#2 | Selling Is Not About You

Selling is often misunderstood, especially by leaders who care deeply about mission, service, and impact. In this episode, Dr. Daniel Freeman breaks down why effective selling is not performance, persuasion, or self-promotion.

It is about understanding people, recognizing need, building trust, and creating alignment. Whether you are raising funds, leading a team, or making the case for change, this episode challenges the instinct to make the work personal and offers a more grounded way to think about influence.

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📝 If you're reading this and you're in the higher ed, collegiate athletics, or general nonprofit field, I'd love for you to take my survey.

Available for Speaking I'm selectively available for keynotes, leadership retreats, and executive panels on decision-making, organizational culture, and leadership identity. If you're building a lineup for your next event, I'd love to be in that conversation. 

→ Reach out at dan@fsgventures.biz or  YourExecutiveThoughtPartner.com

If you made it this far, I want to offer you two limited time discounts. 

• Executive Thought Partner 3-Month Commitment
• 8-Week Fundraising Intensive Program 

View this form to see the discounts:https://forms.gle/ngxwgS6sjCpyppuA8

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Executive Thought Partner Podcast, where leadership, strategy, and growth intersect. I'm Dr. Daniel Freeman, Executive Thought Partner and co-founder of the Growth Alliance. This isn't just a podcast about fundraising. It's about how leaders think, decide, and build systems that scale impact across nonprofits, higher education, athletics, and mission-driven enterprises. Here we explore major gifts, governance, culture, and the quiet decisions that determine long-term momentum. If you're leading something that matters and you want clarity with conviction, you're in the right place. We're here. We're here. Episode two, the executive thought partner podcast. Episode two, Underneath the Contagious Culture Podcast. So I ended my last episode talking about awareness and separation. And I want to jump back into that a little bit. As a refresher for everyone out there, these are all the things I talk about in my work as the executive thought partner, but also with all of our members of the Growth Alliance. And this is also all the things that we're going to talk about at the Contagious Culture Conference. Look it up. It's on our website. There's a LinkedIn page, there's a Facebook page, and an Instagram page. But back to your regularly scheduled programming. And maybe my son in the background that you might be able to hear. Probably not, just me. So we're talking about awareness and separation. I was talking about selling, talking about philanthropy, for-profit, non-profit. And when people say, I don't know how to sell, I don't know how to ask for money, I don't know how to do that stuff. It's not about you. This is something you need to realize, whether you're a leader, entry level, middle, you don't control anything. And not only that, it is not about you. When you're selling something, you're not selling yourself. You're a conduit. And sure, we're gonna talk about the next level of that philosophically. But you're not selling yourself, you're selling a product. And if you're afraid to sell, the best thing to do for you is to separate yourself from it. You're selling a product that is offering a solution to a problem that someone has, and the money from that, the funds, that goes to the business. You're just facilitating that conversation in the nonprofit world, you're not getting the funds, so why should it matter? Why should it feel uncomfortable? If you're not getting the funds, then don't worry about it. Your character is important, but separate yourself from that, the it from the ego, right? You're an individual who believes in a mission, you're facilitating the conversation to benefit the populations that you want to serve, or you may already be serving. So when you have this conversation, you're asking for funds for support, for networking, for revenue, for relationships, the three Rs, as Kyle and I have spoken about on the Contagious Culture podcast, the three Rs. You're asking for that on behalf of that nonprofit. You're doing a service, you're doing a deed by asking and facilitating conversation that's going to benefit the populations that you want to impact. So separate yourself from that. Now let's talk about that a little bit, right? Let's talk about we don't we can't control anything, right? Something that I've really been thinking about lately, and I think Kyle's bought into it a little bit, is the universe. You can say I'm a spiritual person, but I think the universe is trying to tell us things all the time. And when we try to control it, or we don't trust the gut feeling, what our gut is telling us, and our gut's been influenced by the universe, by the world that we live in. My background's in sociology, so sometimes I bring in some of that stuff too. The social structures that we were born into and brought into, those impact our gut. And those social structures and the way that we were brought up, those situations, that is the universe. That's where we are. It can always change everywhere we go, but there's something out there that's controlling what we do. Sometimes we need to give into it. So let's talk about that. So throughout my career, in my life, there have been a lot of different things that happened, and I can always pull them back, as I said in my first episode, to collegiate athletics. I did some weird stuff in high school in terms of technique for javelin. It was not conducive. Not conducive to success. And I had some injuries, and then my freshman year in college, as I was working through that technically, I ended up tearing my elbow in uh in May of 2011. And uh that was that was a rough year, freshman year, they always say, as a collegiate athlete, and in general, is the hardest year because not only are you trying to succeed, you're trying to adjust, you're trying to grow, you may be away from home, you are managing your schedule for the first time, potentially. And you have to fight off imposter syndrome of am I meant to be here? And that correlates to life in general, right? But you know, in that scenario, I came in, I tore my elbow. I knew it. I knew it the moment that it happened. And it was rough. I ended up figuring it out fast forward. I came back in October 27, 2011. That following fall is when I had surgery. I'll never forget that. That date is stuck in my head. But when I came into the school year, that summer going into it, and then the fall of my sophomore year of college at UNC Charlotte, I told myself, my mindset's done. It's different, it's got to change. My freshman year didn't like that part of me, didn't like the way that I had my outlook on life. And I decided I was gonna be positive. I was gonna see everything in a positive light. I was going to wash everything over with positivity, be annoyingly positive. And that did something for me. That changed my mindset. I forced myself to be positive every day. I forced myself to see the positive wins, the small wins, the details. Every single day, every single hour of every day. I looked for the small wins. It didn't matter how bad my day was, it didn't matter how much my arm hurt, if I had to wrap my arm up in saran wrap and my hamstring, my leg, my knee, because that was where they took the piece out to reconstruct my elbow. It did not matter. I was looking at what those small wins were every day. How many little steps could I take every day that over a certain period of time would continue to move me forward to get to the larger win? You don't just get to a win. There are steps to get there. So when I went into that year, it was over positive, overly positive, everything that I was doing. And it was tough to be positive. It was. So it's been almost 15 years since I started coaching high school kids, college kids. I've coached people uh in their 60s, people in their late 80s. I've coached athletes who are eight, nine, 10, and everyone in between. And I'm really grateful for that. But it all started because of that mindset shift and that need to look at the world and say, I want to make things happen, and to do that, I have to take tiny steps every day. Did I keep that positive mindset for the rest of my life? Absolutely not, up till now. No, but I took those little steps every single day, and I want to relate that to the career work. I had a conversation today with someone, and we were talking about nonprofits, and in the words of Kyle in a recent podcast we did, your nonprofit status is only a tax code. That's something to remember. Now, the way that I came up through my career professionally, personally, taking those small steps, all of that correlates to my fundraising career and my career outside of fundraising. When we get into leadership roles, middle management, even entry level, people used to tell me you can't lead from where you are. And then they said, you can totally lead from where you are. And that was something really interesting to me. It was something I didn't it took me a long time to understand what it really meant when people said lead from where you are. And what does that mean? That means lead from example. When I was that collegiate athlete looking every day to take a step by step by step, my teammates saw me, people saw me struggling. If you are leading a nonprofit college foundation athletic program or mission-driven enterprise, and the weight of key decisions sits squarely on your shoulders, this is for you. I'm Dr. Daniel Freeman. Through my executive thought partner practice, I work alongside founders, presidents, CEOs, and advancement leaders to refine strategy, strengthen major gift growth, and bring clarity to high-stakes decisions. And through the Growth Alliance, we help organizations build the systems and structure that turn vision into measurable momentum. This isn't surface level consulting, it's focused partnership for leaders ready to scale impact with intention. Visit fundraisewithdan.com to start the conversation. People also saw me thriving with a bandaged up leg hobbling around and my elbow bent in with a hardcast. I was leading from where I was. I didn't know that. I didn't know what that meant. When I was in my roles at UNC Charlotte and UNC Asheville, and I may not have been the leader, but I may have been doing indirect coaching with coaches on how to fundraise and different programs. When I was a liaison to university advancement from athletics in both of those roles, I was leading from where I was, but I didn't see that. I didn't understand that's what that meant. And I think that's so important. When we reflect on our situations and think about where we are and where we want to go, we have to have those direct and indirect leadership opportunities. You can build a whole career off of indirect leadership, aka leading from where you are with opportunities that you get. But it's how you reflect on that. And I want to ask the question: how are you leading from where you are? What are you doing right now? I just want to pause for a few seconds and I want you to think, where are you leading from where? How are you leading from where you are right now? Are you in an entry-level role? Are you running a business? Are you a president? Are you an associate? What about a director or a manager? Are people seeing you? And are they saying, I really like what that person does? They're not leading me, right? And that's where leading from where you are, they're not leading you, right? This person looking at you, they're like, Well, he's not leading me, but what he's doing, I respect that. I like what he's doing, I like how he's carrying himself. I like what he says to other people, I like how he makes them feel. I like how he listens in meetings and doesn't blurt things out, but then he'll stand up, not literally, but he'll stand up, he'll say something. If he really has conviction and he's using his discernment, he's gonna say something if he feels strongly about that, but not only that, he's gonna recognize others. So all of those things that I said right there, leading from where you are in these meetings, even if you're not technically a leader, I want you to ask yourself how are people viewing you? It's not that you need to care how people see you, but you need to care about how you present yourself and in turn how that reflects on other people when they see you. It you don't have to care what other people think, but I want you to be aware of how you come across to other people. Because if you're watching this right now, you are a leader, you want to be a leader, you are leading from where you are, you're getting indirect leadership experience, or maybe you're retired, maybe you want to start something and you don't fit in any of those categories. But how do people see you? Because the vision you have for yourself, that's how you see yourself. But if you are acting on that externally, that's how people see you, and that brings us to authenticity. And I have a hot take that I've shared on our Contagious Culture podcast. The people who play the game, and I've had people recently tell me they're just playing the game, those people that play the game, they're the most insecure people that you'll meet. Because if you're playing the game, you're afraid of how your authentic self will be seen by the people around you. You don't think that they will accept you. And you know what? You're right. If they don't accept you, you don't need to be there. Why would you live another life and not live the authentic life that you deserve and that you want to be a part of? Why would you not want to live that? So let's think about that. Are you leading your authentic life as a leader, as a fundraiser, as a founder, as a friend, as a spouse, as a partner, as a coach? Are you giving others what you think that they want, or are you giving them what you want to give them? And here's another step don't give people what you think they want. Give them what you want to say, but also understand that it's good to individualize what you're doing. Everyone's an individual. And if I've learned anything in my coaching, I teach people a model, just like I have for myself. I know who I am, but I also know that I can evolve. So I've got this model of myself that's been evolving for years, my authentic self. My views on politics and spirituality and life and friends and work, all of those things. I'm always evolving. So my model is always changing. But the thing is, I'm aware of other people too. I'm looking for their vibes, I'm looking for their nondescript cues, I'm looking for their nonverbal cues, and I'm saying, what does this person need from me? How can I be authentic in whatever sense that is? Again, being a leader, being a partner, being a fundraiser. How can I bring a piece of myself to them that's authentic, but meets the need that I can tell they're looking for? And I want to end this today. When I say, how can I bring a piece of me that fits what they're looking for? That's me saying that person has value to me, that I care enough to bring a piece of me to them because I know how it's going to make them feel. I'm not giving them all of myself, I'm giving them a piece of me because I want to give that to them as a gift, because it makes me feel good when they feel good. That's one of the reasons that I coach. That's one of the reasons that I lead. And I'll end with this story. I had a colleague in a scenario where they were crying because of the way that someone treated them in our office. And that beat me up. I said, you know what? Let's go for a walk. Let's go walk around, let's go outside. Again, shout out to the book, The Nature Fix, the book that I'm reading, being outside, being around trees, the pheromones coming from trees, all those things. Did you know that if you go hiking just a few hours a week out in nature, it can increase the production of killer cells in your body that keep you healthy by 40%. And it stays that high for over a week. And even after a month, it's still just under 20% elevated. So I took that coworker and we went for a walk, and I told them they deserved better. And I let them know that the awareness that I'm using and seeing is that the issue is not them. The coworker that I was working with. That person who acted that way obviously feels a certain way about themselves and about their situation, and maybe they have other feelings that are going on outside of it, but they allowed it to come through and affect you as an individual. So, first, you don't deserve it. Second, have the confidence and know that when people act like that, it's okay to be emotional. It's okay to feel a certain way and feel disrespected, but don't let it last. Don't give that person the power to let them know that they affected you. So, as we wrap up the second episode of the executive thought partner, we talked about a lot of stuff. We talked about awareness, we talked about separation, we talked about leading from where you are. We talked about my sports background and how that affected my view of the world. And then we talked about my character traits. We talked about authenticity. We talked about a lot of stuff that play into my work as being an executive thought partner. And also that's a lot of the work that I frame into our work with the Growth Alliance and the Culture Lab. Go to join thegrowth alliance.com. If you want to be part of something special, if you want to work with me and Kyle on fundraising, mindset, on ability, he's one of the best storytellers with the best framework that I know. If you want to be part of that and you don't want to be rushed and you don't want to go out and spend $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 for a few months for a fraction of a fundraiser that may not actually do what you need, and you want to work with some people that are going to be in the trenches with you to help you implement and execute, this is the place. Come join us. We love this. We'd love to have you. And we'd also love to have you at our conference, spreadcontagiousculture.com. Thank you for listening to the Executive Thought Partner Podcast. If today's conversation helped clarify your leadership or expand your thinking, share it with someone navigating meaningful decisions. Through my Executive Thought Partner Practice and the Growth Alliance, we work with leaders and organizations ready to strengthen strategy, align systems, and build sustainable momentum. You can learn more at fundraiswithdan.com. Until next time, think clearly, lead intentionally, and build what lasts.