that were psychology based. I had done a lot of writing with Wiley in terms of clinical treatment planning, in terms of clinical practice development and starting a practice in terms of evidence based practice and evidence based medicine within psychiatry and psychology. So those were all kind of foundational of how do you build things and how do you evaluate things and how do you create things that then help all of those things work, work better together. For why Global Health Matters, there were chapters that. That I authored and co authored, but there were a lot of other people that I was starting to work with that I was, like, amazed by the. The work that they had done were in areas that I knew something about. And I learned, you know, what they were doing was just amazing. There are other authors that were working in areas that I had never even heard of. So I got to learn a lot about them. And my goal with that book was then to give voice to these other people that are doing amazing kinds of things that maybe not a whole lot of people know about, and then to, you know, mercenarily, to kind of learn myself. Just like the new humanitarians. How did they do that and how did they do this? So. And it's just sort of great fun when you edit a book that you get to do it with your collaborators and, you know, they become your friend. Some. Some were friends first and some, you know, everyone was friends afterwards, not just with myself and the contributors, but with each other as well, because we got to read each other's work and give feedback and support. So it was kind of a yeoman's job. It was a very large book. I think it was pushing 500 pages. But it was sort of like editors talk about in film. You can't edit out your darlings and leave them on the cutting room floor. So again, we had the availability and option to grow the chapters. If a chapter needed a couple more pages beyond what our page limit was, we could. Could kind of renegotiate things and be able to make that happen. And that's been different from a lot of my other experiences with books where they're so rigorous and so regimented and you got hit the deadlines really solidly and things like that. This was a wonderful group of people to work with and just really proud of the work that they did. Standing on the shoulders of giants. I did very little. They did a great deal. And I'm so happy that the book is out there. There.

Okay, so how much of your first book did you write before pitching it? And how did you pitch it to agents and publishers? And how challenging was the process to get your first contract?

Oh, gosh. How many hours do we have? The. The. The shortened version of all this was. And if people are interested in writing, here's my big advice on this. And I actually have some. I've done a couple of presentations on this that are just. Just go to slideshare.com and put in my name. They'll pop up pretty quickly. I never have written a book without having a contract first. So a lot of people will write the books. And it depends on the kind of. I mean, I write nonfiction, I'm not writing a novel or anything like that. So there's a variety of really strong reasons for that. I'll just give a couple of the highlights is that you could have a wonderful idea that is very publishable. You can be a very good writer and not need a whole lot of editing and all those good things to help going from idea to book in the bookstore. The parts in between are things like some publishers want to say, oh gosh, I really wish you would have contacted me. They haven't said it to me because I haven't done this, but I've heard others and this is what I learned from. I wish you would have contacted me before you started writing all this, because if you would have done it from this perspective or if you would have thought about it from a graduate student rather than a functioning professional, then we could use it. So then that means either the person says, oh my gosh, I don't go through all that work, or I'll rewrite my whole book to a different audience and tweak it and do this and take me another year and finally have it come out. Ways to be a step saver along that process. Is that just about. And I've never used an agent either. I probably, probably should have, but. So I don't have any experience with that. But if any of the students or listeners or viewers of our conversation today are interested in doing a book, think about who your best publisher might be for that. Is it Wiley? Is it abc Sileo? Is it New Harbinger? Is it Newton or Norton, et cetera. Then go to their website. There will, chances are, be a link on that website that says author's guidelines. Get that link, print it, read it, consume it, live it, breathe it. Think about it when you go to sleep. Think about when you wake up in the morning and that will tell you kind of what they're interested in. Generally, it'll be 10ish kinds of questions, plus or minus two. And what will be included in that will be an analysis to say, who's your competition for this book? Why does this book need to be written? Why is there any market for your book? If there is, who is that market? Is it graduate adoption? Is it undergraduate adoption? Is it professional organizations? Is it functioning professionals, et cetera? Because again, remember, I'm in the nonfiction area. So you answer those questions, you do your research, and that's really a Good discipline for the hopeful author. Because then you go out and you say, well, who is the competition for my book? And you go out and you find like two or three books. They go, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I wanted to do. And then you say, okay, well I'm not gonna waste my time, you know, let's look, move on and go into something else. Or you say, you know what, these are great books. But they never have looked at it from the perspective that I want to talk about and the treatment I want to give it it. So then that's how you're distinctive. So because that's the next question, they're going to say, well, if you've never written this, then why should it even be written? Because if no one cares about it, there's no audience and there's also, well, if everybody's already written about it, what are you going to say? That's new. So you get this kind of double bind of like, well it's here's, yes, there's going to be a great audience and yes, everybody's going to buy it and give it as a gift to their mother and blah blah, blah, blah, blah. And here's all the things to support that they will then also this gets out a questionnaire and more into creative. But they'll chances are, always also ask you for a sample table of contents. So that's also a good discipline for the author to think about. Okay, here's how I fantasize the book as a whole thing. But now if I've got to break it out, how many chapters is it? Is it 10 chapters? Is it 200 chapters? Is it, you know, what's the flow from chapter one to chapter two, etc. How am I going to construct that? Am I going to write it all myself or am I going to be an editor for the book? You know, what's going to, what's the best way to do that? Do I have expertise in all the things that I want my book to cover, therefore I can write it myself? Or you know, there's some pretty big gaps that I don't want to have, you know, try to learn about and then try and teach somebody that I'm not an expert in. That doesn't feel right, that doesn't play right. So maybe I should edit it, which are also fine. You can, you know, I don't think publishers particularly care that much if it's a single or multiple authored kind of piece and then also a sample chapter. So they want to get an idea of well, what is the flow of this and what can this person write and et cetera, et cetera, then also expect them that they're going to ask a copy for a copy of your cv. You know, you get to know a little bit about your bio and your background to see is this person also published elsewhere? What have they published? And if you have published elsewhere, so this wouldn't be for your first book, but if you've published other books, you know, that's good. What have their sales metrics been? If you haven't published a book, what else have you published? Have you published in high impact factor peer reviewed scientific journals that are very respectable. Excellent. That will go a long way, chances are, depending upon what your topic is. But you know, if you've published already in good solid journals on evidence based practice, for example, and now you want to write a book on evidence based practice, you're already, you know, halfway there to getting someone to say yes to your contract from or getting you a contract.

Awesome. All right. Okay. So what were some of the major exciting and memorable moments as an author? And first, there are also moments that almost got you to quit and how did you get past them?

Gosh, well, it's always just exciting. It's, there's like little way stations, it's exciting to be able to get a contract for your book. So that's always kind of cool. It's then therefore the next step of excitement, which is in between is great deals of torture and consumption of caffeine is getting the book done. So then when you submit your book, the publisher has the right to say yes, it's submitted, but you know what, it's not quite done. You need to work on this, you need to fill out this chapter, need to do, you know, this, that and the other. And then once you go back and do that and then submit it and they take it, accept it for final. That's great. So that's excitement number two. Number three is when the book actually comes out and it's actually available and it's on their website and it's on Amazon and it's, you know, you get, you know, usually complimentary copies, a few yourself, that sort of a thing. And then also this can be a double edged sword, but I've been fairly fortunate that, that when it goes out for review independently, you can always ask people, you know to do an endorsement of your book and it can go on the back of the COVID or things like that. That's before it goes out, you ask for that. It's with your colleagues and good big names and stuff like that to support your work. But when someone independently whose job it is to review books, reviews your book and they say that, you know, there's going to be some, you know, some hiccups, there's got to be some stuff that you're just going to go, oh, gosh, I wish. Oh, that just kills me. But, you know, if the majority of the review is good and positive, then that's. That's also wonderful. That's very satisfying and nice to see. It's also nice to see, you know, if your book does get adopted for a course or sometimes I've. There's been some programs I've been involved with that I've just sort of later found out that like five chapters out of one of my book is. Is part of their assigned readings and things. So that's also very nice and complex and supportive. A million years ago, probably before you were even born, there used to be book clubs that you would get like a little flyer in the mail and the physical mail, you know, kind of thing. And it would be. For me, there's one called Behavioral Science Book Club. And I had had a book that I had done on psychological assessment that had gotten. That had achieved the level of being like one of the features in the Behavioral Science Science Book Club. And it was totally unbeknownst to me. So I get it, you know, because I already subscribed to that and open it up and I see my book in it and I just about fell out of my chair. So it's sort of like that was really kind of a, you know, a cool thing that, you know, anytime you put all that kind of work into a book and then it comes out and, you know, gets as much as. As much exposure as possible. That's terrific. And then it's also fun. I've had a few invitations. I've spoken like, at. Done book talks at Barnes and Noble and local libraries, things like that. So those are also kind of fun because you presume whoever shows up for those is interested in what you have to say, and then you can really, you know, talk a little bit about your book, but then engage with them.

All right. Okay. So what college programs did you attend and what were the best parts? And how did each of your college programs prepare you for your career?

Well, this is pretty roundabout. I actually started off a million years ago. I was interested in computer science, but it was so long ago. There wasn't a degree in computer science, so I was a math major taking Fortran and Cobalt and stuff like that, because that was the department where I went was the Indianapolis version of Purdue University. And that was great and I like that. But back then it was deck tins and punch cards and it just was miserable to like write the simplest kind of program and do any kind of thing that even would come close to looking like coding today. And I just thought, I just can't imagine myself doing this for the rest of my life. So I had been a math major and science major, but also an art minor. So people said, well, maybe, you know, architecture, you should take a look at that. So the Purdue also had a school of engineering. So I transferred into that, got a degree in engineering and in the process of. In architectural technology in the school of engineering, and then had taken the psychology class and loved it and took another psychology class and loved that and decided that I would like to be a psychology major and become a psychologist. So I took. I kid you not, I was kind of nuts back then, I think 56 credits just in psychology. Just about every psychology course they had. Most my senior year, second semester undergrad, I took 21 credit hours. You know, when everyone else is kind of cruising and they're kind of done, I'm like, you know, just taking all this stuff because I just enjoyed it so much. So did that got into graduate school, a doctoral program in clinical psychology called Forest Institute. And that got me up to Chicago from Indiana. And then my fantasy was originally, before you even applying to a clinical program, that I would do research because I just really like the science part of it. At my undergrad program, you could either get a bachelor of science or a Bachelor of Arts. And I chose the science side because I just like the research and quant stuff. So my fantasy was then to be a psychologist and do research. And then by the time I finished my program and was kind of sick of doing research and sick of doing my dissertation, that sort of a thing. I really wanted to be. Be more focused on clinical. To become a licensed clinical psychologist, you have to do a year pre doctoral internship, a year postdoctoral fellowship, which I then did and got my license. But then I was very much focused on children and families. And very much like I mentioned earlier, I'd done a book on assessments. So I was very much into the testing stuff. So I did another postdoc fellowship at Harvard Medical School in neurodevelopmental behavioral pediatrics at their Children Children's Hospital and worked with all stars like Teaberry Brazelton and others. Judith Palfrey. They're Just amazing mentors and just kind of my heroes, you know, big fan of. So that got me into kind of this balance between the clinical and the assessment. I was still doing research in those areas in those times and had academic appointments then in graduate schools and medical schools. And then sort of decided that after about 10 years of practice, once our first child came along, that I just didn't have the bandwidth anymore. I couldn't do, I couldn't teach, I couldn't do research, I couldn't see patients, I couldn't do administrative work and also be a halfway decent parent. So I stopped the clinical practice and then focused on, you know, child rearing with my partner, my wife. And in that kind of, that same kind of context, you know, this accidental humanitarian thing started and then it really, it wasn't like I ever took a class in humanitarian intervention. I took, did, I went back and did another fellowship in public health and served on a board of public health for a decade. But all of those things seemed to kind of conspire and I, you know, I still, I'd learned stuff. I wrote some, I, oddly enough, you know, wrote some computer code about differential diagnostics way back when when I could still kind of do that and had some skills in that area. So I was still using even some of the math and the quant stuff in my clinical practice and diagnostics and assessment and then had this opportunity to build the non profit and kind of build it in the direction and way that I wanted to and then still apply all of these assessment tools and outcome approaches to it. So, you know, for listeners, I would very much say, you know, in the context of just about any class that you take, no matter how tangential it might seem, oftentimes it will come back and be very helpful and, and additive to whatever work you find yourself doing in. Great.

Okay, so what three life lessons have you learned over your career?

Oh, golly. I think when you first start off, there's a perspective of always saying yes. You know, don't turn down any opportunity unless, unless, you know, there's something unethical or wrong about it. But if it's, if it's legit and okay, then be as opportunistic in saying yes to things that come your way and then kind of maybe mid or later career, kind of flip it the other way around. Stop saying yes to everything because what, anything that you say yes to means that you might have to say no to something else. So if that, and that's a very easy way to kind of get off, focus on Maybe something that you're very specifically working on. So there's a friend, Derek Sivers, who hopefully will be on my podcast in this upcoming season, and he's got kind of this philosophy. If it's not hell yes when someone asks you for something, then it's a no. And I thought that's kind of a good, simple way to kind of keep it in mind if you're not excited about it, if someone asks you to do a talk or to do a chapter or to do. Do a this or to do that. If you don't, like, kind of almost spring out of bed going, oh, yeah, this is going to be so fun to do, or I'm so looking forward to this, then chances are it should be a no. Because if you spend, you know, most legitimate, you know, people will spend time, no matter how small the project is or how small the ask is, to do a good job with it, and the time that it takes to do that, you know, the 24 hours in a day that takes away from maybe something that might be more additive or may have a better outcome for the work that you're really, truly focused on. So. So that. That would be one thing also just always. I always try to, you know, if I'm at a. Trying to figure out why something is the way it is to be open to learning. It's sort of like the old cliche of strong opinions loosely held that I'm not right about everything 100% of the time. So to be open and to, you know, to seek first to understand why is it that this circumstance exists? What are the root causes of it? Why does this person think this X when I think it's really Y? And is it my misunderstanding? Do I not have enough data? Do I not understand? So that sort of a thing to be very open to learning where you can be wrong about things and then learning how to be able to remedy that. So there's probably a number of others, but off the top of my head, those have probably been, you know, pretty good hallmarks of. Of how to, you know, to comport yourself.

Great. Okay, so can you also discuss about experiences, facing any adversity or trying something unusual?

Yeah, I mean, I. Not to turn it into a therapy session, but I had a very challenging upbringing. A lot of things that, you know, I wouldn't want other. Did not want my children to have to go through, that I went through or wouldn't want anybody else to go through. So those were challenges that, you know, that I think I've. I probably still Have a couple of scars, but, you know, maybe not as bad as things used to be. So adversity in some levels can kind of take the wind out of your sails, but don't necessarily mean that your, you know, boat crashes against the shore, so to speak. So. And then, you know, there's. You don't. You apply for things that you don't always get. You don't. You know, there's those surprises that you didn't expect that we're not, you know, happy surprises in the work that we've done. You know, like talking about kind of the sadness, honestly, of feeling like, oh, you know, when we first started and then had this USAID grant possibility and realizing that we couldn't service it, you know, that was horrible. I thought, you know, we put all this work into creating this center and now it's kind of we're done and, you know, it's just kind of this mess and now what are we going to do? And that's turned out very well. That had a very happy ending. But, you know, not all of those challenges do have happiness, happy endings. And not all of the projects that we've been involved with have the level of success that we wish they would have had or have the sustainability or, you know, the fundraiser. I mean, there's never been a fundraiser where I've had an upside surprise to go, wow, we really earned a lot more than what I thought we would have, you know, or, wow, this is, this really blew, blew the top off. You know, that's, that's never happened. So there's always those kind of, you know, chronic disappointments that you kind of wish that you could have made a little bit more because then we kind of have done a little bit, you know, more good, that type of thing. But you sort of, you realize the reality of, of what life is like. And not every time at bat is going to be a home run. And that's, that's how life is, and that's fine. So then what can you do differently? And can you learn from that and, and bounce back from it? Be resilient.

Awesome. All right, so starting job after internship, would you recommend to students who hope to grow professionally like you and any other parting advice, do's and don'ts, would

you give, well, again, kind of the start off, say yes to just about everything that's, that's, you know, legal and ethical and that you can do and do a good job at, I would say. And again, we can, I can maybe we can have some links or something. I'd be happy to share these things. Things. But I actually created a list. It's a very common topic that people, you know, want to know. Well, what program should I do? Should I get a master's degree? How do I get my first job? How do I, you know, there's, I'm competing against, you know, thousands of other people that have gone just as, to just as good a school and gotten just as good A grades and done just as many extracurriculars and done this just as many leadership things. How do I distinguish myself? And one of the things that I highly recommend for folks, you can do it. If you are going to get into graduate school in a competitive program, you can do this. To distinguish yourself as a good candidate for a job is to really, really, really do your research on who you're going to be working for in the sense of a person and what institution you're going to be working for. I've had a number of colleagues that their dream job was to work at the United nations or some other countries kind of, you know, who or World bank and after a couple of years get really disenchanted with it. It wasn't what they imagined. You know, I don't know what all it was they imagined, but I had a year stint that I worked as a special representative at the United nations and got to know a lot of people there and got to know about their work and what they had done and that it, you know, kind of once you're, you know, the curtains are opened up to see kind of what really happened, happens. It's, you know, there's a lot of politics, literally and figuratively, and you know, all sorts of things with organizations. So really do the research. Really. You know, you may have a wonderful organization that you've dreamed of, but maybe it's not so great or maybe it is just as wonderful as you thought it was. But, you know, do the research on the organization, do the research on the position, and then specifically to the person. Chances are in this space in particular, these folks have probably, you know, done things that are very transparent these days. You know, with, with things like LinkedIn and Google, you know, just Google the person. Find out about what their interests are, what their skill is, what their expertise is, and then fit yourself to that. Not in a, not in any dishonest way, but just to say that this person, oh my gosh, I, you know, this person did these five things and those are smack dab to what my interests are, what I've done similar kinds of things to so Then when this person gets your cover letter, they'll be blown away. There are so many, you know, some people just write one cover letter saying how great they are and then just, you know, cut and paste the next in the next job, the next job, the next job. And if you are specific to tailoring it and someone actually, you know, takes the time to read to say, this person did their homework. Holy cow, who is this person? Let me see what their CV looks like. Where did they go to school? Hey, let's for sure get this person on the short list for first round interviews and then you have the opportunity to get in the door. Once people get their foot in the door, I found that chances are it's not always 100%, but I think it highly increases the probability of an engagement of getting that subsequent job. So really, just to say it again in a different, more succinct way is do the research on whoever it is that's going to be reading that all important cover letter that's going to distinguish you amongst everybody else that probably didn't take the time to do that kind of research. And that also just like being a book author like we talked about, it really forces that person, forces that, that new graduate to do the research to say, oh, wow, I thought this was a great thing. And as I tried to find a fit between who I would report to, there was like zero fit. So I'm not even going to waste my time or, you know, get my hopes up to go to this place because I probably wouldn't enjoy working there if I even got the gig.

All right, thank you, Mrs. Cruz. It was an honor talking to you.

Thank you. Great questions and could have spent all day chatting with them. Thanks so much. I appreciate your time today.

Thank you so much, sir. And we'd love to host you at University of Utah if you're ever there.

That would be great. I would love it. Thanks a lot. Living A Life in Full is a production of Stout Media, a subsidiary of Gordian Knot, LLC. Assistant producer Gracie Wong Music Dan O' Brien executive producer and host Dr. Chris Stout to learn more, stop by our website A Life in Full for show notes and please recommend this to your friends and subscribe on your favorite platform. And as for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general information uses only and does not constitute the practice of psychology, medicine, nutrition or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical or psychological advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take contact conflicts of interest seriously for all of my disclosures as well as show notes, please see livingalifeinfull. Org podcast and my LinkedIn profile. Thanks. And until next time,