Breaking the Silence: Why Men's Health Needs a Wake-Up Call ft. Courtney Bugler

[0:00]  there's a misconception that you know we do this work because it feels good we're the helpers of communities we like to show up and we like to serve other people right but I think we need to do a better job of re-evaluating what real impact means just because we raise the next year of funding and we get more donations and we have to engage with our you know our fundraisers does not mean that we're actually having an impact and you kind of sum this up in two simple words you said so what what does that mean yeah so we look at the framework of everything we've been doing here at zero and even before then um as I always try and ask people like what is our our our core impact so at zero there were lots of things that we tracked and paid attention I was like but what are we really trying to do and people would

[0:47]  stay stuff and I'd be like okay we want to we want to help people in supp work groups for what so what for that like and what we realized is as we started to ask questions you work your way down or up sort of the impact ladder and you know uh hey uh Public Health nerds or research nerds you know uh we have X number of people that go to our support groups that's an output you know like and they're satisfied or they think it helps them that's an outcome that's great but the impact is usually all right guys welcome back to a brand

[1:37]  new episode of the heart and hustle podcast today is a really important episode because we're going to talk about a few elements that seem to be lost in our society today what does impact truly mean what does it mean to pursue greatness and what does accountability mean when it comes to impacting lives in our communities and really having a sustainable impact in our community as well today I am joined by the CEO of zero prostate cancer Courtney bugler is with me here today Courtney welcome to the show thanks so much for having me I'm looking forward to chatting today so Courtney what is the biggest misconception that we kind of have about prostate cancer today if we were just having a conversation what do people have wrong well I think the first issue is that um many people don't think of it at all so that's the first problem um but I think um you know the

[2:28]  one of the biggest misconceptions is kind of what is the face of prostate cancer and I think for a long time um if you did think about prostate cancer you thought of it as like sort of some you know older white gentleman like maybe your grandfather um for a long time it was sort of like prostate cancer is a cancer that you die with not from um but in reality much like a lot of other cancers the face of this disease is changing and um you know we get uh a lot of people who are younger who are under 50 um who have kids at home or who are at the prime of their careers and it's really not a disease of just old men um and I think that's one of our greatest challenges is that's probably kept us from having the urgency that we really need to have and do you feel like that

[3:18]  is because of the the male Persona and the stigma I know in our previous conversation you said something incredibly impactful you said you know often when women are diagnosed with cancer they look at it as something that they're going to have to live with for the rest of their lives but when men get things like prostate cancer they look like it's they look at it like it's something to overcome and move on from which couldn't be farther from the truth how do why do you think we've come to that in our society yeah it's interesting I definitely um I I sort of joke that this job is every day is a study in gender Dynamics and part of that um and part of the reason why I was brought to zero was because um I'm an almost 20-year breast cancer survivor and so I was brought to kind of bring the the fire of the pink ribbons to prostate cancer um for example if you're

[4:07]  listening to this I bet you probably know when everything gets turned pink because your grocery store is full of it um but you probably don't know that the month before it is prostate cancer awareness month because nothing's there and it's true um I do think that there's my first Mentor once said to me never underestimate the power of pissed off women and um as I say to my constituents a lot like I don't think we've gotten pissed off enough and um I do think it it has to do with how men and women approach diseases approach those sort of challenges but what that's meant is this sort of army of women in their survivorship who have sort of said our lives are forever changed and we want to talk about it um and we won't be ignored about it um and there's probably a whole

[4:56]  discussion about the sexualization and commercialization of the ribbon which is a podcast for another day but you combine all of those things and what that really meant is that there was this sort of pink jogger knut that kept going about 20 years ago and what that meant is it meant an investment in Awareness it meant an investment in talking about it it meant um the changing in how people are screened I mean I turned 40 and somebody said it's time to get a mammogram and I was like just kidding I've been doing it for 12 years already um but that kind of um investment in money and effort and awareness is just not there in prostate cancer prostate cancer is about 20 years behind probably and and what's a shame about that is all

[5:43]  of that awareness and there's some double-edged sword to that in the pink ribbon Community but it drove dollars it drove investment which drove science it drove research and so the science in breast cancer is so much further ahead and so it's it's kind of like a snowball effect that keeps happening and happening but yeah there to so what that means now is it's really common for a woman to come out and say I had breast cancer you know and show pictures and show this and um and yet uh when men are diagnosed with uh with prostate cancer or even worse for those who are part of like lgbtqia communities where there's even greater stigma so anyone with a prostate um that tends to still be kind of pushed under um and that means that we don't

[6:33]  have that army of Advocates that sort of demand not to be ignored it has to piss you off right when you talk about you know in the very beginning like there's no more powerful force than the pissed off woman it's I completely agree um it has to make you so upset to see how many people are being impacted one thing I think we should share from a statistic about prostate cancer is there are as many men being diagnosed with prostate cancer as there are women being diagnosed with breast cancer yeah they're um they're both the number one uh cancers that are diagnosed in their relative sex um you know and give or take a few thousand here or there and about the same number um a few more thousand women but about the same number of uh men and women die from those respective diseases and so

[7:23]  again that's um and and in a coming from a background of a lot lot of women's health right where you're sort of demanding to be heard and there is a ton of stigma around how women are treated in the Healthcare Community however um it is interesting once I got in here and and I will admit I was pulled in because my father's living in the prostate cancer and um I looked around and I said you know quite honestly holy [ __ ] what have we gotten into and um and again I think that the the face of the disease is very different I I used to sort of um say that in breast cancer I mean if you look around and you look at images you look at commercials you look at things you don't see my grandmother in the pictures you see a

[8:11]  30s something year old woman with two kids um or you see a bald woman who's pregnant um when I started in breast cancer I started in an organization for young women specifically and we were highly prized because our faces and our stories were the ones that drove urgency and wanted to be told and and that just hasn't happened in prostate cancer and um it allows um that stigma to just sort of fester I have multiple people who um when they start it at zero they share the story and myself included where when I said I'm coming over here people come out of the woodwork and go yeah I was diagnosed you know 10 years ago I've been living with it for five years and never once speak it aloud um and rarely does that happen on the breast cancer

[8:58]  side so in in 2022 the Surgeon General came on to a national broadcast and said for the first time since the 60s had an announcement for the public in the 60s he talked about the danger of cigarette smoke to the people of the United States in 2022 he said the biggest threat to the American society is not another viral pandemic like covid but an epidemic of isolation and loneliness I continue to think about the stigma the elements of feeling isolated the fear that men have in even admitting that they're dealing with a diagnosis like prostate cancer I'll give you a perfect example you said your father's living with prostate cancer my father's living with prostate cancer so 100% of the people in this room have been impacted right by prostate cancer when he was impacted what was the first thing that he did he's one of the most jovial

[9:46]  outgoing honestly I when we were younger I used to tell him that he has a um holler Outburst disorder h o because he always wants to yell and be the guy in the room that has the most attention when he got his diagnosis the exact opposite thing happened he became very um secluded he became retracted from us he wasn't sending his morning text messages I knew something was going on but to this day I ask him how did you feel in that moment he said Kean I was scared shitless so what did I do I kept it to myself I didn't have people I felt comfortable being able to reach out to other than the friends who I know were brave enough to say I have prostate cancer I'm dealing with this diagnosis and it seems like in order to get past this we have to create the safe space of community and connection for men to raise their hand and admit that it's okay not to be okay because

[10:33]  statistically we're probably not going to be okay well and there are there are tons of statistics around the greater risk if you've been diagnosed with prostate cancer for mental health issues for suicide um so they are intertwined and and what's interesting is that in in our work at zero so for example we have the largest community of prostate cancer specific support groups in the country um and actually one of the largest communities of of a disease specific sport group we have over 150 sport groups around the country and what we know of and and I I sort of joked that uh on day four of when I started at zero about 18 months ago I went to our training for our support group leaders and within about a minute and a half um someone was giving me some very graphic

[11:21]  information about um about their treatment and their side effects and things and you know my first reaction was like okay here we go cuz I've been cancer so I wasn't phased by any of it but what it reminded me is in the power of community when people feel like they're safe men do open up um but they need to see themselves in the community and so one of the things that I think we do at zero really well is we create that Community for people to feel safe we have programs where you can have one-on-one mentoring you can do things online so you can still be sort of anonymous you could you know there's lots of ways for people to get get that kind of support and we're actually going to be growing that in the next um year or so and um and I often joke uh with in my own personal cancer experience that

[12:11]  you know my doctors might have saved my lives but it was my peers it was sort of what I refer to as my Pink Mafia that saved my soul like and they're the ones who really helped me and this epidemic of loneliness that is happening both with men and also with younger generations and of course as those younger Generations become more at risk for cancers including prostate um that inability to find connection or to feel like they can find connection or if you are in um a marginalized Community you know there are um you know a disproportionate number of black men who are you know not married or partnered and therefore they don't have that person who lives with them to kind of

[12:58]  walk them through it um it is a self-fulfilling prophecy and and unfortunately um at zero one of the things that we have to get better at and I think all organizations do is um especially smaller ones you know we're um we're the largest patient- centered prostate cancer organization but we're not as big as the breast cancer organizations is we have sort of been too relying on people to find us and especially if you are you know isolating yourself in that shell you're not going to reach out so we have to be much more proactive in the um in the community organizations Health Care organizations um across the gamut to to not let people Retreat into

[13:48]  themselves um because there is data that shows that that isolation can impact their survival um on the flip side I'm never going to tell you that you have to have a POS positive attitude and that you have to be happy and that's going to because quite honestly cancer freaking sucks and um the last thing I want to do is sort of uh a Survivor or patient shame and say that you have to have a happy face all the time because it's just not that's not real um but what we need to do is and it's why everyone needs an advocate is we have to reach out and grab them as they are retreating and show them that there is a community where it's safe because what do see at zero is when they do feel safe then they then they definitely open up um and I think that's something that you know is

[14:39]  across sort of the Men's Health space as a whole um these issues are not necessarily unique to prostate cancer although I will say um based on you know where the cancer is found and sometimes some of the side effects of some of the treatments it is um it impacts them in a different way um I think I think we have some some things in common with our you know testicular cancer friends um and some of the stigma around for example coloral cancer um which thankfully has moved further ahead um but still has a lot of Shame and stigma around it right like it's interestingly enough we'll share all of our own like issues on social media but when it comes to anything sort of from the waist you know

[15:26]  to the top of the thighs we all get real weird about it we really do you know one thing that I think is important to recognize is you were brought in as a leader who has a vision to transform the organization and you had a really important saying you said you know we are proud but we are dissatisfied in where we're at what does that mean proud but dissatisfied yeah I mean I think um first of all I'm just not the person you call for incremental anything it's just not my jam um and the potential for what we can do and the lives we can save and change is so great um that it's an exciting opportunity to be at my organization but and I will admit that I took this from a colleague um a a friend of mine who works for ALS you know a disease that everyone does die from um

[16:16]  and he and he came and spoke to our team and he said you know when you live in that environment you like it's never enough we have to do more and so um but I liked how he really phrased we can be proud of what we've done so far and when I came into zero um you know zero has been around for over 20 years it's grown it's done amazing work um but as long as there is somebody diagnosed tomorrow who doesn't get the help they need and as long as there's somebody who is you know two people are going to die while we have this conversation um then we have not done enough and um so we want to be proud of how far we've come but as long as those people are still there it is not enough and so one of the

[17:05]  things that I've been really proud of is um and of course as an organization and as a leader you celebrate the wins like by no means are we just but we have built a team and we're continuing to build a team that are never satisfied um and anything can always be better it can always be bigger um we can always be more accountable more transparent um and and what I'm really proud of is in the last year and a half is we've really um started to change the culture at our organization we're we're sort of a culture of Builders um and you know that's not been without its challenges um from an organizational perspective um and from a change management perspective but I think that's what our patients and our

[17:54]  survivors and our community would want um they the ones who really give back and start to get involved they're doing that for the next person not just for themselves and um I just come from a place where I can't look a a survivor in the eye and say yeah we're doing pretty good like isn't that enough because it's not do you think that that comes and this is a little bit of a personal question I apologize but do you think that comes from your personal diagnosis right when my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer it really put everything into scope for me like holy [ __ ] this life is not infinite and if we want to make impact we need to take action now do you think that's a part of why you're such a get [ __ ] done motivator um I think some of it is natural like I'm a go bigger go home kind of person anyway but um you know my staff will say um and

[18:45]  again prostate cancer when caught early has a really great survival rate but I come from a community in cancer um that doesn't have that great things and so I mean in the in the 18 months that I've been here um not only have we lost people in the prostate cancer Community but I have personally lost four friends that I've been friends with who were diagnosed when I was 20 years ago and um and every time I have to take a day off of work to go to a funeral or to help someone with end of life care I come back and say what the [ __ ] are we doing and whether it's breast cancer prostate cancer whatever but like it is um yeah I mean I will say like before I came to nonprofits I was writing for

[19:34]  television um you know I was writing soap operas I could have told you how to come back from the dead and steal someone's baby and be an evil twin um but there is something that fundamentally changes when you have dozens of friends die before you're 40 that I think changes you um I live a life that is kind constantly touched by grief um how I usually manifest that grief as uh thousands of dollars in therapy would tell me is I get pissed off um I'm not sure I've gained acceptance of any of it and um and one of the reasons for example that I did move I've moved in and out of breast cancer is quite honestly sometimes it's

[20:21]  too personal um and this is a way to be sort of personal yet adjacent for me but um I do think that I mean there's a reason why if you look at nonprofits as a whole I mean it's full of people who got involved because they became personally connected by that cause and I think that's what drives that on the flip side if I'm going to put on my business hat I think it's also what makes the world think that we should all do it for free and we should we and anybody could do it and people don't have to be qualified but again a podcast for another day and but it is something that like um you know I've been I start too many meetings with a moment of silence of somebody we've lost and that's you know like we can't

[21:10]  control everything um and I'm not personally in a lab you know finding a cure um but I can certainly advocate for the dollars I can certainly speak to the policy makers and I can certainly make the system um and the healthc care landscape that they work in um better and um that that fuels the ambition um I mean I'm probably an ambitious person anyway but um there's there's a reason why we've at zero we've sort of re-evaluated some of our core values and they're about to be launched but spoiler alert um ambition is one of them because the cause demands it um and as long as I still get a you know an

[22:01]  email or a text once a week where somebody says hey I have somebody who's been diagnosed with prostate cancer and they're freaking out how can you help and we got work to do so my question for you is you know in the nonprofit space right there's a misconception that you know we do this work because it feels good we're the helpers of communities we like to show up and we like to serve other people right but I think we need to do a better job of re-evaluating what real impact means M just because we raise the next year of funding and we get more donations and we have to engage with our you know our fundraisers does not mean that we're actually having an impact and you kind of summed this up in two simple words you said so what what does that mean yeah so we look at the framework of everything we've been doing here at zero

[22:48]  and even before then um as I always try and ask people like what is our our our core impact so at zero there were lots of things that we tracked and paid attention I was like but what are we really trying to do and people would stay stuff and I'd be like okay we want to we want to help people in support groups for what so what for that like and what we realized is as we started to ask questions you work your way down or up sort of the impact ladder and you know uh hey uh Public Health nerds or research nerds you know uh we have X number of people that go to our support groups that's an output you know like and they're satisfied or they think it helps them that's an outcome that's great but the impact is usually or if we're going to get you know we could

[23:36]  also talk for-profit leading indicators lagging indicators those kinds of things but in the end what are we really trying to get to so for at zero we really talked about like if I can't you know seven degrees of Kevin Bacon from what we're doing to Three core impacts then we've got to re-evaluate if it's what we should be doing so for us it's um there's a disturbing Trend in prostate cancer that people are being diagnosed later and again when it's later it is not curable um so we wanted to decrease these late stage diagnosis which meant that we have to be much more involved in the sort of the early detection game and quite honestly our friends in breast cancer and colon

[24:24]  cancer have been talking that talk for 20 years and in prostate cancer for very ious reasons we haven't but we do know that there is a disturbing Trend especially in certain populations that they're being diagnosed too late so we have to drive people to be diagnosed earlier and quite honestly even that is a leading indicator it's not the final impact but the next thing is we want people to live longer with this disease if they have it or if they have had it in the past and better because the disease does impact quality of life and I'm here to tell you as a person who with my own dis disas was probably overtreated and it has grossly impacted my quality of life 20 years later um you know it's a trade-off and that's a trade-off that's important to discuss but we want people to live longer and better and there are ways to

[25:12]  measure that that we quite honestly suck at so we've been really talking about like well how do we measure that and there's some ways to do it that's going to probably be a multi-year plan for how we do that but eventually how do we show that our work here leads to less people dying and you know if we do our job properly because there is some data and we can we're going to get much more involved in sort of our own research to show this like I know that there are people who because they go to support groups will live longer and better and eventually won't die um that's anecdotal right there's some research but it's because they they got information that they should ask their doctors they pushed to get a second opinion they got a treatment they wouldn't have normally

[25:59]  asked for um or they got a way to handle their side effects which meant that their marriage stayed together um any any of these cancers that impact sex and intimacy um have a disproportionately large impact on relationships and so um but we at zero and I would say we as nonprofits are not always great at measuring that and um when I was a chief marketing officer for example I sat down with my team and they were like we have all this social media engagement I was like yeah so what well it's great our community is engaged okay but what do you want them to do next because just like you know you go girl on a post doesn't do anything and they're like well but then

[26:48]  I was like doesn't save anybody's life doesn't lead them to take the next action you know like again marketing hat what's our conversion what's our call to action and um you know kind of like old school media impressions for media Impressions like sure that's a great way to count but if I can't show that that actually changed or saved someone's life we're either not we're either we either shouldn't be doing it or we're doing it wrong and I think that too many people don't ask those questions um because it's it's hard I mean I'm going to be transparent like we suck at it and it's going to take us years to figure it out um they're too afraid that they won't get

[27:35]  funded if they're transparent about like we're bad at this um you know one of the things that we did at zero is we actually we have um one of the largest um RunWalk Series it's sort of the largest Men's Health Series in the country and when I arrived we had 50 of them um and they're great and and I used to be the national director for com's Race for the Cure so I love a good you know 5K but when we got there um a lot of them weren't making money they didn't have a lot of people at them and I was like what are we trying to do with them and what we got was um a lot of people in the community were really invested in them because they made them the people who went felt good about it but it wasn't growing by people like

[28:25]  so we weren't bringing more people into the fold it wasn't wasn't translating into greater investment in the mission um but it it meant that the people who were there felt really good but we weren't growing more of them and they weren't taking any of the next action and we were spending a disproportionate amount of our um Budget on Staffing these events um when I arrived at zero we had more fundraisers than we had people who were working in Mission and we are a direct service organization um um I have a question about that yeah so you know there's a I want to tie a little analogy into this so there was a a famous experiment that scientists ran with four monkeys they put four monkeys in a cage and they put

[29:13]  a ladder in the middle of the cage and what they did is they put bananas at the top of the ladder monkeys crawl up they eat the bananas the second time the scientists put the bananas in the cage or on top of the ladder the monkeys start crawling up and they shock them with electricity and they douse them with cold water okay So eventually none of those monkeys want to go up because they associate getting shocked with cold water and climbing that ladder they replace one of the monkeys so you get a brand new monkey who hasn't been a part of the experiment it tries to climb up to the top and the other monkeys grab it pull it down start beating it up because they don't want to get shocked and doused with cold water that experiment continues where now you have four new monkeys in the cage and guess what by the time they put the new bananas at the top of the ladder none of the monkeys will climb CL the ladder and they say why don't we climb after ladder and they

[30:00]  say exactly this is just how we've always done it and so I'm wondering if you think about the impact and like the hey why are we doing these things and you get an answer well this is how we've always done it but does that really mean yeah I mean I think I think any new leader comes into anywhere for-profit nonprofit and they'll hear that right um and and I heard that at zero um I I'm going to give my team credit though most of them recognize that they shouldn't do it anymore but they weren't quite sure how to get out of it um when I worked at um I mean I haven't worked there in a while so I can share this story um when I worked at Susan Goman I I I was brought in to transform this National event series and I asked my team and some people like go what's getting in the way and the they all said fear we're afraid of screwing up we're afraid of

[30:50]  Doing It Wrong um the series was declining there was a lot of other things going on and they had just been afraid to make any moves lest it be the wrong move and um and and quite honestly in some ways that team was so so used to to not winning that they had forgotten what winning looked like and they certainly forgot what it felt like and so um Zero's a little bit different environment because they were um there were a lot of things that they were like we shouldn't be doing this way we just need someone to break us out of the mold to do it so you know that's I mean for-profit nonprofit you know the disruptors um I think

[31:38]  what what also happens is depending on your funding source um I'm blessed at zero we have a really diverse funding but you know if you are government funded I'm not sure they're driving you for Innovation right there um if you are you know if you get a lot from large family foundations and they've been giving you the same amount year after year you're sort of afraid to upset the apple cart right so one of the things that I think has been fun here at zero is we have a nice diverse set but there's still a lot that we haven't touched and again because the cause and the need is so great there's actually a lot of opportunity and it allows us to kind of like keep doing what we're doing with those that feel comfortable with how

[32:25]  we're doing it while going to the new new places who don't have that same mindset but on the flip side I'm going to say um as a fundraiser uh who often for many years would say well no money no mission right um I don't really think about it that way anymore I think about it as big mission will drive the dollars and it if you put the people want to be a part of big bold things they do and it's scary and you got to be really transparent we're about to launch this huge initiative and I looked our lead funer in the eye and said we are going to screw this up somewhere you need to give us this money knowing that we are

[33:14]  going to screw it up because some of the things that we are trying to do no one's done in prostate cancer before and we're going into communities that have a hard time trusting and this you must know like this is our this is what we hope to happen but and we're piloting some things like you must know that some of what you're giving us money for we are going to tell you that didn't work so we're not going to do it anymore um and you must know that we're going to come to you at some point and say this is taking longer than we thought I'm going to be TR but what you can guarantee is I will be transparent with you about it we will come to you when it's happening we will raise our hand before it gets too late and we will be your partner in sharing that with you but if you want to do things that are new and big and bold to expect them to

[34:03]  go perfectly is stupid and thankfully they're like yeah okay and you know we set some very Baseline parameters like you've got to at least do this you know like because we got to at least be able to show that we're doing what we say we're doing um but every uh potential partner in this initiative I have gone to them and said I'm telling you it will not go perfectly and the feedback that we are getting now at the same time I'm also showing people you know we've hired people we're elevating certain things so it's not like we're a we're a bunch of yahoos who don't have any idea at zero we have purposely hired um since I arrived my entire senior team has turned over and

[34:51]  um we are hiring kind of VP and director levels and the number one thing that we've hired in those are people who come from bigger places who know how to do it already oh wow um so you you know like here's the people and you're investing in the people as much as you are right so if anybody's in sales or or leadership you know people give to people so they got to trust that you're going to do it that way um and you know I'm not sure I would go with this like I can't go to a very very um regimen mended healthare Foundation necessarily with this tact um you know we need to show some data first before we go to some other

[35:38]  people um and in fact that's what we're telling some of our key kind of Partners we need the first 20 because you're going to give us the data we need to go get the next 100 we're not ready to go to those people yet you're going to help us which of course every funer wants to hear too because they want to know that they're not going to be the ones perpetually funding you forever and you're going to go find the other money um but I think that some of that is being really honest and at least in the environment that we've been in um we have been told that that cander is refreshing now come to me in two years and if we've screwed it all up well that's a whole different other topic but um people want to be a part of big bold

[36:28]  things like our funders are bored if we come to them with the same crap um I mean this is a this is a huge part Courtney of being able to attract those highly talented people who have been there before you have to cast that Vision where they can see themselves being successful in the vision that you cast yeah and and as we've been hiring um the team jokes I spend the first half an hour of any interview of a leadership role and I try to scare them away I tell them here here's all the things that are terrible you're not going to have this this isn't in place you don't have this team you don't have that like I try to make them run and then um if they look at me and they go well that sounds like fun then they have passed the first

[37:16]  hurdle um we just met with somebody recently and I tried to scare them away and he said man bring it on um and and again that's the culture of building the culture of ambition not being afraid of the mess um and again to Zero's credit zero was doing a great job again proud but dissatisfied a great job but where we need to be nope not even close to ready um I I have to give my board some real props um I think if you're a leader in nonprofit you got to have a great partner in a board and one of the things that my board said to me was uh when I

[38:05]  came into them and I said okay like we're doing some good things but there's a bunch of things we're not doing and they looked at me and they said and this is sort of any new leader right they go how long do you think it's going to take to kind of get the team in place that you want to kind of get things just ready to do the things and I said probably two years and uh I'm about 18 months in we're seeing the shoots of of the things um but we're probably right on track about two years um and you got to be prepared for the um what I like to say the messy middle so it's like uh I don't know if you've ever uh if you read like Marie condo and that you know the book about uh what sparks joy and her whole thing

[38:52]  is like if you're trying to organize your house you got to take everything you have you got to you got to find find all the scissors in your house put them in a put them in a pile cuz quite honestly half the time you don't even know how many pairs of scissors you have so you don't do it by room you do it by stuff and you got to throw it in the middle and you got to look at it you gotta go holy [ __ ] I have 18 pairs of scissors like I had no idea and then you realize well some of the scissors are like my kid's scissors from when he was in first grade and we don't really need those little scissors anymore so those don't work for us anymore and then you're like oh these are kind of like rusty scissors or in the case of my house you're hearing my dogs I have three big dogs I have like a pair of scissors that I just use when like I got to like cut a pine cone out of my dog okay well those don't get used by any other things right like and then I'm like oh but these scissors I really like

[39:39]  these are great for wrapping paper you know like they cut right through and so right like those are like special scissors right and um and what they what they say is you got to look and you got to see do I need everything um do these have very specific uses do I need you know is there one that I can use across that like no I don't think my wrapping paper scissors and my dog scissors can serve dual purposes but they other things can and then they also say you got to look and you got to say like do any of these things still sort of spark Joy so if you're if it's clothes right throw all your clothes in a pile this doesn't fit anymore my God the last time I wore this was 1997 um and my mother told me that if I was young enough to wear it the first time I might be too old to wear it the second time um I hate this color I mean when I left breast cancer the first time

[40:29]  I literally threw out almost everything that was pink because I couldn't look at it again um this doesn't fit um oh my god I didn't even realize I had this and oh this is a sweater I love and it's always been in the back and I never get to see it right and so you bring the things you love to the Forefront but in the meantime damn that's a big ass mess in the middle of your floor but over time you start to put things away and so um if you were to go to like I did a Blog for zero recently and I talked about we are in the messy middle we have throw we spent the last you know year throwing everything on the floor and being like that works that doesn't work that could work better um oh God we love this and our constituents love this and

[41:17]  it really like it touches hearts and minds and we can't lose that because that's part of who we are um and we're starting to put things away now so there's l m on the floor and we're starting to see you know and there's room in the closet now for the new things that we need to put away and that that sort of metaphor for me um especially when you're trying to drive organizational change is really helpful because first of all it tells you that the mess isn't forever um it serves a purpose because you cannot you cannot you know people talk about like you know um you have to be able to measure things right and I'm a big believer that there is no

[42:05]  accountability without visibility we all have to see it and only then can we realize maybe that's not as effective as it could be um or we just need it in a different size Because by the way you know my butt's too big for that now so I just need it to be bigger but I would love it if it was bigger Courtney I can't help but see the connections between the demographic of people who your organization serves and the mentality of the organization transparency vulnerability being clear with what our mission is the impact that we're making don't you do you think it's like maybe subconscious that some of these characteristics are also the things that we're looking for from the demographic of men who can raise their hand and be transparent can be vulnerable about where they're at in the process can

[42:52]  recognize that this is only part of the healing journey to get us to we're trying to get to I make those connections in my mind as you're speaking Yeah and I think but I also think that that's um I think yes I also just think that like values are values and we have to live what we um you know what we believe I mean if you were to actually ask me kind of what are my own personal values I would say some of these align right um but I think that when you are trying to build trust and nonprofits our greatest value is is our credibility and our trust um unlike a brand where like there are plenty Brands where people don't really trust them but they love the product so they're going to keep it rolling right um and again that's a

[43:42]  podcast for another day but our currency our greatest asset is our trust and our credibility it's part of the reason why for-profits want to partner with nonprofits they want to take advantage of that halo effect of a nonprofit's credibility and I believe that you that you build credibility and Trust by being open I think you do that with your team right like uh after I do this podcast I'm going and I every two weeks I do open Office hours with my entire staff and they could come and they can ask me anything and um especially the first year I worked here woo some of those questions were spicy and sometimes I couldn't get into everything but I would always be say like I can't tell

[44:29]  you everything about that now but let me tell you what I can or I understand you may not get this now let me give you whatever context I can um and but I believe that you build trust and credibility by being honest and transparent some people would probably say I'm sometimes too transparent but I'd rather air on the side of being too transparent and clean up the mess later um you also need to build in a community like people need to assume good intent if they and and I believe quite honestly in our current environment not enough people assume good intent but I think you go you go a long way if you if you build trust and and and I would say that there are probably people

[45:16]  who um are not quite there yet with me but then when you screw up and invariably everyone every organization you screw up web and rarely is it intentional you at least have built some you know some currency in the bank for them to go well we know you didn't mean to like and yes this sucks but we're going to give you another chance right like if you think about any brand that you love and you know they lose your package or whatever you're like yeah okay sometimes you know there was a huge storm or yep you're right my package happened to be the one that fell off the truck or you know like you assume that they meant to get it to you on time at least most of the time um and I think that when you're trying to drive change

[46:06]  if people know that your heart's in the right place and that you're being honest about where you want to be um and you're honest about where um where you might have screwed up in the past um I think that's really important that again as a whole another topic as a you know you know a white leader in an organization that's sometimes trying to reach you know communities of color um zero hasn't always been that great at it and so I spent a lot of time at the beginning um uh talking to a lot of communities and a lot of people who looked at this woman with her Caren haircut and said why the hell should we give a [ __ ] what you say um and you had to own it um and but I think that also gives you

[46:57]  currency that when you drive hard decisions I mean if you were to ask my staff like they'll tell you the flip side of you know proud but dissatisfied is I demand Excellence now we may not always reach it all the time but at least that is the E Excellence is the aspiration um and certainly you know we are going to ask you to level up um and we are ask we are going to ask more of everyone because the cause demands it and but I think I don't think that's just a nonprofit thing I mean if I were to sit here at a group of you know Fortune 500 CEOs I would hope that um when they come into an organization how

[47:46]  you build trust and credibility um you know that's Universal yeah so one of the Traditions that we have have here on the podcast Courtney is our previous guest wanted to ask you a blind question as we put the wheels down to land it here so our previous guest is big in the technology space and he referenced um the Nvidia CEO big company trillion dollar company he um the CEO of Nvidia has a company culture where he Embraces pain and suffering he says if we are going to be as good as we want to be the road will not be easy and we will learn our biggest lessons through the pain and suffering and getting to where we need to get to do you think that pain and suffering has a

[48:33]  place even in the nonprofit sector because you guys want to be excellent I'm not sure I'd call it pain and suffering um because I also I I'll I'll use an example um I was once um at a nonprofit and morale was really bad and I went to my boss and I was sort of the number two and I said we got a problem with morale and uh you know our numbers suck and I was a fundraiser you know like all these things are sucking and I was like we got to do something and um his answer was well get the numbers up and then the morale would be better and I looked at him and I said I disagree because I think people who feel valued people who are and and

[49:24]  again don't get me wrong hard work some sometimes it is going to suck I mean I do agree with that part but I think that people feel who feel seen and Valu and are happy at least with where they're going and know that it may not last forever will work harder will put in the extra time will um you know because again I think the difference between a nonprofit and a for-profit is um I do believe nonprofits should be paid for what they're worth but we're not here just for the paycheck cuz I could go to for profits and make three times more well probably even more than that um so I think that I do think that um uncomfortableness is a part of the process I'm not sure I would advocate

[50:12]  for a culture of pain and suffering um and I would say part of that is because quite honestly our mission is full of pain and suffering and so um you know if if I'm miserable everywhere how can help someone not be miserable um on the flip side I will say like if you're going to be excellent it's not always going to be pretty um but people have got to know that it's not going to be forever either and and I again um let's be transparent I've been here for 18 months um almost half of my staff has turned over in 18 months um for various reasons right like some they've they've just moved on some May probably didn't like the direction we were going which the you know either

[50:59]  higher expectations or what we're asking them um you know we've made some choices to to move people along um and that's you know like if you walk into a place and you go you know what this isn't the family that I joined because I also don't believe um businesses for profits or nonprofits were not families we're teams and um so it's okay if you're like hey this isn't the this isn't the team that I want to be on um so there's an element to it I think I agree with but I don't believe um I don't believe that being miserable in pain and suffering is the way to keep is the way to keep people

[51:46]  because I'm not in a for-profit because I don't have I don't have uh shares or ownership or huge bonuses to keep people um I've got to keep them different ways um and so I think that I think that's where we're sort of different but I think that um embrace the uncomfortable certainly um and and I'm sure if you were to talk to some people who work here now or have left they might tell you that I agree with what he said um but I don't um I just it it that uncomfortable can't be forever um and not everybody is like

[52:35]  me like not everybody is drawn to the Flames of chaos like perhaps I am and a really well-run business because a nonprofit is a business um it takes all kinds and if you are only catering to that one kind you are missing out on amazing skills and and contributions that you wouldn't necessarily have Courtney it is so easy for everybody who's tuning in watching and listening today to understand why you are the definition of heart and hustle for the things you guys are doing at Zero from your leadership style for how you are holding yourself and the team accountable to the mission and the communities that you serve it's incredible to see I can't thank you

[53:21]  enough for coming on the show seriously thank you and that's a wrap guys we'll catch you in the next one