Episode 10 - How I Got Here, And How That Might Help You

Welcome to another edition of “Around with Randall,”  your weekly ten-to-12 minute podcast about making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here's your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett

I appreciate everybody joining me again. It is great to welcome you to another edition of “Around with Randall.”  I received a great question through the portal that I talk about at the end of each podcast, asking a question which we're going to make into this week's subject.

The question came from Courtney out in California, who asked, “How did I get here?” And it made me do a lot of reflection. I spent a number of years raising money for the Jesuits and St. Ignatius. His principles were all about the art of reflection. Sure. And that was a good question because it caused me to think about it in some interesting ways.

So not to make the story of Randall, because I'm not sure it's all that interesting, but as I reflected and thought about the experiences of my life, that kind of brings me here. A couple of them really came forth prominently and probably you've contributed a great deal to who I am and the way in which I do things.

So I think, for many people, it starts at home. I am so fortunate and blessed. My parents provided an environment that allowed me, as a child, and my sisters as well, to be free enough to fail, to learn from those failures, and to grow. We were safe. We were happy and we had great role models. And still to this day, my mom volunteers in the community. She was chairman of this and on the board of that and explained at the dinner table, why she did it. She felt like it was her responsibility to make the community a better place. To this day, my dad still counts money every Tuesday at the church. I had great role models and not everybody has that. And I don't take it for granted. I’m appreciative of it. 

As I look at my career and some of the skills maybe that I use, one of them came from an odd place. Before I went into my graduate work, during college, as a matter of fact, I was coaching at a local Catholic high school, coaching sophomore, JV, and assistant varsity basketball, working and helping on the football team, was the assistant coach on the golf team.

What I took from that, which I didn't even understand at the time, I was just having a ball, is coaching's about teaching and I've taken a lot of lessons from those moments about working with young people and helping them be what they want it to be today. I find myself doing a lot of coaching with clients.

And much of it is very similar in structure. It’s about listening, about giving them the big picture, about teaching them individual things they can do to be more effective, working and practicing with them. And then honing that into a team environment. 

Many times that the greater sum of the parts is in the whole if the team brings more than just those individuals can do on their own. I certainly think about my storytelling. I probably tell way too many stories, as a consultant, but I enjoy them. I think they give the idea of a metaphor or an analogy. And many of them are about my own failures.

Telling stories is part of who I am. And I take that directly from my experience in broadcasting. I spent a number of years in law school, and then after law school doing play-by-play for the University of Missouri, Kansas City soccer, volleyball, and basketball. I had to learn to paint a picture. And I didn't understand it at the time, but having grown up in a time when we actually did listen to radios, I knew that the broadcasters I loved could paint a picture for me as a listener and that as a broadcaster, I wanted to paint a picture. And so things like moving left to right on your radio dial isn't just a corny, corny phrase. It's the ability to imagine if you're listening to a broadcast, the action going from left to right. My team's moving from left to right. Or my teams’ on defense from right to left. 

Painting a picture is great for philanthropy. What is it we're trying to accomplish? Even when we don't have all the details. And, broadcasting’s all about that. We don't know the end result of a particular play or a particular game or what the season will bring, but we have to paint the picture of what might be possible. If all the things come together correctly, philanthropy, it's no different.

How do we bring things together that are a little bit unclear? They're gray or they’re not distinguished in terms of definition. So people can see their investment can make a difference in what we're trying to accomplish.

I probably have way too much education, but I'm intellectually curious just by nature. I’m always reading and wanting to know more about the things that go on around, whatever it is I'm witnessing. So I'm notoriously bad at watching movies and I'm an old movie person. I love movies from the forties, fifties, and sixties. I’ve always got my phone and I'm Googling something around a particular character, particularly if it's a memorial historical film, to find out what was going on around the time, who were these people, and what were they doing, what was their experience? 

That intellectual curiosity is alive in me every day, particularly in my profession and former educational pursuits. I loved law school. I'd go back and do it again. I thought it was the best three years of my educational life, in part because I didn't want to practice, but I knew that it would give me an advantage because the knowledge that I took out of it would allow me to get to where I wanted to go.

The thing is, I didn't think this would be where I'd end up. I wanted to be president of the NCAA. And it turns out after a brief stint, as an assistant athletic director, I didn't want to do that. I look back at law school and I learned about the States and trusts, which obviously play a huge part in philanthropy.

I learned about tax. I spent a lot of time in tax classes, and that has played a huge part in nonprofit management. Certain things, like contracts, are very important. And then there are the ancillary things that just come up every day about how privacy is viewed. Privacy, when I went to law, school is much different than it is today because the internet totally changed the way we look at it, but it caused me for a while to think my MBA and work there was all about finance, how organizations function, financially.  

There are huge opportunities to be more aware of when you look at a balance sheet or an income statement or when you're sitting in a budget meeting, how things might be applicable. My doctoral work both postdoc and, and educational, EDD work was about public policy. And I never at the time thought about healthcare, but it's one of the great public policy issues of our day. And so all of these things have kind of coalesced together and these experiences kind of make me who I am and what I do every day and why I love it.

So Courtney, thank you for your question. That's a very short version of the professional life of Randall Hallett, but that's not really important. What's really important is the tactical, which we'll talk about each week on the podcast - what can you do to make yourself and your organization better and doing it in, you know, I try to do it in ten-to-12 minutes. Sometimes it stretches to 14 or 15, but in a short version, let me tell you what I think the tactical is that can be helpful to you. 

Based on your question, I think that taking an inventory of who you are and what you want to do, and in terms of skills is incredibly important and it happens formally and informally. Formally, you make a list. Informally, something happens and you're like, “Gosh, I don't have the background or the knowledge.” And I probably should get some more information or become more aware of what I'm trying to get to in terms of content. So I'm not going to deal with the emotional or the psychological side.

I did a podcast called, managing up. As a part of this series, you can listen to some of the things I talk about in there that deal with knowing yourself and the idea that you have to do that before you can manage up to a leader or a CEO or your supervisor, but things like psychological awareness, disc, which deals with communication, Myers-Briggs and how you deal with situations. I'm going to leave those out. I'm going to deal in the true essence of skillset learning. 

So I did a quick search online. You don't have to go to school for all the things that you want to get better at in terms of formal education in tech. I probably would advise against it. Th the amount of years I've spent in school, I've enjoyed every second of it, but I'm not sure that's for everybody, but I think self-improvement is for everyone. So I did a quick search online and found there are a number of places for free that you can better yourself. If you take the right kind of inventory and be self-aware of where maybe there's a deficit. So I'll mention some possibilities. 

I hear from a lot of people. I love public speaking, the bigger the audience, the more I like it, people ask me constantly, how did you get comfortable with it? I'm not sure I have an answer. I've always been kind of comfortable in front of a large group. I don't think that's better or worse. It's just Randall. But I found free courses in public speaking to help you. Google it for an online free course in public speaking. If you want to know more about the law, I found it.

I may go back and do this, but just because I found it interesting. I love law school. It'd be fun to go back and see what I missed free courses. Over three, four, five, six, seven, eight weeks on the law on different subjects. If you want to get a certification, you might have to pay for that. But the educational piece is free. I was stunned.

I thought it was a great resource. So, go in there and do a search for Project Management. This is something that I actually have done online in the last couple of years, as I have developed the core of the consulting that I do, being able to manage and set tasks in order is incredibly important. It's a weak spot of mine. I've done some online work and I was able to go back and find it. It was all for free. 

Maybe you'd like to be a more effective writer. There are courses and groups that actually do that kind of work, and that can help you become more effective at communication. Maybe it's finance. You're wondering how the business world works free courses, free lectures, free stuff on the internet, even too.

The idea of computer science and we've done a podcast on AI, and I'm not saying one of those is going to make you an expert, but if you're looking for more information about what the future of screening is going to be, and we've done that podcast on, on artificial intelligence, there's a course for it.

Several. So the tactical piece is, is that I would highly recommend you take a look at your experiences, find out where there's a gap or two, and invest in yourself. That investment isn't necessarily monetary it's time. Figure out what you want to be better at. And then the last piece, can you find someone that would help you along the way?

And in my next podcast, I'm going to talk specifically about that leadership. What are some of the experiences and leaders I've had that I can't be more appreciative for. And what were those things that they allowed me to do that allowed me to grow? If you can find one, two, or three people along the way, that'll help you.

And you supplement that with your own efforts and the time, and a little reading, a little watching, a little research, you'll be surprised at what you can be. I did not anticipate at 50  - while I'm 50 -  that 25-years ago that I'd be here, but the journey, the learning, the growth has been worth every second.

I want to remind you about the website, www.hallettphilanthropy.com. That's two L's two T's - Hallett Philanthropy.com. You can find the blogs there  - 90-second reads. We put up two or three a week, not meant to change the world, but a chance to kind of reflect on our profession and things going on in life and how they make connections and how sometimes they just caused you to think.

And certainly, the podcast is on the website as well. And if you'd like to email me as Courtney did that's podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. If you've got a subject you'd like to hear, would love to get it from you and my homage to Clark Howard. If you think you disagree, if you disagree with something, I said, I want to know about it. I'm going to read it. Reeks. R E E K S @hallettphilanthropy.com. Shoot me an email. Tell me something you didn't like. Lastly, if you think this podcast could be helpful to someone it's on Apple, it's on Spotify. It's on downcast. It's on any platform, send an email or send a link and say, Hey, you might want to listen to this.

If you think this could help someone else. I really, that's why I do it is to make sure that there's an opportunity for people to grow and a chance for everyone to be all that they can be. Because as I end every podcast, the same, it's all connected to that idea that we're here to make our community a better place.

We've been called in this non-profit world to be a difference-maker. And my all-time favorite saying, some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wondered what happened. In life, we're always in one of those moments. And the great thing about fundraising, nonprofit work, philanthropy is we surround ourselves with people who want to make things happen for those that are truly wondering what happened.

And I don't know a better professional journey than that. It's joyous to get up every morning thinking you might be in a small, small way, making a difference for people who are really struggling in life. So thank you for what you do. Keep on doing it. Keep getting better, take that inventory and make sure that, you know, you know, that you're important to the cause.

Appreciate your time this week. We'll see you next time on “Around with Randall” and don't forget, make it a great day.