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- [00:00]
Rhea Wong
Hey, you, it's Ria Wong. If you're listening to nonprofit Load On, I'm pretty sure that you'd love my weekly newsletter. Every Tuesday morning, you get updates on the newest podcast episodes. And then interspersed, we have fun special invitations for newsletter subscribers only and fundraising inspo because I know what it feels like to be in the trenches alone. On top of that, you get cute dog photos. Best of all, it is free. So what are you waiting for? Head over to riawong.com now to sign up.
- [00:27]
John Lepp
Foreign.
- [00:34]
Rhea Wong
Welcome to nonprofit Lowdown. I'm your host, Rhea Wong. Hey, podcast listeners, Rhea Wong with you once again with nonprofit Lowdown. Today I'm excited to welcome my friend and guest, John Lepp. He is a partner at Agents of Good and an expert in marketing and specifically using empathy in marketing. So, John, welcome. Welcome to the show.
- [00:54]
John Lepp
You, Rhea, thank you for the intro. I appreciate it. Lovely to be here.
- [00:57]
Rhea Wong
Also, I think it's amazing that you refer to yourself as the Ted Lasso of fundraising, which is so lovely.
- [01:04]
John Lepp
I have to praise my friend Shannon Doolittle for that, that she came up with that and I think that's very sweet of her and I'll take it. That's not a bad thing to be referred as.
- [01:12]
Rhea Wong
Oh my gosh, it's amazing. I think Ted Lasso got me through the pandemic.
- [01:16]
John Lepp
Same here, Same here.
- [01:17]
Rhea Wong
Yeah, I just watched like nice British people in Ted Lasso. Okay, before we jump into the details here, can you tell me a little bit about yourself? I know that you started your career in journalism, which is great. I too started my career in journalism and then I realized this Internet thing is not going away, but would love to hear about your journey and what brought you now to helping nonprofits with marketing.
- [01:40]
John Lepp
Oh, yeah, I won't bore people with excessive details, but yes. I've gone to school for journalism after Flunkiano University and and from there I went into working at advertising agencies in just general marketing and pharmaceutical. And my partner at the time was worked at a place called Stephen Thomas in Toronto and they did direct response fundraising mostly through direct mail. So I freelanced as a designer just for fun. And then Steve Thomas actually asked if I would work there with them. So I did go there and work for five years with. @ that time, the shop was filled with some amazing fundraisers like David Love, who's my business partner's dad, David Love and Steve, and people like Mal Warwick would come visit and Ken Burnett, and it was a real petri dish for really interesting people and thinking and Then after I left there, I worked with lots of different agencies, direct response agencies across Canada and internationally. And then Jen and I decided to open doors for our own consultancy, Agents of good in 2009. And yeah, here we are in 2024. I can't believe it's still Motoron kicking ass, asking hard questions, being curious and challenging each other to do better all the time. And it's fascinating and I'm really happy to know that for 25 years been told that direct is dead. And it's still not dead, it's still very much alive. And I love mail especially is such an interesting channel for conversation.
- [02:59]
Rhea Wong
Oh my gosh, let us talk about snail mail because I think digital communications has gotten a lot more of the thunder. Like we when we talk about appeals, when we think about our email campaigns, we think about our social media, et cetera. But talk to me about direct mail. And so for those of you who don't know, that's like literally letters that you get in the mail.
- [03:22]
John Lepp
Imagine, I know, imagine letters in the mail. And it's interesting to me because it's so human behavior is so interesting anyways. The way humans make decisions, the way they move through things, I find quite fascinating when you start to get into the brain. Like I've been looking and understanding decision science a lot more in the last few years and it's really been insightful to my own craft. But male is such a strange beast. United states, you have 1.5 million charities you're competing for. Most of the time you're competing for the same donors. Whenever I talk about donors, I'm talking about women who are like 65 to 95 years old, even in digital. I'm sorry, I don't. If you think you're talking to a totally different lines. You might be in some cases, but for your best. And most donors, they're still in that age range and stuff and they have certain needs and priorities. And that's where like the empathy starts to kick in a little bit. Like actually understanding their behavior and what they actually want out of this quote unquote relationship they want to maybe have with you. What does that mean for them? And I have to always, as strange as it's going to sound, put myself in the shoes of a 70 year old woman to do my job the best I can. And that's not easy for a 50 year old white guy. Like it takes some work. But I've been trying to do that my whole career and I have lots of people around me who also are very Emotionally intelligent and empathetic and helps. We all help each other with that.
- [04:42]
Rhea Wong
Okay, before we jump into the idea of empathy in marketing, because I think that's so important, talk to me about how you define marketing. Because I think most nonprofit people generally do not have a background in marketing or sales or anything like that. They usually come up because they like really loved the thing that they were doing, maybe they're social workers, etc. Etc. And I think there can be, rightly or wrongly, this sort of visceral reaction when you say marketing. It feels. Or people will disconnect marketing from fundraising and they'll say like, well, I just need to raise money. So how would you define marketing for the folks who might have this visceral reaction to that? And how does marketing relate to fundraising?
- [05:24]
John Lepp
It's like a lot of things. There's a lot of people in this world who've made these things very complicated. And it's really not when I'm talking about fundraising, I'm talking about direct marketing or direct response. And I say that because there's a lot of people in our sector, especially in marketing, who actually have a mass marketing lens in their work. The idea of direct marketing or direct response is you're having potentially one on one conversations with other human beings and that's what you're doing in digital, in mail, doesn't matter. And so I work in direct marketing, not mass marketing. So that means I have to. There's some basic concepts with I have to make sure the list of people that I'm going to try to talk to, I know stuff about them. And in some cases if you're doing acquisition, you don't know anything about them. But hopefully you've done a good job at curating that list and you can make some assumptions. Right. And direct marking. The other thing in the list list is segmentation. If a $50 donor is different than a $5,000 donor, I can't talk to them the same way. But again, a lot of people in market go, I'm just going to blow my message out to everybody, as many people as possible, hoping I'll get a better response. That's actually not the way it works at all because the more one on one conversation I can have and get my message to you, the more likely I will get a response. I'll get a hundred percent response if I do a really good job. So you have to check less is more in direct marketing. Again, and that's a key thing. I think that people are doing mass marketing and they think they're doing direct marketing or direct response, but they're not. They're just doing one message to a big number of people. That's mass marketing.
- [06:55]
Rhea Wong
Oh, that's such a good explanation. And I just want to be clear here, too, that when we're thinking about marketing, if we do marketing, well, the conversion, the donation, the solicitation happens very naturally at the end of the conversation, right? So if good marketing makes the sale, so to speak, the ask almost superfluous because you've warmed it all up, like you've created the relationship, would you say that's accurate?
- [07:21]
John Lepp
I would say that's if you have the right people and you're talking to the right people, it means you know something about them. So, Ria, you and I don't know either exceptionally well, but let's assume that we've been talking on stuff about having a conversation with you. I should know you enough that whatever I'm going to ask you for, I'm going to say, ria, can you loan me 5mil because I need to put a down payment on my next house? You'd be like, girl, please. I'm not. That's impossible.
- [07:44]
Rhea Wong
I would totally say to you, girl.
- [07:46]
John Lepp
Please give me a hand next weekend to move my stuff in. You be like, no problem. I'm there for you anytime because I'm making an appropriate offer ask to you because I know you, right? And so again, that's direct marketing. If you make an appropriate ask because you understand the person you're making the ask to, you will more likely get a positive result. So, yeah, in that context, the ask becomes a little bit like, it's not. List is the most important thing. 50% of the success or failure is who you're talking to. 30% of the success or failure relies on. What are you asking me for? And I have to tailor that to you.
- [08:20]
Rhea Wong
Yeah, yeah.
- [08:21]
John Lepp
Where you're at. And that's really important.
- [08:23]
Rhea Wong
Let's talk about list segmentation. So when we're building our list. Such a deep dive here, but I know, like, where to even begin. So I think the way that most nonprofits go about it is they just collect names, right? From everywhere. They're like my social media followers, my email addresses, the friends and family, the people that my board members give me, et cetera, et cetera. And then at the end, I have a list of, let's say, a couple thousand people that I really don't know. So how would you suggest for the understaffed executive director, development director, listening to this, John, I hear You I know I want to curate my list. How do I even start with that?
- [09:01]
John Lepp
Yeah, sometimes if you're starting with a list like that's been cobbled. If you're a new organization and you're cobbling together a list from people who show up to events and this and that, or you don't quite know. Yes. Sometimes you have to go and level set. Do you know what I mean? Do an appeal come up with a pretty good offer that would arrange to a wide range of the people you're looking for in a price point that is pretty common and just see what happens and start to say, man, did they give a gift or not? Check or no check. Do you know their relationship with you? Yes or no? You start to fill in the data, the survey. A lot of charities and agencies too, when they start working with charities, the first thing to do is a survey, a donor survey to again, level set. Let's see where we're actually really at if we're not quite sure. And you have to do that at some point because otherwise you are guessing. So you could do just a good appeal with a pretty good offer that would arrange attract a bunch of different people. But again, a survey is a good idea. But most of the stuff we do is with established individual giving programs most of the time. So usually in my case, I have people saying my coaching or new clients are like, I just don't know if my file is dead or not. Do they? Does anyone here really care? And usually, like I said, it's usually a segmentation. Usually there's some data work just to understand they actually have donors here who've been with you for a long time and you need to talk to them like that. Like you need to do a better job because it looks like you don't care in the way you're talking to them. So again, there's a bunch of different audiences, but the one you're talking about is someone who's trying to cobble together a new program. But you have to figure out who they are first before you can really talk to them.
- [10:31]
Rhea Wong
Yeah, I love that. And here's the thing, the stumbling block that I find a lot of folks are having and I'd love for you to talk about this a little bit, which is I think that what I've seen is a new ed or new development director gets this list and they're trying to understand the list and they'll do reach out to people, asking them for a coffee, asking them for a conversation, trying to do the thing that you're suggesting that they do, which is to get to know them and they hear crickets. So what's happening and how do we fix that?
- [11:01]
John Lepp
Oh, what's. It depends on the state of the relationship. If you come into a charity that's you're brand new there and the person before you burned everything before they left, your job becomes very difficult very quickly. There's no real intel or data on who, who these people are. And like I said, it's a common question for me is to ask people is, do you know where these, these people came from? Do you know anything about them? Do you know how they were acquired? That's a really important question. Do you know like how they were brought into the charity or how you found them on this list and stuff? But like I said, sometimes you just need to do the hard work of a mailing. Maybe you're doing to a part of the audience to try to see what's your responses. But if you've been ignored for a long time and then someone comes around and says, hey, do you want to talk? Probably not. Why would you rush to that conversation? I've been ignored and treated not very nicely for a long time. I'm not going to stand up and do you a favor by showing up for anything. So we have to take that. It's about where the donors are. Like I'm, that's where I'm always coming back to you is where are they at? What are they? It's common for me to look at everything a donor seen in the last year before I start working with a client because I want to see how they've been treated and I want to see everything.
- [12:06]
Rhea Wong
Yeah.
- [12:07]
John Lepp
And we're blindly aware of the, of how our donors feel or perceive us because we're all like, yes, we're so awesome. We do all this stuff. I, I do audits and the first thing I'll do is make a gift to the charity online and see what happens. I know I did an audit for a hospital foundation two months ago. I'm still waiting for an email. Anything. I made a gift. I got my auto receipt in seven minutes and it's been crickets. Nothing that says I'm not important at all.
- [12:35]
Rhea Wong
Yeah. Oh my gosh, John, this is, we can just, just go here because I, this is like the bee in my bonnet. Right now. I'm doing a series with Alison and Beth Cantor about transactional versus relational fundraising and particularly for our small dollar donors, our mid level donors. I think we have gotten into this mindset of just Transaction, Right. Like, I just see you as an atm, I'm going to hit you up for money, and then I'm going to ignore you for a year until that one year mark comes around and I'm like, hey, John, you should give a gift again. And then I think that the auto email tax letter is sufficient.
- [13:11]
John Lepp
Yeah. Like, Jack, I did the job. I did. What I was supposed to do was make sure they got a receipt.
- [13:15]
Rhea Wong
Yeah, that's a check. So we're like, so many questions here, but how might you recommend that folks start to train themselves to think through the lens of the donor? Because I think, speaking for myself as having been a believer executive director, I had a bajillion things going on in my mind, right? So in my mind, I was like, gift came in, sent out the acknowledgment check. I'm onto the next thing in my mind. That was a closed loop in the mind of my donor. We were just starting a relationship. How would you suggest that really busy executives slow down enough to actually think about the experience of the donor?
- [13:54]
John Lepp
It's really simple for me to sit in my beautiful offices up here in Ontario, Canada, tell these hardworking, amazing EDs how to do their frigging job. And I'm not going to do that. All I'm going to say and all I ask of people when I do presentations is, what sort of fundraiser do you want to be? And in fact, I'll go one step further. What sort of human do you want to be? What sort of human are you to the humans around you in your life? I'm gonna. I'm gonna believe in my heart of hearts that every human that's listening to this call today, in their real life, they are plugged into the people around them, to their friends, their family, the. The circle that goes a little beyond that. What. What's going on in their lives? What. What they can help with, how they need to show up for them on a daily basis. They're plugged into their lives, but for some reason, we walk through a door of an office and all says, oh, yeah, answer a seat check. Did that made sure this such a happen? Check. And then they go home and forget about it and log off. We need less people who just want to show up and check boxes in their job, because you really need people. And that's the idea of being empathetic and being vulnerable and being curious, which is we're always plugged into and connected to our craft. It's not like you don't turn this on and off. If you want to turn on off, you can go to jobs where you can turn your job on and off and do that. That's totally fine. I have no problem with that. But we have a lot of people who just want to show up and go here's my job tell. And this is my checkbox of things I need to do every week to make sure I get 3% more and giving and then I get maybe one of my 1% raise like it's really, I don't know. I want more in my life than that. I want more in my work than that. And so I'm just pushing people and asking people be more present. Means you have to be thoughtful, means you have to be reactive and listen. Means you have to make things up every so often be connected because you're talking to other human beings who care about your organization and the mission so so much. And you should see them for that every day.
- [15:48]
Rhea Wong
Yeah, that's a beautiful reminder. I also just want to put in there and, and I say this with all the love in my heart and having been in the trenches that like I think the way that we ask leaders to do their job and the circumstances and conditions that we put them in, especially with pressure coming from the board to like constantly produce every quarter, meet the payroll means that we're sacrificing these short term gains. But long term we're burning out our donors. We're not actually working in the best interest of our donors and therefore people sense that people know when you are using them. They we all have a very good generally most of us have a pretty.
- [16:28]
John Lepp
Good detector and we're burning each other out. Yeah, it's not only the donors, it's each other. Like it's become a sector has really started focusing on a lot of the wrong kinds of things. I get it. We, we're always looking for things that we can set it and forget it because it helps our efficiencies and that's capitalism is about being efficient and as cheap as possible to make as much money as possible. We've adapted this kind of thinking to our work all the time because really like as you know it takes a long time to grow your next best.
- [16:58]
Rhea Wong
Right.
- [16:59]
John Lepp
You and I could be on a beautiful journey together. A 10 minute, 10 years from now you not be complete BFS surprising to everybody could be the best BFFs of all time. And that's going to take an investment of time and energy into one another to do that properly. And on top of it you don't just Want to be best friends. I'm saying there needs to be an energy from you first and foremost to your work, to your donors, to the work you're putting sending to your donors, that you're putting that energy in that you're showing up for people. Why would they show up for you if you're not showing up for them? So it's, it is a long, it's a long game, but we're setting ourselves up and have been set up for a long time where people don't have the patience for anything long, long term. And I wonder what state we're in.
- [17:37]
Rhea Wong
Oh my gosh. I was just telling someone the other day that I feel like I've self diagnosed myself with adhd. Like I can't focus on anything for longer than two minutes and I get, especially when I'm online, get into my email and then I like jump to a different tab and then like I'm down that rabbit hole. Focus is a problem people.
- [17:54]
John Lepp
For most people it is.
- [17:55]
Rhea Wong
Sorry, how might you recommend that people create these on ramps for conversations like using direct marketing or any other channel? Because I think what I hear you saying is the conversation is the relationship. What I'm trying to do is just connect with another human being. So how could I do that?
- [18:14]
John Lepp
There's lots of, there's lots of different ways you can do it. I would say, you know, again, from an empathetic lens, we know that being empathetic means you need to create space for someone to, to share something about themselves. There needs to be that atmosphere for, for someone to be vulnerable and share something back and stuff. So how that looks like in direct mail, for example, is I'm always trying to create space on a reply forum or something for donors to share a bit of a story about them. I will always want to know what's her story, why does she, what part of her makes her compelled to give a gift? What's her connection to your mission? And I want that story and I want as simply and as emotionally as possible emotional questions get emotional an. And so that's one really simple way to do it. But that, that's a big one if you want to start somewhere. But it comes back to like I always say, I'm a fascinating in this sector of ours. We have a colleague who worked at UNICEF in Italy and he had started a donor love department and Frankie was fantastic and tested a whole bunch of different things. And Frankie found he actually had to do really two things. And the two things he had to do was he would make sure. Within 48 hours, a donor would get a very heartfelt thank you card, not note something for their gift receipt. The transactional part would come whenever we would come. And he would call a donor on an anniversary of a birthday or anniversary giving or something like that. Those two things, a telephone call and a handwritten card. He'd see like a 50% increase in lifetime value, a 30% increase of retention of these donors. And I say to people all over the world in presentations, who in this room can't make a telephone call or send a thank you card? Of course, no one knows hands go up. But I can tell you from Dale's perspective, Dale the donor, who's my mother in law, no one gives a shit. No calls, no thank you cards. So no one's doing it. So this stuff is actually very simple. If we thought about how we talk to the most important people in our real lives and translate that to our donors and the way we think about our work and what we're asking them to do for us and how we want to be treated and how we want to treat them, we would be in a completely different place. And it comes back to low tech human gestures. Simple, really easy. But we spend time talking about technology, AI, automation's sake. We've lost our way in just being humans to other human beings.
- [20:36]
Rhea Wong
I, I love that. By the way, have you read Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Godara?
- [20:41]
John Lepp
I've not, No.
- [20:42]
Rhea Wong
I think you would really love it. Trying to get him on my show. So if Will Godara, if you're listening to this, it's this guy, he came up through Hospitality and eleven Madison park, but he has a lot of really amazing stories that connect exactly to what you're talking about. But one of the things he did at eleven Madison park, which by the way got him his Michelin star, was there was a staff person who was a dream weaver. And their whole job was to think about how to make experiences special for guests. And I think how cool would it be if we had a dreamweaver on our teams to really think about, to take the time and the creativity to think about what would make this experience special for our guests or our donors.
- [21:27]
John Lepp
I love that. And you know what the problem with that is? What's the ROI on that? Right. When you have people sitting around going, what's, what's return on that investment? Go yourself. What's the. How can you determine that? How can you determine again, this conversation you are having today? How can I determine the return on investment of me investing time and care into you as a human being. But you can't metric that. So in our work, sometimes we've done things where we've created characters, like different unique voices, bags, trucks and shit. Because the ED was so goddamn boring, no one was really paying any attention. I've had donors send the most beautiful, most heartfelt messages back to paper talking bags that are drawn by one of my illustrators more than they would ever say to a human being, like an Ed. That's how far we've lost our way. And not only that, but how do you metric that? How do you metric that? Dale's left one of the most heartfelt messages about her deep feeling connection to this mission and this bag that's talking to her. How do I met. How do I put that up on a goddamn bulletin board? We're tracking the wrong kinds of things. And so to your point that we should be dream weaving? Absolutely. Into our work all the time. How can we create unique experiences for donors? And I can tell you the bar doesn't exist. Do anything. Anything. I'll. I'll take anything. Because you're doing a lot of charities, mostly are doing nothing.
- [22:55]
Rhea Wong
Right. That's why donor retention rates are in the toilet. And so to your point about how do we measure it, I think one very easy metric is like, donor retention. Did we retain donors at more than. And like, the bar, like you said, is really freaking low. Did we manage to hold on to at least half of the people that gave last year? Did we manage to hold on to more than 20% of the first time donors? Like, these are really low bars. Did you know? I did not know this, and it blew my mind. The customer lifetime value of Starbucks. Do you know what this is?
- [23:28]
John Lepp
No.
- [23:28]
Rhea Wong
It's crazy. For those who don't know, customer lifetime value is basically the amount that you would spend over a lifetime with a particular company or with a particular nonprofit. Their customer lifetime value is $15,000.
- [23:44]
John Lepp
Holy cow.
- [23:45]
Rhea Wong
It's crazy. Which means that they could spend money on acquisition because they know on the back end they're making a lot of money. On average, $15,000 per customer. Which also means that they have to create experiences and products good enough to come back for.
- [24:02]
John Lepp
Wow, I had no idea. Coffee. That's wild.
- [24:05]
Rhea Wong
It's wild. You're selling flavored water, people.
- [24:09]
John Lepp
Yeah, expensive flavored water.
- [24:12]
Rhea Wong
Yeah, expensive flavored water. But it's. Anyway, I could go on about branding, but that's a whole other topic for another day. John, let's talk about the role of creativity, because here's the thing, I get lots of nonprofit newsletters and mailings and whatever, and they are just. Just boring as shit. They're boring.
- [24:31]
John Lepp
Well stated. Yes.
- [24:33]
Rhea Wong
So talk to me about why is it that nonprofits are so afraid to get a little bit edgy, a little bit creative, to claim an edge? Because the thing is, you know, what I don't need in my life is more boring stuff. I don't need. I don't need to buy more boring stuff. I don't need more boring stuff in my inbox. I don't need more boring stuff in my mailbox. So how do we stop being boring?
- [24:54]
John Lepp
I think it comes back. It's a good question. And I think it comes back to really what's built into our human DNA. Like that comes back, right, to decision science. We knew a long time ago the last thing you want to do was stand out. You. You want. You had to be part of the tribe or you were sent out to the forest or stoned or something. Do you know what I mean? Like, you had to fit in. You had to contribute. You had to not rock the boat, because if you did, that was problematic. And I think that. So it was always a fear related to doing something that felt like I was going to do something to stand out of line. Because now I'm easy to pick off, right? And so, like, sometimes being creative, you're.
- [25:31]
Rhea Wong
Like the gazelle you are, right?
- [25:34]
John Lepp
Like that you're standing out, right? And you're an easy target to again get cast away. And we see this inside all the time. Society relies on a system of people following the rules. Because if you. If all of a sudden my ex partner, you say the stuff you talk about, John, is crazy because everyone starts doing whatever they want. It's chaos. And I was like, yeah. And. But out of chaos has to come some order. And I'm not asking for chaos. I'm asking for people to take, like, my book Minor Deviations Away from the status quo of what everyone's doing all the time. But a small thing can seem terrifying. Do you know what I mean? Like a small thing that's different than what everyone else seems to be doing all the time. Whatever's telling me I should be doing my bosses and stuff can seem really frightening because now I'm putting myself at risk. And so it comes back to fear. It's like fear of asking, like, we're settling ourselves up to be a bit vulnerable. We're knowing that we could be attacked for what we're suggesting or. And it can be a small friggin. Thing, eat tiny things. People are like, oh, my boss is just uncomfortable using the word love in a note because he would never use that word. I'm like, is he not freaking human? What, are you kidding me right now? Or just again, credibly expressing ourselves? But I'm not asking for people. Like my joke is people such as you guys are really innovative in your work. That is terrifying to me. Like, I don't want to be seen as innovative because I'm not being innovative. I'm trying to train people to be more human. That's all.
- [26:59]
Rhea Wong
Yeah, yeah.
- [26:59]
John Lepp
And so that's the flip. Like being human means being imperfect. This whole idea, professionalism and perfection in our sector, in every sector, again, is crippling our sector. It's just, it's destroying it one human at a time.
- [27:15]
Rhea Wong
And let me add to that too, because I think the other mistake I see is when you try to develop communications via committee and you ask your board and they have very unhelpful comments about watering things down or watering down the point of view. And I think I always think about Seth Godin and the idea of being remarkable means being worthy of being remarked upon. Right. And no one's going to remark on boring. No one's going to remark on vanilla ice cream. It's vanilla ice cream. It's fine, it's fine.
- [27:49]
John Lepp
It's not offensive at all. It's just.
- [27:51]
Rhea Wong
Yeah, it's there.
- [27:52]
John Lepp
Yeah.
- [27:53]
Rhea Wong
But people have feelings about pink sherbert.
- [27:55]
John Lepp
Me too. Strong feelings.
- [27:59]
Rhea Wong
That's right. That's right.
- [28:00]
John Lepp
Absolutely. And that's important.
- [28:02]
Rhea Wong
Yeah, it's funny because I think being out in the world, I have a strong point of view. You have a strong point of view and not everyone's gonna like it. Like, I'm not for everybody. You're not for everybody. And I think there is this very human feeling of oh, but I don't want people to say bad things about me. I don't want to be criticized. I don't want them to think badly of me. And how. So how do we get over the fear? Because I do think that there. It is very fear based. If I'm, I'm super neutral. If I'm super vanilla, like, I won't get any. I won't be a target for any hate. But I'm also not attracting anybody.
- [28:38]
John Lepp
Exactly. That's the whole idea, is that if we're doing our jobs properly, you are getting unsubscribes, you are getting people who aren't going to give to you. It means you're like left with less rather than more. But the less you're left with care more because you are differentiating yourself versus everyone else. And there's lots of different ways you do that. So I. I can't. I'm the worst convincer of all time. I. I like. I talk about pushing other people's rocks up hills. I cannot do it. I am blessed, though, to have a lot of fundraisers that have contacted me or worked with who've gone it. I'm just gonna. I just know this is important and I'm gonna do it. And I know I'm gonna have to take some heat from people, and some get shut down, some get fired. Some just deal with the constant negativity around them and go for it. That the. You have to make that own your own decision. How do you want to again, how do you want to show up? How do you want to live your life? Do you want to be. When we say remarkable, and I think people go, oh, I need to be all, no, it's actually not. It's just taking a step back and being you. And again, the idea of being authentic becomes a very. People throw this stuff around all the time. What does it mean to be authentic? It does mean just to be truly you, which I'm going to assume means you care about yourself deeply, passionately, lovingly. And that means you also translate to the other humans around you as well. You care about them passionately, deeply, thoughtfully. You're empathetic, you know, you're curious, You're. You show up when needed. And if you can find ways to do that. And I'm going to assume that most of the people who are doing their work I know are like that in their real lives anyways. So it's just making that decision, how do you want to be in this work? And if you're doing your real life, it's scary to do in a professional environment that is going to try to shut it down, who's going to try to push you back in line? But if you can find the right places and the right people to work with. I've seen charities transformed because they've adapted this idea of being this way to their donors. And it takes a lot of work.
- [30:44]
Rhea Wong
John, I'm going to push back for a second. I'm not. I'm going to. I'm going to present a case because I'm so resonating with what you're saying. I think to be courageous enough to be true to your personality, your brand, your values can be hard. And what Might you say to somebody? Because I think I can imagine someone listening to this. Yeah, John, I hear you. I'm going to go all in on going deep on my personality and whatever. But what if someone's personality is like, off putting? Let's just. I think there are certainly people out here who maybe have abrasive personalities or who are not that emotionally intelligent. So how do we ground all of this in actual data that tells us like, we're moving in the right direction?
- [31:27]
John Lepp
Oh, Jesus. I don't. I'm not gonna. I can't answer this question. I've seen this is an internal conversation you have to have with yourself. I have a couple colleagues who lack. And I'm gonna assume none of them are listening. They lack self awareness, Jimmy. So to be, I think to be creative and curious and thoughtful and emotionally intelligent does take work. It's work you have to do on yourself. But sometimes you have to pay attention to the people around you. And some people just don't lack the sel self awareness to see how they are as it relates to other people. How do they get better at that? I can't see. There's some people who just think they're fine. How am I supposed to go? You're not fine. You're a. And you need to go do some work on yourself. Do you know what I mean? Ask yourself. You have to have honest conversations with yourself. There was a time before I really got into my career where I worked with a coach. And this coach actually sent me into a absolute spiral of panic attacks, constant anxiety. I couldn't leave the house for like a year because really he came, he showed up and he was just like, no, face. Face your. Like, face all the stuff you're telling yourself. Face who you actually are. You're at this. You don't understand this. It was a breakdown process that had to happen for me to climb above it. And it sucked. It was awful. But I think it made me who I am now, which was to understand that my sensitivities, my creativeness, my curiosity, my weak. My weaknesses, as it would be perceived by the rest of the world, are actually my strengths in my craft. I can't tell people, you make a decision, you need to do that and do it or you don't. But it really comes through. Some people just don't have the self awareness.
- [33:09]
Rhea Wong
Yeah.
- [33:10]
John Lepp
So I don't know how to answer it. I don't really know. Don't know how to say that.
- [33:13]
Rhea Wong
Yeah, no. I think it's a tough thing. So, you know When I accept TUPLE into my program, I actually interview everybody because look, there are just some people who, because of, you know, lack of emotional intelligence, lack of self awareness, whatever it might be, just don't have what it takes to be a really good fundraiser. And I would rather suss that out on the front end. I don't work with them versus promising them something that I can't deliver, which is basically like this level of introspection. I'm not a therapist. I'm not your co. Like, there's work that you have to do if you want to. To do the work of fundraising.
- [33:50]
John Lepp
Great. A hundred percent.
- [33:51]
Rhea Wong
I want to talk about the concept of a thousand true fans. Do you know about this?
- [33:57]
John Lepp
Tell me.
- [33:58]
Rhea Wong
Okay, so this guy, Kevin Kelly wrote this blog piece, like back in the 90s, I want to say, and it's called A Thousand True Fans. And it basically posits that you can make a very nice living. You can, you know, run your nonprofit, et cetera, with just a thousand true fans. And who are your true fans? These are people who will show up at anything you do, who will buy what you want them to buy, who will open your emails, who will like volunteer. Like, these are your thousand true fans. And I think so often we're focused on the masses of like the 325 million people in this country. I know you're in Canada, but in the US Versus paying attention to the thousand true fans that I have who show up consistently. So I'm. Does it. Is that resonating with you?
- [34:46]
John Lepp
Because even as charities, there's people want to go. We need to find a whole bunch of new donors. I'm like, yeah, you do. But what about. What if the donors you already have, you're treating like, why would you bother? Why would you bother doing that? Do you know what I mean? We're in a. Again, it's part of what's ingrained in this sort of system, this kind of capitalist system which all based on growth. I mean like, growth isn't a positive thing. I've stayed a small consultancy and agency on purpose because it's. Everyone is more connected to their work. We have a small rush of clients who care more as like in that idea of a thousand fans, everyone here is really connected. Growth isn't a metric you should constantly be chasing. You need to do it. Sure. To help grow your. Make sure when you lose clients or donors, you have other ones to talk to. But yeah, I think that's again, a very Seth Goen kind of idea. Right? That idea of Tribes is you need to. You're trying to find these people who are the closest to you, paying attention all the time, and you're investing in them. And again, even in male programs, 80% of your revenue is coming from 20% of your donors. What are you doing for them? That, again, they'll keep giving you more money and more attention all the time. What extra special attention are you giving them? And there's lots of ways you can do that as well. So again, less is more for my community and marketing, the less people I'm talking to, there's a reason why I call my email list constantly, because I want less people, because they get a better response. I have more people listening and caring, and the ones who don't, that's fine. They can just go then come back if they want. You know, if I was wrong, whatever. Do you know what I mean? And again, that's not. That's not traditional thinking. Everyone. But how many people sign for the thing? How many new doors did we find? How many new. How big can we, like, track to? How many eyeballs can we get on this? How many impressions did this thing have? It's just, what are we. What does it even mean? Do you know what I mean? So I like the idea of less and more. And yes, you want to be left. You want to be left with the people who care the most. The 20%, the 820 rule, the Pareto rule is pretty much a real thing everywhere, for every charity and business out there all the time.
- [36:50]
Rhea Wong
What I would say, John, actually, when we look at the numbers, it's more of 90. 10. Right. It's becoming even more extreme. And so my question, especially with my clients, is always, what are you doing to love up that 10% that's making up 90% of your budget? Because that's your thousand true fans. Like, how are you adding more value to them? How are you serving them? How are you loving them? Up.
- [37:13]
John Lepp
Yeah.
- [37:14]
Rhea Wong
Okay, wait. Last question. I could go on. We could talk for hours. Let's talk about copywriting.
- [37:19]
John Lepp
Okay. Okay. All right.
- [37:21]
Rhea Wong
Sorry, I'm just, like, shifted. I have so many questions. So I've been doing a lot of podcasts recently about AI, and I think we've all been talking about ChatGPT, blah, blah, blah. But my feeling is that we're just producing a higher volume of garbage. Like, it's just more garbage faster. And so I'm wondering through the lens of empathy, how are we thinking about communications and copywriting in a way that is connecting and not in this Weird anonymous bloodless chatgpt way that was leading the witness.
- [37:55]
John Lepp
I had an interesting conversation with Josh Hirsch this last week because Josh is a big fan of AI and he helped for one of their clients create an appeal using AI Eye. You know, and I have a love hate relationship with it because to me it's another shiny object that actually disconnects people from the important emotional human work that they need to be doing in their work. But I'm also a fan of helping our charity friends find ways to get their work done a little bit faster, a little bit easier. There's only so many hours in the day, there's a lot of pressure to perform. So I'm in the middle of it. I love technology. I think it's freaking really fascinating, including AI. I think it's quite amazing. I don't know man. I think that it's a, again it's back to a decision. AI is just another tool. The tool, it's like a frigging pan. You can go to Walmart and buy $20 skillet off the shelf if you want or go to all clad and women's snowman, buy 150 skillet and stuff. They're different tools and the results I'll get. All those pans are completely different. And so the tools are only as good as what they're built out of. And AI is exactly the same way. Like it's only as good as the tools are built into it. And also Josh had told me that actually there's, there's, there's a name for it, it's hallucinations. We had a, like a little nice clever phrase for it. But AI does hallucinate, it does tell you stuff. That's just not right. Even if you go no, that's wrong, here's the correct information. It still has certain things to it. So I think it's important. Josh's point was try it, try some ways to incorporate into your workflow. There are some like systems out there that will help create workflows, but it's all AI creating the workflow for or creating your letter. But just be aware of the limitations of the tool. If the tool is a basic tool that has nothing really fed into it, the result isn't going to be very good. But even still, even if the best tools can still fail because it needs a human to use it properly and go, you still burn a friggin steak on an all clad skillet. You know what I mean? Like you could if you don't know what you're Doing this is going to burn the shit out of it. And it's the same thing with AI you still need to be participating in the creation of the dish. You can't uncheck from it. So that's it again. It still comes back to the idea of be plugged into your work, don't show up and check a box and go home. And if you want to do that again, there's jobs. So you can go do that, just go there. You can't do that here because we're having human connections with other human beings. And that's not about checking boxes. Oh, I bought her flowers, check. Oh, I said I love you, check. I left it. You know, like that's not how we hope, how we work with or love other human beings.
- [40:32]
Rhea Wong
Right.
- [40:32]
John Lepp
You know what I mean?
- [40:33]
Rhea Wong
Last thing I'm going to say. So the way that I've been using ChatGPT recently, which I'm into, is I've developed a donor journey and used it in a way to be curious through empathy. What's the, what are the conversations that you're, what are the questions you donor have? What are the ways that I can show up to help guide you down this journey with me? And that's actually been tremendously helpful because it's actually forced me and others to think through the lens of the donor perspective. Not like it's like Mike Tyson says, everyone has a plan till you get punched in the face. I think the mistake we make is we're sitting in our offices, we're like, yeah, this is brilliant that people are gonna love this. They might not. Why don't you ask them?
- [41:15]
John Lepp
And that's, that is the thing with that tool is it does give you a place for some idea generation or some starting points. And that's the thing is try it. And Josh did give it like, here's an example of what you should do and he said, go to ChatGPT and feed this into it and ask it this question and, and bring it back to this and see what it give you some ideas of some things to think about and try. So I'm going to try as a follow up video which I'll post on the back side of his as my own test. And I'll be running, I've got this list of 600 people start these DM clinics and I want to market to them to find some people who want to hire me more for like ongoing coaching and use it as an idea generation to see what I get out of it. And I'll feed whatever I can into it to help me formulate some ideas. That's a really creative, fun way to use, utilize. So try it. Don't be afraid of it. Don't be afraid of technology. It can be a very valuable tool. But the important thing is try it, learn about it, read about it, ask questions, ask people who are doing things. Because that's curiosity. Let's be curious and open. There's no failure here. It's all learning.
- [42:16]
Rhea Wong
So let's just keep trying, keep learning and also. Yes. And be discerning. Right? So be discerning about what you're delegating to the robots. Like the robots are not going to do all the things and nor should they do all the things. John, thank you. This is really fun.
- [42:31]
John Lepp
Thanks Sue. I appreciate your time. Thank you very much. It was fun.
- [42:34]
Rhea Wong
I will make sure to put all of your info in the show, notes for folks who want to get in touch with you and also a link to your book.
- [42:40]
John Lepp
Thank you, I appreciate that. And yeah, I'm very easy to find. I'm a little too easy to find online. But most days, these days I'm a rationale, LinkedIn or my own website. But yeah, hopefully if I see you out there in the real world, come up and say hello. I'm always happy to meet new, passionate people.
- [42:55]
Rhea Wong
Fantastic. Well, if I ever make it up to tomorrow.
- [42:59]
John Lepp
All right, we'll see you later.
- [43:00]
Rhea Wong
Thank you so much.
- [43:01]
John Lepp
Bye.
- [43:02]
Rhea Wong
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