It's Lonely building a Nonprofit

Hey, hey, hey, how you doing?

I'm doing well, how about you?

Good, good, good.

It's, you know, it's good Thursday.

It is, it's a good Thursday and we're getting, we're coming up on the weekend. We love those couple days we get to just relax. I'm gonna call it R&R time for most people. Yeah, but for nonprofit founders, there are no R&R. For business owners, we know there's no R&R on the, over on the— yeah, weekend.

Yeah. There isn't, no, no. But you know, it is interesting because the topic that we have for today is, um, it's lonely building a nonprofit. And sometimes it is. And even on those, those days that we have off for R&R when we're working, it can still feel isolating. It could still feel, um, um, lonely while we're, we're doing that. So yeah, it really is. You're a nonprofit by yourself, you could probably really talk to us more about what it feels like to have this, um, alone time.

It really is. It's, it's, it could be really— no, they say it's lonely at the top. It really is, you know, um, because you're out here and you're, you're true, you're working and you're trying to figure it out. And when you first start your nonprofit, you're excited, you're like, yeah, I'm gonna start my nonprofit, I got my 501. And then you start hitting these roadblocks, and you keep hitting these roadblocks, and you're like, I keep hitting these roadblocks, and, um, I don't know who to go to, you know. It's like, and then you go home, you tell your, your spouse or your loved one, you're like, this is what happened, and this is what happened. And then after a while, you keep telling them, and they're like, right, because they, they, because They don't want to hear a lot of it all the time because you're always telling them there's always something that's going on. And it's like, who do you talk to? You know, when you're really first building your nonprofit, who do you talk to? And then I'm gonna also say, as you're building it, as you move on and as you get bigger and bigger and bigger, the more people you can talk to actually gets smaller and smaller and smaller unless you have established your own support system of mentoring. But the bigger you get the lonelier it could be.

Um, it's so funny you said that. I heard this term, uh, yesterday. It's called echo chambers. And the higher up you go, the more you have these echo chambers where everyone's kind of just saying the very same thing. Uh, no new information. No one, um, is sharing new information because it's not coming in. To that, you know, small group. I also wanted to just add too that sometimes when you're doing this work, it's not even that you are doing the work alone or you have a spouse. Some people don't have anyone else, and so it's, you know, definitely lonely when you have no one else to talk to. Uh, and no one understands what you're doing. Uh, sometimes you even start a nonprofit and you don't understand what you're doing, so it makes it just, you know, that much harder sometimes to, um, yeah, it really is.

I know when I was building my nonprofit in my baby stages, I, um, I started having staff and volunteers. So if you have a problem with the staff person, you can't tell another staff person about it. If you have a problem with someone in the community. You can't tell somebody else in the community about it. But then it also gets lonely. We talk about being by yourself. As I started building my nonprofit, my son went away to the military, and I was single. And I was like, I— my responsibility, my primary responsibility was going. So now I poured everything that I had into this nonprofit. But I poured in so much, they still laugh at me today because I— we didn't have holidays off. If it wasn't the major holidays, but the mini holidays, they're like, how come we don't get enough? I'm like, Why? We need to work, right? So I threw myself into work, right? And it just got more lonelier and more lonelier because who do you talk to? And sometimes it could be so stressful— not sometimes, a lot of times it's so stressful. But who do you talk about when you're stressed, when you're feeling uneasy, when you don't know where to go? It's, it's, it's lonely. I'm not even going to act like it's not. So that's what we— when we need to build collaboratives within collaboratives. So we're on the community, we're building collaboration. What collaborative, what circle do you have for yourself? Because it could be a mental— it's a mental game. Nonprofit building is a mental game. Any business building is a mental game, but nonprofit, it's more of a mental because you are— you have this thing called vicarious trauma too, right? And so what it is, is you're working with people that has a lot of trauma. You take on a lot of what they take on, and then you have all your other things that you have to deal with. And it's like, well, where do I get an opportunity to vent?

And talk about this, which is why it's important to become members of the Nonprofit Founders Club.

I love you. Like, this is what you need to be doing.

I'm serious, because the Nonprofit Founders Club— this is, this is really not a sales pitch, but it's a plea to get help. So Nonprofit Founders Club is made up of nonprofit founders who are in the same boat as you. This is not a new situation. It's not, um, you know, we're not making this up. This isn't like a figment of your imagination. The loneliness is real.

Yeah, you know, it really is. And that's one of the reasons— that's how the Nonprofit Founders Club was birthed. Because during my years as I was building my nonprofit, I was like, who do I go to? Who would I talk to? It's lonely. And sometimes I would be like, I'm pissed, I don't have anybody to tell that I'm pissed. This dad person did this, or this person did that, who do I talk to about it, right? Because you have these boundaries you have to keep, because you, you cannot, you know, cross some of these boundaries because then you're setting yourself up for a lawsuit.

Yeah.

So it's like, who do I talk to? Are there— if something happens to something, you in the county with your county or your community, and you're like, you don't want to tell another community provider because you don't know who knows who, right? So who do you talk to? It's lonely. And so that's really why the Nonprofit Founders Club was birthed. So I have a place that's specifically for nonprofit founders if you want to come It's, it's, it's a safe place. It's purely confidential. If you want to come and you want to vent, you can come in. You don't have to say names if you don't want to. You can just talk about, look, this staff person, and then, and then to get some advice. What do I do? What would you do in this situation? So it's really helpful because you don't know a lot of things, and then you don't know what you don't know as you're building.

And one of the things that you said that I think is important is then you get help. Because, uh, you get help. Everything we do, we have to always keep moving forward. So, you know, we can— we, we hit some horrible places. I like— I'm taking a class and the lady said when you hit an icky spot, you don't want to get stuck in the ick. You need to find a way to dig yourself up out of the ick. So one of the things that we're doing in the class is trying to learn, like, what could be a way to dig out of the ick. And what I have decided to do is, um, right on my website are these testimonials from my— some of my favorite clients. Read them and believe them. So how can you figure out a way to dig yourself up out of the ick? How can you figure out a way to um, break through some of the loneliness. The Nonprofit Founders Club.

Yes, yes. And even— and it's funny because even the greatest people, they get support. You look at your, your athletes, your singers, your actors, no one really seeks out to do this stuff alone.

Yeah.

And one of the things that I'm— and I know this is going off a little bit— one of the things I want people to really take a look at, this is hard and this is challenging, and the suicide rates are so high.

Yeah.

And sometimes when our— when we get so stressed of whatever situation that's going on in our life. But if you're so stressed about building your nonprofit, you put all your eggs in this basket, you want it so bad, and you're just like, I'm not achieving it, and these things are happening to me, I didn't know I wasn't supposed to do this and I made a mistake— people think, you know what, I think I, I'm just done, I don't want to do this anymore. So we want to make sure that we keep that suicide rate down, the depression down, the anxiety, you know. Those are things that we need to support each other because this is everyday life. We're picking up these things, but then now when we do our nonprofit, we've added another layer that can cause extra stress and anxiety in our lives. Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely.

So loneliness is real. So when we talk about it's like, it's real. So yeah, yeah, that's what we'll talk about is what are you doing. If you have any tips, any advice for any of your fellow nonprofit founders, nonprofit CEOs, directors, people that's out here doing the work every day, if you have any suggestions that they could use when they— when you are feeling depressed or sad, please share it because we're, we're not only here to help the community, we are a community and we have to help each other. So exactly, yeah. Alrighty, so everybody, it was good. Thank you. If you please comment if you can, um, give us some support and give your nonprofit friends some support too. So we love you, let's keep doing what you're doing, and, uh, talk to you later.

Yeah.