Nonprofit Strategies to Cut Costs (and Help More People)

[0:00]  we're no longer in partnership with say uh your people have to work 40 hours because we are paying you for a service it's not fair to pay you for that service for 32 hours while we paying other providers uh and they're working 40 and so my argument was you're paying us for a service we're delivering that service we're meeting your kpis what does it matter how you know how like you don't care when we're making them work 50 and 60 hours to get it done like exactly you're not upset then um but it's a culture shift for for society right it was a culture shift within our organization um but you know it's a risk too so we are in contract with another um one that that did also Implement that

[0:49]  and at first we just tried adding more employees um cuz they would consider a 32-hour work week person point8 of an employee I worked for a littleit but and then it became financially um unstable to do it that way so we we did have to move this one little group um back to 40 hours because it's it's really important work and we didn't want to give up on it um but as soon as we did that half the team quit which proved our point all right guys welcome back to a brand

[1:37]  new episode of the heart and hustle podcast now I'm really excited to be able to have this conversation today because I have the president and CEO of Family Resources more importantly I have a leader who is innovating to serve her community by doing things differently in today's conversation we're going to talk about the Family Resources Mission and impact we're going to talk about cultivating an organizational culture of employee well-being we're going to talk about the impacts that we're seeing in our community and society as a whole when it comes to social media and youth mental health we're going to talk about leveraging efficiencies in the form of Technology Innovation AI lots of those conversations but we're also going to talk about how Nicole's doing some things differently now Nicole in our previous conversation you mentioned something to me and said if you stay in our organization long enough you might

[2:25]  just end up running the place why is that something that is so relative to you um well because I've been here for almost 18 years um so I started as a therapist for sexual self victims and um I quickly moved up the ladder and I just the mission resonates with me and I joke with people if you just stay here long enough they'll keep moving up and they'll put you in charge of place you know I think it's uh really interesting and really important for us to kind of talk to the audience about why you were so inspired to go into this work one of the conversations we talk about in the podcast today is that with all the things that we could be doing like Tik Tok and being an influencer and YouTube and trying to do Drop Shipping and all the other quick I would say satisfaction instant gratification

[3:12]  business models people pursue why did you choose to go into something that has such a big impact in the community and serving others sure um well I I have a really um strong passion for helping others so what drew me to family res sources was initially the position obviously I just gotten out of grad school and I um wanted to be a therapist but once I got here and started doing the work when you work with victims of crime it's it's not just about the individual sitting across from you in that crisis moment it's also about all the systems that work with the victim the community how people respond to victims and survivors and so it gave me an opportunity to to take my skills Beyond just that oneon-one um therapeutic

[4:00]  relationship to how I can interact with the entire community and have a ripple effect throughout the entire community so I don't see myself ever leaving this profession because every day is different um I know I get to know lots of different people and work with lots of different people um lots of different systems in the community but I know that we're not just changing lives one by one we're changing our entire community's infrastructure so that everybody can live a healthy happy and safe life it's interesting to me that you are having such a profound impact by getting ahead of the problem now in our previous conversation you had mentioned to me that you guys have a problem in your

[4:47]  community or you had a problem with juvenile car theft as an example we also had a problem with gun violence I want you to take a little bit of a deep dive into two of those problems and how you and your organization have partnered with other community leaders to be able to create a bigger impact and get ahead of these issues that we see kind of being prevailing across the United States sure so to take a deep dive we have to step back a little bit so family resources for many many decades provided what we call fostered group care services and those are youth who are adjudicated through the juvenile Ford system or don't have a safe place to live and what we knew and working with these youth over the years is they were typically here for a couple reasons um they had made some bad decisions of course and that was usually a result of

[5:35]  the trauma that they had experienced in their lives trauma that was typically a result of violence whether it was domestic violence um gang violence witnessing homicides just witnessing Community violence um sexual abuse child abuse you name it so there was a Common Thread there which for our organization um were unique because we offer such a wide array of services we were able to use our our Sur rivor services expertise to try and address that underlying trauma of our youth but some of the reasons they were getting involved and then or some of the reasons they were ending up in foster group CARE the jual court system is they were stealing cars they were shooting at people right so those these were very like finite points of violence that that our youth were experiencing or perpetrating um again

[6:25]  because they were victims of abuse to begin with made bad decisions and and you know so on and so forth so it got to the point and this was right before Co we we took a step back and we said okay we have this this poor service of our organization that takes up a lot of resources because a 247 operation with youth living with you um especially youth uh in these situations requires a lot of resources but it's at the end of the problem right because we aren't affect we weren't at the time impacting the home environment that they would go back to would have the kids for about 6 months um and we would work with them and we would make progress and then they would go home and we would see 70 80% recidivism rate across the state of Iowa with kids coming right back into the

[7:11]  system right wow so obviously that's not working and you know the definition of insanity is keep doing the same thing you're doing and expect different results um but that's also the the um business structure of a lot of nonprofits is you get a contract and the contract tells you what to do and you deliver the service so you're never really allowed the opportunity to um research and develop a different way to do it but we had a family um the meriny family who came to us and and wanted to invest in family resources and give us a what they call a transformational donation and what we did with that donation is we did research about it we talked to the kids with lived experience we talk to our system Partners our juvenile Corp or law enforcement our schools you know all the people that

[8:00]  were working with our kids and our kids themselves and said if we could do it different what would we do um and and we got a ton of feedback a lot of results we worked with um a local University here St abis University um you know we had a white paper everything and really the conclusion we came to is the earlier we get to kids and families and the simpler we make it um the better outcomes we have and that that wasn't sure talking to any of us you know if if you heard these kids stories you could pinpoint like when they were five we could have done this when they were 10 we could have done this but we just didn't have that system in place so we needed to refocus our resources is our people our money our talent on early identification

[8:49]  intervention and so that's what we've been doing so we've been very strategic and intentional about the services that we offer so they align with our early identification intervention so we don't get bogged down in putting all of our resources toward the end of the Continuum and more towards the beginning so all that being said um from FY 23 to FY 24 uh juvenile car thefts in Scott County are down 30% which is incredible wow um our shots fired are down 26% uh AR gun incidents are down 54% and the number of victims are down around 59% so we know this works we know early identification intervention works and we

[9:39]  also know it works when you work alongside the people who are in the thick of it who are either committing the violence um or victims of the violence I just am so impressed with the Curiosity in leadership that is involved in saying we have to get further Downstream in order for us to stop I would say treating the symptom and really start treating the cause I love talking about curiosity in this kind of Realm of leadership when you're making big shifts you get a donation that is a transformational donation from a family that says we believe if we give you these resources you can do things differently was there any type of hesitancy from the organization or maybe even the mindset of leaders and saying we've been doing this for a long time we

[10:26]  continue to have an impact that we see but we're not having having the impact that we want is it good for us to shift because I know that entire experience is of pivoting can be kind of scary from a leadership perspective did you experience any of that oh yeah um I was early in my tenure as a president I literally hadn't even served as the CEO for a year um this family came to me and at first we thought we should create um transitional housing for youth that's what we thought we should do and and that's that's what I mean like okay transitional housing for youth is even further away from Foster group care right that's like even after the fact that's not really Sol that's not transformational that was the word the donor used I we want to give you a transformational gift and we take stewarding our philanthropic resources

[11:16]  very seriously so if you want me to use your money for transformation how do we really do that so and I I pitched it to him like that and I said I don't know if it's going to work I was really honest with them I was really vulnerable again you know I'm newly minted CEO a huge donor huge opportunity and they went for it um and and we created a documentary about the process so that we could capture all of it so that other organizations could learn that it's okay to take risks uh it's okay to say what we're doing isn't working and there's better ways to do it um and it helps us show other donors um you know think differently about how how you're supporting organizations

[12:04]  think outside of the box um and and that led us to making a decision to stop doing foster group care services and that was probably the biggest and scarious decision that uh not only our leadership had to recommend but that our board had to approve because we were the agency on this side of the state that had the largest number of beds and had been doing it for over years so that was a huge decision a huge risk how did you get everybody to buy into this big audacious goal because when we talk about having an impact in our community the statistics that you just listed off are transformational not only to your community but to the lives and people who are growing up in your community so how do we kind of as a leader have the

[12:52]  confidence in ourselves and our ideas to be able to say we're going to Pivot and we're going to say no to something that we've done forever and we're going to say yes to uncertainty because of the belief that we have in the impact that we can make what was that early experience like and I want to say this because a lot of leaders find themselves in the place of that intuition I guess you would say of realizing we can do better they're given an opportunity but often we are scared to take the shot that can really make the biggest difference yeah I think having a research partner really helped so part of what we used that money for was to contract with senior know Bros University and their masters of Public Health because Community violence and and the services we offer are a part of our Public Health right so when we were able to show local data about what it

[13:43]  was that we could do better and what our clientele were telling us it really gave us um you know those concrete talking points to help folks understand this isn't just about intuition yes we all had that intuition but this is what our community is telling us and this is what we should listen to and then when we took a look at whether or not we kept providing these other services it came down to we are putting 99% of our resources into 1% of the clients that were serving what if we fled to that and we were putting our resources somewhere else and having a bigger impact on a larger number of people and and when you got down to the nuts and bolts of that

[14:30]  those are really staggering data points for our board and our community to consider when making that pivot now to throw another thing on top of it we made that pitch during covid so we started this research during Co and we finished it um at the end of it but you know Co was awful but Co also presented a lot of opportunities for organizations to change the way they were doing things it kind of gave people permission to to test things out and try things you know um that they hadn't tried before because you know you just had your whole world flipped upside down so why not try something new at that point uh so that that was another factor

[15:18]  that that played into it I mean I feel like that's so beautiful taking advantage of an opportunity right where things are in flux to say hey we're going to not I would say retract ourselves and hide from this moment but we're going to lean in and let's see if we can not only make promises but we can back it up with facts and proof and that's what you guys have been able to do which is so transformational I mean that's so cool to hear the risk paid off but it's backed by the data through the partnership that you have and now you're talking about the impact in the community um it's so it's so amazing and this is where I love hosting the podcast because heart and hustle is all about the intersection of the heart of doing things that are right with the hustle that's involved to make big changes and you are a perfect example of somebody who demonstrates that not only in the impact of your organization but the impact in the community one of the

[16:05]  topics of our discussion today is going to be about kind of your organizational culture so one of the things that I think is amazing that you talked about in our previous conversation was at one point in time you said you know what we're going to start focusing on working towards a 32-hour work week and we're going to make this work this is a bold move especially when you're serving the community and having such an impact let's talk about that initiative how it came up and why it's so important and how you kind of executed on it yeah so it's it's interesting given the conversation we just had uh because when I first became president we started talking about it but then Co happened and we all you know I I would spend hours a week driving to meetings but now we all have become so much more

[16:52]  efficient with you know having meetings on Zoom having meetings on teams So Co naturally taught our Workforce um that you can make it work in a hybrid situation at home that you can be more efficient with your time and using technology so it kind of laid the the foundation for saying we've we've already learned how to work more efficiently we could carve off time you know in our work week to to give back to our employees so um so that that was that was the underlying like that had already happened and um the workforce crisis I don't I don't know if you experienced it in in your neck of the woods um geographically but we were just desperate for people to work we we could not attract and retain we're a nonprofit

[17:41]  you know um and and we've worked really hard to get our our pay structure up to a thriving wage but it was just really hard to attract and retain and the jobs are hard our burnout level was really high so we had already um place a lot of emphasis on Wellness we had created a a wellness program with a local uh partner called Healing Heart Center where our employees get five sessions um with with that with that organization and it could be massage raiki you know actual therapy Chiropractic Services whatever they want free for the um employees and part-time employees on top of their re EAP we had given plenty of PTO we had given um five self Carri days like we had done

[18:29]  everything we could from a a benefit standpoint um and then we just started really trying to poke holes in we had a group that that got together that represented all areas of the agency and we tried poking holes in why a 32-hour work week couldn't work so we were trying to be pessimistic but what we did is we created a template and you know internal rules um to go by to make it work and so July 7th because it had to coincide with um the first payroll of the fiscal year we we did it we launched it leading up until that date um for about uh I'd say four or five months we started

[19:16]  practicing our internal rules um like you can't schedule meetings on Mondays or Fridays because those are the days you have to pick from you can't send non-emergent emails after noon on on Fridays or before noon on Mondays you know just these little tweaks uh we started practicing those so we were ready to go live um on that July date and so we have finished a whole year of being in a 32-hour work week and now that is part of our culture um we've had the best employee satisfaction survey results we've ever had um I just learned that our um cuz we just had to get quotes for our um health benefits and we are down in all areas all claims like

[20:04]  our our Workforce is healthier and happier um so it just proves that when people have a balanced life to do I don't care what you do with those eight hours you can sit on your couch and watch Netflix if that's what you need to do um but you know when you give that time back people are happier and healthier and um we now when we consider new services or new contracts if it's not going to fit into that 32-hour work week we're going to be really hesitant on whether or not we should do it Nicole let's freaking go you know what I mean like you are literally a transformational leader because you are leading from the front and you are willing to test this is a conversation that we see so much of these days where

[20:52]  people often talk about not just a 32-hour work week but a 4day work week right and when I think about that there's a lot lot of this is going to be an interesting conversation there's a lot of distrust that often leaders place on their employees now I host another podcast called the HR Heroes podcast and I talk to leaders of people and culture and one of the biggest Transitions and problems that we saw in leadership coming out of the pandemic and trying to push people back into the office environment was how do I know they're getting the work done how can we trust them and this is living proof right in front of us so everybody who's tuning in listening and watching to this today Nicole has led her organization to a 32-hour work week they implemented the values and their practice internal principles to manage work you establish principles establish standards and now

[21:40]  your team is executing on not only the work but they are happier and they are healthier at the same time yeah that is amaz it's saving us money it's saving us I mean our insurance costs are going to go down like the other thing I understand why people are hesitant to do it but if you put a framework together of important metrics that you know you need to keep an eye on if your employees are hitting those metrics then trust them if they're not then manage them you know Empower them coach them whatever you need to do but you can do it as if if you want to do it I mean that's the thing you have to want to do it you have to have Buy in but if you don't and and if people don't think it's going to work from the get-go this is probably not going to work I know one of the conversations that we had previously was you know

[22:27]  naturally when I think of a 32-hour work week people are going to say there's no way we're going to keep the lights on so you guys implemented this obviously as I'm sitting with you today the lights are still on you guys are still executing on the vision and the mission but one thing that's also really interesting is I know that you had to deal with some times of adversity and some conflict from some of your vendors right or people who said we're not going to support people working like that can we talk about how you navigated that and what type of problems you came across yeah um so we did we had um we had two funders um one we're no longer in partnership with say uh your people have to work 40 hours because we are paying you for a service it's not fair to pay you for that service for 32 hours when we're paying other providers uh and

[23:14]  they're working 40 and so my argument was you're paying us for a service we're delivering that service we're meeting your kpis what does it matter how you know how are like you don't care when we're making a 50 and 60 hours to get it done like exactly you're not upset then um but it's a culture shift for for society right it was a culture shift within our organization um but you know it's a risk too so we are in contract with another um one that that did also Implement that and at first we just tried adding more employees um cuz they would consider a 32-hour work week per point8 of an employee uh and that worked for a little

[24:02]  bit and then it became financially um unstable to do it that way so we we did have to move this one little group um back to 40 hours because it's it's really important work and we didn't want to give up on it um but as soon as we did that half the team quit which proved our point so um you know 90% of our agency is still in that 32h hour work week we're still making it work but because of those two situations when we look at making a decision on new Services we need to know it fits with our mission our culture our values and part of that is this work life balance and that 32 our work week so yeah I mean this is just so impactful to me because

[24:50]  one of the things that I think about especially when we're having such a fundamental data-backed Improvement and impact in our community is the only thing that should be the focus is how do we keep this going for as long as we possibly can and this is where that element of curiosity from a leadership perspective says are we doing this the best way can we listen to different perspectives can we test can we do things differently to be able to meet the needs of how we're serving individuals and this is what I love is if we're going to Future proof our businesses we have to put on that thinking cap of curiosity and Innovation to be able to meet the needs and you guys are proving that you can do it I want to talk a little bit about how you guys are viewing technology as an example to be an accelerator to help you do more with less not only from a resources perspective but more with less time because I think what you mentioned

[25:38]  a little bit earlier when we trust our employees we put them in positions to win and be proficient and efficient they're going to get the work done so how are we kind of thinking about technology as that enabler to help our team do more with less yeah so um I mean you and I are an example of that right now like I didn't have to travel to get in your studio right so you know having me even though our offices are you know we have one in Bowling Illinois we have one in mustine Iowa we're not making people travel right we're we're getting on our computers we're still as efficient we're we're having those meetings um so you know just that piece of technology which which everybody learned to use right during during Co is a is a big part of it um the other thing that I know I've talked to you about is uh part of my role is I've write a lot of Grants and

[26:28]  um um and I mean we we write a lot of things period whether they're grants or policies you know uh Etc and I use chat GPT to help me with that um it's not like it's writing it for me but it's I can get my thoughts together put in a paragraph and then help it help me make it more refined right so I'm cutting down on hours of of you know really long mental strength brains to figure out how to say this just the right way so that they'll give me money um by asking uh AI to help me with it and I don't even think we've really um I don't think we have yet figured out how to use AI as much as we probably could in our industry I think it's scary

[27:17]  for some folks um you know our our work is with people so it's never going to replace that Rapport you have with a client um but for the administrative of things in a nonprofit it absolutely can can help us with that I mean let's let's talk a little bit about once again using the view of an accelerator not a replacement okay one of the things that I have learned in talking to hundreds of leaders of different types of businesses is when it comes to topics like burnouts burnout often comes from our teams when they feel like they're doing repetitive tasks doing things like answering frequently asked questions playing phone tag and doing things that really don't have a received I would say Agency on the mission that we're on and so if we can think about the partnership in the future between a technology like

[28:05]  artificial intelligence and us to put the human back in the human seat so we can do the personal connection the one-on-one conversations and show up so people can be felt heard seen validated that is a beautiful Harmony between technology and the human services that we're leveraging and I think that that is a mindset that our leaders need to get a little bit more behind because often when a new technology pops up I mean I feel like it was just in the early 2000s when people were saying that the internet was going to be the end of the world or that we were always going to have the phones on the wall I mean there's so many ways in which we push things forward why do you think so many leaders are scared of Technology where do you think that comes from I I don't know if they're scared of technology I think they're scared of change and and I I mean I remember I remember people thinking that the world

[28:57]  was going to end you know Y2K but I also remember arguing as a young supervisor actually as a young director um with my president at the time that we needed a Facebook account like imagine a nonprofit not having a Facebook account right but at the time it was how well how do we keep it confidential how do we make sure that people aren't saying mean things about it you know it was it was more of um how do we manage it and and that that is something you have to take into consideration how do we manage it like we have a Tik to account that's not um the uh the average nonprofit doesn't have a Tik Tok account but we had to figure out who's going to manage it it takes time right so I I think people get nervous around technology when they don't understand it they don't

[29:44]  know how to manage it and then they don't know how to implement that change management or because you know I I'm I have young children they they're going to be more technologically savvy than me but that's okay I I I just think as Leaders if we dig our heels in and and we think that this is going to be a passing phase um we're just sticking our heads in the sand it's it's not you know we've seen technology just burst over these last I you know 30 40 years um it's it's just going to keep advancing it's not going to slow down so we have to speed up sometimes and we have to leverage that I'm going to use the word again but that that hone sense of curiosity it really is a soft skill that our leaders

[30:31]  have to lean a little bit more into because yes you're right did we think that we needed a Facebook page back in the day when you came from a day when you had Yellow Pages maybe you didn't think you needed a Facebook page but now in order for people to be able to find you experience your mission see the impact that you're doing you have to be in the channels that they are in you know often people say if you're not on Tik Tok if you're not on Instagram if you're not on LinkedIn as an example you don't exist because I'm not going to come across you in this everyday world where work remotely and we don't get the exposure as much as we should and so I congratulate you for leaning into the element of saying let's stand up that Tik Tok account let's figure out how we're going to manage it because it's it is really really impactful I want to talk about social media a little bit in this part of the conversation now one of the things that we recognize is that

[31:18]  social media has always been something of the scapegoat for the problems that we see in society and I think it's very easy for us to be able to point a finger in judgment and say that that is bad or that is good what are the some of the challenges that you perceive when it comes to youth mental health as an example for the use of social media what are you saying and what's your intuition telling you yeah so I think social media like anything can be used for good and it can be used for bad um youth are going to engage with so social media no matter what I have a 12-year-old daughter she does not have a cell phone but by God she has access to social media cuz we have iPads at home we have computers at home right so even though I'm the mom that doesn't let her seventh grader have a cell phone yet she's still going to have access to that stuff um

[32:06]  and it's not a bad thing as long as it's managed you know as long as it's in moderation and in fact sometimes I think we have to lean in like you're saying to using social media because that's the language that's the platform that our youth are using to help them understand mental health better there's lots of organiz ations out there that do a great job of using social media to help educate kids on their mental health you know you I know at our school district we've got um you know the cards that they can just snap their phones on if they need to call someone or if they need to text someone because they're having a rough day we have to make it easy and efficient because these kids have grown up with it you know it's it's it they need that instant ability to

[32:55]  connect where I see it being a negative thing sometimes is if you spend all of your time only interacting on social media with other humans you're really not interacting with humans you're interacting with a device and that can be really isolating and kids the way we know their brains form if they have too much of that screen time you know that is affecting the formation of their brains the physical development of their brains excuse me so we have to limit that uh in order for them to grow up and and have you know their their brains develop in a good healthy way um but we also um have to teach them how to interact with people in person so it's really easy to be a bully

[33:45]  online right because you're not seeing the person sitting across from you and how they're reacting but when we teach our kids how to interact I just did this last night with my son and my husband because they were having an argument and I wanted my son my six-year-old son to tell my 46-year-old husband his feelings and he's like oh Mom I'm not going to do that I'm like no you are because I'm going to raise a son who knows how to talk about his feelings and that's what we need to do because otherwise you're both yelling at each other you're not making any Headway you both are mad you're both are saying you're hurting each other's feelings but you're not talking about why so that's where I think social media can be a negative because why they think they're interacting while they think they're having that connection it's not truly a human to human connection and that is

[34:35]  important well I I love The Stance of enabling your son with the skills that he is going to need to be able to be a functioning I would say effective human because if we don't have the skill set of being able to express ourselves emotionally we're going to run into some problems and I love that you're leaning into that but the other side of that is choosing not to give your daughter a mobile device is also another amazing Cho I would say decision I want to share a little study with you that might surprise you the average 18-year-old today spends about nine hours per day on their device screen time if you will now if you really want to be scared there's a tool out there called lifetime screen time calculator you go to this website you put in your current age and your average screen time if I'm 18 and I

[35:23]  spend nine hours of my day on my advice and I put in how much time am I going to spend over the rest of my life 24 years of your life will be spent behind a screen now when I think about limiting the exposure to all of The Elements of Life interacting with different people making memories one thing I always talk about is as I get a little bit older I feel like life is going by faster and faster and when you compound the element of distraction where you're in a doom scroll for what you're supposed to be for 10 minutes but that turns into two hours all those two hours add up to a lot of time lost in life and so I think we need to stand up and have that contrarian ideal in our family to say let's spend time with each other let's spend time learning how to express ourselves because those are the skill sets that you're going to carry into

[36:10]  life social media could be gone in a decade and we're going to be missing out on a lot of time and so I congratulate you for that I think it's absolutely amazing um that statistic is frightening um so much so and the other piece that that I think is really scary is that's nine hours of uh serotonin levels being high right yes and that's addictive so serotonin is what makes us happy if if folks don't know that it's it's the chemical that your body produces when you're happy and the kids brains are learning that these devices give them that quick hit of Serotonin and if we're not teaching them how to get that quick hit of Serotonin and sitting across from another human they're always going to gravitate towards that screen instead of that

[36:58]  human interaction so you know that's just a very you know biological way of thinking about how social media and screens again I'm not saying kids shouldn't have them but how do you limit them how do you do ad moderation and also teach them you know interacting with with other humans and adults and and developing all those social skills that they need to survive a life I totally agree and when I I'm a big Observer so when I go out into the world I go to the gym I go to the store I go to different places I'm always looking at the behavior of different people and what I recognize is that no matter what generation you're a part of today one of the things that we become incredibly good at doing is leveraging the skill set of escapism so there's a book out there called indistractable which I think you would really enjoy it's a

[37:45]  story about how a dad had a pivotal experience with his daughter where they were doing a daddy daughter experience where they were like what's your favorite superpower when she answered that question for the first time he got an email on his phone and he was answering the email and then she said Daddy what would your superpower be and he said wait what and she said well I told you what mine was and in that moment he had the gravity of the world hit him because he said I missed the first time that my daughter was going to tell me what her superpower would be and I recognize that this little device has an amazing ability to keep us coming back to it but what he also talks about is the skill set of emotional regulation whenever you're in public like I was talking about the store at the grocery store at the gym wherever you're at you see people on their device often they're not even looking at anything they're just looking at their device flipping through the screen back and forth what

[38:32]  that is a result of is the behavior that we've anchored in anytime I'm uncomfortable or uncomfortable I'm going to then go to my device to get that release of dopamine and serotonin to escape this moment there's a really interesting term called Alone Together I'm not sure if you've heard of it but when you go to a restaurant you see everybody in a group setting we're all on their device everybody is alone but together and unless we have conversations like this we can't call attention to that behavior because we've been tricked through time and hundreds of thousands if not millions of interactions with our device that this is a safe place but that safe place keeps us from experiencing everything that life is about so I get really fired up when we kind of have these type of conversations yeah I totally agree and I no my husband and I notice that all the time when we're out we're like look at

[39:18]  that couple they're both on their phones you know I wonder how that conversation is is going and you know it's a it's an interesting conversation to have with people I have friends that do that and I don't want to shame them for being on their phones but I also I want to talk to you I don't want to have to interrupt you being on your phone to sit with you and and be with you and be present so it's going to continue to be a challenge I think especially given we have Generations that are literally growing up with with a phone attached to them you know I didn't have a cell phone she was a senior in college so when my daughter asked me what type of YouTube I watched when I was her age I just laughed I'm like that wasn't a thing so um yeah so you know given that I didn't grow up like that but I'm trying

[40:05]  to parent kids or growing up like that or I'm seeing you know other young adults who have always had one it's it's a hard conversation to have sometimes it is and we see other examples of I've been to because I'm here in Las Vegas where my studio is at there's a lot of shows and a lot of entertainers who come to this city Kevin Hart was a big Entertainer who came here recently and one of the things that we experienced was when you went into his show they gave you a bag that you had to put your phone in so you could have your phone on you but your phone was then crimped in this bag and you couldn't open it so everybody comes into the auditorium everybody sits down and instead of everybody sitting on their device what do they do they start conversations with the people to the left in front of them to the right behind them and it's amazing to see how we're all secretly yearning for that connection that we

[40:52]  don't get in our social lives in our personal lives and I think we just need to eliminate a distraction every once in a while to get back to that place that we know is so fulfilling and I feel like we could eliminate a lot of the challenges that we see in our macro Society if we weren't always distracted or kind of being influenced by something that wasn't innate to us if that makes sense 100% no it totally makes sense so let's uh let's kind of close or land the plane here with talking about what is the F the future of Family Resources now we've made some amazing progress backed by data talking about the impact that we're having in our community you've implemented 32-hour work week the lights are still on you're still having an impact you're hitting your kpis what are we doing in the future what are you looking for so we have set a big hairy audacious goal to reduce Violence by 50% in 10 years um we don't have uh that

[41:43]  quite pinpointed into how we're going to measure that we're working with St Ambrose University on that but those statistics that I talk talked about earlier um shots fired victims um and you know J car thefts those are some some key data points that we're looking at so um that is that is a a big big goal and and over 10 years I think the way we do that will probably shift because we're going to continue to listen to our community and what they're telling us they need so no matter what happens um Family Resources will continue to be an organization that um is embedded in our community is working with our partners we we don't do this alone we we are been great partnership with our schools our law enforcement our

[42:31]  Judicial System our Hospital Systems you name it we're world one big team um but we're going to keep listening to what the community tells us and what the data is telling us you know the local data um I hope that we uh right now one of our strategic goals is to be the nonprofit employer of choice um so we have some very concrete goals around you know how we want to keep increasing pay um but I hope in 10 years that we can say we are the employer of choice regardless of whether you're a for proit or nonprofit because you want to come work at Family Resources not just because of the pay but because of the mission because the culture um because you feel like you're making a difference and that that's what you know you you want in your life so

[43:21]  that's that's what I hope our future has in store for us a worthy big hairy audacious goal when you're having the impact that you guys are having you're backing with data it's not making promises but it's coming through and using proof to prove that you're doing what you say you're going to do and that is what it's all about um one of the Traditions that we have here on the podcast is we love for our previous guest to ask you a question now this person had a question for you and I know you're going to really be able to hit this on the head and it kind of hits on all the things that we talked about a little earlier what are the internal mechanisms that you utilize to stay on course with your beliefs internal like me personally or me or like the organization you personally you personally oh man um well my kids are definitely that's not an internal mechanism but the way they

[44:09]  react to me is definitely a mechanism that helps me stay on course whether or not they're like Mom you're not paying attention to us or um Mom I need more of your attention um but I I pay I I'm really into Wellness so I pay attention to what my body says to me um I think I I shared with you that I found out that um on April 17th I found out I had a benign tumor in my neck and at the base of my skull so that was a a really um scary moment but it was also a moment where I knew something was wrong and I was listening to my body and my doctor and I helped figure it out and had we not you know I would have ended up I probably would have ended up with really really bad Vision I have slight double vision right now and that was the the

[44:56]  indicator that got us to to look into it but um listening to my body making sure that I'm taking care of myself physically and mentally so if if I can't pay attention to my kids then I know I am not you know doing things that I need to do in order to have space in my life to give them what they need so I I have to figure out where I need to to take better care of myself in in a mental capacity and a physical capacity well Nicole I just want to say for all the work that you youve been doing for 18 years now at Family Services how you continue to innovate push your organization forward but also future proof for the Future Leaders who want to come and be a part of your amazing Mission I just want to say for everybody who's watching and listening thank you so much for coming on the podcast that's

[45:42]  a wrap we appreciate well thank you so much for having me