One Person at a Time: Building a Legacy That Matters

What does legacy really mean? For some, it's the ripple effect of lifting others.

Join me as I sit down with fundraising expert Marni Mandell, who shares how uncovering her passions involving women's leadership, legacy, and chutzpah connected her back to her own grandfather's legacy. 

As president of Tupperware, he inspired countless women to become entrepreneurs by truly believing in their potential. Through a year-long listening tour, Marni heard stories of women who transformed their lives from humble beginnings into successful business leaders.

You'll Learn:

⭐ The sometimes unseen impact of creating content 

⭐ Why owning our strengths is critical to serving others 

⭐ How authentic relationships fuel successful fundraising 

⭐ The HOPE philosophy: Help One Person Every Day

Key Insights:

Legacy Through Empowerment: True legacy isn't about personal achievement -it's about creating pathways for others to discover and own their strengths.

The Power of Belief: Tupperware's innovative policies (including requiring husbands to support their wives' businesses) created a movement that transformed women's economic independence.

Strength-Based Leadership: The story of Franny - a woman who could confidently articulate her strengths - demonstrates how self-awareness shapes both individual success and organizational culture.

Authentic Fundraising: Building genuine relationships removes the fear of "no" and creates sustainable impact through connection, not transaction.

Content as Legacy: Creating content may feel invisible in the moment, but its impact compounds over time as it reaches and transforms people you'll never meet.

Timestamps:

[01:19] - Marni shares the story of her grandfather's legacy at Tupperware 

[05:09] - How Tupperware empowered women to become successful entrepreneurs 

[06:46] - The innovative company policy requiring husbands to join their wives' businesses 

[12:41] - Kristin and Marni's shared experience of being diagnosed with ADHD at age 43 

[15:36] - The story of Franny, a woman who could confidently articulate her strengths 

[20:58] - How Franny shaped Tupperware's training program and influenced countless lives 

[28:58] - Marni's journey into content creation and personal branding 

[34:15] - The HOPE philosophy: Help One Person Every Day 

[36:42] - Marni explains her work as a fundraising coach and her unique approach

[40:32] - What legacy means to Marni: empowering others and building community

Resources and Links:

Find host Kristin Belden on LinkedIn or at Beldenstrategies.com, or sign up for the newsletter at Beldenstrategies.com/newsletter

Connect with Marni: www.friendraisingforsuccess.com or on LinkedIn

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review! And if you're interested in more stories and tools for women leaders, sign up for my newsletter at Beldenstrategies.com. Let's continue to empower each other in our journeys!

Transcript

Speaker 2: [00:00:00] Welcome back to kind of a big deal where we share real stories of women leading differently. In this episode, I sit down with Marnie Mandel, a fundraising coach with an extraordinary legacy. When she set out to write a book about her grandfather who served as president of Tupperware for 25 years, she embarked on eliciting tour that changed everything.

Interviewing the women he inspired. Marni discovered a leadership philosophy ahead of its time, one that turned housewives into millionaires and proved that the real product wasn't plastic. Containers. It was human potential. Today, Marni brings that same belief in people to her work, helping first time fundraisers transform their fear of a no into the opportunity to build meaningful relationships.

This is a conversation about vision, confidence, and the kind of leadership that leaves ripples for generations. Let's dive in.

Speaker 4: how's it going? So good to see you. Great to see you. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, I'm so happy you're here. Um, I was thinking about this conversation prior to getting [00:01:00] going, and I love that we've already had chats about what. Our concept of women in leadership is what our own stories have been, and I have shared some of what you shared with me in other conversations.

And so thanks. Some of what you have said has stuck with me. Um, so I'm really excited to get to dig in a little bit more and come back to some of those conversations. So thank you so much for hanging out with me today. Amazing. I'm looking forward to it. Marty and I met through a coaching program that we both went through, and she is not the first person I've had in this series that I met through that program.

And I think that's a testament to the kind of folks that show up in those spaces, which is, you know, people that are growing and building and developing themselves and one way or another, and being really intentional about what they think the next kind of chapter of their work might look like. So it's just been a real pleasure to get to talk to Marni about what her vision is, and I'm excited for her to share that.[00:02:00] 

But before we get to her, I would love you have a really incredible story. The very first time I chatted with you, you told me about a kind of listening tour that you had gone out on, um, because of your grandfather and who he was and what his legacy is. So can we start there and give a little bit of color about that story?

Speaker 3: Absolutely. Uh, it's my, it's literally my favorite topic to talk about, which would be Oh, good. I'm so glad. My grandfather, in fact, all of my grandparents, their stories are incredible. Um, but I have one grandfather who I literally decided I was going to write a book about, and I'll give you the genesis of it, which is that I was diagnosed with A-D-H-D-A few years ago.

I think I was 43. Um, and I, at the time I was in. My own data analytics startup and I was trying to figure out, you know, what I wanted to do next. I needed to be passionate about it. And so I took a course about, [00:03:00] uh, really figuring out. What was going to light me up because with A DHD, you know, you always need to be lit up by something that you're doing, otherwise you lose interest.

And when I took this course, the entire course I think was six weeks long. Boiled down to four words that were supposed to tell you what you were gonna do next. And those four words for me were women leadership, chutzpah, like guts, I guess, um, and legacy. And that was supposed to tell me what I was going to do next and I could not figure out how those four words went together and I sort of had a eureka moment and I went my grandfather, right?

That is actually what ties all of that together. You might say, look, why is a man tying together women leadership? So I decided that actually my next move was going to be to write a book about my grandfather and how he inspired thousands of women to become entrepreneurs while he was the president of Tupperware for [00:04:00] 25 years.

And if you listen to him, um, which I had the great fortune to do all the way until I was 40 years old because he was alive all of that time. Um. Really, it was incredible. He had an unprecedented amount of faith, belief, and confidence in women, and had spent his entire career really investing in that belief because if you look at the success of what Tupperware was, it was not a success because of a product.

It was success because of the women that were brought inside and developed. Uh, to really become and live up to and exceed their fullest potential and right. And the company deeply believed that. My grandfather deeply believed that. And so for about a year in order to work on this book, uh, which I'm still working on, I went around and I, [00:05:00] I conducted a listening tour of.

Everybody I could find that worked with my grandfather during his time in the company, whether that was before he was president, during, um, and in fact, many people I spoke to after he left, uh, who were still, you know, very. Influenced by him and his leadership style because one of the things about him is, is that he started this way before just believing in people and building people.

And even after he retired, he never stopped that process. I mean, he literally looked for every opportunity to build people up, whether that was us as his grandchildren. Whether that was the waiter that he, you know, he would frequent the exact same place on breakfast three days a week. And he became close to the waiter and you would see him working to prop up the waiter's belief in himself.

It was just incredible. Um, and so that's what I learned and I learned. [00:06:00] Through all of these women who I interviewed, many of whom went from, I mean literally I talked to one that went from being a milkmaid to a millionaire. That was kind of a working title for the book. I love that. Yes. But it wasn't an exceptional circumstance.

I mean, maybe that specific story was very specific to her, but so many of the women's stories started with, I was a wife. I, you know, I came into a home family with next to nothing. I. Assumed I would just be a teacher. Not that there's anything just about being a teacher, but they never had a concept of themselves as business women.

Mm-hmm. Uh, of people who could build business, of people who could go out there, drum up business, hit the pavement. And I think one of the most fascinating things to learn about the structure of Tupperware at the time is that you would start as like a salesperson and you'd become a. A manager and then you [00:07:00] eventually, when you were successful enough and when corporate would identify you as having potential to have a distributorship, they required, it was a fascinating thing.

They required your husband to leave his job and join you in business. What in order for you to get a distributorship? And their thought process was two things. And the first is, is that the woman was successful at sales. She was the one who had built her business day after day, step after step, party after party, right?

And that's what made her successful. And they realized that if you got a distributorship. A whole lot has to happen behind the scenes, which is not something that that person would have time to do if they were out there building the distributorship. And so that was one piece of it was they knew that they would need a back office support [00:08:00] person.

The second part, which was even more interesting is that I, as I talked to people, I learned. That Tupperware was concerned about what you might call the male ego, which is to say that if the woman became more successful than the man, it might disrupt their marriage. And they didn't want to be breaking up families.

They were a very, very family oriented company to the point where many of the people I spoke with were the children of the couples that had been this distributors who ended up taking on the distributorships themselves. Um. And they talked about this relationship that they would watch their parents have, where the women were really strong in the families, were really making decisions alongside their husbands.

And when I talked to some of the older couples, you could actually see that relationship. You could see the respect that they had for each other as partners and those, you know, as husbands and wives at the same time. [00:09:00] So. That became, you know, a year of my life and one of the greatest honors of my life will ever be is having these conversations and learning from these incredibly inspiring people as a factor of being able to learn about my grandfather.

Speaker 4: So cool. And there's so much there. I mean, I feel like talk about being forward thinking and progressive, not only from a believing in women's potential and lifting them up, and I can see why. You are who you are, which is always thinking about how you are lifting others as well. But what do you think about the fact?

I think that's really incredible to look at it and say, okay, this could. Be a function that would not be in support of what this family has created for themselves to this point. And so we're gonna do something about it intentionally instead of either ignoring it or fighting against it. And I wonder about that even in current days around.

I do think that sometimes, [00:10:00] instead of just addressing what the thing is and saying this is, it's okay that this is the thing, right? Let's just work with that instead of. Fighting against it or saying, well, you shouldn't be that way. Right? Like, oh, male ego, you shouldn't have it. Well, sorry, but it's, it's there.

And so how do you then work with that in support of the. Progress of the business. That is fascinating to me. Yeah. I don't know that it, you know, clearly it was a very, I wanna say that on one level it was really forward thinking on, on another level it was also very patronizing. I mean, a hundred, right?

Speaker 3: Like if you think about the fact that it's not like they went to the woman and said, who would be best listen for your back office? Right? Like they didn't actually sit there and go. Yeah. And also I wanna be equally, um. Open about the fact that during the time that my grandfather was a Tupperware, there were no C-suite people who were women.

Sure. It was a, it was still a very patriarchal company in that way, but. There was still a tremendous amount of [00:11:00] respect given to the fact that the women were making the company successful. And interestingly enough, right, when we think about product marketing today in startups, a good product marketer goes out and talks to the customer.

So she could be or he could be next to the customer, understand the customer, understand how they're gonna use a product, understand what the problems are, right? Um. That is what Tupperware believed about, why women were going to be the best people for the sales process because they were the ones that could be in the home.

They were using the product themselves, but even more so, they were the ones who were going to be able to really be next to the women who were using the product. They were going to understand it. There were right, and there were a couple of interesting product choices that they didn't do that with, that flopped completely.

And so I think that Tupperware, like any company, is a complicated company. Yes. But they really got that piece right of, of recognizing the potential. Well, and I think [00:12:00] for that generation in particular, right? I mean when you think about those decades ago, I mean, we're still navigating what it means to walk through these waters as women in leadership and what your definition of leadership is can be different.

Speaker 4: But I think that for that generation was, that's pretty remarkable that they would even Sure. You know, work to try and. Sure support in that way. So that's really, really cool. And all the way back to A DHD at 43, same, literally same exact age, which is funny and also not funny in so many ways. Not so funny in a, it's, but it's also, I don't know if this is true for you, but it also gave me this like, oh, well that's why A, B, and C.

Or like, oh, I'm not totally like. Correct. Crazy or I'm not, you know, there's so many things about the way it manifests for me. Even around like visualization, if I can't see it, it doesn't exist. Essentially. Yes. Like I can't tell you how many times I've bought [00:13:00] multiples of something because I still always there.

Speaker 3: My whole, I wanna tell you, I can tell you a very embarrassing thing that I have now multiple on my desk, that I have to return because of Amazon Prime Day, like. Or my refrigerator like it's a mess because I'm at a store. Right? If it's not in front of you, you don't know about it. For me, it's not there.

Speaker 4: Yes. People don't understand. All my clothes are like they cannot be in a drawer. I don't know where that black shirt went. What is that? Where is my brush? If it's in a drawer, it literally doesn't exist. It's so funny, so painful. The struggle is real, and there's also some beautiful components of brains working in this way.

So once you tap into it and know how to support yourself, I think that's kind of one of the keys, is knowing that, and it's a work in progress. I mean, it's, oh, a hundred percent. Just when I think that like, I've got a system like the, the A DH ADHD brain doesn't like systems, and so you built one and then it starts fighting against it as hard as physically possible.

Speaker 3: Like, you know, it works. You [00:14:00] know that if you do something as if, you know, if you write down every single thing you're supposed to do, you'll probably remember every single thing you'll supposed to do and you get really into it for like a day. Yeah. Yeah. I can't tell you how many project management tools I have created for myself, like I've done them all.

Speaker 4: All. If you need an expert on Asana or Notion or Evernote, I've got 'em all. Like I know how to use them all, so.

Speaker 3: There's one called Norman. Go check that one out. It was supposed to, it was supposed to solve all the ODHD problems you have. I can't even go there. No. And there's one I have, I did Akiva, Akea, uh, wait. A aki, wait. Oh wait. AKI Flow. AKI Flow. That's the latest. That's my latest. Oh, no. I'm literally, I'm not, I'm not kidding.

Speaker 4: I can't bring this up. I am in the process right now of moving everything from one tool to another. I totally get it, [00:15:00] and it's gonna be a work of art. When you do it right, you're gonna be like, it's gonna be perfect. It's gonna be perfect. Yeah. Until I don't wanna use that one anymore. It's almost like a, I don't know how to say this.

It's like. Almost like a blindness at some point. It's like it's, even if I'm seeing it, it's very strange. So yeah. But to know that that's also okay is. Mm-hmm. And being more accepting of it is I think part of that process. So we can talk about that forever, I'm sure. Absolutely. I'm now seeing why we have such a tether that's connecting us.

When you said women leadership, hotspot and legacy, I mean. Everything that I think about now is around women leadership and legacy. I did not have husman in there, but I will find some ways. That's a good word. It also defines things that don't really have words. It's like, it's not really just bravery, it's not really just gumption or [00:16:00] guts.

Speaker 3: It's like all of it. Um, but then there's a flavor to it that I think. Either people respect it or they hate it. I don't know which one, but it's one of those things and I think that, I think there's a great quote that said, well-behaved women never get ahead. Something like that. I know. It's an interesting, it's an interesting one.

Speaker 4: So yeah, I'll be thinking about that one. Um. One of the stories that you shared with me about one of the women that you interviewed was so compelling to me, Franny, who you stayed in touch with for Yeah. Some time. And what you shared with me was she was able to articulate very clearly. Started with one of my strengths is mm-hmm.

And that struck you I think in some ways as well, because I think we don't, it's not something that women naturally are adept at being able to identify and articulate what our natural strengths are. So give us a little bit about [00:17:00] Franny. Wow. So the powerhouse, um. I met her as a part of my research. You know, one person led me to another person and one, and then somebody said, well, you've, you've clearly talked to Frannie, right?

Speaker 3: I was like, no, I don't know who Frannie is. And she set up the call, which I'll always be grateful for because there are certain people you're just supposed to meet in your life and you're supposed to meet them at the right time in your life. Yeah. And. There was a day I had just really flunked at something and I mean, I had really flunked and I was really down.

And somehow or another, that was around the day that I was supposed to interview Frannie for the first time. Mm-hmm. And Frannie was in her nineties. Had still wrote a newsletter on a weekly basis to her people. Amazing. This is what you call the early form of followers, right? Yes. I mean, [00:18:00] really, she was an influencer.

Speaker 4: She was the OG influencer. She was an og. She was like that kind of influencer that made the world better, not made herself better, but she made the world better. And one of the most beautiful things about her is she made the world better by knowing what she was really good at.

Speaker 3: Because of that, she was able to serve so many people. Mm-hmm. And she did it with Grace. She did it with humility, but she also did it with a tremendous amount of confidence and belief in herself to know that, you know, nobody would've gotten a come across Frannie and said that she was demure or falsely modest.

That was not her. She was also not grandstanding, right? Yeah. She had this ability, I'll just never forget this interview because she must have said one of my strengths is about five times, right? Mm-hmm. One of my strengths is being able to see things in other people. One of my [00:19:00] strengths is being able to speak well so that people understand and get me one of my strengths and, and she.

She peppered our conversation. I think our first conversation lasted for like two hours. It was scheduled for probably 45 minutes, and I just didn't wanna stop listening to the, I wanted to drink her. Yeah, right. I wanted to like imbibe her and keep her as a part of me, because you rarely meet women that are so self-assured.

That by being who they were, you wanted to spend more time with them. Totally. Do you know those people when you've come across them? I feel like, yeah. It's almost like. Immediate. Yeah. That you, when you're in someone's presence that has that kind of self knowing Yes. And that foundation and mm-hmm. It isn't in a way that is bragadocious, but it is in a way that I'm gonna own this and own who I'm mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: It's very compelling to be around women like that. It's compelling and it lets you be you, right? Like totally [00:20:00] yes. Like when somebody is there. And, and one of the things she fundamentally believed is that by being her, it enabled other people to live up to who they were supposed to be. That was her raise on the etra of life.

Speaker 3: Right. Wow. Yeah. And what was interesting about Frannie is, so Frannie, just a very quick backstory. She had started at Tupperware as a dealer. She sold Tupperware. Right. And she was really interested in personal development from like a very young age. And so she went out and she took a course. And from that course she started to learn about how you grow people.

Now you have to realize she's in, she was in her nineties and she passed away a couple of months ago, so we're talking about she was doing this in the fifties, sixties, and eventually her distributorship became so successful that my grandfather. She was identified by corporate. My grandfather flew up to, she was, I think in upstate New York and they [00:21:00] never left the airport.

He basically sat next to her for five or six hours and said, teach me everything you are doing right, because. You know, something that we haven't figured out and Frannie really became the backbone and the bedrock of the training program at Tupperware. And she taught how to teach. She taught how to grow people, and that became the lifeblood of Tupperware.

Wow. And so, you know, there were two women I would say that really shaped that early modern. Thing called Tupperware. One of them was, brownie wise, was actually the person, the woman who came up with the idea of Tupperware home parties. Okay. Uh, she had done something similar with a previous company called Stanley Vacuums, I think, and decided she was gonna bring that model Tupperware.

At its very beginning, it was actually [00:22:00] sold in department stores and was not doing well at. Mm. Um, and Brownie took a look at this product and she said, well, wait a minute. Why would it do well in a, in department store? What you need is you need to bring it into the places where it's gonna be used by the people who are gonna use it.

And then you were gonna have it sold by the people who are using it. So smart. Um, right. And Brownie was like a genius onto tour herself. And that's a whole other story. And then. Frannie came along, I don't know how many years later, but really started to grow that, that personal development piece of sales, of how you grow somebody into an amazing sales leader.

Speaker 4: That's incredible. And you know, she just had this remarkable way, I mean, I get periodic emails from her after that, just saying, I believe in you. Um, I love you. I'm thinking, you know, you what your, what my gifts were. She would say like, it was just. You know, I, I, I sort of felt like my grandfather was like shining down.

Speaker 3: Oh man. Um, and giving me like another piece of himself through her because they had [00:23:00] that same quality in them. Right. That's amazing. That's amazing. I feel like, yeah, that is such a, I honestly don't know that I've actually ever heard anyone say that so directly around. My strengths are not about being in service of myself.

Speaker 4: Right, right. Like I do think that's even still the conversation today as you tap in, even with a lot of coaching, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think it's important. No. Right. Sometimes that's the first step is actually even acknowledging, right? Like right where you find your strength or where you find to join, how that all combines, but.

To think about it from a perspective of, by owning this, I help others. I honestly don't think I've ever, I've never heard it said in that way, and that's really incredible. Yeah, I think it's the most beautiful thing that in a sense we can do. Some people might say that it doesn't take ownership enough of it, which I think is maybe a different way of looking at it, but for me, I've always, always, always loved.[00:24:00] 

Speaker 3: Being with other people and, and doing things for other people. And I think that I had a very low self-esteem and I didn't actually believe so much in my, what I did for a long time. Um, and when I look at that and when I was able to really flip the script because of Frannie, quite frankly, and I was able to understand that.

I've been helping people my whole life, right? I learned to be a coach, not because I wanted to become a coach for a coaching practice. I learned it because I was building companies and I wanted to be able to build people in my companies. I took that page from my grandfather and um. When she framed it that way, I really, I said, you know, that's something I, that's something I believe, right?

Yeah. I do believe, and I believe that, I don't know, some might say it's a religious belief. I don't know. I believe that we have gifts that we've been given, [00:25:00] and those gifts are meant to serve the world a hundred percent, and I think it also allows you then. A different, you're not holding onto it as tightly, I think then, right.

Speaker 4: There's kind of this, I think sometimes desire to like define yourself. You can't tell me how many tests I've taken over the years to try and, you know, get some kind of insight. Totally. Like who am I? Right? And they can, they serve a purpose, not to disparage those at all, but I think sometimes it really just has to be.

Inner knowing of like, no, this is just who I am. And we can overcomplicate it at times, I think, right. Much just by virtue of all of us that are ambitious. And overachievers. And overthinkers, you know? Yeah. To just like pare it down to. Here's what I'm great at, and here's how it's in service of others.

That's beautiful. Did you just attribute a huge amount of some of your mentality shift to your relationship with Frannie? Is [00:26:00] that what I heard? Like was that a catalyst for you? I think it was partly, um, I think it forced me to own up to what I was good at in many ways. Mm-hmm. Right. I couldn't hide behind the idea that.

Speaker 3: I could, you know,

I don't love using the word imposter syndrome syndrome because I think that it's kind of overused, but you know, a friend of mine was great. At one point I was negotiating something and she said, Marni, you need to go and negotiate as if you're a 25-year-old white. Oh no.

I mean, I don't like using those euphemism to be honest, because I'm sure there are a lot of 25-year-old white guys who are not, they're wonderful, particularly confident and are wonderful. Yes, but I, I do think that for better, for worse, I.[00:27:00] 

I didn't love the idea of being able to own up to what I was good at, and I, I can't really explain why. Right. Yeah. I don't exactly know. And I think that in knowing Frannie and in seeing her and what she was able to accomplish in life, and I don't mean on a monetary level, I just mean like. If you're in your nineties and you're still writing a newsletter to your people, that's amazing, who are opening it and are reading it and are getting something out of it, think about how much of a positive impact she's having in the world.

Speaker 4: So many people's lives. Right? Yeah. Long after she's even here. Think about it. I'm talking about her. Yeah. She's not here, but I'm still talking about her. If there's any sense of legacy, if there's any sense of what we can do, what we can inspire, what we can accomplish, what we can give. It's the idea that what we can give.

Speaker 3: Exists long past [00:28:00] us and our existence physically here on our earth. Yes. I think there's so much I was listening to, it might have been Seth Godin episode or something, but talking about the big eye impact versus the little eye impact. Mm-hmm. And so many of us can be blinded by chasing after what feels like the big eye, which is some massive, you know, like.

Speaker 4: Fame or having impact. Mm-hmm. You know, I've created this product and I've changed the world and he's like, the quieter, the smaller eye is in these moments of being seen, feeling like you're known and the people that. Come into your life that do that might not even be aware that they're doing it. Right.

She, I'm sure, was not thinking, I'm gonna impact Marty's life forever. She inherently, just by who she was and how she showed up and wanting to be developing others. Mm-hmm. In her own authentic, natural way. Right. That's a different kind of impact to your point, that lasts forever and Right. That's, I mean, what else could you desire, [00:29:00] I imagine in life.

Than that. I hope nothing. I mean, yeah, I hope nothing. You know, we we're so much, and I'm a part of it now, right? I'm a part of the creator economy. I'm creating content all of the time about fundraising and about standing up and, and doing things and having authentic conversations and feeling real about what you're talking about.

Speaker 3: Um. And many times, in fact, when I first got started, I was very, very, very uncomfortable with doing this. Right. I couldn't, I I, of the, of the content creation piece? Yeah. Of the content creation. Oh, don't even get started. I never wanted to get, like, no, listen. The first time I had to watch a video back of myself, I was like, oh, no, I feel you.

Speaker 4: It's hard. It's hard to get going. For sure. It's hard. And so I started by writing because I was like, okay, writing. It's like one, but then, you know, I worked with this person. They're like, you have to put your picture on it. And I was like, wait. And that made me even more uncomfortable. And then I had to start [00:30:00] doing videos, which I'm honestly not, it's not, it's not one of my strengths.

Speaker 3: I'm willing to admit also, when I do not have strengths. That's one of the things I'm not strong at. Um, but. You know, I think that what I got from Frannie as well as a lot of other people, is this whole idea that the world has changed and our concept of influence has changed. Mm-hmm. And while I don't aspire to say that I want a million people to become a better fundraiser, that's not what I say.

It's not even what I believe necessarily. But what I do believe is that we are now in a time and place where. Influence our ability to take our gifts and share them such that other people can learn from them, gain from them, and then get better at them themselves. There's been no better time to do that than now, and by acknowledging what we're strong at and by [00:31:00] acknowledging that we have these gifts that other people can benefit from, then the real question is, if we're not doing it, what are we actually.

Inhibiting somebody else from not being able to learn. Right. Totally. Well, I think there's been, I mean so much up until recently has felt like. If you're seeking to be an influencer of influence, you know, whatever, a thought leader, whatever word you want to use, it can feel cringey to those who are like, but this isn't about me.

Speaker 4: Daniel Priestly talks about this a little bit in some of his work because he's very into what it means. To be putting yourself out there in an authentic way. And he said something that helped shift it for me, which was, this isn't about putting a spotlight on you though. It's about putting a spotlight on the work.

It's about putting a spotlight on how mm-hmm. You can be of service and how that then has a triple effect of impact, like. To your point, then why wouldn't you at least try to do that if you want to impact more folks with your [00:32:00] work? Sometimes it just takes a moment to, I think for me it was also tapping into like, what, what is actually meaningful to me so that it doesn't feel like I'm just.

Out there doing content for content's sake, if that makes sense. For sure. I think that when I was able to get specific on the kind of help that I could specifically provide, yeah. That I felt like there wasn't enough of out in the world in the way that I would talk about it. Yeah. That's when I got more comfortable with the idea of doing it.

Speaker 3: I'm still not comfortable on camera doing it. I would much rather get on a stage and talk to an audience. 'cause I would feel feedback. Right. Yeah, I would. I would get a sense of whether or not it's being responded to. I like to interact with audiences a lot more because then I feel like I've got, I'm pulling something from Totally, yeah.

When I have my. You know, when I'm holding a phone or when I've got a phone on a pedestal or whatever. Oh no, that, forget about that. Oh, no way. Oh, no, no, no. I have not gone down that route. [00:33:00] It's not a good route. It's for me, it's, I do it because. I know that I sort of need to put that kind of content out there, but, um, you know, I started working after our coaching program and I figured, finally figured out the, the focus of what I wanted to work on next.

Mm-hmm. I ended up finding one of those three day free courses online about building your personal brand and ended up taking it from a woman named Jen Gottlieb. And, you know, she was this very perfect looking person. It's the best way of putting, I mean, she's, she's beautiful and she speaks perfectly. And it turns out she was a former actress, so she knows how to do it really well.

And I still didn't feel like I knew enough how to do it. I'm a perfectionist. I was like, I, I need to know, like somebody has to teach me, right? Yeah. And so I'm the person that kinda like, you're, you're gonna go find a million platforms until you find the right one, and then you're gonna make it perfect.

So I was the person who was going out and finding the perfect personal branding person who I could go and learn from, and then I was gonna sit next to them and have them teach me what I had. To do. And [00:34:00] um, that's what I did. I found her and I liked her more or less, and I ended up going and sitting literally next to her.

Really? And oh yeah, I went down to Fort Lauderdale. Oh my gosh. I spent a day with her and her husband and um, you know, 'cause I kept and I kept saying to them like, I don't know how to do this. I don't, just tell me what I have to do and I'll go do it. Tell me exactly. Gimme the homework. I'm really good at homework.

Speaker 6: Yes. Homework. I'm a plus student. I got this. Yeah. Right. And she said, she gave me homework. And her homework was, you have to pick a platform and post on it every single day for 90 days. Whoa. That's, yeah, that's, she said, pick whatever one you want, but you have to, and I was like, I don't have that much to say.

Speaker 3: She, she said, you'll figure it out. And I learned AI enough to really start to churn out content that I felt like was really useful. 'cause I wasn't gonna turn out junk. Yeah. But she has the saying. And that was really something that I internalized. And the acronym is [00:35:00] Hope Help One Person every Day. Oh, oh wow.

Speaker 6: Right? Yeah. Like Create Hope. Hope help one person every day. Love that. And I think about it. And Jen, if you ever watch this. Thank you. Bye. Because it framed it and it was actually framed it in what I think I did before, but now I get to understand that even the things I do that I'm cringing from, that's the goal.

Speaker 3: The goal is not the content. The goal is not to get it out there. The goal is the one person at the end that gets to see it, read it, feel it, and feel like they. Are understood. Feel like they can take something that I'm saying and apply it and maybe do something a little bit better than they did it yesterday.

And that's how I try to approach all of the things that I feel like are super cringey. Yeah, cringey, yes. No, but you're right. I mean, I had someone share with [00:36:00] me very recently like, Hey, I'm. So thank like, thank you for what you've been sharing because I've been walking through some stuff and I was like, I, first of all, I would've had no idea that this person was even reading what I was putting out there, watching what I was putting out there.

Speaker 4: And so you don't, and that's the other part I think is so many of us can be driven by engagement or likes or click, right? There's so much about the algorithm and the people on the whatever, and I feel like. Put all that away because you don't know. You literally don't know who's reading or watching or consuming.

And so you could be influencing or impacting or supporting or helping someone without even knowing it. And. Um, that is always helpful for me to think about it in that way. I could have never said it that articulately, but I think that is a really important point when people are thinking about content. I know you have to go to the top of the hour, and I have two really big questions for you, and so I'm like, okay, how are we gonna get through this?

I'll just give you the, the prep here. One is I really do want you to talk about what it is that [00:37:00] you decided to focus on. 'cause your approach to the work that you do is so unique and so special, and it's not surprising given you know your history and the way you think about the world. And I do ask everyone to share with me at the end, what does legacy mean to you?

What does building a legacy for you and your life mean in this moment? And I know that can shift over time and change, but. For this moment, what does that mean? So let's, we've got five minutes. Let's start with what are you doing today and what are you focused on in your work? So I am a fundraising coach.

Speaker 3: What does that mean? I help first time fundraisers. People who have either never raised money before or don't feel comfortable with it. On the skills techniques, but overall, the mentality that enables them to go out and fundraise with confidence, clarity, and honestly with a little bit of excitement.

Because for me, what fundraising is, is the opportunity to develop a relationship that I didn't have before and I love [00:38:00] people. Not everybody loves people. I really love people. Same. I get it. And honestly, if you don't love people, fundraising gets really hard. Yeah. And I think that by the way, that's, that's a piece of it that you really have to tap into the part of you that loves people.

Because for me, when I'm teaching fundraising, I'm teaching yet another way of relating to people. Absolutely. And that is the opportunity to get to know. Why people care about the things that they care about. Mm-hmm. And then I get to share with them why I care about the things that I care about. And then I work towards a place of being able to make an impact together.

Mm-hmm. I don't believe in the days of creating heroes that are donors, it's not, uh, it feels patronizing to me. Mm-hmm. But what I do believe is that every time that I get the opportunity to ask somebody. For money, I am asking them to join me in making a difference, and I'm asking to join in, being able to lift up [00:39:00] and help somebody or something in a way that they wouldn't have been able to do had I not asked.

Mm-hmm. Yes. I don't ask. You don't have the opportunity. To make an impact. Yeah. And that's my belief and that's what gets me over the, oh my God, what if they say no? Yeah. 'cause if they say no, they say no. But at least now they've been given the opportunity. And if they say no, it's probably a no for right now or a no because of a very good reason in their lives that I don't need to know.

Right. Um, or a no, because honestly, not every opportunity is right for every single person. Right. Totally. Yeah. I'm never gonna wear stiletto heels. It doesn't make stiletto heels an enemy. But really, I mean, I, I try to get that through because the biggest problem with fundraising for most people is a fear of hearing the word No.

No, absolutely right. And. If we can remove that fear, and it sounds crazy to remove it, but if we can think of every opportunity as an opportunity for a yes and [00:40:00] because a yes can be so many different things. It could be yes. A donation. It could be yes, an introduction. It could be yes, they have insight that you didn't have before.

Mm-hmm. It could be, yes. Now you've built a relationship with this person that you can draw from. Go back to talk about what happens in the future and see if it interests them. Then. Right. Every opportunity has a chance for Yes, and the ball's always in your court. I mean, I was on the phone with a client yesterday and we were talking about the board meeting, and I said during the board meeting you are going to say, tomorrow I will be following up with you to have a conversation about how you'd like to be involved in the next quarter.

That puts the ball back in his court. He gets to make the next move because he's planted the seed that he is making it. Yeah. Every email I end up with will end up with, and I'll be looking forward to talking to you. I'll reach out to set a time up in whenever. Yeah. It gives the ability for me not to feel uncomfortable in the future reaching out [00:41:00] because I've set the stage, I've already set the scene.

Speaker 4: Yes. That's so smart. And I think that that's just building an honest relationship. It's building the opportunity to build relationship and that to me is what fundraising is about. Um, and I'll answer that, you know, by transitioning into the second question, which is, what is legacy? I. If there's anything that I can make out of my legacy, it is for people to learn how to build relationships and how to build community, and how through the strength of relationships and community, we are able to fundamentally impact the world in whatever small ways or large ways we want to because we can't.

Speaker 3: Make an impact without other people. I mean, I've just never seen a singular leader actually do anything beyond, have a good idea. Yeah. You need people to join you in your ideas, to make them work, to make them happen, to make them grow, to make them go from idea to a reality that you couldn't have even envisioned and.

For me, I [00:42:00] believe that the way that we can do that is by empowering people, by making them believe in themselves or by giving them the ability to say, one of my strengths is I got that from Frannie. Um, if I can have children who in their twenties, thirties, forties, seventies, are able to say, one of my strengths is with.

Confidence and humility at the same time. Yes. I think that that would be a success as a parent. Yeah. I continue to think that that is the biggest gift that we could ever give our kids is that awareness of self in a way that is not about self, but it is about how you walk in the world and what the impact is that you're going to have and how you interact with people.

Speaker 4: Being curious about people because. I think we're in danger of losing some of that if we're not intentional about it. Right. With the advent of all of the things that are coming our way. And so yes. I love the way you think about things. I love, thank you. You have such [00:43:00] a beautiful, nuanced way of thinking about things and it comes in.

Every conversation we've ever had, and your ability to parse things out in a way that's very intentional, it's really incredible. It's a true gift if you don't already know that one of your strengths is being able to also be true to where you're at in the conversation. So I appreciate that about you so much.

I feel like I've learned so much from you. Um, thank you for doing this with me. I just really appreciate it. Well, thank you for having me. I love having conversations. We'll have more of them. I enjoy them because I learned from the conversations and I learned that there are wonderful people in the world that wanna have these conversations and yeah.

Speaker 3: Um. I think in a world where people are shouting all of the time, the ability to have conversations with nuance is the most important skill we could possibly ever have right now. Absolutely. I'm with you on that a hundred percent. Thank you so much more. Please. So good to see you. Have a wonderful rest of the day.

Speaker 4: [00:44:00] Great to see you. Okay, you too soon. Bye. Bye-Bye.

Speaker: Thank you so much for listening and spending some of your time with me here. I hope our conversation sparked some new ideas for you. If you enjoyed the episode, please make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss what's next. And if you're ready for even more tools and stories, head on over to belden strategies.com.

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