When it comes to successfully engaging decisionmakers and getting them to invest fully in our work, it's all about skills. 

Of course, no matter where you are in your messaging and engagement skill-development journey, there’s always a next level to master. But the real test of how urgent it is for you to increase your skills, is the results you're getting.

If every time you go talk to a decisionmaker, they're leaning in, they 100% get the value of your work and they can't wait to invest. I'd say you're doing great and you can probably invest your skill development time in something else. 

But if you're not landing those results most of the time, then I would submit that really putting some effort in on increasing your messaging and engagement skills is a very smart investment of your energy. 

Now you notice, I didn't say investment of your time. 

We do have to put in the work to develop messaging and engagement skills if we want to see those big results. But at the same time, let's be honest. We're all having serious bandwidth issues. And the idea of learning a new set of skills, or taking our current skills to the next level sounds way too time consuming.

The good news is there's a way to weave skill development into your existing work without spending a ton more time. If you know how. That's the secret I want to let you in on today.

In this episode, we share:

• The four-step process to turn every interaction with a decisionmaker into an opportunity to increase your skill level
• The top three misperceptions about skills that will hold you back
• The brain science secrets to developing advanced skills
• Why practice doesn’t guarantee progress, and how to add the key “skill growth ingredient”
• How to use the skill of debriefing to catapult your messaging and engagement skill growth
• A simple yet powerful mindset shift that will free you from the most common traps that inhibit growth

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast.  Thanks!!

A lot of us, especially Gen Xers, were taught a lot of things about how important it is to be modest. Don't brag about yourself. Heck, don't even talk about yourself. We were taught to regard modesty as a great virtue. 

But there's a serious problem with that when we're talking about getting decisionmakers to invest in our work. Because they need to know how great our work is, and how great we are at making a huge impact through that work. They need to know how we're leading the field with our work.

If we struggle to talk about our work as the best, most effective solution to a particular problem, and if we won't own the identity of expert on the work that we do, why would the decisionmaker believe that our work is worthy of high-level investment?

This misplaced modesty is one of the biggest causes of underinvestment by decisionmakers, and it doesn't get talked about enough. 

We have to be able to claim our expertise and we have to be able to claim our best/most status in whatever construct it is true. And we have to be able to do that with confidence and certainty if we want decisionmakers to believe us when we say it. 

But you might have noticed there's often a lot of stuff that gets in the way of our being able to do that. What I've observed is that when these problems are showing up consistently for a leader, there's almost always something else going on beneath the surface. 

Until we get at the stuff under the surface, our default modesty behaviors are likely to persist. And to keep costing us real money, both in lost investments and under-investment.

In this episode, we share:

• The two main ways counterproductive modesty shows up in interactions with decisionmakers
• The most common sources of unhelpful beliefs that drive counterproductive modesty
• The three key ingredients to taking ownership of your greatness
• Essential questions to help you identify areas of counterproductive modesty, and to rewire it
• Why you should beware of focusing on credentials
• How to avoid a common trap that discourages us from owning our greatness

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast.  Thanks!!

We hear all the time about how important it is to tell client stories. But we seldom get much more guidance than that. And the truth is that number one, client stories are only a small part of the overall storytelling toolkit for Nonprofit leaders. And number two, even with client stories, simply telling them does not guarantee any sort of a result or impact.

Storytelling can be an incredibly powerful tool in your advocacy toolkit, IF you build your stories for results. Like every other part of our advocacy work, our storytelling needs to be strategic. And that means that every part of any story you decide to tell should be designed to produce a specific result.

How are you using storytelling in your advocacy work right now? If you're not currently designing your storytelling from that strategic perspective, this episode is for you.

In this episode, we share:

• The five most common storytelling mistakes you may be making that rob your stories of impact
• Four key ingredients to a story that produces results
• Questions to ask yourself to identify the strategic job(s) a story needs to do in a given situation
• How to create relatable imagery that will reliably engage a decisionmaker’s emotional center 
• How to integrate your bits of data and facts into an engaging story
• The four-step process to build a story that gets results 

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast.  Thanks!!

How many times have you dealt with a funding decisionmaker who is tempted by the low-cost alternative to your services? And how many times have you been challenged on your prices?

This is a really common problem and it came up in a session with one of my coaching clients last week. As we were talking, it became clear they were missing a critical ingredient in their messaging that’s essential for dealing with this specific problem.

Here’s what was going on. My client was dealing with a group of decisionmakers who were failing to see why my client's version of transportation services cost significantly more than the version offered by the other transportation providers also being funded. The basic difference is that my client provides a totally client-centered, door-to-door transportation service on demand. While the other providers are modeled on more of a group transport set-up where they're taking 10 or 20 people in a bus from one place to another. You can see why those are obviously different animals.

But the decisionmakers were hung up on the cost element. They were challenging my client’s prices and questioning why they were so much higher than the others’. The decisionmakers’ focus on cost and their desire to pay the least to get the desired result, which they were broadly characterizing as transportation, was blinding them to all the other details.

I worked with my client to craft a multi-pronged messaging strategy to turn this situation around. But the key ingredient was a technique I rarely see being used by Nonprofits.

So today I'm going to introduce you to a powerful marketing technique that is tailor-made for exactly this problem.

In this episode, we share:

• The three most common mistakes Nonprofit leaders make when discussing price with decisionmakers
• How decisionmakers are creating unhelpful price comparisons in their head and using them to devalue your work
• How to use the decisionmaker’s desire for a bargain to your advantage
• Why decisionmakers’ perception of what’s expensive and what’s not is highly malleable
• The three basic steps to change the price comparisons the decisionmaker is using, so they come to see your stuff as the true bargain

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast.  Thanks!!

We're all witnessing some truly devastating and distressing actions against our immigrant neighbors. We may be watching this from afar, or we may be seeing it up close and personal. 

There are almost two reactions that happen at the same time. One is we are tempted to recoil in horror and push it away. And the other is to step forward and help. 

What is awesome about Nonprofit leaders is that generally we're wired to step in and help. It's what we do. But it would be easy to look at this particular situation and feel fairly powerless.

That's the conversation I want to have – about the fact that in spite of the horrific events that have been occurring in Minnesota, there are some powerful lessons that are coming out of the work being done there. By community members and by community organizations that are banding together and creating a powerful force of resistance against lawless action and in support for the immigrant community.

It's that combination of both resistance against what is wrong, and simultaneously stepping up to support those who are being targeted and harmed, that is the critical recipe for how we all can be thinking about how to respond.

In this episode, we share:

• Three questions to guide you in supporting clients who are members of immigrant communities 
• How to help staff and volunteers who are members of immigrant communities
• The two-prong strategy that is working in Minnesota
• The powerful role that 34,000 Minnesotans have signed up to play in protecting immigrants and pushing back on lawless actions by the federal government
• Two downloadable tools that you can start using today to support and protect your immigrant neighbors

Links to downloadable resources from the Immigrant Defense Network/COPAL in MN:

The Handbook for Constitutional Observers 

"Red Cards" on basic rights

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast.  Thanks!!

As a Nonprofit leader/advocate, you already know that information alone doesn't engage. But here's what I see as a flashing red signal. AI is transforming the information ecosystem. It's now easier than ever to get just about any information you might want or need, in fairly complex form, just by asking. 

The bottom line is that if decisionmakers just needed information, they would no longer particularly need us. They can get that on their own. They can just ask their favorite AI tool to go assemble that information for them. That is a huge heads-up for us.

I'm aware of a lot of Nonprofit leaders and advocates who tend to rely pretty heavily on information and data as their primary vehicle for communicating with decision makers. And I am sorry to tell you that is not gonna cut it anymore. 

We have to be able to engage decisionmakers, one human being to another. That means developing a very robust set of engagement skills, the ability to engage people on a deeply human level. It's the one thing you can't fake. AI cannot do it. But it only works if you show up as your whole human self. And that can feel a little scary.

In this episode, we share:

• The worst advice many Nonprofit leaders have been given that’s hurting your ability to fully engage decisionmakers
• How to use advanced-level active listening skills to create engagement with a decisionmaker
• The most powerful questions to ask that will pull the decisionmaker in
• How to check whether the quality and tone of your voice is attracting or repelling the decisionmaker
• How to find multiple points of connection and alignment with a decisionmaker with ease
• The most common barriers that get in the way of successful engagement, and how to get past them

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast.  Thanks!!

There's a mistake that every Nonprofit leader makes from time to time. In fact, we all make this mistake, not just in our work, but in multiple aspects of our lives. And if we can be attentive enough and fix it, we can absolutely transform our results and massively reduce our level of frustration.

Here's what I'm talking about. It's the curse of the expert. We know way too much about every aspect of the work that we do and the impact it has. And we correctly recognize that all those details are important. They all contribute to the overall success of the work that we do.

Unfortunately, that makes us really bad at paring that way down and zeroing in on the one or two details or messaging points that the decisionmaker we're talking to needs to know right now. Not in the end, not when we're all done, but right now.

We want to tell them all the details 'cause we know how important they all are. But when we do that, all we do is flood their brain with way too much information and they can't process any of it and they don't retain any of it.

So what do we do about this? How do you not only refrain from TMI, but how do you identify precisely what are the two or three things this decisionmaker needs to know right now, depending on where they are in their journey. Where do you, as their guide, need to take them next?

In this episode, we share:

• What I learned from teaching jujitsu that will help you build messaging that causes decisionmakers to “get it”
• The three-piece message scaffolding that is key to moving decisionmakers to invest fully in your work
• How to construct a high-level, impact-focused summary of your work in three sentences or less
• Why white papers and infographics often fail to improve decisionmakers’ understanding
• How to structure your messaging to cause decisionmakers to ask for the exact details they need
• The one thing you must train yourself to do when talking with decisionmakers

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast.  Thanks!!

One of my New Year's resolutions for 2026 is to make more mistakes. And I gotta tell you, it's been very interesting to see the reaction it gets when I tell people that. 

A few people get it and cheer me on. But a lot of folks look at me kind of funny and ask, why on earth would you wanna do that?

That got me thinking about how much energy people put into trying to avoid mistakes and what that can wind up costing us. It also got me thinking about how this applies inside Nonprofit organizations. How important it is for Nonprofit leaders to have the freedom and space and support to make smart mistakes.

Action brings clarity. If we wait to take action until we have everything figured out, we're missing opportunity. And we're also very likely missing the chance to do something really brilliant.

In this episode, we share:

• How smart mistakes lead to the biggest breakthroughs
• What mistake-aversion could be costing you
• Three key principles to guide you in making valuable mistakes
• The four biggest obstacles to making the kind of mistakes that lead to big breakthroughs
• How to build a culture that supports and rewards making smart mistakes
• Two key questions to get you and your team started

Ready to take your messaging and engagement skills to the next level and start getting next-level results? The wait list for my new coaching program is now open. Only 10 Founding Member spots will be available. Claim yours by sending me a message here: 

On the podcast website

On LinkedIn

As Nonprofit leaders, we all have a relationship with power. But it's not something that we tend to take a look at much. And I think perhaps the reason for that is what a lot of Nonprofit leaders tell me – that they're not super comfortable with the concept of power.

Today I want to really dig into some questions that will help us all understand our relationship with power a little bit better, and perhaps begin to shift that relationship a little bit.

The thing is, our relationship with power is often pretty complex. What we don't always consider is that we're also walking around with a whole set of beliefs about power that shape that relationship.

Our beliefs about power in particular have been shaped over a lifetime of experience. But they’ve also been informed by things we heard growing up. And by the environment we're operating in now. 

If we're operating in an environment with a lot of other Nonprofit leaders, and that's our primary thought ecosystem, what happens a lot is that we start reinforcing one another's beliefs about power. And what I've noticed is that a lot of times those beliefs may not always be serving us very well. In fact, they may be holding us back from the things we most want.

In this episode, we share:

• How and why our beliefs about power affect our actions and decisions
• The most common beliefs about power held by many Nonprofit leaders
• A simple exercise to help you uncover your hidden beliefs about power
• The most powerful questions you can ask yourself to rewire your beliefs
• How to change your relationship with power to one that truly serves you

Ready to take your messaging and engagement skills to the next level and start getting next-level results? The wait list for my new coaching program is now open. Only 10 Founding Member spots will be available. Claim yours by sending me a message here: 

Through the podcast website

On LinkedIn

As we're coming right up on the close of 2025, I think it's always important to do a review and take stock of the year that's just gone by. And it might be more important than ever in this particular year, given what a wild ride it's been.

There's a lot of different ways you can come at a year-end review, and you probably already have a process in place in your organization. But I'd like to call out something specific that I think is especially important at the close of 2025. And that's to take stock of your wins. Particularly the kinds of wins that would easily be overlooked otherwise. 

For some Nonprofit leaders, that feels like a stretch right there. How do you clock a win in completely chaotic and abnormal times? Our normal definition of wins may or may not apply. For some they will. For others, it's going to look a little different this year. 

It would be pretty easy to just sort of heave a sigh of relief and say, thank God we survived this year. But that would be selling yourself massively short. 

Here's the thing. No matter how you're feeling about the year and how happy you may be that it is almost over, there were wins. If you had some ginormous obvious wins, of course you are celebrating them. I celebrate with you.

But I also hope you'll use the questions I’m posing to dig into some of the wins that maybe aren't as obvious, but that are every bit as important as the great big showy ones.

In this episode, we share:

• The five categories of wins we might otherwise overlook, that matter more than we know
• Questions to help you investigate what allowed you to see opportunity in the midst of crisis and chaos
• How to uncover the organizational culture factors that caused some of your wins
• Key questions to help you recognize your team members for their roles in the wins
• The two hardest questions for most Nonprofit leaders to answer, that are a key to a successful 2026

Ready to take your messaging and engagement skills to the next level and start getting next-level results? The wait list for my new coaching program is now open. Only 10 Founding Member spots will be available. Claim yours by sending me a message here: 

Through the podcast website

On LinkedIn