Transitioning From Consultancy to Agency with Heather Nelson

“I knew that by this point that there was ROI for working with BridgeRaise, like increased revenue for the charity, increased efficiency. Team members were happier because they had someone to problem solve with. So I had evidence of  that.” - Heather Nelson

Transitioning From Consultancy to Agency with Heather Nelson

Today, we are super excited to introduce Heather Nelson, Founder and President of boutique fundraising consultancy, BridgeRaise. Her agency is dedicated to forging corporate partnerships for mid-sized charities. 

In this episode, we'll explore her journey from an individual consultant to the leader of a thriving firm and discuss her strategic shift to the agency model. As we chat, you'll learn how Heather figured out the tricky world of pricing and choosing the right clients - choices that help her live a full life and run a successful business. She keeps it real with us, sharing the highs and lows of her work. So, come on in and join us for a down-to-earth talk that'll give you some golden nuggets for your own nonprofit work. Get ready to get inspired! 

Key Highlights:

• The Agency Advantage: Dive deeper with Heather as she shares how her passion for teamwork and client success steered her towards running an agency. Juggling HR, hiring, and maintaining profitability while being a compassionate boss, Heather gives us a candid look at navigating the complexities of agency management.

• Client Relationships and Boundaries: Setting boundaries is vital, and Heather's agency is no exception. From planned vacation periods to choosing clients who resonate with the agency's values, discover how to maintain a healthy work-life balance and foster respectful, mutually beneficial relationships with clients.

• Heather's Pricing Journey: Join us as Heather unveils her transition from solo consulting to establishing a robust firm, which brought about a pivotal change in her pricing strategy. Learn how she almost doubled the pricing of each product and further tweaked it over time, underlining the correlation between pricing, client access, and psychological hurdles like fear of client loss.

• The Importance of Self-Investment: Investing in personal development isn't just motivational jargon. Heather reveals her own commitment to coaching and courses to buff up her business acumen. She didn't shy away from prioritizing personal development, addressing issues head-on, and it's reflected in her business's success today.

• Choosing the Right Clients: Heather shares the evolution of her decision-making when taking on clients, emphasizing the need to value emotional well-being and her own terms. From early-career struggles with saying 'No' to harnessing confidence in her marketing and pipeline, she now opts for clients aligned with her agenda and values.

  
  Heather Nelson is a seasoned consultant who helms an outstanding team at her specialized firm, BridgeRaise. With over two decades of devotion to working alongside charities, volunteers, and benefactors, her fervor for fundraising is evident. Throughout her extensive career, she has honed a specialized skill set in forging corporate alliances, employing a distinctive strategy that emphasizes cultivating connections and reciprocal benefits. Heather possesses a keen insight into the synergy between fundraising and marketing, adept at exploring opportunities for mutually advantageous partnerships.

Find Us Online:  https://www.confessionswithjessandcindy.com

Connect with Heather Nelson: 

Heather Nelson (Linkedin): linkedin.com/in/nelsonheather

Heather Nelson (Twitter): heathernelson12

BridgeRaise (Website): https://www.bridgeraise.com/ 

Connect with Cindy:

Cindy Wagman Coaching https://cindywagman.com

Fractional Fundraising Network https://www.fractionalfundraising.co/

LinkedIn:  https://ca.linkedin.com/in/cindywagman

Connect with Jess: 

Out In the Boons: https://www.outintheboons.me

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jess-campbell-outintheboons/ 

Transcript:

00:00:00 Cindy: Hey everyone. It's Cindy, and before we get into today's episode, I wanted to come and share with you something. Jess doesn't even know I'm doing this, but she is hosting a conference for consultants this February in California called Make It Happen Live. I'm so excited to be there. I can't wait to meet everyone who's going to go, and so I thought you know what? Jess is so busy with work these days, I would take this opportunity to let you know about it. February 28th and 29th although come early on February 27th there's some fun stuff happening too. So if you haven't already signed up to Make It Happen, join us. It is going to be so much fun and transformative for your business. Seriously, every time I get together with other consultants, I feel like things just get elevated to a whole new level. So the link is in the show notes and I hope to see you there.

00:01:00 Cindy: Welcome to the Confessions podcast. I'm Cindy Wagman.

00:01:03 Jess: And I'm Jess Campbell. We're two former in-house nonprofit pros turned coaches and consultants to purpose-driven organizations.

00:01:11 Cindy: After years of building up our separate six-figure businesses from scratch. We've thrown a lot of spaghetti at the wall and have lived to see what sticks.

00:01:19 Jess: We're on a mission to help other nonprofit coaches and consultants looking to start or scale their own businesses past the six-figure mark by pulling back the curtain.

00:01:30 Cindy: Whether you're still working inside a nonprofit and thinking of one day going out on your own, or you've been running your consulting business for years, you understand that working with nonprofits is just different. We're giving you access to the business leaders who serve nonprofits as their clients. You know, the people who truly get it.

00:01:51 Jess: No, more gatekeeping, no more secrets. This podcast is going to give you an inside look at what running a successful nonprofit coaching and consulting business looks like. Basically, we're asking people how much money they make, how they get paid and what has and hasn't worked in their businesses.

00:02:11 Cindy: Listen in as these leaders share their insights, their numbers and the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to building a nonprofit coaching or consulting business. We're going to empower you to make the power moves that give you the income and freedom you set out to create from day one.

00:02:27 Jess: You ready? Let's go.

00:02:31 Cindy: Hey, Jess.

00:02:32 Jess: We're back.

00:02:33 Cindy: We're back, we're recording this. It's a New Year, but when this airs, it's not the New Year anymore. We're full into 2024. But today we have such a great case study. This is a very unique interview, I think, because I can't think of anyone else who's had this journey in our sector. It's going to be--

00:02:57 Jess: It's going to be fun.

00:03:01 Cindy: So fun. Our guest today is Cherian Koshy, who is currently or now the VP of Product Strategy at iWave. His journey to that position is super unique and awesome. So, buckle up, oh my goodness, we are going into a really great interview about creating and selling something to big tech. So let's go, Cherian, Welcome.

00:03:28 Cherian: Thanks so much. Thanks so much for having me. I'm thrilled to talk to both of you again, but I'm excited to be on the podcast.

00:03:35 Cindy: We're so excited to have you. So, before we dive into all the nitty gritty, can you give us a little bit of your journey to where you are now? You have a nine to five, you had a nine to five, but you also do some consulting and you created something that you sold. So take us back a little bit.

00:03:57 Cherian: So I was actually talking to a couple of coaches of mine about this last week and the thing that I want to reiterate is a lot of people see the outcome of the work that you've done and they're like, "Oh, it must have been super planned and super linear," and it really is just this hot, massive thing. So I fell completely backwards into fundraising, did not think that that's where I was going to spend most of my life and worked in small and mid-sized nonprofit organizations for most of my 25-year career in the space. I took a little dabble into a for-profit space.

00:04:33 Cherian: I got some certification in a financial tool or financial products and thought that maybe that would be the path that I would go. That really wasn't the right fit. It wasn't the right direction, at least at the time. And so ended up working at a large nonprofit and in the midst of all of this, the pandemic was happening, I was trying to figure out my own space, but figure out what would really be helpful to the nonprofits I was speaking to and to the teams that I was working with, and built an AI tool to, honestly, to help me, in particular, to help do the work inside of the nonprofit.

00:05:14 Cherian: And then people said, hey, this might be of interest to me as well. Can you make this available? And so I built it out. And then the end of the story at least the end of this part of the chapter is in 2023, I reached out and said, "Hey, we'd like to talk about what it would look like to acquire your products." And I was like, "Okay, sure, let's talk about that." And honestly, at the time, I didn't necessarily think it was going to end up that way. I figured lots of other things could come into play, but we closed the deal in October and they brought me on full time so super thrilled. That's the TLDR version of that story.

00:05:56 Jess: You're amazing. Congratulations.

00:05:58 Cindy: Okay, I have like a list of questions here and--

00:06:02 Jess: Cindy and I are going to be fighting over this one. Hopefully the course overlap.

00:06:05 Cindy: Okay, let's start with you built an AI tool before AI was the thing that everyone's using. Tell just me a little bit more background around like how did you get into that and when was this? Because this was re... when everyone was like ChatGPT and all that kind of stuff.

00:06:25 Cherian: Yeah, it was definitely before ChatGPT and you know nowadays like any kid with a computer can build an AI tool. So what's unique about my journey if there is anything really unique about my journey is that I had spent all this time in fundraising and then the AI has been around for really long time. AI has been around since the '50s. There's Star Trek movies and TV shows about AI. But what really became available in 2019, 2020 was the ability to access some of these large language models. That also happened to be the time when all of us were spending a lot of time at home.

00:07:05 Cherian: I spent my time poorly during that time. I watched everything on Netflix. I had too many open bottles of wine. It was like this is not good. I was still working a nonprofit job, too, and we were trying... We had lost staff trying to figure out how to do more with less, how to stay engaged with donors, and we were left with Zoom calls and phone calls and I was like this, "There's got to be something else that I can do." I started watching YouTube videos about AI and the potential of AI and I just started playing around to see if it could create something that you know mimicked some of the work that we would normally do as consultants or nonprofit professionals.

00:07:43 Cherian: And it started to work and I was like, "Oh my gosh," I find this useful as a fundraiser. It worked for me and I started using it regularly in my own work and then shared it internally with our team and they started using it and it was super helpful to them and that's sort of how it snowballed.

00:08:02 Jess: Okay. So what I love about for everyone listening, what I am fascinated by, inspired by like, so impressed by, is how you listened or observed or witnessed a problem, a loud problem, and you solved that problem. I feel like there's a lot of consultants out there that they choose their path because it's what they like to do, or it's what they see other people doing, or I don't even know. People pay money to solve pain, to solve problems, and you took a direct path to doing that. I'm wondering if it would be helpful for you to talk through that thought process. I see a problem, I want to fix it. I'm going to build something at mass scale. What was that or did you? Maybe your answer is like I didn't do that, I got lucky. I don't know what were those steps.

00:09:01 Cherian: To be honest, Jess, just to capture that point. There is a tremendous amount of luck that's involved in this particular journey, in my particular journey. It was right time, right place, right product and all of those types of things for that particular sale. I don't want to steal my confession for the end of the podcast, but I do want to talk through.

00:09:27 Cherian: When the pandemic happened, I had the time on my hands because we weren't doing all of these meetings and all of these other things that suck up your day, and so that lent itself to too much an out plugs. But it also meant that I was speaking a lot. I was interacting particularly with small and mid-sized nonprofits who are all saying we don't know what to do, we don't know how to handle this, what can happen, and so we talked about, we talked about how to budget during that time. We talked about how to stay in front of donors.

00:09:56 Cherian: And so yes, it absolutely was hearing from colleagues in the space who were really struggling and at that point they couldn't afford a consultant. They didn't have budget to be able to afford anything that would be a reasonable amount of money for me to charge to do work for them if I were going to do that. And so really, my thought process is how can I serve these people? How can I help them? But, hearing what they're saying, they can't pay a lot for what they need.

00:10:26 Cherian: I needed to find this space where the product that I was creating had recurring revenue, that it was digital in nature, that it was something that was truly scalable, that didn't require my time or input on a regular basis, or at least at the core part of the product, and then something that was evergreen. I didn't need to worry about does it need to be updated for 2020 at the time, versus 2021?

00:10:58 Cherian: So this particular product or tool really clicked on all of those pieces to be able to offer something at a reasonable cost, a relatively low cost, be able to access it at the top. We were at two, three hundred customers globally at the time of the sale. It didn't require any more of my time or input and it was something that people could get what they needed out of it. So it really had that flexibility and that's what I think excited those customers. Excited then the buyer, but also really excited me because, honestly, I felt like I was helping organizations that I really wanted to help that really needed this help in order to make a difference in their communities. So it was that concentration of all of those factors, if that makes sense.

00:11:52 Jess: That does so. One of the things we hear a lot in this business world is, if you build it, they will come and Cindy, I see smiling. My personal experience is that that couldn't be further from the truth. So I'm curious is, after you had the idea and you start building this product, what were some of the first initial steps you started to get all these speaking gigs and start talking about this at like a mass scale, because I bet right now there are like a gajillion, really good quality products sitting on nonprofit consultant shelves that just no one knows about.

00:12:33 Cherian: Absolutely.

00:12:35 Jess: There is a distance between those two things. I'm just curious how you problem solve for that.

00:12:40 Cherian: So I think the first key is to really identify is this a pain point? Is this something that is Tylenol versus a vitamin? If it's Tylenol, if it's actually curing an issue, that's the thing that you need to talk about when you're out there speaking, when you're talking to prospective customer. Everyone's potentially a prospective customer, but then really niching down into who is that ideal customer profile for you that you can say, "I know you, I know that you have this problem does that resonate."

00:13:17 Cherian: And honestly, the thing that I did early on that first step was to say, in terms of validation, what are the words that they're using, what are the ways in which they are describing their problem, and then translating that into my outbound marketing. So the biggest problem and this was all over the website and the marketing materials early on was blank screen syndrome, and that's something that I felt, right. I totally had the experience of sitting in front of a Word document and having to start a fundraising appeal or a thank you note.

00:13:52 Cherian: And I would literally have my colleague, Anna, knocking on the door saying, "Hey, where's the appeal?" And then the appeal is done and she's like, "Where's the thank you note that goes with this?" And so I could talk about that in terms of this is what's happening to you on a regular basis. What if we can get that part done faster for you? So you just have to edit the appeal or edit the thank you note versus drafting it from the beginning. And the other kind of corollary to that was running out of templates.

00:14:24 Cherian: So I made the joke about in speaking in particular, I made the joke about using like a Tom or Herne, Google fundraising letter or a Gail Perry thank you note, and I had done that for multiple organizations. I knew once you do it, once, you can't use it again. Right, like there's nothing more there. So how do you then do the second appeal, how do you do the next round of your campaign and whatnot. So I use that in sort of validating both where they were in terms of the pain point, but then using that in marketing that resonated with customers.

00:14:58 Cherian: I did a whole bunch of demos. They saw what it was like and they said this is something that I want. And actually mentioned this to Rachel as well. In terms of the product I focused on, what my coaches said was the I want this test or I need this test, right? It can't just be like that's nice to have, it's I must have this, I need to have this. So, as you're thinking through your speaking, your product pitch, whatever you know, whatever's on your website or in your collateral, does it translate into, obviously, in that ICP and your customer avatar, does it speak to their pain points and does it ultimately conclude with I got to have it. I got to have it, I can't do my work without it. And to this day, the marketing materials you like, the testimonials, are people saying I don't know how to do my job without this. And that's really where I think the kind of those first steps are, if that makes sense.

00:15:53 Cindy: So obviously it's how you talk and how you communicate and saying their words. Did you find where you said those words made a difference, like on stages, in email? Where else did you try to find connecting with people?

00:16:10 Cherian: So most of the time, I mean, I would love to say that I thought through that process and I didn't really. I wanted to, I had a thought process, but I did not nuance it to say like I'm going to say this differently in a one to many setting versus a one to small group versus to a one on one. I really just kept identifying where, at least in the one to many scenarios, I would have sort of an overarching message. When it came down to one on one, I spent more time, rather than trying to like sell a product, to really understand what were their pain points, what were their concerns.

00:16:48 Cherian: And if they didn't have a concern, if they were super good at writing I didn't this product isn't good for them. So I'd say you know, is there some other thing that I can point you to, some resource that I can help you with, because this isn't going to be something that's useful to you. So at least on the one on one piece, it was very, very different and I would adapt the message based upon really what their experience was, their unique circumstances.

00:17:15 Cindy: Okay let's get into some of the nitty gritty... Because, again, I think this, your experience is so unique. So tell us about how many users, how you monetized how many users, the kind of like data kind of things that would probably start to inform, thinking about selling or being acquired.

00:17:37 Cherian: Two things on that. First, I'm happy to go through the details of why I did what I did. But then, in terms of selling, I want to modify those answers because I probably would have done things very differently had I had a vision towards selling as quickly as this happened. At the beginning... I really thought about the way that I thought about this product was first of all, this is a hobby that pays me money. I like building this, I like problem solving this.

00:18:06 Cherian: I like talking to other nonprofits and seeing if they would say, "Hey, I need something for press releases. We write a lot of press releases. Can you build something for that?" Sure, absolutely. That ended up in the product. That was fun for me. That was enjoyable. I said some people like to make sourdough, some people like to whatever. It was like that cost money, this one especially early on. It didn't pay well, but I thought if it paid it for a nice dinner sometime, great, that's lovely.

00:18:40 Cherian: And then, in thinking through the process of that, I wanted to make it as accessible as possible, particularly to small and mid-sized nonprofits. I looked at what would approval levels be where someone could say, yep, I can buy that without asking someone across the board. I wanted to make sure that it was self-serve, so it was easy for someone to just go on the website and purchase and make those decisions. That's how we came up with the original price point.

00:19:09 Cherian: I did offer some discounts or free trials for folks to get that base and get the process moving. I didn't offer a lot in terms of free just because it costs money. You could do quite a bit in a very short amount of time. You could build out all of your content for a year in a day. I didn't want people to do that for free and then not end up paying for it or whatever. I still don't know if that was the right answer per se, but that model served well over 2021 through early 2023.

00:19:46 Cherian: It was slow in growth. It was always lovely. Basically every day we grew by another user and so I would see that come through on my email and that was really neat to see. I implemented a referral program in 2022, so users could get additional access or actually cash for referring, and that was a really good decision at the time. Those were some of the pieces that I created as part of that.

00:20:13 Cherian: And somewhere in 2022, the exciting piece was that it grew to a point where I was like, "Oh, this could be a pretty nice little side hustle, it could be a nice little chunk of change." Still did not have sale on my radar, but at that point then I was looking at what are some of the other features that I can bring into the product to make it even bigger or better.

00:20:38 Cherian: Then, thinking through that part, it was then at that point where I was like, "Oh, how do I continue to monetize this and are there other ways to build upon it?" I didn't get too much further into that before the sale conversation came in, but I was thinking that about integrations and other ways of monetizing at that point. So those were the general ideas.

00:21:08 Jess: Thank you for that. I'd love for you to talk to us about your decision to monetize the mindset. Just yesterday I was going through emails in my inbox and I'm on a list of a different nonprofit consultant and they were talking about a community they run and they were boasting no paywall. I immediately was like why is there this yucky thing around paying for content or paying for access or paying for a product?

00:21:47 Jess: It really was like ew to me because I know as someone that makes products and content, how expensive it is in terms of my time. You just said that your product is like someone could create their content for a year in a day. I understand why that's valuable, but I could see 101 other nonprofit consultants being like, "I'm going to do this for the world and not charge." I'm not saying necessarily that one is right or one is wrong, but I am curious about what your mindset was. The process was for you to say, no, this is super valuable and I'm going to charge for it.

00:22:29 Cherian: I don't think I'm in the minority in this virtual room, but I think the idea of creating content for free has some place. But in terms of a business model, it's not a business model, that's a hobby, that's something you want to get back to the community. That's great. I think there's a place for that in terms of blog writing or something else like that, where you provide some information out there. When you're talking about actually creating a business model, my thought process once it got to that point where it looked like there was consistent revenue I had monthly recurring revenue that I could see from the data.

00:23:06 Cherian: The piece that I was really interested in at that point was using this as a funnel. At the top of the funnel there's three content that I would put out with webinars or speaking and other places in person blog content, those types of things at the top of the funnel to get people into this low-cost platform. Then, once they're in that low-cost platform, they probably need organization or strategy or some other needs that I can then use to identify. I had other consultants who were interested in doing things that I don't know how to do.

00:23:41 Cherian: I was like now I can connect the dots, I can say top of the funnel is free, low cost for the second tier and then the higher price as people raise their hand and say I need more, I can get them into a consulting agreement with me or with someone in my network and move into that process. That was my thought process, but I think the key to answer your question, Jess, is that I shouldn't say no one. But it's really hard just like it is in fundraising to go from zero to a major gift.

00:24:13 Cherian: It's really hard to go from free to paying what you, as a consultant, deserve to get paid. It's really hard and there's so much, there's so much lack of transparency when it comes to all kinds of things in our sector, like speaking fees and consulting fees and whatnot. It could be that, you know, for example, a capital campaign could cost a million dollars or it could cost 50,000 dollars. And so unless you have a sense of what your budget is and what you're willing to pay and you have that kind of trust stack underlying those costs, it's really really hard to go from free blog posts or free content that you downloaded whatever into even a you know 500 or a thousand dollar consulting something that's I mean, that's relatively small as well.

00:25:03 Cherian: But you know, if you're talking about a few thousand dollars or a few thousand dollars a month, that's a big gap. So how do we close that gap and kind of get them on the continuum, where they're like, "Oh, I'm paying this person money, I feel like I'm getting value out of it, I'm really ready, willing to give, to pay more to this person."

00:25:23 Cindy: Awesome, and obviously the universe had some other plans for you, yeah, so tell us a little bit about how this came about. Who initiated this conversation? Walk us through the details. Like I said, I don't think anyone talks abo00:00:00 Cindy: Welcome to the Confessions podcast. I'm Cindy Wagman.

00:00:03 Jess: And I'm Jess Campbell. We're two former in-house nonprofit pros turned coaches and consultants to purpose driven organizations.

00:00:12 Cindy: After years of building up our separate six-figure businesses from scratch, we've thrown a lot of spaghetti at the wall and lived to see what sticks.

00:00:20 Jess: We're on a mission to help other nonprofit coaches and consultants looking to start or scale their own businesses past the six-figure mark by pulling back the curtain.

00:00:30 Cindy: Whether you're still working inside a non-profit and thinking of one day going out on your own, or you've been running your consulting business for years, you understand that working with nonprofits is just different. We're giving you access to the business leaders who serve nonprofits as their clients. You know, the people who truly get it.

00:00:52 Jess: No more gatekeeping, no more secrets. This podcast is going to give you an inside look at what running a successful nonprofit coaching and consulting business looks like. Basically, we're asking people how much money they make, how they get paid, and what has and hasn't worked in their businesses.

00:01:11 Cindy: Listen in as these leaders share their insights, their numbers, and the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to building a nonprofit coaching or consulting business. We're going to empower you to make the power moves that give you the income and freedom you set out to create from day one.

00:01:28 Jess: You ready? Let's go.

00:01:31 Cindy: Hey, everyone, it's Cindy. And before we get into today's episode, I wanted to come and share with you something. Jess doesn't even know I'm doing this, but she is hosting a conference for consultants this February in California called Make It Happen Live. I'm so excited to be there. I can't wait to meet everyone who's going to go. And so I thought, you know what? Jess is so busy with work these days. I would take this opportunity to let you know about it. February 28th and 29th, although, come early on February 27th, there's some fun stuff happening too. So if you haven't already signed up to Make It Happen, join us. It is going to be so much fun and transformative for your business. Seriously, every time I get together with other consultants, I feel like things just get elevated to a whole new level. So the link is in the show notes and I hope to see you there.

00:02:31 Jess: Hi, Cindy.

00:02:33 Cindy: Hey.

00:02:35 Jess: We're so lucky. We get to have, like, a real chat with one of our real friends today.

00:02:40 Cindy: Our friend IRL

00:02:42: Jess: Yes, everyone. We are so excited to have this very overdue conversation with our very own, our. I'm calling her ours like she belongs to us. Heather Nelson from BridgeRaise, the resident corporate funding buddy to the show. Thanks for being here. Finally, we made it happen.

00:03:04 Heather: Yes, I'm so, so excited. And I do feel like this could be a coffee chat or a drink chat and we're inviting all our friends to listen. So it's pretty fun.

00:03:14 Cindy: And we've literally done that.

00:03:17 Jess: We’ve done that. I was just thinking–

00:03:17 Cindy: We've had many lunch together.

00:03:18 Jess: I don't know that I did it, but did you guys all try alligator balls when we were in New Orleans? I don't know if I was broken up.

00:03:27 Cindy: And Heather was one of my first consulting friends. Like, yeah, we met ages ago.

00:03:34 Heather: Oh, and I tell people, anybody who will listen, that Cindy was one of the first consultants in the nonprofit space, like, who I got to know and was making money at it. And we were, you know, coming up with good ideas together. So, yes.

00:03:50 Jess: Oh, I love that. Well, for the .01 people that maybe don't know you, Heather, tell the fine listeners who you are and what your business is.

00:04:00 Heather: Yeah, so my business is BridgeRaise. It's a corporate fundraising consultancy. We help charities and nonprofits with values aligned corporate partnerships, which is, super important piece of that puzzle. So, we work with chair… and sort of mid-sized charities on that. There, I have a team of about five consultants that work with me. And I've been doing this for around seven plus years and I am basically a nonprofit lifer, like I have been in the nonprofit sector my entire career. I've been a fundraiser for 20 plus years and moved from in-house corporate fundraising seven, eight years ago. So that's the trajectory of how I landed here in this moment.

00:04:51 Jess: Okay, cool. I'm going to come back to this Amazon leak that just happened. Do you know about it? The memo that was leaked in California about corporate policies? Okay, we're going to come back to that. But before we do, I want to know like, who is your ideal customer? And how do you go about attracting them, finding them, getting business?

00:05:09 Heather: Right. So my idea, so I sort of have two main programs that I work on with, with charities. And so the bigger projects are with charities that have a corporate fundraising person on their teams and they're looking to like, build their programs, try more sophisticated, complicated things. Maybe they want to gain expertise they don't have, that kind of thing. So we build strategies and frameworks and pitch decks with that kind of client. And we also have a springboard program that is for smaller charities that are more getting started and like they don't have the stuff yet, but they know they want to grow their corporate revenue. And we help them get the basics in place and get there, you know, first pipeline underway. And so part of my team worked with each of those different types of organizations. So.

00:06:06 Cindy: Amazing. I want to dive straight into pricing, partly because I know you and I've had these conversations with you. But also a lot of the time on the podcast, we talk about scaled products or like, you know, less expensive services. But I feel like you have a premium service and certainly you're working with clients at a bigger price tag than a lot of consultants that I've seen. So can you tell us a little bit about your pricing journey and how you have thought about and we've talked strategically about you're not priced for everyone, your services aren't for everyone. So how do you align those things together?

00:06:51 Heather: Yeah, I mean, it is really, it is a pricing journey for sure. Partially because I… when I started out, you know, I was on my own. I had, you know, VA pretty early on and a little bit of project help. But at the beginning, when I did pricing, it was very much based on a bit of a sense of, like how long it was going to take me and what I thought the value of that was. And I set prices accordingly. Very early on, I discovered that I did not like short-term partnerships to do this work. Like, to me, to be successful in corporate partnership work requires work over time. That's my philosophy for how I would manage them in-house.

00:07:33 Heather: And so I quickly moved to a model where it was like a project, an amount per month. Sometimes people paid it as chunks, but there was a work that happened over six or nine months. And so very early on, that was the model and I priced for that and it reinforced the values of my organization, which is the evolution of how you're going to approach companies is something that involves consistency, staying in touch, getting to know them, building packages that make sense for them, and renewing them and growing them, that kind of thing.

00:08:07 Heather: So when I went to that model, I priced a little bit higher, but it was still me. The biggest shift happened when I went to a firm model. So I have consultants and I'm still involved with clients, but I have team members that are involved. And for a while I kept pricing similarly. And then I realized that the value that my team was giving clients was so much bigger than me by myself. And therefore, the value was higher and the pricing need to be higher also so that I could remain true to my values for how I want to pay the people that work for me and the environment I want them to get to experience as a member of the BridgeRaise team. So that was where the big jump in pricing happened.

00:08:57 Heather: And to be transparent, it almost doubled. I almost doubled every product at that point. And I don't feel like... That probably wasn't even enough at the time. It's gone up since then because I had to do it a little bit, by little bit in my head because of what I could kind of get my head around, but the fact is, once you have a team delivering work, it is like you're bringing in so much different thinking and different kinds of support, and we could deliver more things and faster and all kinds of stuff. So we really did grow pricing at that point significantly and kept the longer term thing as well.

00:09:41 Heather: And I've said before, I also, to some extent, price a little bit based on what the relationship looks like with clients. So some clients are higher need and want a lot more access, and others are very comfortable with less access. And so as I get better at determining that, that does change price points that I put forward in proposals.

00:10:07 Jess: I want to come back to this agency model, but before we do, I'm just curious, what work did you have to do to be able to put that price out there. Did you hire a coach? Did you do some mindset work? Did you just test it on a few people? I think there's probably a lot of people who are in your position, who have either scaled to some degree or they want to make more money or whatever the reason is, it's time. It's been three years since they've raised their prices and it's just freaking time. But doing, like saying you want to do that and actually doing that are two totally different things. And in my experience, it requires a little bit of work. So I'm just curious, like, what your work was.

00:10:51 Heather: So it does require some work. And I think, first of all, I think that, you know, I had like, on the practical side, and this is very aligned with how we work with clients as well. On the practical side, there was numbers, right, to back up. I knew that by this point, that there was ROI for working with BridgeRaise, like, you know, increased revenue for the charity, increased efficiency, teammates, team members were happier because they had someone to problem solve with. So I had evidence of that. I had evidence of how much it cost me to deliver in hours and products. So those two things were there. And that's, as I said, like how we work with clients.

00:11:31 Heather: Sometimes you need some data behind you to feel like you can step into it. At the same time, I definitely worked with a coach on Mindset as well. So, and I think that that's an important accompaniment. I think it's very difficult for many of us and certainly many of the people that I talk to in the entrepreneur world and in the fundraising world, you need to do some mindset work on what you're comfortable asking for, is what do you feel like when you ask for a lot of money, all of those things. I was very comfortable fundraising for a lot of money before I started selling my business offerings for a good amount of money.

00:12:10 Heather: Like large numbers weren't really scary to me. So I did have that advantage, but I did work on Mindset and just like believing in myself and abundance and like that I had, like I was giving value and all those things. And I did do quite a bit of work on that to accompany the, like prime in the numbers kind of piece.

00:12:29 Jess: Well, you have a story, don't you, about how you kind of put it out there once, just to see and tell us that story.

00:12:36 Heather: Yeah. I think that one of the hardest things for me with raising prices has been that there are charities that I deeply want to work with and getting past the fear that if I gave a price that was too high that I wouldn't be able to work with them. And so I started to work on that and sometimes that's where I would be willing to put downward pressure on my prices until I discovered that there was ways I could support them in getting funding to pay for my work and things like that. So that solved that problem.

00:13:08 Heather: Then on the other side, there is, sometimes people who come to me who I'm less eager to work with. So then the opposite started to be true. Like I would say, Okay, well, I'm not really sure how badly I want this particular client. I'll raise the price and that way maybe, you know, there'll be another consultant that I could subcontract for it. Or like there's different solutions that are available to me if I price higher. And yeah, so there's been, there was more than one situation where I did that kind of thinking, maybe the person would say no, and they did not say no, they came back. And there I had a new client at a much higher price point. So, you know, it happens.

00:13:48 Jess: Well, and it gives you the strength and confidence to then do it again and do it again. And I find with pricing, like the scariest part is just that in between period, like that waiting period of actually doing it versus just doing it, you know, and so good for you.

00:14:06 Heather: Yeah, well, I think that there's the secrets to that. Like, can you, you know, do you kind of float some numbers in a conversation and look at their face or float an idea in an email so that then you can follow up and write it? Like there's so many different things to test pricing when you really want it to work out. But when you're, when you don't care, whether it works out or not, it gives you such a sense of freedom. You know, it's probably good to do that a few times. I would like encourage people, you know, if you're thinking about what are some experiments like, yeah, get on the phone with somebody who you aren't so worried about whether they're going to say yes or not and throw out a number and see what happens as long as you are willing to figure it out if they say yes, because as yeah, you know, the aim.

00:14:49 Heather: Yeah, the end of the story is I wish they hadn't said yes. And I am sure I laughed about this with Cindy saying like, I should have made the number even higher because the headache, my gut was right. And so in some cases, like if your gut is telling you it's not a good deal, like even at a really high price, it is not a good deal. And I actually like, while my pocket was happy that that worked out. My emotional well-being was not happy. The client wasn't, values aligned. And if I'm pointing out mistakes of my journey, a better course in that place would have been to just not go ahead. Money wasn't worth it.

00:15:30 Cindy: Can we talk a little bit about that? Because I definitely see this come up with a lot of consultants, which is like, I really wish it didn't take on that client. But especially early on, which is when this happened for you, because I remember, we see money, we see someone who's willing to pay, we see like work, right? It's work that we have versus work that's out there and we don't know where it's gonna come from. And now you have a team, you have payroll. So tell me a little bit about how things have changed for you. It's hard to say no when we're looking at someone who's ready to pay us.

00:16:12 Heather: Yeah, it is. It is hard. And I think in the early days, it's especially hard because it's a company with, like, is there more? I am now past that. So the good news is, like, I think once you've been in business a certain length of time, and you know, we, I know we sort of glossed over marketing, but you believe in your marketing, you believe in your pipeline, you've got that part figured out, which I do feel like I do. Then you don't feel that same pressure to take things. Because you know there's others that are coming.

00:16:49 Heather: At the beginning, when you're not so solid on your marketing and you're not so solid on your prospect pipeline, I think there's this combination of both, like that sort of, yeah, it's in front of me and it's money. And I don't know if, when, how I'm gonna get the next one. So that is a very scary place. And yeah, you know, maybe everybody has to learn the lesson of taking the crappy client for themselves. But if I could impart, you know, I do think that there is like bad money out there, right? Like, and, you know, maybe part of it is like you get stronger in your intuition and your gut and knowing how to find client and clients that you're going to want and thrive with and are going to be successful because they're the right ones to work with you.

00:17:39 Heather: You get better at that and listening to that voice and maybe you have to say yes to a few [guts] in order to like, remind yourself that yeah, yeah, I was yes, my gut is right. Both was signaling good ones and bad ones. But now, yeah, now it's different with the pressure of a team and salary, which, you know, there is, days where that can be stressful. But, you know, again, I just remind myself about the consistency I've shown over time and believing that I can close more business and find more good clients and, you know, continue to have the work for the people.

00:18:21 Jess: I keep having questions, but then you keep saying things and then they're sparking new questions. And I don't wanna, like, mess up the order of the conversation. So I guess I'm wondering before I go ask my questions around your agency, is like, do you have any tips and tricks of what you do to call in fresh business when things are feeling slow or a project wraps? You mentioned that you feel at a good place with your marketing and your pipeline. So what do you do to call in that work when you find yourself in that position?

00:18:54 Heather: Yeah. So I think one of the things to start with is because it is a firm, we have quite a few clients at a time, right? So like there's eight or more charities working with us at any one time. So like there's always ones that are wrapping and renewing and you know, any one wrapping up is not like that big a deal. And I do try to have the next ones kind of coming before. So to start there, like it's, you know, it is a bit of a game of like, mapping things out and putting people in ahead of time. And so when things are going well, what happens is I know when the next spaces are and there's already someone filling it before we get there.

00:19:34 Heather: So I try to book a few months out ahead and they're all on long term contracts. Having said that, what do I do? So I'm sure I'm like the 1000th interview to say that referrals is a huge part of my work. And I do nurture, like a fairly wide number of people who are part of my referral network. And so if I need more work, I do, kind of let people know, I have some spaces, that kind of thing. I also am always active in LinkedIn, but I do have, like a ramp up system in LinkedIn where I'm more, like I go in, hotter pursuit of people individually, so I will DM them. I mean, I have different ways of getting a coffee meeting basically. And I sort of believe that if I kind of know what kinds of charities organizations are likely to need me.

00:20:31 Heather: And if I start having a few conversations about that, one of them will convert into a client. Like, am I down to the science? No, but I sort of, do you know, like, hey, I need to go on to a more aggressive sales cycle. I'll start booking more coffee meetings and cross six or eight of those, probably one will turn into a client.

00:20:50 Cindy: When you said pursuit, I just pictured like, yeah, they're on pursuit. I love it. Okay, I wanna spend a little bit more time talking about less than ideal clients because it was such a big learning and I really know people struggle with this, which is how do we suss it out? So now that you've learned and you know how to call in the clients you wanna work with, every now and then there's gonna be a client where you're like, you need bad vibes.

00:21:18 Heather: Yeah.

00:21:19 Cindy: What are those red flags? How do you figure out if that's a bad vibe client that you want to say no to? Because so often we don't know until we start working with them. So what are your little like–

00:21:32 Heather: Yeah.

00:21:32 Cindy: Body sense things?

00:21:34 Heather: Yeah, one of them is desperation. So if they call and they're like, you know, we need a corporate partner, like to solve a big financial crisis in a short amount of time. I'm almost always going to say no. Like this is, I did not, like I'm not putting out fires with corporate partnership. I'm building long-term sustainable revenue for your organization. I'm building long-term relationships. This is not a quick fix for emergencies. So that is the… one of the top ones. If there's, like, nobody who has any capacity to do the work, then there's a bit of a, is this the right client? Or like there's a different package. Like there's sort of two possible pathways in that case.

00:22:23 Heather: But sometimes they will, have come saying, you know, just give me some prospects and some strategies and a pitch deck and we'll be good. And I'll be like, get, no, that won't solve your particular issue you need, you know, us to do a certain amount of the work or something like that. So scarcity on time or on humans, I mean, there's always a certain amount of scarcity. Otherwise, you know, it's a charitable sector, there's often scarcity in terms of time, but like if there really is nobody. And this desperation, those are some early indicators. And I think the third is, I was just joking about this, you know, RFP that I did, not only didn't answer, I got very frustrated by because it was the perfect project for BridgeRaise.

00:23:07 Heather: We were just like, everything that they wanted, except for they actually mapped out how to execute the project in the RFP and it was wrong. A group of board directors were basically telling me how to do this in their organization. That was, again, a flag. I did, obviously not, I never respond to RFPs, but I definitely wasn't responding to this RFP because I'm happy to have them identify the problem, or identify a few problems, identify the objectives. That's great. But I think it is really a huge red flag if they think they know how the work should be done. And I'm not here for that.

00:23:54 Heather: So joint expertise, them giving me ideas, us working together on a plan, sure. It's not like I know everything. But to just give me, here's your milestones, next steps, this should take two weeks, this should take one, like, no. I'm not here for that. So yeah, so those are a few red flags. And then I guess all the other things like lack of value, like there's certain charities I just won't work with because they don't align with my values in the world. And so there's, you know, there is some in that space as well. So we have like a no list.

00:24:31 Jess: Very wise, very wise. Your wisdom is so good. So I wanna come back to this. So you run an agency. And I'm curious about why you chose an agency. So when it comes time to scale, right, there's a lot of different directions one can go in. There's the agency model, there's like courses and teach the person model, there's speaking. I mean, there's like so many different ways to go. And I'm just curious how and why you landed on agency. And if you could speak in, a little bit about, like what you really love about it and maybe something that is challenging about it.

00:25:15 Heather: Okay, so I picked agency because relatively quickly I realized that client success was predicated on a combination of things that I was very excellent at and some that I was either not excellent at or really don't enjoy doing. And so at that point, it then became, okay, so now I either have to, like rethink the pathway to success for clients. And so then I could have gone into course mode or something else, or I need to bring on people to do the things that I don't enjoy doing. And that one I just liked better. I like being on a team, I like managing a team, I enjoy delegating things to other people, you know, those things. And I had dabbled a little bit in the online space by that point. And I personally didn't find it as satisfying.

00:26:13 Heather: So I like working with the client. I like celebrating, I like looking at their faces. I like listening to them. So I wanted that part of it. And therefore the agency model really made sense. And that's not to say that I don't see some possibilities for some of the other things increasingly playing a role as the business evolves. I have been speaking in education and there is a training product that they sell that group training program. I do have some of those things, but there's no question that the most significant amount of my revenue comes from consulting and having a team that responds to the specific problem. Yeah, I like it. I do like it.

00:27:03 Heather: What do I not like about it? Yeah. So I mean, while I love all my team members and the, like hire carefully and we build a lot of fun together, still the challenges of HR and like hiring and letting people go and figuring out how as a small business to cover work when somebody is sick, or somebody has a family member that's sick, like that is not an insignificant thing. So, you know, the balance of Heather who loves people and wants to be the most caring boss, partner, support system, and Heather who needs to run a viable, profitable business, does sometimes come up against each other.

00:27:52 Heather: And I would say, like my hardest days are the days where I have to say, yeah, Heather, you can be a person who really loves your team and also make a decision that is best for you and your business that they may not love. So those are not my favorite days, for sure. But the overarching thing is most of the time it's great. Most of the time it's great. And then there's that part that is less great. But I'm willing to live with it.

00:28:22 Jess: Yeah, that's so helpful. This comes up in the Slack channel a little bit. And I'm curious how your agency handles it. How do you put boundaries up with your clients? Like for example, we're speaking in December. There's a lot of holidays. There's a lot of potential time off maybe. How do you put boundaries up with your clients and for your team members when, like you're kind of on call but like you don't wanna be working. Like you wanna take a vacation too. How do you do that?

00:28:55 Heather: Yeah, so I don't consider us on calls to be clear. So maybe that's the starting point. I mean, we close. All right. So some of the things are predetermined. So in contracts, I actually, like right from the start, we'll put, you know, we're closed from blah to blah. Sometimes, depending on the client, sometimes I'll then squish their work. You know, if it's like a certain amount of deliverables, we'll just do it in half the month and the months will be the same. But sometimes we'll say, you know, if they're closing for a big amount and we are too, I will add two weeks to the end of the contract.

00:29:31 Heather: And like, I do both of those and it kind of depends on the situation, which one happens. My assumption is that over a course of a year, like we're with them for a long period, right? So they're also gonna take vacation at some point, you know. So, you know, we flex when they take vacation, they flex when we take vacation. So that's a bit of the, like how we work together part of the conversation. They do have a few different ways of broaching that. So we have like a client commitment document we send at the beginning to some clients with other clients, we do an intake interview where we talk about some of those things. There's all of that.

00:30:08 Heather: And then we're back to that, we pick our clients kind of carefully like I'm, you know, I'm kind of expecting clients that are going to want to work on corporate partnerships that are aligned with their values are also looking for consulting partners that are aligned with values. And one of the values would be like, respecting each other and you know, having empathy and believing people deserve vacation and things like that. So, you know, it's sort of you have to practice what you preach. Like I try really hard. We try really hard not to send emails to our clients on the weekend, for example.

00:30:41 Heather: I, in fact, one of the rules I try to enforce is like by noon on Friday, our last emails go out to clients, right? So that they're not getting something at four o'clock, but they feel the need to answer. And like, so if you're kind of modeling that, then they can model it back to you. And then, you know, when things go off the rails, sometimes there is a client where they'll, you know, and then I'll have a conversation, say, Hey, how can we work this out?

00:31:12 Jess: All right, Heather, we are back for another round of rapid fire questions. Are you ready? What are the top three apps you use on your phone?

00:31:24 Heather: Instagram, Asana, I don't know, it's like my email app account or text message.

00:31:33 Jess: Okay.

00:31:33 Heather: Just one of those.

00:31:34 Jess: There are two business gal. There was, right there. You mentioned in your interview Costa Rica. What is, like one must do if you've never been to Costa Rica? Like, where do we go? What tour do we do? What part do we go visit? What do we eat? Like give us one must Costa Rica do.

00:31:55 Heather: Basically, one of the highlights of my life was seeing Arenal, the volcano erupt. So I was there and like, knocked on the door in the middle of the night and we drove to see it erupt. It's a beautiful part of the country. So yes, I think you should go there. It's not necessarily going to be erupting when you go there, but that area is still very, very beautiful.

00:32:19 Jess: Oh, okay. Adding it to the list. And then for my last question, I'm wondering as someone who has hired many a person on your team, what's your favorite hiring question? Your favorite interview question.

00:32:34 Heather: Oh, hmm. That's difficult because I'm really not much of a question asker. Like I, first of all, recruit my people off LinkedIn often. And we'd have a chat. So I'm very like, just tell me about yourself, kind of thing. And you know, what do you want in a boss or what, you know, what does flexible, what's the perfect work pays for you, those kinds of things. But I really do hire the way I do pretty much everything, which is based on relationships and conversation and not much of a question sheet.

00:33:13 Jess: Okay, there we go. Thank you for playing.

00:33:20 Cindy: I feel like we've covered so much in such a short period of time. Before we get into confessions, I want to talk a little bit about your investments in yourself as a business leader, because I know that you've had coaching and you do, you know, those are meaningful investments. So tell us a little bit about how you think about that and what you've done that you've felt has been really powerful and what you're thinking of next.

00:33:53 Heather: Yeah, I honestly, such an important part of the evolution of my business has been investing in my own personal development. And like at the beginning, it was, you know, I knew corporate partnership stuff, I didn't know enough about how to run a business. So, you know, I hired coaches that helped more on that side of things than as we already talked about. I started feeling like I was hitting mental blocks around growth, around, you know, am I the person that should run a firm and not just be a sole prior, like those kinds of things.

00:34:28 Heather: And so then I did go into sort of more mindset coaching and invested pretty significantly over a couple of years in that to the point which I know some people are flabbergasted here literally joined a call every day for a couple of years at 6 AM to get coaching on Mindset and how I was going to handle the day and just get in the right space. So I did that for a couple of years and it made a huge difference. So both of those things were kind of key investments.

00:35:01 Heather: And then more recently, I have invested, well, I'm all along the way of investing in community. So I do, like I'm willing to spend money to be around people like yourselves and other consultants and other groups of people that I think are, you know, just smart, great humans and like, they bring me joy. So I love being in those groups and I pay for that. And then in the last year, I've also sort of had specific areas that I felt I didn't know enough about and so, and wanted more, more coaching. So I took a course this year on dealing with difficult situations in like difficult conversations, I joined another group to talk about my unconscious biases and learning about how, you know, just showing up as me could, can be, can put other people in uncomfortable positions or, you know, how do I make sure that I raise the voices of particular, this group was about raising the voice of black women.

00:36:09 Heather: And like, how do I navigate that so I, taking some courses in that space. So now I'm kind of more, like I have some specific things that I've identified that I'd like to work on and I invest in professional development for that. So yeah, all the things, all of those things. And I couldn't have the business I have now, nor the life frankly that I have now without putting investments into those places. And if anything I would, like I regret how long, like, if I could have bought all of the things in the first year, or maybe the first two years, I would have but like, that's where sort of budgeting and things have come in. I pick a couple a year and do them.

00:36:54 Cindy: You can't absorb that much anyways at once, right? Like that's also fair. If we have more time, I want to talk about Costa Rica and just, like, travel because I know that's really important for you and part of why you love working for yourself. But in like one minute, tell us a little bit about that balance that you find and what your other goals are.

00:37:16 Heather: Yeah, well, it's interesting to mention like Costa Rica or any other tropical or hot location. There's no question that I started my business, at least in part, to support my desire to take regular vacations, which I do. And the firm, my boutique, my agency model supports that as well. So that was one of the reasons for the shift to my very first vacation where I totally didn't answer any mail for two and a half weeks, did nothing. Was after I had a couple of team members. So that was a super great milestone in my life that I got to that point, and I do feel like that's part of the model is that I get to take vacation, and as do my team members, and we don't check in during that time and we cover each other off.

00:38:04 Heather: So that's definitely a big part. I also have a son who is in competitive hockey. I have a very flexible schedule because of that. So part of this has been being able to do those things that are really important to me. I did admit to people, I know on a call that we were all on that. My dream has always been that the balance that this job would afford me would allow me to travel more and be at all the hockey games. It is also true that the kind of less glamorous side of this is I am fully sandwich generation. I have a number of responsibilities with an older parent. And yes, I'm allowed to also service those needs because of the flexibility. That's the less joyful part. And probably, there's days where I'd rather be working than dealing with these different things that I now can't theoretically flex time to do. But I'd rather be traveling or eating bonbons. I cannot.

00:39:15 Cindy: 100%. But you were able to be there for all of it, right? The happy and the less happy and the obligations and all of that. So.

00:39:26 Heather: Yeah, I am able, although I will say, you know, I'm not gonna lie. It does often, like that does lead to sometimes having to work on the weekends.

00:39:34 Cindy: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Heather.

00:39:39 Heather: Yes.

00:39:39 Cindy: What is your confession?

00:39:42 Heather: What is my confession? I feel like I've been super, super honest throughout this entire call. So I don't know how many more secrets there really are. I, you know, I think the confession is that even though we've talked about pricing and all these things very transparently, I think the confession is I still don't think I have it right. And I've almost got to the point where I'm not convinced that you can have it right. Like, I'm like, not in like a doomsday, you know, things are terrible sort of way. But I just, I think I've got to the point where people are asking these questions and I'm like, there is no perfect answer.

00:40:21 Heather: And yeah, I still beat myself up on the regular about different pricing decisions I've made. And yet I also appreciate that I'm probably doing it better than huge number of people, but it's, yeah, it's really hard. It's really hard to get it right.

00:40:36 Cindy: Such a good confession because–

00:40:38 Jess: Totally.

00:40:39 Cindy: I think most of us fit in that and there is no perfect to your point. Heather, where can our listeners connect with you and find you online?

00:40:50 Heather: Well, as you guys know, I'm a huge lover of LinkedIn. So definitely find me there. I try to offer value as often as I can. And that is where I am. So they can DM me or follow me there. BridgeRaise.com is our website where we talk about what we do. And so if you want more information on that side of things, then that's the place.

00:41:18 Cindy: Amazing.

00:41:18 Jess: We appreciate you, Heather.

00:41:20 Heather: I appreciate you guys. Thank you.

00:41:25 Cindy: Thank you again for listening to the Confessions podcast for nonprofit coaches and consultants. If you enjoyed today's episode, which I sure hope you did, you can show your support in one of three ways.

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00:41:55 Cindy: And of course, make sure you subscribe so you can get the latest and greatest interviews as they drop every Thursday.

00:42:02 Jess: And to our fellow nonprofit coaching and consulting friends, remember, we're an open book and here to answer your burning biz questions.

00:42:09 Cindy: See you next time.