542. How It's Built: How to Create a Modern Donor Journey - Nicholas Kristock, Fleece and Thank You

Meet Nicholas. He’s a former international soccer player turned serial entrepreneur and servant leader⚽ He’s found his passion in social impact work and is all about building businesses that tackle real-world problems. He founded and serves as the Executive Director of Fleece & Thank You, a nonprofit that provides psychosocial support and programs to children in the hospital. In this episode of "How It's Built," Nicholas shares how mapping donor journeys with intention has transformed their nonprofit🗺️ From listing all touchpoints to prioritizing a core welcome series, he walks us through practical steps to personalize the donor experience. Tune in to hear how you can adapt this modern framework for your org✨

💡Learn

• The Impact + Case for Building Modern Donor Journey
• The Playbook: 5-minute Fundraising Asks
• Pro Tips + Lessons Learned

Today’s Guest

Nicholas Kristock, Founder + Executive Director, Fleece and Thank You and Founder + CEO, KindKatch

For more information + episode details visit: weareforgood.com/episode/542.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 3:05

Hi friends, welcome back to how it's Built, a series where we explore the intricate and often overlooked elements that go into crafting impactful change brought to you by our friends at Allegiance Group and Pursuant.

Speaker 2: 3:17

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Speaker 1: 3:44

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Speaker 2: 3:47

We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.

Speaker 1: 3:56

So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.

Speaker 2: 4:07

So let's get started. Becky, you've been hyping this one for so long.

Speaker 1: 4:11

I've been hyping this one for several months. But before I introduce our guests, I want to go back to the fall of 2023. And we were sitting around as a team and we're sort of scheming season nine and what are we going to do? And we came up with this concept of how it's built and we really wanted to go tactically in like how do you build a thing, how do you do a thing? And we had this concept in mind.

Speaker 1: 4:33

And then, at the top of 2024, I get this great introduction to Nicholas Kristok and I am obsessed immediately and I'm like this is the one. This is the creating a modern donor journey. This is something we hear all the time. This has got to be baked into the how it's Built series. And then I met him and then I heard a story, and then I watched what he was doing and I was like it is meant to be so community.

Speaker 1: 4:59

Let me introduce you to an incredible founder and executive director, nicholas Kristok. He is the founder of Fleece and Thank you. And, by the way, as he was running his nonprofit, he's like there's not a tech platform that's really working for me, so I'm going to build that on the side. So he is also the founder of Kind Catch and he just has such an interesting story just getting in to the social impact world, living by this code of build, empower and serve, and he just really centered his life on building businesses that solve problems, and so he's a former international soccer player turned serial entrepreneur and servant leader, and he just loves this idea of building purpose-driven businesses.

Speaker 1: 5:42

So in 2015, he founded Felice and Thank you, and this organization is just going to blow your mind with what it does to bring psychosocial support programs and actual goods to children in the hospital, which really resonates with John and I as we worked 10 years in healthcare philanthropy and through it, he launched in 2023 the Grateful Human Apparel brand, a side brand that has done so much to even just be this walking billboard for how we can show up in this world. Does this sound like we are for good? This sounds like we should be great friends.

Speaker 1: 6:16

So, nicholas, get into our house. We're so excited you're here.

Speaker 3: 6:19

I'm grateful to be in here. Should I put my shoes at the door? You can totally put your shoes at the door.

Speaker 1: 6:24

You can even put your feet up on the table because we want you to be so comfortable here, but we're just excited to get to know you and you have a really winding journey and, like we want you to just take us into it. Take us back to like Nicholas playing on the soccer field, maybe in the hockey arena. And what happened to your heart? How did you get into this?

Speaker 3: 6:46

First, I'm grateful to be here, so thanks, becky and John, I really appreciate it, our pleasure. Second, I am the. I'm grateful to be here, so thanks, becky and John, I really appreciate it, our pleasure.

Speaker 1: 6:54

Second, I'm not shy about reaching into the chip bowl when I come to someone's house, like if I'm feeling it, you can double dip at my house, we're not worried about it.

Speaker 3: 6:59

Because it makes them feel like a good host.

Speaker 3: 7:00

Yeah, absolutely. The quickest version of my story to catch you up would be I am a Detroit, michigan, native, so from the Midwest, so got the Midwest roots as part of my blood. Was all about sports growing up hockey and soccer all day long throughout the year, no breaks, loved every second of it, kept me out of trouble, brought me great friendships, taught me about playing on a team and took those into college. And then, as I got towards the end of college, had all these doors in front of me of like the professional working world, and none of them were what I thought I was supposed to be doing. They were just me fitting into expectations of the internship to the full-time job or something of the sort. And this opportunity to play soccer overseas opened up. I took it cause it was the only door that wasn't here, where I didn't know what I was going to do. So I figured I'd book a one-way ticket to Australia and I think there were some cool experiences throughout high school and college, but definitely formative years for me were overseas.

Speaker 2: 7:58

I mean I love that the international experience does change you, shapes you. It's part of my story for sure, so I definitely resonate on that. But would love for you to connect. I mean you go, you're playing professional soccer, how do you end up launching this movement? I would call it with fleece and thank you and kind of connect the dots between those two parts of your story.

Speaker 3: 8:18

I did not know that I loved building, but I always found myself around things that were getting built. And the great example is in college we're sitting in the dorm room and friend walks in, her name's Kristen. She says hey guys, get off your butts. I need you to come help me collect cans. I need to fundraise for a missions trip to Haiti. And so, like, cool, like yeah, we'll go help you collect some cans. So we grab some bags, we go out to some parties, we collect some cans. We said, oh, like, how much do you need? She's like I need dollars. Okay, do the math take care of the ones? Ten thousand cans. Like we're gonna have to do this for more than a couple weekends here, kristin.

Speaker 3: 8:53

And so four weekends in a row, collected cans, collected ten thousand cans, gave her a thousand bucks, went on a mission trip and uh, then we said that was fun, like we should, we should do that. And that was the first uh, non-profit that I ever started was it was called for Good and like that lit the fire of like, wow, cool, like you can start this nonprofit and you can fundraise for a very specific mission. And like grant this money out. And that like lit the pilot light and then when I went to Australia, it was just set ablaze. I had extra time outside of practice and decided to start using that time to dive into volunteering. So I was working with Make-A-Wish Australia and Lady Salento Children's Hospital in Brisbane and Orange Sky Laundry. I met the team there and just spent so much of my time in that space and that was when I really started to see the line of sight to my purpose.

Speaker 1: 9:44

I mean, who does that, who takes their free time and is like I'm just going to like go pour into other people? I'm sure a lot of you out there, that is probably you as well but I just think you know the spark that was lit inside you is is something that keeps iterating, at least when I see it in your journey that you just keep following that nudge over and over again and I just think people are better, better for it. So I want to talk about this impact because before we get into the playbook of how to do the thing it's like we want to know about, like what fleece and thank you is like. Tell us what it is, tell us what you figured out about it, and then we'll go into modern journey journeys right after that.

Speaker 3: 10:26

Cool If, if I could get, if I had to get a tattoo on my forehead, the tattoo would say ask more questions. Because I think we all need to ask more questions and truly I'm a product of many, many great people that chose to invest time in me and me asking over my share of quota for questions every single day. When I was working with kids in the hospital in Australia, I knew and saw how badly they needed the comfort and connection. And when I moved back to Michigan in 2015, my twin sister, who's a pediatric oncology nurse, sent me a text right when I landed and said hey, nick, can you make a blanket for one of my patients, and I'm aggressively curious. So I started asking well, yeah, tara, I can make a blanket, but like, what do you need? Do you need two? Do you need five? Do you need 10? She's like I don't know. I always need them and we never have enough. But they changed the room and so I said connect me to your hospital. Who do I need to talk? To Talk to the hospital that she worked at one of the best children's hospitals in the room we never have enough Picked up the phone, called every hospital in Michigan and everyone said the same thing and I said look, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with my life, but I know we can start this.

Speaker 3: 11:35

Let's just figure out how many kids go in the hospital every year. Let's make that many blankets, and even more than just the color and the comfort of the blanket, let's give them connection. Let's have Becky be able to make a blanket and a video message for that to travel to Chloe and for Chloe to be able to send Becky a video message back. And in 2015, fleece and Thank you was born. And here we are about to turn nine years old this year.

Speaker 1: 12:01

I'm so stinking proud of you, like I mean, who would think it would be? You, by the way, who would think to create, like to ask the bigger question we talk about that a lot on the podcast like it's not just about delivering a blanket, it's about delivering humanity. It's about that connection and the brilliance to me, that you allowed the blanket to be an entry point to storytelling, to a relationship, to something that's bigger than all of us is just so brilliant. And I want to brag on Fleece and Thank you just for a hot minute, because you started out and you're like, okay, how many kids are in the hospital in Michigan? And let's just get every one of them a blanket? And then you cross that threshold and then you were like, oh, maybe we just got to syndicate this thing. That's what we call it.

Speaker 1: 13:52

You know we're got to dive in to donor journeys. This is one of the hottest topics that we've heard about in our community and people understand that it's no longer business as usual anymore. You know, when somebody comes into our organization, however, they come in, and I'm not just talking about a donor, I'm talking about somebody that starts to follow us, somebody that subscribes to our newsletter, somebody that maybe attends one of our events. Every single one of those is an entry point, and you're educating me, by the way, on this a lot, nicholas, and so I want to talk about what does the modern journey look like right now for donors, and what impact have you seen? And then we're going to get into how to reverse engineer it and how we're going to build the thing.

Speaker 3: 14:53

Well, where we started, this is not where we are today, that's for sure. Truly, we started our journey into donor journeys at Fleece and Thank you. Around this need to answer the question of like who are we missing? Who are the people that we are not getting a touchpoint with and we're just missing them, no-transcript. Where does it make sense for us to take them next and how are we driving dollar support further connections off of that journey? And we're very intentional now taking it from who are we missing to why are we missing them?

Speaker 1: 15:53

What I wanna take the fear out for a lot of people is we're going back to that personalization. We're going back to trend number three this year, which is, if you can start with the one, personalize it, there you can start a movement. So really excited to get further into this.

Speaker 2: 16:08

I love that, and this is like the transition point of the how it's Built built series that we'd love so much Cause we've got our notebooks out, we're ready to like, really glean your wisdom of building a modern donor journey. Walk us through the steps. A lot of this are you know, at different stages of our organizations. But how can someone start to replicate this, starting with how you think about you know, putting this together and giving us some of the practical implications of how to do it?

Speaker 3: 16:31

Important that everyone knows my lens is coming from that grassroots, nonprofit side, that small to midsize nonprofit. So if you're one of those, you're going to resonate with this journey, because I'm very much a believer that everything I'm about to say needs to be hyper practical. You need to be able to listen to this and not just feel good, but know the exact steps to take from here. For us, when we started mapping out donor journeys and you're right, becky, it can be a very intimidating word, like CRM, it's like oh my gosh, crm is a big thing we first listed out me and the team sat down whiteboard, big pad of paper, all the places or moments we have an interaction with a contact. All the places or moments and that's an email subscribe, that's a volunteer signup, that's an event attendee, no, the list goes on and on and we listed all of those out. And then, with each of those interactions, we said cool, like when Becky signs up to volunteer, what is the right cadence of messaging and where are we trying to move her? Well, when she signs up to volunteer, we're trying to move her to repeat volunteer and to drive a general gift at some point. And then we mapped out just with, like very shorthand, like email. One is probably this purpose educate her about the mission. More Email. Two gratitude and impact of her volunteering. And so we just went from there, like high level what emails do we think she needs to get, or what touch points, calls, texts, et cetera from her volunteer experience to where we want to move her next, which is the repeat ball and the general gift.

Speaker 3: 18:02

And we did that for each of our interactions. So this is multiple sessions of planning and this is all free, by the way, we did not put a penny into this, we just gave our time right. So you talk about bootstrapping, like we are the bootstrappers over here. You got to figure it out with no dollars to do it, and we just did that for each interaction. And then we had all these interactions and then these micro journeys of where we want to take someone and we started to look and said, okay, cool, when Becky's here, we're trying to bring her to point B, but also someone over here we're trying to bring them to point B. Okay, do these overlap them to point B? Okay, do these overlap? Will they ever cross each other? And what if they do? Okay, let's make sure the content is different so that if Becky falls into multiple, she's still getting an experience that she understands and that is like the starting place for us.

Speaker 2: 18:46

I love that you started there, though, because I think I'm even thinking this through the lens of we are for good. It's like people do not always move in a logical place. Through your organization, you have to recognize they're coming in in different entry points. I love that you're putting on the hat of like. Will it connect? Will it make sense if they're in these different buckets at the same time? So it's such an evolved way to think and it's just the reality in today's world too.

Speaker 1: 19:08

So it's so smart. Give some context for our listeners. How big is your staff?

Speaker 3: 19:14

We're three full-time team members.

Speaker 1: 19:23

Okay, so we're talking about this can be done, this can be bootstrapped. You don't need to have a massive organization with deep resources. I think this is just something that can be done with having this sort of abundance mindset, this curiosity, and I think walking through it is a really interesting thing, auditing your own channels and saying, if I went through here, where would they go. And so I want to get into the practicality of it. I want you to start, like at step one. Tell us how people can start to build the thing and, yeah, give us the pro tips on the way as you guide us through it.

Speaker 3: 19:55

For sure. Yeah, there's two pro tips for sure that I'm going to bring out here, but the practical steps start with that and it's free to do. You sit down with your team and you just like vomit out these ideas of where places people have interactions with us, where do we want to take them once they have the interaction, what's the destination and what does it look like? In between, you lay all those out, figure out where they might overlap and make sure you just adjust accordingly. For that. That might mean you're combining some journeys Great. That might mean you're just being very intentional about the content in some journeys. After that, you then assess the tech stack you have and figure out okay, what does this look like to build this into our current tech stack? How much of this is going to be manual? Do we need other people to help with this or can we provide some automations based on what you're using? That's probably like boom section that off. That's the first piece and then you get into, like, based on what tech stack you are, you might go different micro nuances from there, but second to, that would be okay. Nick, I get it. I understand we can do this, but what are the core journeys we need to address first and I think there's like a core four that if you do no other journeys in your organization, do these four.

Speaker 3: 21:01

The first one is the non-donor welcome series and all those interactions where someone's not giving you a gift. Figure out what kind of communication do they need to get to try your best to bring them to a gift or another interaction. And we're always trying to drive the general gift, the interaction or the unsubscribe. It's like you either love us or you don't want anything to do with us. That's okay. We don't mind it if you unsubscribe, because we're always just trying to move you along and bring you to support more, and that's okay. We should not be ashamed of that. So the non-donor welcome series is the first one and that's one of the easiest ones. So it's like cool to start with that and like small bite, launch it. Small bite, launch it. Just focus on your non-donor one and launch it and then cool, it's okay.

Speaker 3: 21:42

We saw, worked out the kinks. Now we go to two. The first time, donor welcome series, someone's first gift. What does that experience look like? And what would it look like if you, if I told you that hey, at the end of this experience, becky's going to want to go to Google and leave a five-star review, cause she's like blown away by how we engaged her on her first gift, like elevate. Look at it with that type of lens. So, non-donor welcome series first time donor welcome series. Two, third is the lapsed donor series. What do we do when Becky doesn't give that second gift? Uh, and then the. The fourth is your sustaining giving. How do you drive someone who's given multiple gifts to be a formal repeat giver or just continue to foster that sustaining?

Speaker 2: 22:22

gift. What would you recommend in terms of how many touch points do each of those four have as part of them? And it probably can vary, but what's your recommendation for how many different touch points follow up in that series?

Speaker 1: 22:33

Or even give an example if you have it of what you guys are doing.

Speaker 3: 22:36

For sure. Yeah, the average of those four, the average touch points that we're going to make with someone are right around five touch points, and it's going to be over the span of probably six to eight months. So some people might go more aggressive, some people less, but probably a good example would be the first time donor welcome series. It's one of my favorites, some people less, but probably a good example would be the first time donor welcome series. It's one of my favorites. So, um, and that'll lead into one of my other pro tips here Uh, the first time donor welcome series, the second that somebody gives that gift, within, uh, seven days of that gift, you're getting a phone call, 100%.

Speaker 3: 23:06

You're getting a phone call from someone in my organization. Um, and I'll talk a little bit about when someone hears that and goes how are you calling all these people? There's just no way. I've got a great, great resource for you. You're getting a phone call. You're also getting a video message texted right to your phone thanking you. So that's right from the team.

Speaker 3: 23:24

And so, within a week of that first gift, there's obviously some of the auto emails and the gift receipt that'll come out. You're also getting that phone call and the video message thanking you. And then, along that journey between then and six months later, there's some emails educating you a little bit more. We know if you've gone through the non-donor welcome series or not, so we know what type of information to start to give you. And we're moving you about six months after that to give another gift and we're really building that up.

Speaker 3: 23:50

And if you don't, that's okay, because we've got a flow built out that'll start to catch you when you're pre-lapsing and build up the hype around the anniversary of your gift date. Like, becky, it's coming up, your one-year anniversary of giving to us, right? So no worries if we don't get the six-month gift, but if we get the six-month gift, then we're starting to move them into. Hey, you've given twice in a year now. Like, maybe we want to make this a formal recurring donation. Here's what we do with that program, so that one's a fun one.

Speaker 1: 24:21

I think so many of us are. Just we're pushing through the grind of doing all the things and then we see a shiny thing and it's like, oh, let's try digital marketing over here. And oh, phone is coming back and let's talk about how to diversify phone. But this is such a plan of intention and I want to quote you back to you, nicholas, to the community, because the first time we met, you said some things and I wrote them down and I just thought they were really, really profound. And you mentioned this before. You said every place you meet someone, map that out wherever they're coming in the door. And you talked about the non-donor.

Speaker 1: 24:53

And I want to make sure that people connect, sometimes what we call the non-donor, which is like the lurkers, and these are people that are surrounding your mission in some way.

Speaker 1: 25:02

They are watching, they are learning. They may not even be engaging with like a thumb up on one of your posts, but they are watching and learning. And so when you look at someone and you see all the entry points of which they could connect and you start to map it out, you need to ask yourself, like, what journey are you on? And Nicholas called this his the donor, plinko board. Like, do you remember this back when you were sick at home watching like the Price is Right, like, and I can totally see, like, oh, they came in through email and then they came to the event and I just see, and they're erratic, like John said Boom yeah totally Totally, and no journey is probably the same for very many people, and so the point is, what you told me is we're moving each of these people with intention, we're mapping out the right strategy and we're finding the right platform to do it.

Speaker 1: 25:54

So it's really about planning, mapping and documenting. And so I want to ask a question about diversifying these touch points, because when you just gave that example, it wasn't like, oh, we're going to put you in the email funnel and then we're going to do another email, and then we're going to do another email. It's like, okay, we're going to recognize that not everybody consumes data the same way. Not everybody shows up in the same place every way. So I would love to get your advice on how people can diversify the way that they plot out those connections.

Speaker 3: 26:28

Yeah, for us, the three main touch points that we're using in these journeys for the most part are call, text and email. You know nothing groundbreaking there. We are really fortunate to be a user of Virtuous, so there's some amazing responsive CRM things we can do with automation. We use KindCatch on the texting sides. There's some cool things that are triggering there, so some amount of that is automated and then some amount of it is manual, because there's some really custom language.

Speaker 3: 26:52

We're putting in some of those emails or texts, but there's also calls within that, and the only way, the only way that we'd be able to pull this off is how we do it, and it's what's called our donor outreach SWAT team, and if you don't have a donor outreach SWAT team, I would encourage you to get one. And all this is is this is a group of one to 12 people, maybe more. It's board members, key on-fire volunteers and some staff, and they're on a list and every Friday I pull a report of people that need to get a call with their donor notes, life-to-date, giving what we know about them, why we're calling them, and then I know with each donor outreach SWAT team member how many calls do you want to make this week. And they know, like, becky says, I'll make two for you every week, cool, becky gets her two.

Speaker 3: 27:40

Ed says he wants seven, great, he'll get seven. Somebody wants one, no problem, I'll give you one. And then everybody gets assigned a person. They get this Excel file and then they call and they just think and then they put in some notes of like what the person said. And I've made it really easy for them and I've got an Excel template that happy to share with anybody for how I use it. But that allows us to scale the call touch point and the feedback from that is amazing. First off, like from the donor side, it's brilliant. But it's also like selfishly strategic, because my board members are more engaged than ever.

Speaker 3: 28:09

And they're like texting me. I was like Nick, you wouldn't believe the conversation I just had with this donor, like thanks for letting me do this.

Speaker 1: 28:17

Two words rabid fans. They unleash the movement because they are core value number four of we are for good. It's not just about giving, it's about belief. They are believers in what you're doing and the connective tissue that you're creating between them and the person on the front line tissue that you're creating between them and the person on the front line. You're getting, I would guess, a twofer out of that. You're growing not only the connectivity of the donor but also the volunteer. And guess what? It's all done organically in community, hands off to you and your three-person staff who can focus on doing other things for the organization. That is freaking brilliant. And yes, we do want that resource and we will link it up in the show notes if you're willing to share it.

Speaker 2: 29:07

Agreed. It's something we talk about a lot is like the gift of activation, like it really is a gift when you give and show someone the right next way to be helpful or to plug in, and I think that's what leads to so much engagement here. So I mean, you've had all this incredible experience. You've obviously built a tech platform to power all this. What are some pro tips? What are some lessons learned as you kind of step back that you could pass along to others looking to replicate the success?

Speaker 3: 29:30

I think the small bite strategy is one for sure. It is very intimidating to listen to this and think it's all got to get done in this fiscal year, whatever your fiscal year is. We've been working on this for a couple of years now and we didn't have all the journeys we have when we first started. So that small bite approach starts with the leadership and setting the expectation. With the team of like. We're on a boat and we are sailing across the ocean, but there are multiple checkpoints on this ocean journey and right now we're just going to get to checkpoint one and here's checkpoint one and let's row and that that is so, on the leadership of like, charting that path and setting the destination, but then the micro checkpoints. So I think the small bite approach is one that I wish that more people talked about when they talk about donor journeys, because it's we wouldn't be able to do it without it.

Speaker 1: 30:21

Yeah, I think that's so good. And something else that you were talking to me about is like, right now, in this moment in time, people more than ever are reverse engineers, and so I want to say that because I thought that was a really good takeaway. When you're approaching your donor journey and, guys, I want to tell you you don't have to have four right away. We're talking pilots this year and it's like start with one, map out one, get a target Maybe it's your new donors or maybe your sustainers and it's like figure out what do you want to do, what kind of a journey do you want to take them on? What are you proud of? What do you want to make sure that they understand? How do you create some connection back to the organization, whether it's with their story or the way that they can amplify your work? It's not just about getting them in the pipeline to give. It will come if we're doing all of these other things. So just hats off to you, nicholas. I just think what you've built is so beautiful.

Speaker 1: 31:21

You have a book coming out, so for anybody who literally wants the playbook, nicholas has put together this book. It's called the Practical Guide to Donor Journeys. Can we just talk about how great and frank that is, and you've done all this research and I thank you for getting curious and following that nudge and mapping it out for us, and when you didn't find a solution, you built one, and I just think the scrappiness and the grassroots of this is something that a lot of people are going to relate to, and I could just not be rooting for you more. So I just have to think that as you've walked through your life and it's such an interesting path that you've been traveling you've had to encounter just moments that have just taken your breath away, moments that center you deeply, and we honor and celebrate stories so much in this space, and we would love to hear a story of generosity, kindness, that's really stuck with you in this work.

Speaker 3: 32:22

There's two that stick out for sure and one is very short and the other one is a great story. The one that sticks out that's very short is we were doing a blanket making event at a mall and there was an egg roll shop next to the blanket making event and the owner of this egg roll shop walked out because he saw the fleece and people laughing and music and he just like, asked me a couple of questions about the organization. He walked away. He came back, he handed us a thousand bucks. He's like you're doing amazing work, here you go. And uh, we were back at that mall a month later and his shop was shut down and I we did not get, we were not able to get in touch with him. We could not find this guy. But just to like that, we sat in that for a second. It's like not find this guy, but just to like that, we sat in that for a second. It's like holy smokes like this. This is someone who had every excuse not to give in that moment a thousand dollars. Nonetheless, like he had every excuse not to give, but he felt it in his heart, loved the mission and you know you better believe that we were making good on that thousand bucks and turning that into real impact in honor of of that owner. And that was pretty cool. So that was the first one. The second one is a quick one Blanket recipient named Hannah Thomas.

Speaker 3: 33:29

She was 16 years old, wanted to go to Disney Paris. She was in Disney Paris, started having headaches, went to the hospital in Paris hey, we think you've got a brain tumor. Immediate flight back to the States Mott Children's Hospital. Rushed into brain surgery. Wakes up. She's got a blanket on her when she comes out of surgery a blue polka dot blanket. Blue is her favorite color and as she was recovering she said hey, my birthday's in two weeks. I'm going to cancel my birthday party and turn it into a blanket making event. She made 25 blankets with her friends for her birthday, like weeks after coming out of brain surgery. And then she got her whole community involved in a Grozeo community event. That now is an annual event every year and they've made hundreds and hundreds of blankets over the last five years because of Hannah paying it forward Ripple ripple connoisseur man that we will not know his name to Hannah, that we can name and celebrate her, like, wow, like that's a movement.

Speaker 2: 34:27

That's where people see that they're actually stepping into. This does matter and it really does create an impact. I've loved this conversation, man. I mean we're starting to wind down and you have gotten so much wisdom in such a short time, too, through this conversation. I've got to ask you what's a one good thing? It can be a piece of advice, secret to success, mantra that rolls around your head, or something that's just lifting for you right now.

Speaker 3: 34:45

I would probably lean on the uh, the ask more questions philosophy and I think, like, do an audit at the end of the day of, like, what questions did I ask today, you know, and um, it is, it has been when I, when I get to speak to high school students especially, it's the number one thing that I talk about outside of the gratitude piece of the message is like, we got to ask more questions. We've all got to care so much more about everything, every little detail, every big detail and so I think we can always ask more questions and do a little audit with yourself on a daily basis. Like, you know, what questions did I ask today? And I think you could be pretty surprised by your answers.

Speaker 1: 35:24

Nicholas, people are going to want to connect with you. They're going to want to contact you and say, okay, now break it down for me. What exactly do you do with your occurring donors and how do they respond, and what do we? And so you're going to become such an expert in this topic lane, I believe in the sector. So where do you hang out online? How can people hang out with you? And, yeah, if you want to add anything about your book, we'd love to drop that too, and keep in mind that we'll like drop that into our communications when it does come out.

Speaker 3: 35:53

I appreciate that big time. I'm just trying to figure it out every day, so I'm asking a lot of questions. If my questions can be helpful to anyone, you can email me directly at any point in time, nicholas at fleeceandthankyouorg. Some people think that it's not the right move to give out emails and county links, but, honestly, if you can't make time for other people, I don't know what are you making time for. So, until the day it comes to bite me, send me an email and I'm going to get back to you ASAP and I it back to you ASAP. And, like I know, we started as strangers, but I hope that we can, you know, become friends and if I can be helpful in any way, shoot me an email.

Speaker 3: 36:24

Outside of that, um, we put a lot of time into the fleece and thank you mission. So, at fleece and thank you on LinkedIn, facebook, instagram, tik TOK, youtube you can usually see me there talking about something wild and crazy and having a good time doing it. And then, um, we also have a really cool part of what we do, the Grateful Human podcast, where we just get to interview people about gratitude. So if you're just wanting to munch on some gratitude, the Grateful Human podcast is a great place to do it.

Speaker 2: 36:51

What a conversation You're. So our people, my friend, love the way you showed up in the world. Stay curious, growth mindset, like all these things, just stack. Appreciate your time today.

Speaker 1: 36:59

Yeah, and thank you for sharing the playbook so openly with this community. I hope it starts another ripple.

Speaker 3: 37:05

Thank you, guys. Very, very grateful for the time today. Thanks, becky and John.