 Hey, welcome everybody to another episode of the nonprofit show. I'm really excited today because I was telling Jarrett Ransom, nonprofit nerd extraordinaire. I'm going to add that word extraordinaire. I get you all to myself today with a masterclass because we work so well together, but we have to share one another within whoever our guest is on the nonprofit show. This is exciting for me because I get to get you in the hot seat for the next 30 minutes. We're going to talk about something that's really exciting, liberating, and sometimes burdensome, and that's managing tasks and responsibilities, which for all of us, it's a new year, it's a new start, where do we go with this? Jarrett Ransom, nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. My friend, I hope you have ice on your chair because you're in the hot seat. I feel it warming up. All right. Well, everybody, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. Of course, Jarrett R. Ransom, nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. The two of us get to work today and every day together moving through three years, and we have been doing this because we have amazing partners. They include Blimerang, American Nonprofit Academy, nonprofit thought leaders, Staffing Boutique, your part-time controller, 180 Management Group, Fundraising Academy at National University, GMT Consulting, Nonprofit Nerd, and Nonprofit Tech Talk. You can get to any of our 950-plus episodes through our, I call it the sexy app that Kevin on our team, Kevin Pace developed. You can find us in streaming, podcasts. Jarrett and I always joke that if you speak into your smart remote, we'll show up on the sofa next to you and you're, but if you're in the job. We're, you know, in hologram. Yeah. Yeah, God, that's just what everybody needs. Anyway, Jarrett R. Ransom, nonprofit nerd, love, love, love this image of you. I put it up because it's fun. Somebody, I was talking about you yesterday with somebody from another part of the country and they're like, Jarrett Ransom, she's a total badass. I was like, I was like, really? I don't see that. I think she's like super fun and crazy smart. And they're like, oh, no, she's, she's like really, she's strict. And I was like, wow. And so I was thinking of this image because in my mind. Yes. I have a different vision of you and you can learn more about Jarrett on the ravengroup.com. Well, I appreciate both, right? Like this photo is intentional to shine the light of fun, playfulness, non-traditional, right? And yet, whomever you're speaking with, there is a fine line with me where it's like, I have high expectations, I set big goals, I expect a lot out of myself and the production that I'm a part of. Yeah. You know, and that's cool. I'm glad that you said that because it's so interesting how we see ourselves, how others see us, how we want to project ourselves, how we change, and that's part of our discussion because so much has been going on. And I want to lead in with strategic self-care. And that kind of goes into how we are, who we are, talk to us a little bit about that and what your journey is and why this is important to you. Very important to me and why we wanted to dedicate the show to today's episode, to this conversation. You know, you and I were talking in our green room chatter, Julia, about the decades of experience we have in the sector, also the decades of experience we have in life, right? And so what I am realizing, I am acknowledging my own burnout. I was experiencing it a couple of years ago right in the thick of the pandemic and I'm still experiencing some of that now. And so I'm focusing on strategic self-care practices, intentionally so, right? Like intentionally with his mindfulness awareness of I have to take care of myself so that I can be of service to others. It's the oxygen mask, right? When we get on the flight, we talk about oxygen first, before you take care of others. It's the same thing as, you know, filling up your coffee cup or filling up your mug, you know, like it overflows, like it's really not doing any good kind of thing. So strategic self-care practices, and I have to, if everyone can kind of follow me on this, long, long ago, I used to do some half-marathons and I followed the Jeff Galloway method and his method is to run and to walk. And that is a self-care practice to help you maintain your pace, right? Because if you ran the whole time of this marathon or half-marathon, inevitably your body will begin to slow down. So what I've taken from that practice, and it is a mindfulness practice, is to go far, you have to go slow on occasion. And so really looking at that, okay, there's moments in our career that we are going to sprint. And there's moments, we're gonna take a pause, we're gonna grab the water from the sidelines, we're going to walk the next quarter mile, half mile, whatever that might be. And I just wanna acknowledge many of us just ended our Q4 of last year that they sprint. It is time to take a little bit of water and to take some self-care practice, whether it's a retreat, we'll talk about later, whether it's a massage, a journal activity, meditation, having a longer lunch with your colleagues, there's so many ways in there, but burnout is real, Julia, we know this. And I really feel a lot of our non-profit professionals are just now acknowledging it because we are the ones that ran into the pandemics and not have the opportunity to break when everyone else was making bread. It's true, it's really true. And I think, I love that you said that, that we were running into the pandemics while everybody else was making bread. I think that's a brilliant comment. I have not heard anyone phrase it like that, but wow, does that resonate with me? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, many of us, myself included, right? Like we were having virtual happy hour upon virtual happy hour, but my social calendar was just as busy as my professional calendar because many of us work in the sectors that are frontline, right? We are dealing with homelessness. We are dealing with hunger. We are dealing with some of the most vulnerable populations. We are just now catching our breath and realizing the trauma, the fast-paced life that we have been enduring consistently for four years. Yeah, it's a fascinating lens with which to really start to evaluate ourselves and what we're doing. And one of the things that you advise us on, and I can't wait to talk more about this, is to harness the power of community collaboration. Now you and I have been seeing this coming down the pike from funders that are saying, hey, don't come to us unless you have other people in your sector. So if you're a food bank, great, we love your work, yay team. But you gotta come to us with two other, three other food banks. I mean, this is like really rocked so many of our nonprofits. So explain this process to us. It has in this, ironically, Dove tells to yesterday's conversation you shared with us, Julia, the leadership list. Who is your community? Who are your collaborators? Who are those peers that you seek when you are feeling frustrated? You want to vent because here's the thing, right? Like, where do the doctors go to receive, you know, medical attention? Where does this go to receive therapy? Where do we go as nonprofit leaders to talk shop? Because believe it or not, whether you come home to your partner, they may not fully understand your role in the nonprofit community, but I guarantee you another executive director, CEO, development director, program director, board member, they can empathize where your partner might be sympathetic but your professional colleagues can empathize. So harnessing the power of community collaboration. I just read, Julia, and I have to refer to my notes. The hottest trend coming up this year, right? So this is my crystal ball. The hottest trend in 2024, which we're in it. We just started it, right? Is that people are lonelier than ever. If you think about it, many of us are in a distributed workforce working from home. We don't have that water cooler talk. We don't have that, hey, I'm going to lunch. You wanna grab lunch with me? We are craving intimate communities. We are craving the opportunity to connect with one another and we are seeking more fulfillment in our relationships. That comes together, Julia, when we harness the power of our community collaborations. Hey, Jared, the Surgeon General of the United States has said that loneliness is an epidemic, that we need to start talking about this. It's not just a fun thing, that this is real and that it's impacting leadership, our workforce, our decisions. I think this is brilliant. And it's a basic thing that we can do. We can reach out to other people and start those conversations. I wanna give a shameless plug and I know this is time-sensitive, but next week on January the 9th, I am holding a real talk virtual meetup. But I intend to hold these throughout the year because I realized I needed it, Julia. I needed to come together in community with my peers. And I felt if I was needing it, the chances of others was probably pretty high. So if anyone's interested, it's January the 9th, it's real talk, but I do intend to have more of these, again, to really harness the power, build the community, facilitate connection in this intimate relationships where we can share peer-to-peer what that looks like. So, you know, when we talk about your meetup and I love this idea, I mean, of this collegial connection, do you feel like it's got to be like a slow go? Are people gonna be comfortable talking about these things or do they kind of have to be reset? Because you said something really interesting and I see this in my own life. What you have at home in what you try and communicate is not always going to be reflective of what goes on within your professional life because they just don't get it. Your mate, your spouse, your dog, your parrot, they're not gonna get what it's like to be in your world, right? So do you see that that's why a facilitated conversation is more important or what's your feeling on that? Really do. I think, you know, coming together in community where we bring like-minded experiences, similar lived experiences. So I'm not doing this, you know, we hear a lot from this lived experience in a DEI world, which I am huge proponent of, right? Like definitely get together for that. And where else do you have the need for connection? And so my goal is to lead by example. And I think that we as leaders can do this in our daily work life. Lead by example, if you're overwhelmed, if you're stressed, if you're tired, if you're overworked, you know, it's time for you to say, I'm going to take a pause, I'm going to implement that Jeff Galloway running method and I'm gonna take Friday off and I'm gonna make my own long work weekend or sorry, weekend of not working. We don't wanna make it a work weekend. Oh, we caught you, we caught you. I know, we picked you up. I'm guilty of that, right? Like how many times, Julia, do we work in the evenings? Do we work on the weekends? Because we simply need to catch up. But what we're not catching up on is our personal care, right? Like really looking at that. I have a lot of friends in the entrepreneur world and they are go, go, go, go, go. I admire one of my friends, every single Wednesday she takes the day off and she spends it with her young child so that she can cherish those childhood memories with her child, right? Like really looking at that from an intentional standpoint, not everyone can do that. I know we're very much dictated often by our work schedule but where might you find your own special time? You know, whether it's a Tuesday, you leave every Tuesday at two, maybe there's a flex schedule but really looking at it from a way of leading by example to your team, creating this space where you can share in a transparent, vulnerable opportunity. And I know that's new for a lot of people and it is coming, it is really coming out of the pandemic because what we realized is the other way is not sustainable. Right? Well, and I think in, you know, this Calvinistic society and the, you know, the American spirit for good or for bad. And you and I have chatted about this, you know, the difference between being busy and productive and, you know, task oriented, task management is not thought management. And I follow, I'm like the queen of that because I literally have three computer screens on my desk. I'm in my studio so it's different but three screens and they kind of envelop me. They're big screens and on the left hand side is one screen dedicated to my tasks and my calendar. It never changes, except I interact with it. And it's really an interesting thing because I've put on it for the new year thoughts, like things that I want like bigger picture things not just to, you know, go to the mailbox, pay this bill, make this phone call, write this note. Yeah. And I'm just out by it. It's only the board. I find myself doing that too, Julia, in my home. I do it for my child, I do it for my spouse. You know, here's the things that have to get done and which of us needs to handle it. And it literally is a list that we check off and some of it is menial, you know, like run to the bank or get this from the grocery store. But what are we doing to set boundaries, you know, and to create the opportunities we need to reflect on our own self-care? We've had Miko Whitlock on before for him, the mindful techie. I attended his class, his workshop in December. So last year, it was all about like creating an opportunity that's restorative for your life and for your work life and what that looks like. So I'm really leaning into that this year, Julia, because for me and my last newsletter went out talking about I have a different season and the season of my life right now is very different for me as a wife, as a mother of a teenager, which I have to witness is very different than being the mother of a toddler. Yeah. So my hair might be turning gray itself, but really looking at it from a standpoint of who do I need to be, how can I show up, right? And I thrive on living a life of authenticity. It's different now. And I was talking to this, you know, other consultant recently, she was sharing too, it's different. And so the blueprint, I just wanna share for all of our viewers and listeners, the blueprint you've been following for the last decade may not be the right decade or blueprint to be following for this current season that you're in. And I'm just sharing this from my own personal standpoint. So let's talk about that and explored a little bit and you talk about retreat and reflection. How do we figure this out before it's too late, right? How do we do it? Like, you know, kind of years ago, I spoke with a friend of mine who was a marriage counselor and he told me he's like, the sad thing is that most of the time people get to him, it's too late. They're so hurt and they're so upset that they can't hear and respond to certain things. And if they had been able to do this earlier and acknowledge, then he could work with them. And I was so shocked when he said that because if he could see it, right? And that's his practice. Does that kind of work with us? It seems to me that we're getting to the point where we're just like, screw it, I can't do it. And then we're cutting things off, right? Versus- Well, we're cutting things off. We are in a mental health crisis. We're really getting to the places that is hard to backtrack into healthy environments. So boundaries are important. When I do this workshop about building your own personal board of directors. And so if we can build our own personal board of directors and these are individuals that can say, and Julia, whether you know it or not, you're on my personal board of directors because you can see in me when something has changed, right? And so when we have trusted peers in our community and our network that can say, are you okay? You seem a little different, right? Like those are red flags, essentially maybe orange flags burnt orange that we need to pay attention to. And so retreat and reflection should happen all the time. Just in a scheduled fashion. But if we can build this in to our life, to retreat and reflect on a consistent basis, that I think will help us to build this into our intentionality for a healthier new year. The way I do this, right, is I will certainly take a longer weekend to retreat in nature. I connect great with nature. I will take a long lunch to get an extra long massage, right? Like something like that. And so I weave it into my normal everyday life and kind of blend it. I wrote a blog about, I don't believe in work-life balance. Soccer, I don't, right? I believe in a work-life blend. And that is very different than a balance where it is a finite start, finite stop. So I'm into this woven section of a blend. So retreat and reflection, I encourage you all of you to think about this consistently every day, every week, every month and go above and beyond, right? Like schedule that vacation that you haven't done in three, four years and you're building up PTO. Right, I think you're right. And I like your approach to weave it into your life. It doesn't have, I think sometimes, and maybe this is generational for me, it seems like you've got to block off two weeks and go away and then it's all gonna be solved versus doing the small things that help you move through, you know, the Jeff Galloway approach to running. Yeah, I think you're right. It's an interesting shift that we don't talk about. Well, and I have to admit to what I found for myself even though I love a long weekend, it really takes four consecutive days, four consecutive days for me to start to unwind and really disconnect from stress, anxiety, overload, overwhelm, four consecutive days, right? So when are we doing that? Rarely, myself included. No, no, when do we find that? That seems like four months. Well, before I let you go, and I knew that this time would go just like sailing by, let's talk about coaching circles for growth because you talked briefly about that, with the lead-in of your own personal board and those people that know you and will speak truth to power, talk about this concept of a coaching circle and what does that look like? Yeah, so it does go back to harnessing the power of community collaboration, right? Finding these coaching circles that can support you, they can challenge you, they can nurture you, they can encourage you to do something different, get out of your comfort zone, check yourself when you're like, hey, am I seeing this wrong and someone else can say, yeah, you are, like this is how I see it. So finding an opportunity where you can be coached in a nurturing environment, right? And I really think that that is a trend also for 2024, it's something I'm leaning into as well. You know, we often talk, Julia, that executive coaching is not a slap on the wrist, it's not a slap on the hand, it's not that you've done something wrong, it can be, but it's not always, right? Right, right, right, right. I have a coach, I know you work with a coach, like so many of us as leaders have our own coaches, right? And so coaching circles for your own growth. So in addition, this year, right? Leaning into me providing, that's a service line I offer as executive coaching, but moving it into a community coaching circle so that we are coming together as peers, find that for yourself, hopefully, whether it's a formal or an informal process, I think you will find so much benefit from a coaching circle. Well, and I think it also alleviates some of that sense that you're by yourself, that you're the only one out there. And if you can hear that, sometimes it's just that sigh or that, you know, like, oh, that's right, I feel that way too, or a way to, you know, navigate through something that you hadn't thought of. I think it's genius. All of the coaching programs I have been in, I have to say, and this might be a little taboo, it wasn't the coach that kept me there. It was the community that was built in that environment, right? So the coach facilitated and built and stewarded the environment that really held me in a space of safety, of challenge, of encouragement. So that community really is what many of us are seeking. Right, right. And it goes back to this profound concept of loneliness and isolation that I think as we move through the pandemics and the implications of a digital society, I think we're gonna have a lot more information about this. I think this is gonna be something that we talk about for a long time. And it'll be very interesting to see what comes of it. Well, it's trend, it's definitely trending for 2024. So I will still be here on the nonprofit show. You all know where to find me every single weekday right here with Julia interested in some of the offerings that I'm playing with in 2024. My playful spirit, one that understands, right? This work, the life and the balance that it requires. I invite all of you really to look into this because my whole goal, including my license plate, Julia, you know this, reads B of string. I want to be of service, so. Yeah, well, I think it's a really great time to talk about this, Jared. I love, you're always so transparent and you're real and down to earth and sharing your observations that are so wise and helping us to understand. I think a lot of times we don't understand that we're burnt out or we don't understand what this stress is doing to us until we reach that point, like my friend, the marriage counselor says you can't go any further. And then you have eroded all the opportunity that you had just because you can't go any further versus if you had had some intervention, external or internal, you could be moving forward because it's gonna be tough. There's never a doubt about that in our sector. That's right, and I'm gonna push back a little bit because to me, I don't see it as intervention, right? I see it as baking it into the life we want to live that feels a little bit more balanced, right? And so instead of getting to that need of an intervention, we weave it back to weaving it, we weave it and bake it, whatever you wanna say, into how we live our life. Right, and I appreciate you saying that because I agree with you, you're absolutely right. And I think that this is a, again, we could go on and on but I think this is one of those things that we need to be talking about so that we don't keep bleeding off our leadership and our talent across our sector. It is frightening. Well, we're losing professionals in the sector. Many amazing rockstar professionals are moving to the for-profit section, our sector. And I have to say probably because of this, right? Like many in our sector are low-paid, overworked, doing the angels work for four people, getting paid for one. Yeah, yeah. No, it's been great. I love this. Again, Jared Ransom, nonprofit nerd, CEO of Raven Group. Check out the Raven Group.com. Where does the word Raven come from? It's my middle name. Thank you. I always have to have you bring that in because it's so interesting. Yeah, it sounds like the bird, but it's spelled totally different, but it is pronounced like Raven, the bird. Yeah, I love it. It's super cool. Well, again, everybody, I'm Julia Patrick, been joined today by the nonprofit nerd herself, Jared Ransom, sitting in the hot seat and you got to cool it off, sister. It's hot. Well, you know who else is hot? These are all of our sponsors and they are incredible. Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, nonprofit thought leaders, staffing boutique, your part-time controller, 180 management group, Fundraising Academy at National University, GMT Consulting, nonprofit nerd, and of course, nonprofit tech talk. Wow, Jared, they're with us day in, day out so that we can be really leading edge with bringing in amazing talents across the globe. Although it's been great talking with you and being with you, we get to have these amazing conversations every day, don't we? We do, it is fantastic. And the other amazing thing we sign off, and this means a lot today, so I would like to sign off, Fundra. Yes. And we have said this from day one of March, 2020 and it remains the same words, but they resonate a little differently. We invite you, we encourage you to stay well so you can do well. Thanks everyone. We'll see you back here tomorrow.