Creative on Purpose Live!

Right position. We are zipping across the ether. And just like that, ladies and gentlemen, once again, defying all expectations, we are live. Welcome to Creative on Purpose Live. These conversations are about— are with inspiring difference makers about making things better and endeavors that matter. I'm your host, Scott Perry, author of Onward!, head coach at Akimbo Workshops, and Chief Difference Maker at Creative on Purpose. If you're ready to make a living by making a difference. Grab some insight and inspiration at creativeonpurpose.com. And while you're there, grab a copy of The Burnout Solution. Make a bigger difference by making better decisions. Let's meet today's guest. Kim, welcome to the broadcast. Please tell our viewers who you are, what you're up to these days, and where can they go to learn more about you and the difference you're making.

Thanks, Scott Perry. It's great to be here with you this morning and, and with your audience. So as Scott said, I'm Kim Fisher, and what I actually am, I'm a nonprofit strategist. So I have kind of a unique world that I operate in. I have over 30 years experience as a nonprofit executive, and I was also a business coach for a period of time. So I just brought it together, and I do business coaching for nonprofits, which is a wonderful adventure and journey. So the key area that I work in, actually, I work with nonprofit startups. So what I love to do is I do formations of nonprofits. I do all the IRS paperwork. I get them incorporated, create their boards, their narratives, their 3-year budget, file their IRS paperwork, and really just kind of get them started and get them going.

That's fantastic. I love what you do. We were connected by our mutual friend Candice Edelen, and I am just really inspired by— it's, it seems to be a really growing enterprise that people are, people that are out there making a difference and maybe successful in one aspect of their lives want to pay that forward with nonprofits. So, and it sounds like you're really helping them navigate the things that probably most people don't care to navigate, which is paperwork and the drudgery of assembling boards and things of that nature. What got you— what's— I'm always interested in people's kind of backstory, origin story. Like, what was the path that got you from— you said you were a business coach. I don't know if you had other experiences before that, but what got you from where you were to where you are now?

Well, my— over 30 years as a nonprofit executive. So I've been in development, marketing, training, education, you name it. Including 7 years as the chief executive of Arms of Love International. And so throughout all that time, I just, I saw a lot of the challenges that nonprofits face. And some of it is because nonprofit people are very heart-driven people, not always as business-oriented, business-focused, business-experienced. And so I found over and over and over again, nonprofits that I worked for and the ones that I've now worked with as my clients, But that's really a part of what the struggle is, is for the nonprofit, is to bring in that business expertise and strategy work. So the areas I also work in besides formation is I do nonprofit finance. So getting their QuickBooks system set up and income and expenses and training chief executives and how to read nonprofit financials and training boards how to read nonprofit financials. And then I also do board development work for small nonprofits and again, just helping them when they get stuck. Stack. I love working in the micro nonprofit area. That's really where my niche and love is. And so it really came out of Scott Perry, as I said, just my own experiences working for boards, serving on boards. And my passion is really to help these people that are so heroic. People that start nonprofits are such heroes to be able to start off on the right foot in the best way that I can. They'll make their own mistakes. But as I do, as I say, I come by my own mistakes quite honestly. And what I teach the nonprofits and how to do things a little bit differently to hopefully not make some of those same mistakes.

Awesome. I'm not really familiar with a term that you use, and I wonder if you would just kind of unpack a little bit. Micro nonprofits?

Yes, just the startups, the startups, nonprofits under $500,000, just kind of the smaller organizations that that are— they have, you know, like any startup business, as you and I both know, and many of your listeners know, has its own challenges to it. And then you have the growth options of the way that businesses grow. So in this case, nonprofits are very much the same way. They have their own challenges when they're small. And I love to work within those areas.

Nice. Well, and I know from, you know, from our conversation, earlier off camera that you have really had a lot of success, especially recently with what you're doing. And I'm wondering if you, when you go back in time and kind of look at what are the pieces that, that you assembled, what, you know, when, when was the moment that you kind of tipped the scales? Um, I imagine that you didn't just burst onto the scene wildly successful, turning away business. Most of us that seek to, you know, build something a little bit bigger than ourselves and make a difference doing work that matters have the experience of having to, you know, learn skills that we're not really proficient in or hire out to get done. What are the pieces that you, that you found you had to put together that really put you over the top?

Yeah. And so when I first started this, Scott, I had left my last chief— I left my chief executive job in 2014. And I actually spent a period of time not employed, interviewing for jobs. That's a whole nother story for a whole different day. And then in the meantime, people started approaching me about this work. You know, and so next thing I know, I was doing it on the side while I was looking for work. And I said, nope, I am not doing a business again. Another story for a different time. But obviously, you can see I lost that battle, as I like to say, happily so. And because I just— the business kept coming to me. I didn't realize there'd be a niche for what I do. I think that was probably the biggest surprise to me, to think that I could earn the kind of income that I earn and have the number of clients and the amazing clients that I get to interact with. And then starting the business officially, probably 2016, 2017. And what really kind of shifted a lot of things for me was really upping my marketing. Like every small business trying to figure out how do you do your job, make the money that you need to make, plus invest in your infrastructure. And so that was probably the biggest game changer for me. For me, it was upgrading my website, uh, doing SEO or hiring someone to do SEO for me, doing Google AdWords, creating a database, having a lot of different things that, that I did that put structure into the business. That allowed me to work less and make more, essentially.

Well, I love that you shared that there are some things that you actually hired out for, because I think a lot of times people that are especially at the beginning, they hire the cheapest labor they can, and which is themselves. And, you know, so they'll teach themselves SEO or teach themselves Google AdWords and end up spinning a lot of cycles way outside of their area of expertise, which prevents them from actually growing the business and from taking a more macro, big picture look at what's going on.

Yeah.

But I imagine that some of your marketing in particular, one of the ways that we frame marketing at Creative Our Purpose is telling true stories to people that need to hear them so that you can enhance their lives through whatever it is. Whatever change you help them make. That piece sounds— and something else that you said was interesting to me, it's almost like it sounds like your niche found you.

Yes, certainly did. That's exactly the way I'm putting it.

If you have any tips for how we, the rest of us, can make that happen, that would be wonderful. Because I think one of the hardest things, certainly that I have found in creating Creative On Purpose, but and with all the people I work with is the niching. But the niche and the marketing really go together. You have to know who you're speaking to.

Yes.

Before you can start telling those stories strategically or tactically. Was there any— did you see any kind of evolution in your niche and in your marketing for how, you know, who you're speaking to and how you're speaking to them?

Well, you know, maybe a great comparison, Scott, would be When I was, gosh, almost 20 years ago now, I started my first small business as a business coach. I actually started as a life coach, found that that wasn't really a great fit for me 'cause I'm more business-driven. I had a lot of marketing experience. I became a business coach. And that was a hard business for me to start. And this one has been much more seamless 20 years later. And I've kind of come up with reasons why the differences for me, this is just my journey, of course. But that number one, you have to be able to do the job and have the experience of what you're actually promoting. Number two, can you find your client? So when I started my coaching business, I had, I had to go through coach training and I had experience, but I hadn't actually been trained. I didn't have all the, um, things together and the stories. I didn't have a decades-long career of running my own business at that point. And to go find my clients, I was networking breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Chamber of Commerce events. I mean, believe me, I could go on and on, you name it. It was very expensive and very hard on my waistline to go to so many different events all the time. But that's what I had to do to find my clients that were business owners. And then the question was, do these people see you as a solution to their problem? So when you're business coaching, this is again 20 years ago, people weren't doing as much business coaching. I was in San Francisco Bay Area and even there it was difficult to be able to talk about coaching. And that's the first thing. And then number 2, am I— would they hire me? So I had a 2-step sales process in that, that was, that was hard. Number 4, can your clients pay you? So those were the things that were not operating as well in my first business that really shifted in my second business. And I could really see that now. So I, again, I spent 30 years in the nonprofit space. I have credibility in the nonprofit space. I have contacts in the nonprofit space. It wasn't difficult. People that know nonprofit people know other nonprofit people. So that's a very common place to operate in. Also a place I loved operating in. I mean, it was a passion of mine for decades of my life. And I did find that my clients found me the solution, as the solution to their problem. Because again, in my experience, I feel very confident and I love what I do because I know I give my clients fantastic value for our work together compared to my competitors. And they pay me, you know, because of the niche that I operate in. So that's kind of a general overview of what I really discovered in my own journey in business and also interacting with other entrepreneurs, is that if one of those 4 things is missing, there's going to be nothing you can't overcome it. It's just going to be more challenging than when you find a space that you— the biggest thing is, again, can you find those clients easily without a lot of money, time, and effort? Are they there?

Yeah. Well, I really appreciate you articulating that, that clearly. And so what I'm hearing is you started where you were with what you had and who you already know. That piece in particular is really, uh, important to me because it's so often when clients will come to me, they'll say, well, I gotta figure out how to, um, you know, have a better presence on social media. And I always go, how is that part of your, your, you know, get started strategy? Like, how are you going to possibly, and especially at this stage in the game, engage with total strangers in a way that so thoroughly delights them that you earn their awareness, their attention, their trust, their permission, their enrollment and their investment. That's, that's, that's, that takes a long time.

It does.

Who do you already know? Who's, who, who do you already know? What problem do they have? How can you craft a solution to it? That's, I love that, that you shared that. I think that's, that's a way that people that are really ready to get going in their enterprise can get going and not spent a lot of cycles hiding on social media, you know, howling into the void.

Absolutely.

You've shared a little bit of this already, but I'm always interested too in, you know, this idea of, you know, everybody that, that seeks to make a difference in the world, everybody that's trying to make things better through endeavors that make a difference. Knows that that work is fraught. You will make mistakes. You are trying to do things before. There are moments that really seem like profound failures. And then, you know, sometimes in retrospect, the mistakes and the failures were really important lessons, or maybe they were obstacles that were actually thinly disguised opportunities that you were able to flip. Is there a moment like that where in the arc of your current endeavor where, you know, something that you at the moment may be perceived as a hardship, a challenge, an obstacle, or even a mistake, a failure, um, that in retrospect really provided you with some fuel to help you get through?

Ah, that was a great question. I think that like many business owners, You start with thinking you can do more. You're— everybody's your client. Everybody's my potential client. And, um, and I think like every entrepreneur, I had to learn that that was exhausting to me. I was not enjoying the work as much. I wasn't providing as good of service that I felt that was outstanding because there's certain areas, for an example, fundraising and grant writing. Those are areas that I do not do consulting in. They're— I did them when I was a chief executive and throughout my career, but I don't do them because I don't feel like I offer the best product for the amount of money someone would be paying me to do that. So I refer those things. So I think that that was probably a real big shift for me, was really narrowing down. As I mentioned, you know, in our early beginning of our conversation, how I started working with micro nonprofits. I realized that the larger existing nonprofits, the strategic planning aspects, all those things which I certainly can do, were not the area that I was finding energy in and were not unique to me. So that's kind of where I made a major shift for me, spending time, money, you know, some frustration to really just look at what is it that I love doing? What makes me different than other people? There's a lot of outstanding consultants out there in the strategic planning space working with larger nonprofits. And I work with them and I refer business to them. But again, just, I think the biggest key for me was shifting what makes me unique. Where's the biggest need? Where do other people not want to work? Not smaller nonprofits, not always. People don't always want to work in those spaces. So I don't know, that's kind of probably a big, big shift in my business that really made a huge difference and brought me a lot of freedom and more joy.

Yeah. Well, I, want to just highlight the first thing that you said, which is basically echoing the sign over my left shoulder, which is less is more. Actually, you are not for everybody. I just had a, had a, was part of a, a conversation yesterday where someone said half the people in the world like me and half the people in the world don't. And I said, well, actually 99.9999999% of the people on the planet don't even know who you are. Um, and You know, there's real, there's real value in that go small approach. Like what's the smallest viable audience that you can talk to, to use a word that Seth Godin uses, um, that, you know, that you can serve and delight so thoroughly that they can't help but tell more people like them. You know, you don't need to save the world. You probably can't save the world and you don't need to be for everybody. You can be for just, you know, if there are 100 people that will pay you $1,000, you should be good. So, and the other thing that you were saying, and this is, this is so essential, and I think too many of us learn this too late, it's you have got to be clear on your boundaries and guardrails.

Yeah.

Who, what do you do and what do you never do?

Yes.

And who do you work with and for, and who do you never work with and for? Yes. And not, not letting that, those boundaries ever blur. Mm-hmm. Because that level of clarity will, I think, be one of the, the, the biggest, um, catalyst to your forward progress. Because when you do more of the right things with and for more of the right people, to your point, you said it, I, I experienced a lot more joy. That's how you can enhance your own life while you're still helping other people. So, mm-hmm. Love, love, love, love.

And Scott, what I would say is that also comes into my work because with nonprofits, one of the biggest things is people want to save everybody in the world. And it's the same thing that I do in my consulting with the smaller nonprofits, particularly that are starting, is that not everybody— we would say not everybody's your client, but for them, not everybody is their client either. And so just helping them to niche down on the very 4 things that I told you are kind of the 4 things that I share with them. Just in a little bit of a different, different, different dialogue. But if you can't, if you don't have access to those people that you want to help, they don't see you, you're not going to show up in their neighborhood and all of a sudden they're going to say, oh, you're here to help me. If they don't already, you already have a relationship and access to them. And also with donors, kind of in the same way, you've got to be able to tell your donor what it is that you do. Does your donor have a draw to this kind of a thing that they say, yes, I want to give up my money, my hard-earned money to your cause because I see what your purpose is. So it just kind of works. It works for me. And then obviously the people that I work with in my nonprofit consulting.

Well, and I think that there's also real value in something that you're saying. Like, you use the word referral, like you can refer, and people really underestimate the value. Yes, you may not get that person's business because you actually help them. When you refer someone that's the wrong fit for you to, to the right fit, not only do you get the good karma that might get you into heaven, you also get the reputation of being someone that is competent enough in who they are and what they offer that you can, you can turn people— not just turn people away, but turn them toward your quote unquote competitors, which are really just other choices. Exactly. And by— it's a way of being of service and helping that can only enhance your reputation, uh, in, in the marketplace. It's, you know, I'm sure in your world there's a, you know, there's a lot of people that know each other. I mean, you know, word does spread. If you are a selfish, if you act selfishly in the workplace, people will soon find out that you're, you're a selfish person. And people don't, I don't know if you've noticed, people don't really like to work with people that are only interested in self-interest.

And I think it's a poverty versus scarcity mentality. I'm sorry, I was going to say prosperity versus scarcity mentality is what I meant to say. Poverty and scarcity go together, is that do I believe that I can, that I can bless and encourage somebody else by giving them a better fit and bless this other entrepreneur? And, and then, you know, I get referrals all the time too in, in the same way. And I, you know, you kind of asked a question earlier, but I think that is a mistake that I have made in other times is trying to take on a client that I should not have because either I was afraid I wouldn't have money or I thought, oh, I can make this happen. And I got to share, decades in my career later, I'm much less enjoying that than I might have decades sooner when I just said, sure, I'll figure it out. And I'm realizing that I love working in my lane right now, and that's where my joy and peace is. So, well, I love to bring other people in and help their families prosper.

So yeah, well, I love that you brought that up because I, I think that that applies even more broadly. And I know that you and I, just from, uh, we haven't spoken about this before, but I was looking at your profile on LinkedIn before we got on, and I know that you have, um, some investment in DEI and trying to help broaden, uh, opportunity and, and create more, um, opportunity, you know, diversity, equity, and inclusion. And And to me, that conversation is also around this idea of abundance. Like we talk about privilege and we have treated privilege like a scarce commodity. And the ones that have it don't want to give any up because they're afraid that there's not enough to go around when in fact there's an abundance of opportunity.

Yes.

Uh, and, and the more privilege we extend, the more privilege there will be generated, which just means that there's more opportunity for more people to do better. Yes. To have more. So I think that I, I really feel you on that because I remember, uh, the, that shift for me came in my music career when I had a guitar studio. I live in a very small town and there were a lot of choices for taking guitar lessons. And I was pretty clear on like what I did and what I didn't do. Um, and I remember when I finally raised my prices to the point where I could make a living wage, I would price 20%, 25% higher than all the competition. And people would come for to enter, you know, I always started off with kind of a, a, a, a let's, uh, let's get to know each other chat. And, you know, they would say, well, we really like you and what you do sounds amazing, but, um, you know, there's a guy down the hall that is only charging, you know, this much. Um, we're gonna, we're gonna try that. And I would say, fantastic, you should do that for sure. In more than half the cases, 3, 4, 5 weeks later, I would get a knock on my door saying, hey, Do you still have an opening? You know, because, um, even though they were protecting their scarce financial resources, they realized that the value of working with someone that treated their kid nice, that was compassionate and understanding, in addition to being technically good at the craft, um, that was, that was invaluable. Suddenly I became a bargain compared to position. So really powerful. Well, we are coming, um, close to the end of our half hour together, and I always end with the same question. Um, you're making a profound difference in the world, Kim, and if there are people out there that, like you, would like to fly higher in the difference only they could make, is there a final tip, piece of advice, insight, quote, something that you would share to help those that seek to begin or to advance in the difference only they can make do so with greater equanimity and joy? Yeah.

It's been wonderful to be chatting with you in these, in these last minutes. I would say that I think that I've really seen a big shift since, since COVID and everything that we've all been through in the world, our shared experience of people really wanting to make more of a difference. And so it's been really extraordinary to see that. And I think that people get stuck because, um, they think what they're not doing is unique, or what can I actually do, or fear, those kind of things. And I think that we're just all in a season where taking risks and trying new things and being okay if certain things don't work. And then we shifted a different perspective. You know, we shift something different. I guess I would just encourage those out there in your, in your audience that have a nonprofit dream or have a dream to make a difference in their world to see where that is. Is it in their neighborhood? Is it in their children's school? Is it in their church? Is it in their business? Or is it something bigger that they are ready to create some structure around or bring a team of people on to help them move forward in that? And I would say a lot of people that I work with are people that have had their own personal experience with certain things, and then they want to change the world because, because of the ways that they have learned and grown and that they want to help other families and other people with the things that they've journeyed on. So I'd always love to chat with anybody. That, that wants to consider, uh, making their dreams a reality and creating some structure and moving forward and creating a nonprofit, or just someone wants to talk about, uh, about some of these issues. I don't— I'm always available for that. Obviously, my website here, I do offer a discovery call and would love to talk to anyone that, that is interested in chatting more.

Really appreciate that. Love that you highlighted the opportunity even in the last couple of years during the pandemic. I think you are absolutely right. It reminded us that we took a lot for granted and that basic human needs, wants, dreams, and desires like connecting, hugs, yeah, shakes.

Yeah.

You know, it, we, we, I think all got a much deeper appreciation for that over the last couple of years. So I, I love that you shared, um, those reflections. And so we wanna thank everyone for tuning in. Kim and I really we appreciate you lending us your valuable time and attention and hope that today's broadcast motivates you to lean into an endeavor that matters with greater curiosity and courage. You can learn more about Kim Fisher right down there on, at her website, visioncatalyst.org. And of course, it's always great to see you at creativeonpurpose.com as well. Now, take the insight and inspiration from this conversation and keep flying higher in the difference only you can make. Kim Fisher, thank you so much. For sharing your experience and wisdom with us today.

Thank you, Scott Perry. It's been great to hang out.