I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a lot more optimistic than I was a week ago. In spite of daily news that can feel pretty daunting, I think we just got a lot of new information out of this past week's elections that give us a ton of reasons for optimism. And I want to share those with you.

A number of my clients have said to me in the last few days, give us a reason for optimism. How are you feeling about this? And each time I've had this conversation, I've gotten clearer about exactly what the big things were that represented major shifts.

I believe these shifts are reasons to get really excited about the rising power of a vast majority of people in this country who do not agree with what is happening. Who feel very strongly about it, and who are willing to go to the ballot box and make their voices heard.

This election was the first opportunity for voters to weigh in on things since the 2024 elections. And boy did they have a lot to say.

In this episode, we share:

• What the pollsters missed that made a huge difference
• The two most significant factors that drove voters’ shift to blue
• The most important thing that didn’t happen, and why it matters
• The two most critical groups of voters who shifted strongly in our favor, and why
• Why the right’s attempts at additional gerrymandering may backfire on them
• The very surprising data point that tells us how many strong allies we have
• What Nonprofit leaders can do to help fight voter suppression and ensure all eligible clients can make their voices heard in the next elections

Links:

Episode 54 – How to Help the People You Serve Make Their Voices Heard at the Ballot Box

Episode 62 – How Your Nonprofit can Help Your Clients Register to Vote in the 2024 Elections

Episode 66 – How to Help Your Clients Make Sure Their Vote Counts

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast. Thanks!!

There is nothing more exciting than talking with a money or policy decisionmaker who's all in on the conversation. They're leaning in, they're asking good questions. Their gears are turning as they think about how you can work together. That's awesome when that happens.

And then, there are the times where you've got the opposite. They're not engaged. Their body language and their relative silence tell you so. They're listening politely enough, but it feels like they're just waiting for you to be done so they can move on.

When that's happening in real time, it is super stressful. You can tell your messaging's not landing. You can feel them slipping further and further away.

But how to tell what's wrong? And what to do to fix it?

Today I'm sharing with you the four engagement must haves – and how to make sure they're built into all of your messaging. So that you can have the engagement you want and need from your most critical decisionmakers.

In this episode, we share:

• Why it’s harder now to engage decisionmakers than it has even been
• How to pull the decisionmaker in in the first one or two minutes of interaction
• Two key ingredients to grabbing and holding a decisionmaker’s attention
• The real purpose of data and information in the engagement process (it’s not what you’ve been taught)
• How to share ROI data in a way that will get the decisionmaker as excited about it as you are
• Why vivid storytelling is such a powerful engagement tool, and how to use it
• What to focus on first to vastly increase the impact of your message

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast. Thanks!!

It is no secret that engagement is the key to influence. It’s one of the biggest themes of my work with my clients. We also focus on how and why information and data are not engaging on their own.

We know great messaging is essential, but there's another piece. The biggest secret to engagement – and therefore the secret to having your message land with impact – is you.

You can have fantastic core messaging and still mess up the engagement piece. And when that happens, when the messaging is good, but the engagement fails, that is almost always caused by bringing the wrong energy, vibration, frequency to the encounter.

It happens more often than you'd think. And there are some very specific reasons why it tends to happen. That's what I want to explore today, and help you do things a little bit differently. So that you can consistently bring the kind of energy and vibration and frequency that is going to engage that decisionmaker.

In this episode, we share:

• The biggest driver of your energetic state in a conversation with a decisionmaker
• How to consciously choose the energy you bring, and the emotional state you operate from with decisionmakers, especially when you’re worried about an unwanted result
• Five common emotion-based mistakes many leaders make that can kill the deal, and what to do instead
• How to raise the decisionmaker’s energy and increase the chances of getting a ‘yes’ from them
• Three powerful beliefs to operate from with any decisionmaker that will keep you in a powerful energetic state

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast. Thanks!!