Breaking the Nonprofit Starvation Cycle: Measuring True Impact Beyond Dollars

[0:00]  but my number one goal is to protect the agency right and it was really a turning point for me where I said you know what they didn't feel comfortable enough to say anything when they saw me going down the wrong road it was it was a learning experience for me but one of the best things I did as a leader because I was able to say to the management team and to the staff as a whole I was wrong it doesn't mean I'm always going to but I absolutely should have given you more Credence than I did and we're going to dial this back because if I want to protect the agency then I need to keep you all around table if I'm not caring for you in exactly that that way and if I'm not listening to you and talking with you and admitting when we screw up then what are we doing here all right guys welcome back to a

[0:56]  brand new episode of the heart and hustle podcast now today is an incredibly important episode because I'm sitting across this digital table with another amazing leader who we're going to learn about their heart and hustle now today I'm sitting across this table from the president and CEO of Family and Children's Association an organization who recently celebrated 140 years in serving their Community serving about 35,000 people annually with the clients ranging in age from two to 102 years old Jeff thank you so much for coming to the show sir really excited for you to be here Kenan I'm exced excited too this is going to be a great uh conversation I appreciate you uh having me you know from the intro you heard that FCA is 140 years old uh I haven't been there that entire time although sometimes it feels like it and

[1:43]  I look like it um but it's really an honor and priv privilege to be able to run this great organization and to be able to spend some time with you today you know it's really important for us not only to recognize the amazing work that you do in serving families and individuals in your community for 140 plus years but this is really about your heart and hustle part of the show is really understanding what drives these amazing leaders Founders CEOs to do the work that they do here today so right off the rip I'm going to ask you a simple question who were you as a child Jeffrey how did you kind of get about what are things that got you excited and how do you think it tied into you doing this work that you're doing here today yeah so you know I will say generally anytime you ask people in Health and Human Services how they got into this work you know they talk about being I'm a people person I just like working with

[2:31]  folks and their voices kind of Trail off my theory is you don't wind up in this work by accident you're not going to make a lot of money you're not going to become famous and so you come to this work for I think one of three very specific reasons and then I'll talk about why I'm not dodging the question I'll talk about how I got to this work one is you needed help as a kid and you got it you needed help as a kid and you didn't get it or you didn't need help and you have it there for but the grace of God go eye mentality and you just want to make a difference for people around you that might be less fortunate you know my family growing up had its fair share of struggles it was a home that had CPS involvement um my mom struggled with chronic alcoholism you know a whole wide range of things and so

[3:19]  I think for me you know I could have used some of that help but it existed that was a time and place where you just didn't ask for help like what happened behind closed doors stayed within families and in some families that's still the case um but I looked around and saw well there's a lot of stuff that could be a heck of a lot better in in our community one of two of my first jobs out of college one was in domestic violence and sex crimes and there I saw a huge amount of pain and suffering and a huge amount of work to be done and I was very quickly recruited by an AIDS organization to do the political components of HIV organizing and that was in the late 1980s and before I could do the political stuff I needed to get kind of Hands-On and so I ran support groups for people who were newly diagnosed with the virus and I'll tell you it was eye

[4:07]  openening for me as like a 20-some year old kid to watch an entire generation of young gay men dying of a disease it took President Reagan 60,000 AIDS deaths before he ever said the word AIDS in public and I'm like well wait a minute bias stigma oppression discrimination you know is holding back public health and putting an entire generation of of young men at risk and so you know as and and maybe just wide-eyed and idealistic where I looked around and I said this is just wrong like somebody needs to say something even if you're not part of the affected group you have an obligation to stand up and say hold up this is wrong and you know that kind of just set me on a a path of um working on behalf of social justice causes and and those types of things I will say you know for as much as I may have given over the

[4:54]  course of the past 30 35 years I feel like I've gotten so much back um you know there's days and I always hesitate to say this to my board of directors but I'm like I can't believe I get paid for doing this like this is this just feels good at the end of the day and you know I think for for all of us the ability it's really an honor or privilege to be able to lay your head on the pillow at night and say I made a difference in somebody's life I mean how do you feel about the burden of leadership that you have in serving the community right we've got 35,000 people that you guys serve annually it seems like if anybody who's tuning in listening and learning to from the podcast knows anything about the space of Human Services community- based organizations mental Behavioral Health we continue to see the rise of demand in our communities but you guys only have so many resources so how do

[5:41]  you kind of go to sleep at night with a clear conscience that says we're doing everything that we possibly can to meet the rising demand of all the services in our communities it's got a away heavy yeah it does but I practice it and so you know you know some of this and I'll tell you my greatest worry is is yes it's the 35,000 people we serve but I also take very seriously the fact that we employ 340 people and that means that there are 340 families out there that are directly relying on me to ensure that they have a paycheck that they have a safe good productive place to work um and that weighs on me more than anything else you know as you know in a lot of cases the not for-profit sector and the services we provide are really cobbled together you know you can do I'm like a business where you know you could kill

[6:28]  it in a quarter and still not get the funding you need in order to um to do the job or to meet the demands and so you practice it over time you know I always you know look at this and say look this is not you know a day-to-day fight this is a year-to-year generation to generation kind of kind of fight and that it's a it's a marathon it's not really a Sprint and it's really easy to burn yourself out um you know my own philosophy is if you can lay your head on the pillow at night knowing you did the very best you could even if you made some mistakes along the way um then that's a lot you're a lot further ahead than most people I think I mean and I think at the end of the day we need more great leaders who are going to show up and advocate for the people who are serving others more so today than ever when we talk about burnout and things like that incredibly High rates

[7:15]  of burnout CEO burnout in nonprofit positions is incredibly tough but you mentioned something that was really important to kind of double click on you said this is a generational type of thing we're talking about a longer time Horizon in the work and consorted effort that's going to go into serving your community how have you been able to Grapple with the idea of thinking on things on a longer time Horizon rather than from quarter to quarter grant funding to grant funding which also comes along with kind of the space you guys are in I struggle with that too right and so you know you see grant opportunities and you're like oh it' be great to have the revenue but you also want to do stuff that's in your space um it's helpful to me to know that FCA has been around for 140 years every time I go to take a vacation which is probably not as often as it should be I have to remind myself and say FCA did

[8:02]  just fine without you for 130 years everything ran okay yes we're doing great things today yes we've grown but the organization um is bigger than any one of us including me and I think that's what that's what leadership is I should be able to God forbid I got hit by an ice cream truck tomorrow the organization should be able to continue to function and I think I've put the right people around me so that that would be the case but it's also training up the staff it's also almost making them ambassadors of Goodwill in the community and I like to think that we do that with the families we serve as well and so there's almost like this ripple effect that I Envision that every time we provide services to a family in need every time we lift a kid up we give them a scholarship to go to college we give

[8:50]  them new tools to cope in the community or to be a good parent there's a ripple effect to all of that that I know um goes for Generations you know there's a a a sign on my wall it says what we do in life echoes in eternity and I think the Good Deeds we do now and the seeds we plant now you know may not spring up tonight tomorrow even next week but eventually they're going to germinate yep I mean thinking about that that quote I literally just heard from a a movie or a book or a podcast I was reading I can't place in my mind but that is in the front of my brain what we do in life Echoes for eternity which is so important when's the first time you actually came across that and why does that hold so much I would say substantial nature that you would actually post it in your wall or any office it was like 10 years ago and I

[9:37]  have a poster and it's like a bangy type uh image of a guy kind of painting graffiti on a wall um and you know I started to you reach a certain age and I've got some other experiences that I know you're going to touch on later uh but you reach a certain age where you're like so like what is this all about right and so for me Legacy is you know first and foremost family and it's kind of you raise your children and how you treat people and how you treat your kids to treat people and if you have grandkids how you treat them and how you kind of you know raise them up and position them to be successful in the future but then it's you know what do you do in your own Community what do you do in terms of how you interact with your neighbors whether or not you work in the na for-profit world you know do you spend your life driving to work cursing people out and and increasing anxiety and stress on the road or are you doing your part to kind of moderate

[10:25]  that down to center it to connect with people in our own community and if if you're in the non for-profit space you know some would say you know the job is half done but you've got to make sure that you're doing this with kindness you know in this space we always talk about becoming more like businesses and that kind of thing and you know look let's face it for for us being nonprofit is not a business strategy it's simply our tax status and so I watch the bottom line like there's no tomorrow but I also want to make sure that we're doing it with love and kindness and compassion and never loing losing sight that that's the end game here what does impact mean to you as a CEO of a nonprofit right I had another great leader on the podcast out of the Knoxville area guy named Matt Ryerson who's the CEO of a United Way there he said often you know when we think about

[11:12]  the nonprofit space often we're thinking about if we do our job we'll get more funding next year which means we just need to survive from this quarter to the next quarter to the next quarter to make sure that we hit our goals but we have to ref think what impact means because if we're just chasing the next round of funding we really aren't quantifying what impact means for the people who we serve so what does impact mean from your perspective in your seat yeah I think the living today to day and the just surviving is part of the starvation cycle that government puts us on and quite frankly it's the same cycle that government puts people who receive Social Services on right live today to day and there's at least one or two theorists who have said you know welfare levels are set in a way to um thwart public participation on the part of marginalized community and I don't think

[12:00]  that's intentional but I think that's the byproduct and I think the same goes for for not for profits I think for us impact you know several years ago we started to actually measure the impact of what we're doing and funders to be fair they'll say all right we gave you $100,000 you said you'd run a 100 support groups that would reach 10,000 people you know send us a report that says that you did all that the fact that you put a 100 people in a support group doesn't mean anything how did their lives change did you make them uh less anxious did you make them more self-sufficient what was the actual impact of what you did not the activity but how did you get to that end result did more kids graduate high school did more families you know get to a place where there wasn't Family Violence or

[12:47]  child abuse and neglect and so we we're pretty uh regimented about measuring that kind of stuff and so we have a program that helps kids transition out of foster care and government used to say you have to help these kids find a job which was great but in Nassau and suffi County where the average apartment goes for upwards of $55,000 if you get a kid a part-time job at minimum wage and check a box and say I helped him get a job you haven't positioned that kid to live independently in any way shape or form they would need to have five of those jobs in order to continue to live successfully and independently here on Long Island so we've moved our model to you know measuring that kind of stuff when people people come into our substance use disorder treatment clinics you know it's not did you show up it's

[13:34]  how many days of non-use did you have and and not only that because abstinence is almost always the goal in those kind of things but if I got you to go from shooting 20 bags of heroin a day to only using 10 and maybe buy buying diapers before you buy drugs I've helped move you along that Continuum and I want to measure the heck out of that because it means we're heading in the right direction I don't want to say we weren't successful because you contined to use drugs people use drugs for all sorts of reasons and so we've gotten much more sophisticated about how we measure um our outcomes and I've become very specific about programs that are in our sweet spot and programs that are not not willing to just chase the dollar for the sake of bringing in another Grant uh I had an amazing leader on the podcast previously his name was Will Will Jones he's a CEO of an organization on North

[14:21]  Carolina called Thompson Child and Family Focus they he grew his organization over the last five years from about six million in Revenue to about 50 million in Revenue I said that's gigantic growth how did you do that will he said by saying no we have to recognize what we can do incredibly well and cut some of the ties with the programs that were draining our resources or our ability to actually deliver our services at a level of Excellence that we liked so how have you become comfortable with saying no to some of these opportunities especially as a nonprofit we've done exactly that you know there are programs we've given up where I'm you know I look at them and say either the funding is inadequate and I can't secure the appropriate funding in order order to do it right um or it's something that another organization is better positioned to do or more frequently we should be doing this in

[15:08]  partnership with somebody else we shouldn't be competing and writing you know our own applications and then you know kind of do our own thing and so increasingly in this region organizations are banding together to put together applications to say all right I could do this component we nailed that and you can do this component and let's share in it increase the likelihood that any of us gets a grant but but also make sure that we're playing to our strengths so similarly you know we've taken a hard look at some programs and stopped doing some things you know on the flip side I will say you know we're about ready to start a new program focused on moms who test positive for drugs during pregnancy and we're going to provide some services to them in the postpartum period you know government came and said hey you know would you do this we're going to lose a ton of money on it we're not going to make money on this we're going to have

[15:54]  to supplement it but the program is incredibly meaningful and we spend spend a lot of time with folks who have advanced substance use disorders trying to fish them out of the river when they're struggling for their their dear lives if we can get upstream and get to some of those kids and babies and get to some of those families before we've got an addicted 18-year-old well that's a whole new ball game and so I look at some of those things and say look from a business perspective we're getting 880,000 it's going to cost us $120,000 to run the program but it's what we want to be doing that reflects who we are and who we want to be and the things that we should be doing if we really want to address an opioid crisis in a serious kind of way I mean we're talking about changing the trajectory of family lineages right it's not about just investing into today and today's program

[16:42]  but the future Generations that are going to see the example of somebody who's overcome great things let me grab you before you fall into the river I don't want to fish you out way Downstream when you're when you're you're drowning I want to be able to get you before you ever fall in man there's a there's a couple elements that I really want to tie into your personal perspective on the value of vulnerability and authentic authentic authent authentic leadership um so you know in our conversations with Kim the pr director from your guys's organization she talked about some of your personal experiences and being a two-time cancer survivor first of all congratulations on everything that you've overcome but she also tied a lot of the your willingness to come in show up at work and be there for your team as something that truly inspired so many

[17:29]  people inside your organization do you mind talking on that a little bit yeah absolutely so um I finished my latest round of chemo the end of March of this year not that long ago although it feels like ages ago I was diagnosed with two cancers in two years um two different cancers in two years both picked up on routine screenings um so guys get your PSA test for prostate cancer and get your colonoscopy if you're over 45 or you have other risk factors you know both of those diagnoses came out of the blue um one on top of the other um you know I was really really public about both diagnoses because I wanted to encourage folks to get screened I wanted to encourage awareness I wanted to break the stigma of what it looks like to have cancer I'm not you know into my 70s I'm fairly young um the other component in

[18:18]  all of this is right before I was diagnosed the first time I finished Iron Man Florida and so people said I don't how could you have you're an Iron Man how could you have cancer well well so fitness and health are two very very different things and quite frankly my physical shape and determination and everything that comes along with Iron Man training actually positioned me really well for both cancer battles the second one being much more significant my second diagnosis was stage three be colon cancer and so a pretty Advanced Diagnosis um with pretty uncertain outcomes that uh got better over time and my prognosis changed pretty dramatically but I had resolved from outet look I want people to know because I want them to get screened I had no symptoms whatsoever either time and thank God I went and got routine testing

[19:06]  so I wanted people to know that I didn't want the staff to worry about because I'm very active with our staff I didn't want them to look and say the CEO is really sick what does this mean for us as an organization and I can say to them look we're a big organization there's 30 members of the board of directors there's a C team we got this I'm just the guy that accepts plaques and awards and giv speeches we got this um but I also wanted them to know that look sometimes even CEO struggle and I'm gonna show up here um and I'm not gonna camp out in a hospital bed I'm not gonna you know stay home I'm gonna traes in here and do this and honestly it helped me to do that on the mornings when I came in a little bit later I had time in the morning to think and be nauseous I thought and got nauseous whereas if I

[19:55]  was here being productive I'm like no I can do this I need to do this for me I need to do this for the staff I was very open about the uh challenges and in doing that I've had you know since I got here a real emphasis on transparency people need to know what's going on um there are some things I'll protect them from but I'm very candid with the staff I try to be very supportive with the staff um if I have to deliver bad news are things are not going to like you're not going to like this but this is the way it is and I will always give you the truth you may not like it you might disagree but I'm always going to tell you the truth and in talking about my own exp experiences with cancer I can't tell you how many staff came to me people who were doing the same thing I was that is coming in every day and putting on the The Game Face who are

[20:43]  going through the same struggles so I think it helped Foster a culture where you know come as you are like we're it's kind of cliche to say we're family especially if you come from a dysfunctional family because nobody wants that but you know I will say I think it brought us all together I think it humanized me a little bit it made it okay for people to come to me and say hey I just got diagnosed too I'm a little bit freaked out um or I'm afraid to get a colonoscopy you know and then they get a lecture and tell them it's nothing compared to uh what you go through if you wind up with a diagnosis but um I felt like I should share it I felt like not that there was meaning in the diagnosis but I had an obligation to share those life experiences and quite frankly if I spent half my life trying to help people and get them to open up

[21:33]  to me and then the second half keeping secrets about my own condition it didn't feel fair and I think anytime somebody comes and asks us or me for help there's there's a level of trust there right that's a sacred Bond if somebody comes to you and tells you their deepest darker Secrets whether it's child abuse whether it's a substance use disorder a mental health condition they're trusting you and you're creating a bond the least I could do is be open and share that back with folks you know I think that there's a an element that we need to kind of harp on here which is the lines between our personal lives and our professional lives especially over the last let's say four years have become incredibly blurry yes right we expect to be seen validated and heard in our work environments and when our leaders show up with authenticity they show up being

[22:21]  vulnerable and showing that they are a human it creates a sense of loyalty to the organization and Leadership that I don't think is really duplic catable so why do you think so many leaders over the years have gone to the place of keep your personal life and your personal life keep work here those are two completely separate worlds do you think that they're making a mistake and not leaning into the human element of work that we do every day I do bring and and some will say well the non for-profit sector you is different you can do that no look you need to show up as to who you are and you know I'm the same person I am on the outside as I am on the inside meaning outside of working here I always struggled with that concept of work life balance and I can't you know I've got to be careful around the way I say that around staff um but I will say I don't view those two things as a

[23:10]  tug-of war I view my life's work as part of my life it's part of how I Define myself I always struggle with how I Define myself in fact I wrote about this recently you know when I beat prostate cancer it was okay I'm a cancer survivor and then it was like oh damn I'm now a warrior again because I'm undergoing treatment oh now I'm a surv again and so you struggle with these identities but I think you know if you bring yourself to work if even in the private sector if you're an entrepreneurial individual and that's how you live your life outside that's how you live inside too and so you know I I don't I don't and I think over time you just develop less of a tolerance for being fake this is who I am this is what I do you know I will say not all of that came overnight some of that comes from outside activities uh um you know some

[23:59]  of the endurance training I did keyed me up for a whole bunch of things including life in the non for-profit World which can be pretty choppy uh it has es and flows and those kinds of things and vice versa a lot of the experience I've gained here um has been around people and the way people operate and you know the this notion that we're all buttoned up and perfect at work 100% of the time I think is is a fallacy and you know in this space if you're preaching honesty transparency a commitment to Justice to others and you're not practicing it internally that hypocracy will devastate an organization and just kill you as a leader in which ways I love this topic so I I think

[24:46]  if if as an organization you're not treating your staff if you're out there saying look we treat our clients with love compassion dignity we understand that sometimes they fall and we're there to pick them up again and if you 100 times we're there to pick you up again but then you don't operate that same way with your staff they're like all right so he's full of it that's this is not real and so and then to extend that if staff pick up on cues that you're full of it um that you don't mean what you say um that you're not a real person or that they can't get to know you you come to work in places like this because you want to know people because you want that exchange and I think we're in a day and age where those kinds of of intimate transparent exchanges are far and few between technology kills any sense of

[25:34]  that do you think this is an interesting theory that I have it's you know in 2022 the Surgeon General came onto a national broadcast and said the biggest threat to the American society is not a viral pandemic but an epidemic of isolation and loneliness now I grew up in Detroit and so I saw communities of people who saw working for large organizations like GM and Ward and all these other type of companies right as an opportunity and a privilege to be a part of a larger Community now over the recent years we've seen that everybody seems to be more individualized and I have a secret Theory deep down in my heart that says people want that sense of connection validation and I would say being seen in areas of work that we don't get in our personal lives I feel like the work that we do today plays an incredibly

[26:21]  important role to giving us that sense of connection that we've lost over the recent years yeah and and I think you know we not for-profits have had some amazing opportunities to Foster that connection you know we did um a lot around um the time of civil unrest in George Floyd as an organization our staff is roughly 60% folks that um are black and brown um about 79% female and I remember I did a series of town halls um on George Floyd and racism and and that kind of kind of thing and you know recognizing that here's a a middle-aged white guy middle-aged straight white guy kind of leading this conversation and so I made sure that you know staff had their own

[27:10]  voices and all of this and I remember one staff person saying you know look I'm I really love that you're doing all of this but I have a family that comes straight from law enforcement and we don't look and we don't talk this way and this is a little bit and I'm feeling torn because my family is is is blue um and I believe a lot of what we're talking about but I feel torn and I'm like this is the most valuable part of the conversation right this is how we break down those silos in society that say either you're for the cops or you want to defund the police you know either you're black or white you know that kind of thing and the more we can foster those conversations and build those connections the stronger we're going to be we know that when we talk about addiction when we talk about mental health issues that isolation and stigma kills people um same thing when

[27:57]  it comes to Poverty same thing when it comes to homelessness and so for us simply being that going Beyond providing services to being that connector that's a privilege I will tell you some of the most privileged conversations I've had in my life were with people newly diagnosed with HIV facing a terminal illness and knowing that it was a matter of of hours or days it wasn't going to be weeks um it's talking with women who are in domestic violence situations worried about themselves and their children um it's dealing with folks that are struggling with addiction trying so hard to please their parents but these kids are caught into a cycle they can't get out of those are privileged conversations those are not things that happen very often in this day and age and in all of that you

[28:46]  see the Frailty you see the desperation but you also see the hope and then being on the flip side of that as a healthc care consumer right my initial prognosis um after the colon cancer diagnosis was actually pretty dire and so you know it's one of those things where you're like wow like is this it and I remember making eye contact with some of my Health Care Professionals and thinking to myself now I'm on the other side of this I wonder if they can see my desperation and my fear and my panic and at least one of them I can tell even though there wasn't a verbal exchange around it I can tell one there's one nurse in particular I'm like I know she sees it I know she sees it really clearly and those are interactions at a time that's very hurried and very

[29:33]  focused on electronics those types of things are Priceless they never leave you what was your support system like when you got your first and second diagnosis like because I know that when we're challenged with the the mortality of Our Lives things from a perspective and priorities perspective change very quickly the only reason I know this is because my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer in uh 2021 in December and for the first time one of my family members was diagnosed with something that was completely outside of my control and it reprioritized my entire life now my father had a PSA level of 21 I believe and so he was stage three prostate cancer went through radiation treatment and things like that he is a very outgoing Wells spoken charismatic person but when he got his diagnosis he went very much inside became very retracted had a battle through his own

[30:21]  demons and things like that and I just wonder from a leader who seems so in touch with being transparent and vulnerable did you have any moments of doubt in those moments this is really interesting to me I think you know the question of of mortality you know I had I I still think of myself as like a 20-some year old kid you know so this is this is like the kick in the in the butt that says well well you're not um you know yeah so there were some struggles around mortality and it prompted some soul searching for me about you know have I done the things I want to do um Warren Buffett two years ago before Charlie Munger um was asked a question at one of his Saturday kind of public meetings kind of thing and he made this suggestion and it's something that the stoics have

[31:07]  recommended forever and that is you write your orbituary and then work your ass off to live up to it and I wouldn't say that I sat down and wrote it out but I began thinking and saying so like if this is it like how am I remembered did I do everything I want to do um I made a point of spending more time with my kids I made a a point of spending more time with uh my fiance um you know just you really begin to focus and hone in more on the quality of the time the quality of the interactions and you know that doesn't last forever you get used to the diagnosis and you settle in you know I was lucky I I had a great care team I had a great support system I had a partner that went with me to every single medical appointment Bar None So I

[31:55]  had it as easy as it gets but in doing this I've come in contact with a lot of people that don't have it in the same way I've got folks that have now been cured of of cancer I've got folks that are still struggling I know a guy that's been on chemo for three years uh I had it for six months and it almost took me out and so you begin to you know surround yourself with people who are going through the same kind of thing because you speak the same language but for me I developed the new appreciation and I think for people who could die suddenly I don't think they get that opportunity and and that became wistful for me where I'm like you know if you have a heads up or you have these wakeup calls along the way where somebody knocks on your door and says look you won't live forever um it wakes you up and it forces you to rep

[32:43]  prioritize but there's there was never there you know one of the things I was so grateful for the work I was doing not because it was going to get me to Heaven um but because I felt really good about it that this brought life to me it wasn't a job where I had to trudge to and get through eight hours just to go home and sleep it was something that gave me energy that gave me meaning that helped me honestly and and my staff would shiver if they heard this but work was the best medication for me the chemo and radiation did did the job right people say you know you're so brave you battled cancer I didn't have a choice I sat in an infusion room and the chemo did all the work but the Boost I got from the meaning of this work was immeasurable and so I don't believe that you can think your way out of cancer like chemo didn't read do those things but the right mindset goes a long way and it

[33:31]  helped reinforce my purpose did that change the way in which you invest time and effort into the Future Leaders of your organization did it change your leadership Theory at all yeah so I went to the board as soon as this came down like my board chair was maybe like the third person in my life to know um and we're friendly but it's still a board chair CEO relationship and I went to him and said all right right so like we have a problem um here's the deal I think it's going to be okay but we got to start thinking and talking about this because we're not and at that point our chief operating officer who I had known for 30 years was leaving and I said to him now we really have a problem there is no air apparent and that's on Me Maybe that we didn't train another

[34:18]  person but we have a potential issue here and you know he said' look we should have a broader discussion about this and we did and I brought it to the board and said so here's here's the deal and I think I'm going to be okay I wasn't sure that but I said I think I'm going to be okay but this is a huge liability like we need to fix this and we all can't be in this position I can't be in this position as a leader it's not good for me but more importantly it's not good for the organization I want you to be around for 140 years long after I'm gone uh as long as there's work to do unless we solve all the world's problems in the next few years and we can all go do something else and so when I and we recently reshuffled the the C team here and we did that reshuffling I was very cognizant of what skills does this person have do they have the ability to step in and do certain things

[35:05]  if I was unable to do that and quite frankly it shouldn't take a cancer diagnosis to do that that's just good planning right I mean it's a it's a part of when we come across these Crossroads in life where just like there are new realities that get put in front of us and we have to be adaptable and flexible to be able to meet the needs of what the future is going to bring and I think that that's kind of an area that I'd like to click on a little bit more there's some elements of there's a guy out there and my marketing director always gives me Flack because I bring this book into these conversations so often there's a guy out there his name is Gary vaynerchuk um goes by Gary ve on social media in 2022 he released a book Le or 12 and a half leveraging the emotional ingredients necessary for business success and he says the future generations of great workers and great leaders cannot be led in the same way that Steve Jobs LED his team as a tyrant

[35:54]  but our Future Leaders need to demonstrate empathy compassion curiosity kind cander those soft skills have you thought about honing those soft skills to be able to usher in the new generation of leaders from Millennials gen Z and Alpha who's falling behind them yes and I it's something that I have to work really hard at um I Am Naturally a really impatient person you know my my leadership team will say he wants it done tomorrow he want you know today this afternoon can I get that by 3 o'clock and so um I really have to temper and very often have to think through my first response to things my initial response is likely very different than my response an hour later or even if I just take a few minutes to kind of process and think it maybe ask

[36:41]  one or two probing questions after I hear a bit of news and so that's something that I've had to practice I have to continue to practice um I think I get better at over time but I also have come to rely more on the team as a whole and so many years ago soon after I got here um I I made a management error and and it was we require people to have a certain amount of insurance they drive for the organization they have to have a certain amount of insurance so that if they get sued like it doesn't spill over onto us and at one point in time I raised those minimum numbers and staff came back and said oh my God my insurance is so expensive I'm like well yes because you all Drive lousy and I want the organization to remain open and so you know I made this decision people

[37:30]  around the management table table kind of went along with it I went away for a week I came back and like so we talked and we don't think this is a good idea and my first reaction was wait a minute I go away and you talk about revisiting all the decisions I already made like we already talked about this I don't understand well yes we went along with it because you seem s so gung-ho and in the meantime we heard staff feedback and quite frankly staff had revolted oh w and they were like I'm on my parents Insurance my dad isn't willing to pay this and I'm like well then I guess you might have to find a different job kind of thing but my number one goal is to protect the agency right um and it was really a turning point for me where I said you know what they didn't feel comfortable enough to say anything when they saw me going

[38:18]  down the wrong road and then I beat them up for actually listening to staff and when I came back saying I think we need to rethink that this and and I said all right so I hate doing this but we're going to change our policy we're going to revert it back I'll announce it you know we're going to saywell we heard you and we're dialing it back it was it was a learning experience for me but one of the best things I did as a leader because I was able to say to the management team and to the staff as a whole I was wrong it seemed like a great idea I didn't listen to you all right away and I probably should have it doesn't mean I'm always going to but I absolutely should have given you more Credence than I did and we're going to dial this back because if I want to protect the agency then I need to keep you all around the table otherwise I'm not protect I'm

[39:05]  protecting the agency brand but not the people and we're not a brand we're a group of people who have come together to change the community and if I'm not caring for you and exactly that that way and if I'm not listening to you and talking with you and admitting when we screw up then what are we doing here and so you know I've had a few experiences like that in my career that have kind of um cut me down to size um you know and and one of the things that I always think about I do a fair amount of public speaking and somebody once said to me you're never as good as you thought you were you're also never as bad as you thought you were and so you know anytime I make a mistake I'm like it's not as bad as it seems and anytime we have a victory I'm like this is good but we still got other things we got to do yeah there's a do you think in that moment when your team came back to you and said Hey listen we know we talked to the team and we just don't

[39:51]  think this is the best decision do you think we had a little bit of like ego flare up in that moment oh yeah absolutely absolutely abolutely um and I think you know the more we can keep that and and I I work at that the more we can keep it in check um you know and and I would never want so the whole kind of you know life examination thing was really focused back to yeah what do I want my legacy to be but I want my legacy to to be that I left an organization really strong and well positioned and for the period of time that I was entrusted to run this organization that I moved it forward that if something happens to me I go get another job or or something happens and they're like oh he's gone and the organization begins to tank that's not a success that's an that's a huge failure

[40:41]  and that the organization is bigger than any one leader and those leaders who think that this is my baby right I have to be the person who controls every decision often don't see the growth that the organization needs because we're not empowering and entrusting others to make decisions on the organization's behalf as well well and look this is different than the private sector because nobody owns a not for-profit organization right% we collect people's hard-earned tax money and hard-earned donations that they give to us and they entrust us with to put to good use and they trust that we're going to do that so none of us owns this but we own the responsibility does that little bit of I would say insulation if you will that you're not the founder owner of this nonprofit does that give you a little bit of distance from some of the

[41:27]  decisions and the results that maybe you guys have it does but you know there's a there's a huge amount of ownership you know here on Long Island people are are are identified strongly with organizations um and so there is that identity there is that source of Pride but for me there's also the sense that 130 years before 130 years after this is my time my particular time where they've entrusted me to do this and so I've got this slice in time and when I'm done somebody else will move in and take a over you know the uh the landscape of how we do work has changed since November of 22 right that's when artificial intelligence and other Technologies kind of were thrust into our lives through open Ai and all those other type of companies how are you thinking about navigating this new

[42:14]  landscape of Technology artificial intelligence as the leader of an organization that's been around for 140 years this landscape is kind of new how you thinking about this stuff some of it worries me you know some of the remote work stuff has been a challenge um yeah you know I'm at a particular age where if I don't see in the office maybe you're not working as hard um and that's that's the kneejerk reaction that's not my wellth thought out reaction and it's really been an evolution I think for a lot of us but in the na for profit space there's certain things that are not conducive to remote work right one of the things we learned about treating kids during Co was that the the video discussions were not as fruitful as real life online discussions we learned that Zoom was exhausting for our staff and my

[43:03]  first reaction was wait a minute you sitting on your butt in your pajamas right you put a nice blouse on so people would think that you were at work how is it so exhausting and then you know then we saw a huge body of data that said because our senses are firing on all cylinders as we're trying to pick up on things via Zoom that we don't necessarily they come more naturally in real life if you're sitting across from somebody that's why people are exhausted so so it's it's been an adjustment along those lines AI so far for us has been a um has been a plus and so one of the places we use it is um we have a drug testing company that we work with it gives back toxicology screens for folks that are Court mandated and it used to be if you got a positive talk screen you need to sit with the client and say look you know explain to me why you tested

[43:49]  positive well I had a poppy seed Bagel okay so that didn't happen I went to a concert where there was a lot of weed Okay so that probably didn't happen either and so we need to go through all those things now there's actually an AI function built into the testing technology where the staff log into a platform and says this is what the person tested positive for here are the positive explanations uh or the possible explanations and here's what to look out for in the discussion um there's some progress note um applications having said that and I'm a big technology guy I don't think technology is the enemy having said that I worry about um progress notes that are AI generated that don't contain the human flare particularly with younger staff that don't have the same

[44:36]  experience base and so you know we've got folks coming out of Social Work school they work for a couple years here and then they hang a shingle and develop a private practice you know it's hard to counsel you know a 45y old single mom with two kids if you're 25 and don't have two kids and haven't raised kids that doesn't mean you can't be a good clinician but it means you need certain experience and I worry that maybe some of that experience is getting lost in in this day and age but overall I think it will ultimately be helpful um I don't love when I see job applications produced with AI and that kind of thing but look it's the reality and I think it's like any other technology if you use it correctly and you use it responsibly and ethically then it can certainly help you

[45:22]  work uh the one of the things that I think is important is we approach the types of Technology through a lens of curiosity right we're seeing this kind of in the early boom stages right now of it's going to be the Silver Bullet to change everything when we should be thinking about it as one of the hundred golden BBS we have to shoot at these problems to have the sustainable impact that we're looking for and I completely agree with you I think there's a space for it but I do worry about some of the efficiencies through clinical documentation and everything else that seems very popular today because that flare of the human element is super important yeah we can't just replace that and look for a lot of the problems we're dealing with in this region whether it's healthare disparities or or addiction illiteracy homelessness there's no app for that stuff it requires connecting with individuals it

[46:09]  involves connecting them with Services it involves advocating at a larger level and so you know I've talked mostly about what we do individually um for clients but we have a voice in public policy and I want to make sure that we're amplifying the voices of the people we serve and the people we work here in a a way that's genuine in a way that's assertive that's Unapologetic um and that reflects the realities and you know we used to draw a big line between staff and consumers no such line exists anymore most of the folks that were hiring quite frankly are are fairly low income whether they identify in that way or not we also are prioritized hiring folks with lived experience and so all of our recovery programs are led by people in long-term recovery our gun violence

[46:56]  prevent ion programs are run by people who have done generally State time and head gang membership affiliations in the past um I think the people who are closest to the problems are actually closest to the solutions and part of the reason we haven't gotten further ahead is we haven't involved those communities in the conversations about what will work so around gun violence we've said pay for more cops put them out on the street put them in fancy cars get license plate readers you know technology that kind of thing when in fact if we take some folks that have walked the road and struggled and now want to give back and maybe repair some of the communities that they have armed in the past they know better than anyone else folks in long-term recovery can look across a desk and say I know what you're going through I'm not a clinician

[47:45]  I don't have a PhD but I've got life experience and I can meet you where you are and I don't want to leave you there but I can meet you where you are and I understand because I've been there that goes a long way and look I've done that in my you know post- treatment cancer work with other folks too I've said by no means am I an oncologist but I have an experience that maybe I can share with you and if you take one or two things out of it that's helpful for your experience and then you pass that along to another person that's how we get ahead Dr Jeffrey Reynolds having you on the show has been an easy understanding of why you are the definition of heart and hustle and why we want to have you on the show you know I want to give you an opportunity I'm a big baseball guy so I want to give you a Babe Ruth moment call your shot where we going in 2025 and 2026 what are we kind of trying to accomplish with your organization the things you guys are doing yeah look I we

[48:33]  continue to try to solve some of our regions and probably our nation's most vexing problems right poverty is a persistent issue Healthcare in inequalities are a persistent issue I think the next few years are likely to have a lot of change associated with them and how we navigate that change is really really important um you know folks have said you know what is what a political changes mean for you and that kind of thing and I said they don't really mean anything it means that we continue to fight for the things we believe in we continue to fight for the communities that we believe in we continue to build our army of folks that are concerned about homelessness and lack of access to healthc care and untreated substance use disorders and we March forward you know my pitch because you have a bigger audience than than

[49:20]  Long Island would be get involved in a local not for-profit in your own Community um it doesn't have to be the one that attracts all the big dollars or all the big headlines there are very small organizations that are quietly making a difference sometimes a bigger difference than the big guys but call them spend an hour go down there visit with them support them help them at the very least make sure you're connecting up with not only those organizations but your neighbors and most importantly the people who are closest to you as we land the plan on today's episode part of our tradition is our previous guest want to ask you a blind question this is really interesting to me their question was what would your 13-year-old self think of you now um that's actually pretty easy um I debated whether or not to kind of go

[50:08]  down this road but but I'll go down this road I remember when I was in ninth grade I don't know that's about 13 um I had an English teacher his name was Mr sabales and he looked at me and he said Reynolds you're going to go one of two ways either things are going to be really good for you or really bad and I'm just not sure which one it is and those words never left me I mean how many things do you remember that somebody said to you when you were 13 and it never left me and I don't think that I spent my life trying to prove him wrong or to kind of prove that all right so look I turned out okay um but I do think it set a bar for me to say all right look you got some choices here like this could go either way given your history given your upbringing given

[50:56]  where you seem to be beheaded this could go either way and so I think my 13-year-old self would be like you made the right choice you're actually doing okay um you know for me the hustle part is you know it's almost never enough I always want to do more I'm always like I got so many things to do I got so much I want to accomplish we're moving the needle on these problems but I want to move it even faster because every person we save and every person we help is a step closer and a life that's that's enriched so um I think my 13-year-old self would actually be pretty proud say so you answered the question that was asked well that's an amazing place for us to put a bow on the on today's episode once again thank you Dr Jeffrey Reynolds for coming on the show you are the definition of heart and hustle for everybody who's tuning in watching and listening really appreciate you coming on and spending some time with us thanks much for having me on it's been a

[51:43]  pleasure