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- [00:00]
Tama Hearn
We now know that people actually will lean into a decision as fast as three seconds. They don't, they don't need to mullet for days. They're already there. You know, I do want that pink Thunderbird. I do. I want it so bad. And in my case it's a black Subaru, but still I wanted it so bad and, and I knew that within three seconds. So what I'm teaching people sometimes is how are you using your 3 seconds? Are you using it as well as you could, as smart as you, well as you might, et cetera?
- [00:48]
Jay Frost
Welcome to the PM Podcast, brought to you by Donor Search, the show that takes you inside the lives of thought leaders, innovators and change makers in fundraising, philanthropy and civil society. I'm your host, Jay Frost. Tama Hearn is one of the most influential voices in donor communications. The New York Times has called him one of the country's most sought after creators of fundraising messages. A self described writer before he could write, he has authored multiple acclaimed books, trained thousands of fundraisers around the world, and Most recently published Sim 1, a powerful reflection on love and loss after the death of his wife and partner, Simone Joyo. We begin the conversation talking about his earliest memories of writing.
- [01:33]
Unknown
How far does that go back? Did you always write?
- [01:37]
Tama Hearn
Well, I wrote before I could write, as in other words, I think I remember and of course these are very, you know, potentially artificial memories. I think I remember wanting to be a writer when I was like 4 and. But of course I couldn't write at that point. I don't even know what I thought a writer did. Or maybe it was just hold up a book or something, I want to do this, but that one. And it just got worse from there.
- [02:18]
Unknown
Wow. I don't hear writing described as a downhill slope very often, but.
- [02:24]
Tama Hearn
Well, you, you should have talked to my parents. They, they were not thrilled with my career choices, if you want to call it that. I just wanted to be a writer. Okay, there you go. See you later. Let us know how that works out.
- [02:45]
Unknown
What, what did your parents do? What kind of work?
- [02:48]
Tama Hearn
Well, you know, my mother actually managed a daily newspaper and so she should. She was a. And photographers and the rest of it, the biz. She did that. She was basically an accountant. My dad worked in a factory all his life. He, he, he had the unluckiest birthday on her. He graduated high school the year of the Great Depression, although 1929. Dad's in the job market and it just doesn't improve for years. And he was taking care of his invalid Adoptive mother. She couldn't get out of bed. Then he started building, not by himself, of course, building battleships. And then World War II happened and he got drowned. Drafted and he had a new child. And then, well, and then I came along in 1947.
- [04:01]
Unknown
Wow. Where was all this happening? Where. Where were your parents?
- [04:06]
Tama Hearn
Across America. This is, you know, as soon as the United States decided to get into the war because of Pearl harbor, of course, the plan was in place. Everybody was basically draftable unless they were already doing something use to the war effort, like in my dad's case, welding, you know, battleships together. So anyway, and you're.
- [04:39]
Unknown
But a job with a newspaper is usually, you know, a fixed position, unless you're a reporter out on the road. So. And first of all, it. That was a time when the number of women and that kind of role is probably pretty limited.
- [04:55]
Tama Hearn
Yeah, you'd have to meet my mother. The, you know, first of all, she's not a reporter. Let's, let's make that clear. She manages the business side of things. So when she's billing for advertising and that sort of stuff, she's not an easy. She doesn't fold easily. Most of the women in her family actually ran businesses because the men were kind of, I don't know, they had flaws. And some of these flaws were. Were financial and fundamental. And so the women tended to run stuff, which is probably why I liked someone so much, because I'd grown up in a family where the women tended to run stuff and some un. Very much tended to run stuff.
- [05:53]
Unknown
Strong, strong women in the family. Were they both natives to some part of the country or were they from overseas? Where did your parents come from?
- [06:04]
Tama Hearn
Well, my. My mother came down through her mother through Nova Scotia. They were part of the great diaspora from Scotland to the east coast of the United States, and that was her route and eventually lived in Massachusetts. The family story is my grandfather lost their house in a night of wild gambling. And. And the next door, the next day, there was a sheriff at the door saying, it's time to move out. Now. This is where my. The female side of my family, you know, acquired grit to a kind of extraordinary degree. Yeah.
- [07:03]
Unknown
Wow. So you were raised in this household. Your father had been building these battleships. That was during the wartime, of course. Your mother was obviously a force of nature. You're talking a little bit about her in the present tense. Are they both still with you?
- [07:20]
Tama Hearn
Well, yeah. I mean, my house is a memorial to my parents and to Simone.
- [07:28]
Unknown
Yes.
- [07:28]
Tama Hearn
Her photos are everywhere, so.
- [07:32]
Unknown
And then you. You were Born where, Which. Which part of the country?
- [07:36]
Tama Hearn
Up in Massachusetts, just south of Boston. So I used to have an. An accent which would be clearly recognizable by the rest of the country, and it was the typical south. South of Boston accent. Then I. My freshman year at college, I got stuck in a room with somebody who sounded like they had a southern accent. They actually came from southern Ohio. But between the two of us, by the end of the year, neither one of us had an accident anymore.
- [08:10]
Unknown
Does it come back to you, though, when you're with people? I don't know if you get together with people from that, that neck of the woods.
- [08:16]
Tama Hearn
Yeah, I can fake it, but I can't make it anymore. Yeah.
- [08:21]
Unknown
So you. I know we jumped right to college, but you went to college and that's where you were studying. I believe you were studying English and writing. Was it more about the writing or more about the academics for you?
- [08:37]
Tama Hearn
Yeah. How to answer this? I wanted to read as much as possible. Surprise, surprise. High school was much harder for me than university because all university asked me to do was read. So I'm happy to do that 12 hours a day until I fall asleep in the library. And that's how I spent four years. We had something at my university called an open curriculum, which kind of land based. All that means is you can kind of try anything you want to try. And rather than get into just physics or just something and people are wandering all over the place, therefore, and for me personally, it ended up with poetry, philosophy, avant garde art, whatever caught my interest. I had good mentors.
- [09:45]
Unknown
Mentors in poetry are particularly important, and they are in everything. But with poetry, a lot of it is a tradition that you pass from hand to hand or ear to ear. Who is there for you?
- [10:00]
Tama Hearn
Yeah, I wish it were there that way. For me, it wasn't exactly. I. I had a. A couple who kind of brought me under their wing. I was a junior in college and, and definitely on the verge of failing this close all the time, and. But they saw, they saw some poetry I had written and they thought it had promise. And they, they're both professors at my school and they kind of took me in under their wing and showed me, for instance, how to set up a letterpress print shop so we could do poetry books in their basement.
- [10:52]
Unknown
Oh, wow. Yeah, Chapbooks, I guess.
- [10:55]
Tama Hearn
Chapbooks? Yeah, I, you know, I probably have four or five types of cancer from the fluids we use to clean the press, but who knew.
- [11:10]
Unknown
What was. The audience said? What? Poetry makes nothing happen. I guess in this case, it did. It's just luckily it didn't happen to you.
- [11:17]
Tama Hearn
Not yet.
- [11:21]
Unknown
So. But was that really where you focused your writing initially? Because, I mean, the, the under text here is that you've spent so much of your life writing and showing others how writing can be really powerful in conveying messages and meaning and advancing ideas. But for you, that journey must have begun with something. Was it largely that kind of world of poetry initially, or was it all genres?
- [11:53]
Tama Hearn
No, no, poetry. I mean, I remember wrestling. Oh, what kind of writer do I want to be? Will I be a playwright? Will I be a novelist? Will I be a poet? And obviously I can't sing either. But I just decided poetry was the thing I was most comfortable doing. And in part because I was being shown poetry from the middle ages of modernism coming in from Europe through my mentors, Keith and Rosemary Waldrop, and they were running something called Burning Duck Press.
- [12:39]
Unknown
Yes.
- [12:40]
Tama Hearn
Which was publishing people that you wouldn't find any place outside of a university literary library. Very obscure writers, and a lot of them being translated from some European language. And I, you know, I'm just absorbing this stuff at the dinner table. So for me, I always had a kind of minor talent in mimicry. I could mimic their poetry. And I started doing that and Rosemary and Keith said, well, we'll publish some of it. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I was getting very good, I don't know what you call it. Sources, I guess, from Europe in terms of modernist poetry.
- [13:47]
Unknown
Who were you mimicking at that time?
- [13:49]
Tama Hearn
Oh, God, I can't remember, Jay. Anybody that was coming off the press and I was hand setting type for their poetry books.
- [14:01]
Unknown
And people have no idea what that means now. I mean, can you describe what that was like?
- [14:06]
Tama Hearn
Yeah, it's filthy. It is stinky. And you're picking out one letter for each, well, letter form, and you're building it backwards in what's called a stick, where you have a line of poetry, say, and that stick has one line, then you put what's called a piece of lead above that, and then you put the next line of type above that. And that's what you continuously do until the damn book is finished.
- [14:42]
Unknown
It's pretty painstaking work.
- [14:46]
Tama Hearn
Yes and no. With young eyes. It's not such. Yeah, I, I was doing this in my 20s, so.
- [14:56]
Unknown
And producing these books. I, I had no idea. And for you then, did you continue writing poetry? For a lot, and maybe you still do today. But when did you kind of make the transition from that world of literature where you Know, the audience is more limited, unfortunately, and then into this world of more commercial messaging. However you want to describe that.
- [15:21]
Tama Hearn
No, I totally understand it because there is no audience for poetry, except other poets, perhaps, and even they are not reading it. I went to a poetry reading in the last couple of years that just shocked me because it was so different than the kind of reading I kind of matured through, where somebody would have a book open in front of them and they, in a droning voice, would recite the lines, and it was just painful. Now it's way more entertaining and. And so people getting up on stage and really doing performance, it's. It's pretty fabulous. That wasn't the poetry I grew up on.
- [16:12]
Unknown
But when did you start moving into, for example, commercial copywriting, which I think was one of your.
- [16:20]
Tama Hearn
When I discovered I could do it. That was interesting, Jay. The. I got a job, as one does, you know, particularly in the nonprofit world. You get an offer, oh, thank God somebody's going to employ me. I thought I would never, ever have a job because I was an English major and a philosophy minor. But I got this job, it was at the arts Council in Rhode island, small state in the union, but it turned out to have a pretty heavy weight executive director that I, whom I learned a lot from. And at the same time, I had Keith and Rosemary behind my back pushing poetry. And I started to realize, because I was getting training, that I, my. My fascination with words actually could be applied to things like advertising. And so it went, and I started reading books after books after books, and you can't see my whole office. I have 500 how to books here.
- [17:46]
Unknown
On what?
- [17:47]
Tama Hearn
How to write an ad, basically.
- [17:51]
Unknown
Oh, okay.
- [17:53]
Tama Hearn
You know, because you go into this game, you. You go into the ring and you produce results, or you don't for many reasons, but I wanted to produce results. So I went into the ring feeling like I'm going to really make myself as good as I can be as a writer, a commercial ad writer.
- [18:19]
Unknown
Did you go into an agency initially, or how did. How did this work? Because that was right around the time of and immediately after the Madman, I guess, because this must have been very late 60s, early 70s or mid-70s.
- [18:32]
Tama Hearn
Yeah, about then I tried to go into an ad agency. As it happened, in Rhode island, where I live, there were a couple of nationally known ad agencies. They were very proud of their work. They had big clients, and yet they were here located in pokey little Rhode Island. Well, pokey little Rhode island isn't all that pokey, because we have One of the world's greatest design studios here, Rhode Island School of Design. And so we had a flourishing advertising community. And some of my earliest training came from them. And I was basically, I want to be like them. I know I can do this, so I want to be like them. One of my first writing jobs, Jay, was creating a menu for a sandwich shop. And where we discovered the all important lesson that the more adjectives you can throw in, the more money you can charge. So is it cheese? Yeah, it's cheese, but it's farm raised cheese. It's, you know, farm raised, all organic cheese with these light veins of blue running through them. That'll be five bucks. Thank you.
- [20:02]
Unknown
All right, so does that make you more or less cynical then? When you read a restaurant menu now.
- [20:09]
Tama Hearn
You would make, you would think it makes one more cynical. But I, no, I'm just an informed observer. I, it, it never made me cynical, actually. It's fun. Playing with words is fun. So I always had this fun job and as long as I didn't feel I was taking advantage of people, I mean, I, I can sell, sell, sell. But there is a point at which you do not go past.
- [20:45]
Unknown
And what is that point?
- [20:48]
Tama Hearn
Well, it's being honest about everything you're saying. Essentially, to a, you know, to the degree recognized in the advertising world, honesty is a little bit of a kind of jello y thing, you know. But I'm reading actually my own sales copy now for a workshop that's coming up in May and thinking, can I really say that? Is that honest? Okay, I can't. Then I won't say it. And, and so you make those kind of micro decisions all the time. I, I am not going to try to sell cigarettes to 10 year olds. You know, this is not. I, I'm trying to sell intelligent products to intelligent people.
- [21:43]
Unknown
Well, and you were, you were said going into that a second ago, saying that you worked with smaller clients and different things, including sandwich shops, which actually sounds like a lot of fun. And then some bigger clients, whatever they were. And then you started working with these larger nonprofits. How did that transition occur? And was that, was that meaningful for you to start doing that nonprofit work?
- [22:07]
Tama Hearn
Yeah, it took a while. They had to find me. I wasn't looking for them, honestly. It was just whatever client came in the door. And you know, we, we had a contract of some kind. They were of all different sizes. But over time they started to grow in terms of reputation. And you know, they just, they were looking for training, essentially. I mean, there's some of the latest work I've done was creating print newsletters for a couple of different size organizations, one mammoth and one kind of regional. And they both make plenty of money, which was the goal right from the start. And they gave us time to work on it. So we asked give us four issues because it'll take that long to kind of work out the bugs and after then we can decide whether it's working or not. And it, and they, and both did. They both launched successfully.
- [23:27]
Unknown
So when you, when you say working out the bugs, are you talking about the bugs in the messaging or the, the, you know, the audience response or what does that look like?
- [23:38]
Tama Hearn
Yeah, some of its audience response. If we've set it up to gather that sometimes we do our research before we launch the product to get a better sense of how people self identify. This is something I learned from Jen Shang. She has this wonderful little quiz that she gives to donors where she asks them to list five things they would say about themselves. And it's kind of open ended. And the first time she did it, a lot of the responses were old, I'm old. This is from donors to. I think it was the Royal National Lifeboat. Oh sure, yeah.
- [24:33]
Unknown
It was a very large and charity.
- [24:36]
Tama Hearn
Unbelievable. I mean it's a, it's got princely roots. It's, it's that kind of thing in England and, but, but here, you know, people are writing back very honestly saying I'm old, I care about people. That's all. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't a, an incredible surprise what some of their statements were. They just old, I care about people. Thanks.
- [25:15]
Unknown
All right, well that sounds like a job for tuning up the, the survey. Certainly. But did, does something like that affect the messaging too, in your experience when you're working with, because you've worked with lots and lots. How many clients have you worked with? You've worked with lots?
- [25:32]
Tama Hearn
Lots. Yeah. I don't know if it's hundreds, but a lot. I mean I, I used to work with about 40 to 50 a year in my early years when I was, you know, taking any job that would pay me these time. Right now I don't need money, so I take on a lot of pro bono work.
- [25:59]
Jay Frost
What kind of jobs?
- [26:00]
Unknown
And, and why, why pro bono?
- [26:02]
Tama Hearn
Because then I don't have to answer to them. I mean, basically the deal with pro bono is here's what I think. What do you think? And, and it kind of levels the playing field a little bit because there is a, there is a power dynamic, of course, with all Clients and, and the people who serve those clients. I would prefer not to have that power dynamic. So it's more pleasant for me to hear from somebody for whatever reason and they're doing a capital campaign and they're just getting started, not quite sure what their first step should be. And we just talk about stuff and ease into it. So there's no real, there's no contracted relationship. I just not that interested in them. I don't like the paperwork. I like to keep my tax returns simple. And so I'll end up working with five or six or seven or eight different clients in a year on whatever project they're working on. You know, sometimes it's a capital campaign because that is a specialty and sometimes it's their first direct mail letter promoting the idea of bequest giving and they're really nervous about talking about it.
- [27:44]
Unknown
But there are lots of different kinds of organizations that, that would love to have that kind of coaching or counsel and a first draft friend, among other things. So how do you choose? I mean, are there causes that at this point in your, in your career are particularly important to you?
- [28:03]
Tama Hearn
That is an excellent question. Well, yes and no. I mean, Planned Parenthood, for instance, has been a long time interest of mine and I've written a number of things for a number of different Planned Parenthood chapters or whatever they call themselves affiliates. I, it's left leaning, let's say. And, and I don't have a lot of luck with really hardcore faith based. I can work with people doing really fascinating, interesting, useful work and they have a faith based reason for doing that just fine. But I, I cannot fake, I'm not such a great mimic after all. I cannot fake faith based language. I tried once with, I forget who I was working with. The Lutherans, oh my God, they took me to town. I just could not get Lutheran talk down. It was a little bit, you know, was kind of little, little la la and a little not lala. And it was just like, oh God, you're talking a different vocabulary now. I was raised Catholic, so basically you're going to hell and that's, you know, there's your story. If you don't do the right things.
- [29:49]
Unknown
It's pretty clear.
- [29:50]
Tama Hearn
Oh yeah, no, it's very clear.
- [29:57]
Unknown
You have done lots of different kinds of writing and I'm sure still do, but you can pick and choose at this point. But what, what's the, the kind of writing that, that you either most enjoy or like to help people most with? Is it, is it case statements? Because that's when you and I first met, I think it was talking about case statements. But that's only one facet of the work. What's most meaningful.
- [30:22]
Tama Hearn
You know, I. Jay, I've tried to come up with all these mic. These little tests that you can apply to your copywriting, one of which is called the three second test. The three second test is based on some good neuroscience where we now know that people actually will lean into a decision as fast as three seconds. They don't. They don't need to mullet for days. They're already there. You know, I do want that pink Thunderbird. I do. I want it so bad. And in my case, it's a black Subaru, but still, I wanted it so bad, and. And I knew that within three seconds. So what I'm teaching people sometimes is how are you using your 3 seconds? Are using it as well as you could, as smart as well as you might, etc.
- [31:38]
Unknown
And that's true for case statements as much as it is in a line of copy in a direct mail piece.
- [31:45]
Tama Hearn
Yeah. No, absolutely. I would say you can. You can win my heart in three seconds in any environment, communications environment.
- [31:56]
Unknown
So what's. What's the key to that? For people who are either just getting started this or just trying to get through a slump, and they got one piece of advice from you on this front. How. How do you grab. What's the hook?
- [32:10]
Tama Hearn
Fire your boss. That's my. No, your boss is not your enemy. But you might mistake them for one on certain days. What happens a lot, Jay, is because I do so much training and I write books, I get to hear people talk about their experiences with their boss. And a lot of times the experience kind of goes like this. Well, I don't like that. Why don't you like it? I don't know, but it doesn't sound like me. I'm supposed to sign this letter after all. Okay. What would sound like you? Well, I don't know. I guess, to be honest, if I were more boring, that would do the trick. And in other words, there's no good answer to this. The answer is you hired me for a. Insert swear word here. Reason. And why aren't you letting me do my job? It's not your job. It's my job. So one of the things I've been preaching for many, many, many, many years, probably to not any great end, is it is your job and you have to stand up for the job. And don't assume that, you know, because they're in a different place on the Org chart that this person knows anything about donor communications. The person who knows the most about donor communications is the person who wrote read a book last in that room. And that's probably almost nobody else in your organization.
- [34:20]
Unknown
You mentioned writing a bunch of books, and you do have a bunch of them, but your most recent one is a bit different.
- [34:30]
Tama Hearn
Yeah, a bit.
- [34:31]
Unknown
Can you talk about that book?
- [34:34]
Tama Hearn
I had to get it out of me. Jay. I owe Simone my entire adult life. I mean, of adult in the sense of becoming a more adult type person, adulting. She came from a very ethical, very interesting background. Her dad taught existentialism at Michigan State University, and he brought his kids up that way. Well, I mean, he and his wife Jane, they were. They are all responsible people and they take care of other people. And that was very much someone. And she taught me a lot. So I needed to write that book to just say thank you.
- [35:31]
Unknown
How did you two meet?
- [35:33]
Tama Hearn
Well, we met through a colleague who just knew us both and knew we were both single. We met over clams, fried clams. We, you know, Ocean State is the nickname of Rhode island, and. And the clams are good here, so the seafood is good. She hated it. She couldn't just would spit it out. But still, we did kind of pledge our. Ourselves to each other over a plate of clams at a clam shack.
- [36:15]
Unknown
Was this really kind of an instant connection for you?
- [36:20]
Tama Hearn
Well, no, it wasn't instant, but after sex it was more instant.
- [36:28]
Unknown
So when did you meet? When was this that you first got together over clams?
- [36:33]
Tama Hearn
Oh, well, 37 years. We were married, so it goes back to, you know, the mid-80s, something like that.
- [36:41]
Unknown
You described her personality and the ethics of her family. For people who don't know her or her work, it's documented, but that doesn't mean they've seen it. Could you describe that work? A bit impactful for many people.
- [36:58]
Tama Hearn
Yeah, she. She set out, she had a path. It kind of congealed for her when she met the Women's Fund of Arizona, Southern Arizona, I believe, and saw what they were doing there, which was a model for someone. And she had been the chief fundraiser for a regional theater group. And it was the type of place where she had a great boss, but everybody else was toxic and they hated fundraising just on principle. And so she was isolated and. And it really pissed her off that they were like this. Well, they should be their. Her colleagues and her buddies. Anyway, she did what people, intelligent people who want to become consultants do, which is she read a ton of books and she became an expert in the area of governance and basically could treat these people like the whipper snappers that they actually were and move on with her life to, to become a consultant to other organizations, which, you know, she and I both did with clients all over the world.
- [38:35]
Unknown
She could be very direct, but not unkind. Is that a fair characterization?
- [38:42]
Tama Hearn
Exactly. She couldn't stand being unkind. Made her sick.
- [38:49]
Unknown
But she was honest. I mean, just like you were talking about the honesty of writing. She was, she was.
- [38:53]
Tama Hearn
She.
- [38:54]
Unknown
At least she seemed that way to me. Very direct and honest?
- [38:57]
Tama Hearn
Well, yeah. Oh, she's direct and honest. Her, her ability to, to kind of not react negatively to people who challenged her was quite remarkable because she had a lot of, you know, from the, let's say, the far right, faith based community who did not like her. She was a, the board chair for major Planned Parenthood affiliate for many years. They wanted to keep her on and she finally said, no, I'm past my sell by date and I'm quitting. But she had written a book called how to fire your lousy board members and she was trying to be the best board chair she could be. And she was a wonderful board chair for them, led them through campaigns and all sorts of stuff and finally just said no, that's it for me. Women's rights were always primary. Part, part of that was growing up watching her dad cook every meal. And he was French and he was teased a lot by his colleagues at the university for having a very thick French accent that was always impenetrable at times. And he would make fun of them back. You know, it was, it was just, it was a jolly intellectual household. I don't know if you've been around households where the kids, all the, all the parents or professors, they age very quickly.
- [41:02]
Unknown
So you, you were obviously a couple for all those years, but you also did work together with these clients, right? Or all these years.
- [41:12]
Tama Hearn
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it was in its silos. I, I never pretended to be anybody but somebody who liked adjectives. And Simone was very into organizational theory and so forth, so she actually knew what she was talking about half the time. I did not.
- [41:42]
Unknown
Take us up closer to the present. How, how does she pass?
- [41:49]
Tama Hearn
Well, something called caa, which you have and I have and most people will have eventually, and it's blah, blah, blah. Angiopathy, cerebral something. Angiopathy. What it basically means is your, your brain has built up a residue of this material that has no purpose except to weaken the blood vessels. And so people get strokes. Someone had A mini stroke. And then 18 or so months went by and then she had a massive stroke and that took her out.
- [42:40]
Unknown
This is not long ago.
- [42:43]
Tama Hearn
Well, 20, 21. Not long ago, in my view. Right, yeah.
- [42:52]
Unknown
And the, the book. Talk about the book a bit.
- [42:58]
Tama Hearn
Well, I don't know. We talked earlier, much earlier about trying to decide what kind of writer you want to be. And turns out the thing I can do best, or the most with the most being the most articulate I can be, is writing some form of memoir. Because I am willing to be semi honest with them. And so there's an authenticity on the page. You know, they're a little bit. Well, they're just. Me. It's what I can do now after all these years of writing, are you.
- [43:47]
Unknown
Is this the path with your writing that you think you'll. You'll invest more time, I mean, writing memoirs? I'm watching in my household someone committing to writing memoir. And for people who don't know that journey, it might seem like it's anywhere between self indulgent to just easy. It's neither. What has it been like for you to write this book about someone with whom you spent so many years, was so important to you? And is that a way for you to also explore other parts of your life and the lives of others who are meaningful to you?
- [44:27]
Tama Hearn
Yeah. When you put your. Okay, my. My tools are pretty simple. I have yellow pads. I have a pen. The pen was given to me by a man named Sean Triner, and he's a big deal down in Australia. Well, you may know him because of his reputation. And Sean and I were in San Diego presenting together at a conference, and he bought me this wonderful cross pen, which is the same pen ordinarily used at the White House in the Oval Office to sign bills.
- [45:16]
Unknown
Oh, I didn't. Yeah.
- [45:19]
Tama Hearn
Oh, yeah. Well, well. But it wasn't big enough for Donald Trump. He needs a bigger pen. So my pen is now obsolete in the White House. But his Sharpie lives on. I like Sharpies, too.
- [45:40]
Unknown
So are you with. With the cross or even a Sharpie if you're forced to. Are you. You still delving into the personal?
- [45:49]
Tama Hearn
Yeah, yeah. No, I just started something. I finally. I got reamed out on Twitter when it was still Twitter a few years ago, because I, I said something that offended somebody deeply and. And that was a calamity for me. It destroyed my business. And, you know, now looking back on it, I wonder what it has to tell me. I'm going to write about it. See.
- [46:30]
Unknown
Was during this Whole period of the last five years. Wasn't it also, I mean, a time when you went through a lot personally as well as professionally, but also the whole world went through.
- [46:41]
Tama Hearn
Oh, yeah, kind of. Everybody was. Oh God, everybody was on the screaming edge. Yeah, Covid, absolutely. You know, the lockdown, all of just, you know, people get weirder and weirder and weirder and so did I. And anyway, there's an old protest song.
- [47:06]
Unknown
Which side are you on? It felt a little bit like that. Although not necessarily with any cause in mind. I don't mean with you, but with many things. You know, asking people to take sides about lots of things or choose their friends.
- [47:22]
Tama Hearn
Yeah. And look what happened. Look what happened. We now have, you know, this extraordinarily polarized political episode in the United States. Can't tell you how many times I've apologized to my friends in Canada. This too will end. This, this is just craziness. Don't get, you know, don't get too upset about it.
- [47:50]
Unknown
I wonder if that almost makes the ghosts of your family wonder if they should have done something to hold onto.
- [47:56]
Tama Hearn
That house up north, hold on to that house. No, Nova Scotia is a fairly unforgiving place. It's a hard, hard to make a living there.
- [48:09]
Unknown
You know, we've talked about a bunch of things and I guess and when you're writing, there must be lots of things that you can write about and draw from, but you're also witnessing and experiencing right now in the present and then figuring out how that fits into the whole. You talked about the environment we're in right now. You know, it sounds like you're going to write a little bit about what you experienced with some of this kind of back and forth and backlash that, that you experienced. And you were not alone in that. In the last few years, what do you imagine that things are that need to be written about both by you and by others now and in the near future?
- [48:51]
Tama Hearn
Honestly, Jay, I don't know. I mean, it, it just, I don't. Took me a long time to write stuff that I can actually read myself and think that's not too bad. You know, writers are very hyper critical, self critical and for the longest time, I mean decades, I couldn't write anything that I thought a reasonable person would find of entertaining value. And I'm trying to write. This is during a period where I have a good magazine gig, where I have a column where I can write about anything I want. Food related. I'm writing long, well researched articles about social justice issues and, and I. And I, I can't read my own stuff because I read it and go, this is crap. And yet it wasn't. I had a good editor, for one thing, in the magazine world, and she was really just tough. But I read the stuff now and I go, wow, this is pretty, pretty good. This is pretty good stuff. How did this come out of me? I don't know. You know, you, you slave at it. A slave is probably a, you know, not the right choice of words, but you just hope that you're somehow putting a bunch of words together that are going to interest somebody else and make them, I don't know, something wake up.
- [51:05]
Jay Frost
Well, that's it for this episode of the PM Podcast. You can learn more about Tom and his work at Ahern. Our thanks to our sponsor, Donor Search, the world leader in AI and donor research solutions for nonprofit fundraising. Our producer is Jack Frost, and our theme music is Moving Out, Moving in by Jay Taylor and is provided courtesy of Epidemic Sound. If you like what you heard, make sure to subscribe wherever you like to listen. Check out our sister shows, Front Lines of Social Good and How to Raise, and come back next weekend for another conversation with a leader in the world of social good. Until then, this is Jay Frost. Thanks for joining me.