We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

621. Hold Fast: Storytelling That Grounds, Heals + Connects - Obiekwe Okolo

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Meet Obiekwe “Obi” Okolo, storyteller, creative director + culture alchemist. 🤝

In this episode of Hold Fast, we’re slowing down to explore the deep, healing power of story with Obi Okolo—visionary creative and founder of Bittersweet Creative. Born in Lagos, raised in Texas, and rooted in purpose, Obi invites us into a conversation about crafting stories that don’t just meet metrics—but move hearts.

From launching his own coffee brand to championing narratives that center identity, belonging, and truth, Obi reminds us that storytelling isn’t just a strategy. It’s soul work. It’s how we make meaning, deepen connection, and imagine new futures.

Your story isn’t a marketing tool—it’s an invitation to be seen, to feel, and to dream bigger.

🎧 Tune in and join us for one of the most heart-expanding conversations of the season.

You'll hear:

  • Storytelling helps nonprofits meet goals and expand community.
  • Storytelling should be approached as a practice of reconnection and belonging.
  • Nonprofits often struggle with their identity and message during crises.
  • Creating for everyone often results in creating for no one.
  • Silence can be a powerful form of protest and connection.
  • Listening to the wisdom of elders can guide our storytelling journey.

Episode Highlights

  • The Importance of Relationships in Storytelling (08:58)
  • The Role of Nonprofits in Storytelling (11:50)
  • The Process of Ethical Storytelling (15:06)
  • The Impact of Community in Storytelling (23:55)
  • Understanding Audience and Authenticity (36:02)
  • Practical Exercises for Better Storytelling (39:30)
  • Listening and Learning from Elders (50:10)
  • Obi’s One Good Thing “"Look back and borrow strength from the elders." (50:27)

Episode Shownotes: www.weareforgood.com/episode/621


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Speaker 1:

Hey, I'm John.

Speaker 2:

And I'm Becky.

Speaker 1:

And this is the we Are For Good podcast.

Speaker 2:

Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.

Speaker 1:

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 2:

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 1:

So let's get started. Hey Becky, what's happening?

Speaker 2:

We are in the thick of my favorite topic here. We are one holding fast. But guess what we're talking about? How to hold fast while telling your story. That is going to scale and cascade across not just the interwebs, but human to human, like cause to cause.

Speaker 2:

And boy did we bring a really, really impactful and amazing expert to come talk to you today, because we are in the Hold Fast series. We are coming out of this incredible impact up where we're talking about how do you hold fast when everything around you feels like it's changing so quickly? How do you hold fast to your mission? How do you hold fast to your community? And in this era and this time that we are living in, in the craziness of the world that's happening right now, we really feel like telling stories not only help us raise money, they help us meet goals, they help us expand our community and y'all, they give us so much cognitive diversity that is going to enrich who we are as a human being. But what if our stories could be more than strategy? That is the question I want you to think about before John introduces our incredible guest.

Speaker 1:

I mean, what a good question and I don't like to live with a lot of regret, but I have regret that it's taken 615 episodes to get our dear friend Obi Ekwe.

Speaker 1:

Okolo, our friend Obi is finally in the house. Obi is a storyteller, a creative director and culture worker to explore how nonprofits can hold fast to their deeper narratives even when urgency threatens to flatten them. He shares his wisdom from Bittersweet Creative oh my gosh, we love that team so much. Hi everybody. And invites us to really approach storytelling not just as a tool but as a practice of reconnection, identity and belonging, connection, identity and belonging. And becky and I got the beautiful chance just a week ago to hug his neck in dc, where he is living this out, where he shows up with deep authenticity and care for the community that he loves, and so I'm so excited for this conversation and we hope today you're going to leave with some concrete steps to really stabilize and expand your impact. Ob, to have you in the house means the world. Welcome to the podcast. So honored to be here.

Speaker 3:

Thank you for having me. Well, friend, I mean it's your first time through the house, means the world. Welcome to the podcast. So honored to be here. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:

Well, friend I mean it's your first time through the podcast. You know we want folks to know the Obi that we know. Will you share a little bit about your story? What are some formative experiences that led you into this beautiful work you're doing today?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think off the top one thing that I've borrowed from a mentor of mine who always introduces himself as an amateur human. I feel like it's important to note.

Speaker 3:

I've never done this before, None of us have ever done this before. You get one shot and then that's the show. So I've spent most of my life trying to figure out just how to do this humanity thing. Well, I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. I lived in Nigeria until I was about seven years old and from there we moved to San Antonio, Texas. So I am a first-generation American immigrant and I think that sort of probably has shaped me. I've realized in the last probably decade that that has shaped me more than any experience of my life, because much of my sort of young life was trying to excavate the story Like how, who am I?

Speaker 3:

When you move to any new place at that age there's this really weird condition, I think like seven it doesn't feel like a lot of time, but seven years is like the fiber of your being is formed in that seven year period and you know a lot of things get added to that fiber, and ornament and decoration, but that fiber is there.

Speaker 3:

So I remember, you know, even as a, as a kid, feeling deeply Nigerian, even though I was, you know, not in Nigeria anymore. And then, to fast forward a number of years, I'm 16. And I've at this point been here longer than I was there but I still feel deeply Nigerian. The dissonance becomes even more because now the logic it defies logic. It's like, well, I've been here longer, why am I not more American and why am I still feeling this tension? And it just sort of continues. So I think story and understanding story and understanding complex narratives has sort of been ingrained in me from birth and through those experiences my first love and first career aspiration was music. I was a musician from a very, very, very young age and was in every band. I could be all the way through high school. I'm like what was your instrument.

Speaker 3:

I'm a percussionist, percussionist, yeah, so orchestral percussion, jazz and I was a drummer in a few bands through high school and through college and thought I was going to go to school for music. You know, I do still have West African parents. That was not in the cards. That was not in the cards, Not quite an option, didn't fit the doctor, lawyer, engineer and after you know, procrastinating because I thought there was hope.

Speaker 3:

For a long time I sort of was looking staring down the barrel of a lot of past deadlines and I ended up applying to architecture school because one of my teachers, mr Peavy my teachers, mr Peavy had sort of been saving a portfolio from me for most of my high school career and I didn't know.

Speaker 3:

And that's another thing that I think is important to note about me is I try to be acutely aware of the fact that I am sort of absolutely nothing without all the people that have contributed to me, and those are obviously parents, you know, my, my mom, my dad, to some extent uncles and aunts, but also teachers, mr peavy, miss brown, who was my independent study teacher, uh, for my junior and sophomore, junior and senior year of high school, uh, whose room I I cried in a number of times in crisis, and she was like my school mom, mark Blizzard. He was my foundation architecture studio professor. After I got into architecture school, after Mr Peavy gave me the portfolio that he'd been storing for me and our first day of architecture, of our architecture and culture theory class, blizzard gets on stage, puts on Miles Davisis's bitches brew and plays it for the entire class period.

Speaker 3:

That sounds like my kind of person the only words he said to us that class is architecture, static music, and the sooner you realize it, the better off you'll be. And I was like, oh, okay, wow, we are. Somehow I found myself where I'm supposed to be, yeah, and there's just, there's just so many names, uh, and and I I sort of have a running list um on my phone, in a notebook, of the people who have poured into me, and you know, one of those people is kate schmidgall, who's currently my employer, my boss, my friend, the founder of bittersweet creative, and I sort of found myself in this space after graduating from architecture, realized I I'm sort of I knew during my junior year that I didn't want to be a licensed capital, a architect, and more on that story, I can send you a link to a podcast where I told that full story discovered that I really loved sort of decoding architecture for the public, which was, I think, the first time that I sort of entered the realm of what I think would be called, you know, storytelling, marketing. So I approached my boss at the time and said, hey, I kind of don't want to be doing this thing and we have a marketing director position open at the firm and no one's doing it and we're really bad at telling our story. Can I do that instead? And he said, yeah, that sounds great.

Speaker 3:

So I went into that role, did that for a while, really enjoyed it, and then sort of ran to another wall of, okay, cool, the architecture profession doesn't actually want its story to be understood Again. More on that at a different time. So I don't necessarily want to be here either. And my boss at the time had a sense of that. So he was like well, you to leave? And I said that sounds awesome. I had been, uh, collecting some clients, freelance work on the side and just decided not to apply for a job. Um, after I got let go. So I did that for about six years, cut my teeth in the dc hospitality scene restaurant groups, restaurateurs, hotels then got hired on by a, an ownership group called Brookfield hospitality. Um, in 2019, they're opening a product in DC called the year's truly hotel. Got to be involved in the design of the hotel, the programming I was creative and culture director on property.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

And then we were set to open March of 2020.

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's a bummer, it's just a real bummer.

Speaker 3:

So that didn't happen. I had another form of learning experience and having to lay off 52 people. The day before I got laid off and after having to train 52 people, you know, three or four weeks prior, and at that time I was sort of attending. I was in a church community in dc. Kate um was part of that community as well and I'd known her for some years. She asked me in 2020 to come and rebrand bigger suite um, our agency and our foundation, and that was you're behind that brand first introduction into the brand.

Speaker 3:

Oh my gosh. And then that turned into do you want to hang out part-time, do some stuff for clients? And then part-time turns to full-time. And here we are five years, I think five years, almost a day. We're approaching that time and that season and that's what I do now.

Speaker 2:

I just I want to lift a couple of things because I can't go into talking about story without highlighting what I just saw you do there, which is what I think brilliant storytellers do. One, you come in early on and say I don't know. I don't know what this is, I don't know what I am in this world. Yes, I am an amateur human being. I don't know where the story is going, but the level of rootedness that you have and who you are and your values is so clear and it comes through the way that you are endlessly curious.

Speaker 2:

My friend, to allow the story, the moment, the whatever, to be shaped and to just be in flow with it, I think is also a great quality of a storyteller. And I think just allowing to be pulled by the current in some way and being open to the experience because I'm sure you could have never seen that your path would have been this, this winding at least. And I have to say I have the unique position of being coached by Obie, because Obie produced a podcast that I participated in with Stand Together Foundation. We were breaking down the history of philanthropy, like where did this come from? And it was just a beautiful experience. So I think you're going to guide us through some really powerful conversation, because there are many stories that need to be told right now in the sector, in this world stories of truth, stories of humanity, and you have been doing this for years in such a beautiful and human way. So what's one thing that you wish more nonprofits understood about storytelling in this moment, right now?

Speaker 1:

One thing is hard Get ready for the one good thing.

Speaker 3:

I mentioned it on the, when we had our whole fast panel, I think, remembering that communication, storytelling, is rooted in relationship, um, and you know any. Any therapist counselor will tell you the key to a healthy relationship is communication. I think the opposite is also true, that the key to good communication is relationship. And that means a lot of things. And I think, like, like I wish, I wish we all had more time. Well, not had more time, that's not true. We have the time. We all took more time to sort of take an idea and extrapolate it entirely. So, like I say, the key to healthy communication is relationship. And the first thing we think is like relationship to people, and that's one thing that's true, absolutely Like we need to have the relationship to people, um, to be able to communicate to them, to be able to communicate about them without being exploitative, um, which is what happens a lot in in storytelling in the non-profit space, um, but also relationship to ideas.

Speaker 3:

I think one of my, my favorite, all of the people who I follow and I study and I love, who create works of art or even like works of art in commerce, you know, works of advertising. They're, first and foremost, students of the craft. They have a healthy and robust and evolving relationship with the topic and I think we oftentimes sort of like skip that part too. It's just like we want to go directly towards. You know the ROI. You know one of the things that I'm also going now. I'm like here's another thing. That's another one thing Money is not the product, money is the byproduct.

Speaker 3:

Money is not actually the aim, like it's a goal that we can set, but funding is a byproduct of something healthy and you won't fund, you can't raise the funds if the thing isn't healthy. Whatever, the thing is, whether it's your communication strategy, whether it's your programming, whether it's your development strategy, I think aiming at and what's sort of beautiful about that is that kind of should be freeing in some ways, um, because it allows you to look at something else that might not in the in the immediate sense of the word, might not be connected so directly to roi, which a lot of boards are asking non-profits to prove that roi um. But in the, the challenge is the quick money in the door is a lot easier thing to point to than a healthy relationship to an audience or a subject or a theme. So we reach to point to that money and point to those quick hits, the dopamine of big numbers. But what undergirds that is something sort of fragile and super temporal and then, as we are feeling right now, something comes in and shakes the house and we have nothing talk about holding fast. We suddenly have nothing to hold on to. You can only hold fast if you have something to hold fast to.

Speaker 3:

And I find a lot of nonprofits are finding themselves in this place of like. Oh, I don't actually know who I am anymore, I don't know who we are. I kind of I have a vague idea of what we do, enough to sort of like do the elevator pitch or enough to, and I have an idea of how to sort of like create a formula of what we do so that we can, you know, connect to that ROI as quickly as possible. When I sit in the quiet moments and allow those intrusive thoughts to take over for a minute, I'm actually really insecure about our message. I'm actually really insecure about our identity. I'm actually really insecure. I don't have anything to hold on to.

Speaker 3:

And I think that relationship again it's like in our current cultural social upheaval we're finding is that something came in and shook our literal, physical houses, our homes, our families, our relationships, our friendships and we realized, oh, those aren't as strong as I thought they were. They were anchored to and holding onto something that was a little bit more shallow, vapid, fragile than I initially thought. So now it's okay, cool. How do we lick our wounds and reframe and start to sort of rebuild a new foundation, stronger relationships to our audiences and our subject matter and our crafts? I've talked a lot it.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I mean Obie.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot that I would want to dig into, but I'll just say what's lifting for me is the level of intentionality and care that just is so deeply threaded in everything that you do, and your team's work too, because I look at Bittersweet Creative the way that y'all show up in the world, the way that you storytell it connects to this belief that we have about a core idea of ethical storytelling, is the belief that the way that you storytell it connects to this belief that we have about a core idea of ethical storytelling, is the belief that the way that we tell stories can be indicative of, like, our values and our mission.

Speaker 1:

It's actually a way to live out our mission and the way that we storytell and the words we choose to use and the way that we're framing the stories that we're sharing all of that. And so I just love the way that you have that care and intentionality with how you step through this, because I do think it's something that is transcendent in times like these, because we do look for those that that share our values and the things that we do want to hold too fast, and y'all live that really well. So I don't know if you could talk about some of the projects that y'all have created at bittersweet, that challenge perspectives, that evoke emotion, but they're doing that in such a dignified, beautiful way, how you know what's your approach to crafting stories that go deep, without using the quick hook or the you know the things that would actually perpetuate problems in the space, which I think is an easy route to go that sacrifices everything we stand for.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, route to go that sacrifices everything we stand for. Yeah, that is a really storied and well nurtured process and I've got to give credit to Kate and Dave and the rest of our bittersweet creative core, all our designers, all our filmmakers, our photographers, our writers because we've been spending the last probably like two years but like nine-ish months really focused on honing in on what we're calling the bittersweet way and that is just for us to be able to sort of codify what we've just been doing for, in Kate's case, over 12, 13 years. Now the first part of the process is challenging. So a little background on Bittersweet we do bittersweet creative, our for-profit creative agency entity. We also have bittersweet foundation, um, which publishes bittersweet monthly, which is our online for now magazine. I say for now because print is coming back, baby I'm saying it's back but digital for now online magazine.

Speaker 3:

Then we also have a bittersweet collective. This whole body is sort of being understood. It's just like made by bittersweet and they're fundamentally three different products. I think you know the the most pure outpouring of what we do is probably bittersweet monthly. Uh, our client services work, we, we, the work that we do with our foundation and our storytelling for Bittersweet Monthly breathes the life into the client services work and that work sort of the process starts first and foremost once we choose our story subjects, which are nominated by our readers, and we've done our pre-production call with the organization and the subject of the story.

Speaker 3:

The process begins with a self-emptying. It's the most challenging part of the process for me because, in addition to being a creative director and sort of being responsible for stewarding the stories of others, I'm also an artist. So at the same time, I have my own voice and my own thing that I'm trying to say in certain seasons. But client services and storytelling, it's not necessarily the time for my voice. Necessarily there is an art to it, but it is not my art, and that's one of the things that I find very helpful and important for me when I'm working with clients is to remind them that, hey, you aren't the client, you aren't your client, you aren't the customer Always, because one of the things that and then a process of deep, deep listening, asking questions, getting responses, asking more questions, getting responses, sort of repeating the thing. Here's what I hear you saying. Is that right? You know, here are the assumptions that I'm making based on what you're saying. Are those assumptions right? Invite people to challenge your assumptions. And the question that you asked me was actually what is a product? What is a product or piece of work? And here I am rambling. I would say that the products that stand out are just all of our storytelling.

Speaker 3:

With Bittersweet Monthly In the last year, we've written stories about very, very challenging and very, very divisive subjects, divisive in our cultural landscape and the way that the team is able to take what is being said by people who are proximate to the problem, people who are experiencing these hardships every single day, and sort of hold them, quite literally. Hold them because the exercise of storytelling is deeply relational and cannot be transactional without causing a lot of damage. So you know, when I come off of a story I'm exhausted, I'm so, I mean, just like to the nth degree. I'm done Because I have. I've, to the best of my ability, completely emptied myself and then taken on someone else's burdens, joys, grief, all of the above so that I can then sort of make something for our audience within me and within our team and then push that out, and it's just an exhausting process if you're doing it well. So that's some of the work that's really exciting and I think also the work that we've done, particularly trying to figure out which project to tap on.

Speaker 2:

Can I lift one that I really loved?

Speaker 3:

Please go for it.

Speaker 2:

That happened. Is it Together, chicago, chicago Together.

Speaker 3:

Together, chicago. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh. I thought I'm like can you talk a little bit about that one, because I read that one and was so deeply moved by it. I can, I can the community is everything underpinning of that was really beautiful. Yeah, break that story down for us.

Speaker 3:

Honestly, that one I can just start. That's an easy one to tell because it sort of illustrates the commitment to relationship. Together Chicago, I think, was actually nominated and I might need to be fact-checked on my team at some point but nominated for a story in 2023. And the way our nomination process works out is our stories, our organizations, are nominated by our readers, and then that list gets sort of pulled based on a number of criteria longevity and operation, you know. Do they have a formal structure that allows for accountability and leadership? What is? What is their impact look like? How familiar is the community with their work? Once we do that, we take that full list of call it like this year, I think it was like 29 stories or subjects and we've then gathered together as a contributor core our filmmakers, photographers, writers, um, and they sit and we, they, we sit and do what we basically call our story slam, which is just like, uh, rapid research ideation, advocating for stories that resonate, to figure out which ones are going to rise to the top, and then we sort of like select, draw a line, and that becomes our slate for the year. So 2023, I believe, is when Together Chicago was nominated and, as you can tell, we're now in 2025, and it just released. And, as you can tell, we're now in 2025 and it just released, and part of the reason why that is is because the writer on that piece, anne Schneider, wanted to go to the noise. We want to be in proximity and we want to spend enough time to know that what we're saying isn't trendy or isn't echoing the sort of prevailing narrative of despair that is the idea of violent crime in Chicago and what's being done about it. We want to tell something more resonantly true. Also, when you give things time, then other things can happen. So, between 2023, and it might've been 22, and when the story production began, we had a new photographer join our team, who is now.

Speaker 3:

I love Corey's work, and he came to us for a completely different reason, but he's based in Chicago and has grown up in Chicago his entire life. So now, in giving this thing the time that it needs, we now have a lens that is not just in the place, but it's also of the place. Um, it's just. I think these the products that really rise to the top for me. The client work that rises to the top for me is the work that's given the time and attention that it needs to be cultivated, and that doesn't always mean a long time, it just means the right time. Everything comes to fruit in its right time.

Speaker 3:

I tell clients all the time I don't care how much money you have, I don't care how rich you are, a baby takes 10 months. It takes 10 months to see a baby the full term. It doesn't matter how much money you have. And that's a helpful analogy to understand with products, with creative products, if you want it to be full, if you want it to be rich, if you want it to be what you say you want it to be. It takes time. It takes the time that it takes, and you've got to give it that time, otherwise you're cutting a corner and you have to be okay with cutting that corner and that has repercussions as well.

Speaker 2:

And something I'm hearing again, john, there's like a common thread in every one of these Hold Fast discussions is this need not to panic and rush and create this sense of urgency, this concept of germinating and being steady and sitting in your breath. And because I think what you're saying is really important here, obi, about the fact that stories are never one dimensional, I don't care if you come in and think you're about to tell a story that you think has a certain arc with a certain hero. If you can allow that germination to happen, the story of one becomes the story of many. The story of one, that person becomes my story, and so I do think that the collective moment that we're seeing right now of grassroots, of people speaking up, standing up, stepping out and away, I think it is such a storied moment for story. Like. I think it is such a storied moment for story right now because this was literally a trend that we had in our 2025 trends this year that Dr Tim Lampkin came and talked about.

Speaker 2:

It was owning your narrative, and what is the authentic version of your narrative right now? Not the version you know when you started, or 10 years ago, or 15 years ago, when you did your brand refresh. It is what is the story of now? Who is that story? Who's wrapped in it? Why are we wrapped in it? And so I feel like you're hitting some really important themes here, obi, and I'm wondering for someone who's really just getting into this and taking this posture of sitting and listening and allowing it to roll what makes a story stick? And I don't just mean, like how you write it, if it's a video, or your friend Corey's capturing it, you know digitally, but how does something stick emotionally and culturally? What are those hallmarks?

Speaker 3:

This isn't an original idea of mine. I don't know where it came from. It's sort of an adage of film and writing and specificity. Specificity in storytelling is what makes a story stick and it's a little bit counterproductive because the sort of prevailing narrative and understanding would tell you that the more specific a story is, the less someone can see themselves in it. That's actually not the case at all. When we do a thing in brand, we oftentimes try to create the thing for the most number of people and when you create again not an original idea you try to create something for everybody. You've actually just created nothing for no one.

Speaker 3:

And my favorite design, one of my favorite design quips, is a camel, is a horse designed by committee. Add a hump. It makes exactly. I don't like where that was not another one. So I think this, that the idea to me, um, you know when I think about like I, I, I, I am, uh, I love art, I love culture, um, and I love film, I love, love television. So I think, like the stories, episodes of TV that have stuck with me over the number, the last number of years, are like the Thanksgiving episode. I think it's the Thanksgiving episode of Master of None.

Speaker 3:

Season three, the one that Lena Waithe directed and produced, but it basically her character in in the in the show is introducing her family to her girlfriend for the first time, and it's such a hyper-specific story of a queer couple coming home. I'm not a man that belongs to that community, I am a black man in the same way. So like there was some resonant there, but it was told in such a specific way that there is this nugget of universal truth that's about belonging, that's about family, that's about wanting to be a part and not being allowed to be a part, that's about insider, outsider dynamics. And because it was told so specifically, well, it became this like, oh gosh, I feel it, I'm there. Um, another one that comes to mind is, uh, that these are all holiday episodes. Maybe I've got some untapped holiday trauma I haven't dealt with. Um, the christmas, the christmas episode of the bear. Um, from season two, season two, I gotta watch the bear yeah, where like everybody.

Speaker 3:

Oh, at the same time, that same season. The forks episode, which is right after the christmas episode, the episode where cousin uh does the stodge at the at um, I think it's called everly or I forget the name of the restaurant in chicago and he sort of realizes that he's always had this heart for hospitality and he's just never really known how to direct it. And again such a specific story. But we have this fear, as people who create things for other people, that if we get too specific we'll lose people. And that is the truth and you're going to lose the people that you want to lose. I would rather have 10 people who are vocal 10s in a room for my brand than 30 people who are just lukewarm 3s.

Speaker 2:

Same.

Speaker 3:

Every day Because the vocal 10s will bear a fruit that the lukewarm 3s won't. And you'll spend your entire energy and time and effort and budget trying to keep the threes entertained and trying to keep the threes happy, but they were never going to be happy or entertained and you're going to continue to warp yourself and create less specific stories, trying to keep those threes in the room at a three, whereas tens are advocates, tens are attractors, tens are people who want to bring other people into the room who might be and I think part of the again, we have this fear. I want people to hear this because I think the way that we consume is also the way that we create. If you consume from a place of scarcity, you're going to create from a place of scarcity and I need America to understand that not every story that you have access to is for you.

Speaker 2:

Okay, say it again.

Speaker 3:

Not every story that you have access to is for you. Not every story that you have access to is designed to reflect you, your experience or your understanding. It might be designed to expand your experience or your understanding A lot of. Designed to expand your experience or your understanding. A lot of different examples come to mind the Disney short Disney and Pixar short Bow.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I love Bow.

Speaker 3:

Great, great film. But, like when it first came out, there was a lot of this weird discourse about like, oh, how weird this is and like how, why the story spoiler for those who want to watch it? It's so culturally relevant. But the story sort of goes you know, this mother raises this piece of bow son that is personified in this piece of bow to a certain age and the son is growing up and growing a personality and, you know, as the son is getting ready to sort of like grow beyond the mother's need for him, she eats him. And everybody was like, oh, this is so weird, it's so I don't like it. Like why would a mother do that to their son? And meanwhile, and I sort of watched it and I was like I, this is really interesting, I'm not mad at it.

Speaker 3:

I don't I don't necessarily understand it, and it wasn't until I was talking to um, an asian, american friend of mine, who was like, oh no, that was for me, I, we, we get it. And we were, we were all in tears because it's a, it's a deeply, it's for us, it was written for us and you have access to it and you can either be curious about why it is the way that it is. Another example is the Superbowl performance, kendrick Lamar Superbowl performance. So much discourse Like, oh, I didn't understand a single word. He said, oh, rap has no place at the Super Bowl.

Speaker 3:

And that's such a mindset of I mean, let's not even get into any of that, but like that's such a mindset of scarcity, when curiosity could actually have been the response of like, oh, why did he do this? And then it takes you down just such a fruitful rabbit hole of people who again are students of the product and students of their craft. So I think that idea that just because I have access to it doesn't mean it's for me, will help us be better creators when we're in the rooms trying to write stories or create products for our constituents, for our beneficiaries, to say, how do we tell the most authentic story and the most specific story for them and about them. And the sort of the threes be damned Like. Let's not worry about the people who it's not for. Let's focus on the people who it is for and make sure that it honors them, it's true to them, and then the byproduct of money, I think, follows. That's a bet I'm willing to take every day. I'll go broke on that bet, I agree.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean it's a core value here that we're not interested in getting more donors. We want to grow believers around our work. You know like that's going to be worth tenfold any kind of transactional way more than tenfold. Who am I kidding? So I mean, if you're looking for storytelling, we'll definitely link up bittersweet monthly. I mean, if you could just get lost in the storytelling of this group that does this so well, definitely want to check that out. But, obi, we've been challenging our friends listening to have a little bit of homework from these Hold Fast series because we hope that these conversations turn into deeper reflection and turn into moments for us to ask better questions for ourselves. What are some prompts or maybe an exercise you would encourage people listening today that could lead them to become better, deeper storytellers at this moment?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I would say two things slow down and make it bigger are my two sort of messages right now, and slow down in every sense of the word. Just slow the hell down Everybody listening. Just slow down, eat, slower down. Eat slower, listen slower, walk slower. Don't use Google Maps, get lost. Slow down the sense of urgency is the thing that's going to kill us.

Speaker 1:

Holy heck.

Speaker 3:

That sense of urgency. Chaos is the point. Chaos is the point, and if we feed into the chaos and we feed into the urgency, that is how we lose. So we just have to slow down, like I think, in a culture that is loud and fast, counterculture, protest becomes slow and quiet. We can't counterculture with culture, not how it works. The reason I say this a lot to a lot of young people who have a lot of like healthy protest energy and I love it, I love it so much but the reason why sit-ins and loud, vocal protests and boycotts were the language of the civil rights movement that we like to study is because those were the things that culture did not want them to do. Those were countercultural. If our culture is loud, if everyone is screaming in the marketplace, then is our protest not to sit in any in any conversation like this.

Speaker 3:

When the road decision got leaked, I sort of was sort of moved to go down to the supreme court. I live in dc and there were thousands of people down there. Thousands of people um, it's probably the largest crowd I've seen sort of spontaneously gather in dc since I've lived here for 12 years, and it's what started off as sort of like, yeah, we're just highly energized. And then the chant started. And then I noticed something People didn't like the specific chants that were being chanted, so we had competing chants and this is a group of thousands of people who presumably believe the same thing. But it suddenly broke out into this chant battle of people who should be on the same side. And I had this thought of, like what would have happened, what would have been the temperature, the energy, if 5 000 people spontaneously showed up at the steps of the supreme court, sat down and just were silent. Just sat down, 5 000 people in silent protest, just sharing each other's grief, because silence is an invitation. The reason why we avoid silence and the reason why we avoid slowness is because it makes us encounter things we don't want to encounter. So to be silent with my fellow man, to be silent with my neighbor, puts me in a posture where I have to encounter their spirit. I have to feel what they feel. If it's joy, I feel it. If it's grief, I feel it. If it's joy, I feel it's grief, I feel it's hope, I feel it. We don't want to feel that. That was a long tangent, but my first thing is slow down, take more time to do the thing. Um, whatever the thing is for for this is a tactical one for like communicators and messaging. Maybe the time for like punchy two-word tech startup b language is dead.

Speaker 3:

One of my favorite pieces of wisdom is from the Ents in the Lord of the Rings, which are, you know, the Ents. Are these like centuries old beings of Earth who have lived through everything that has ever happened. And Treebeard the Ent says you must understand, young hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in old Entish and we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say. And that has I wish. I mean, that's just like. That's anti-Twitter, that's anti-threads, that's anti, like if it's not worth taking a long time to say it might not be worth saying at all. That goes for hot takes Again, that's such a countercultural idea. So number one is slow down and number two is a tactical exercise.

Speaker 3:

Let's make the thing bigger, and I have this exercise that I'll sometimes do in my slow moments. I've started a practice of what I call non-vulgar listening. Over the last few years I have amassed a decently robust record collection, so every night that I can bring myself to do it, because it's so hard because everything in the world wants me not to do this. I will sit down and listen to a full record, as it was meant to be listened to, from beginning to end, front and back, and that is the activity. No screens, no reading, no, it is just sitting to listen to music as its own act, just as an act of slowness and to be a more conscious consumer and, quite frankly, to honor the product that was created for me to consume. But occasionally I'll doodle or journal or whatever while I'm doing this, and sometimes I'll take an idea and I'll write down the idea and then my prompt is okay, make it bigger.

Speaker 3:

What you know. This is a simple idea of you know what is it? Oh man, my notebook is downstairs where I can actually give you an example. But you know an example could be you know, the idea of a tree, like and I'm just looking out my window now. So we're doing free association. Here we go, folks, podcast, jazz my window now. So we're doing free association. Here we go, folks, podcast, jazz, um, jazz, hands the idea of a tree. How do we make a tree bigger? Okay, cool, make it bigger.

Speaker 3:

Uh, trees are part of a larger ecosystem and part of that is I see a carpenter bee. So we go from tree to a carpenter bee. What's that carpenter be doing, um, and what is its role in the ecosystem? I don't know, but it seems to be flying around. As it flies around, it's pollinating things. It might then I don't know probably scare a little kid who thinks that it might sting it. So the kid runs inside.

Speaker 3:

And now we have a little kid as a character in the story. What does a kid do when it's scared? Well, it runs to protection, so it goes inside. Oftentimes it'll run to a protective force mom or dad. There's a bee there. And now we have mom and dad as a character in the story, started from a tree, and mom and dad are like hey, carpenter bees don't sting, they're friendly, even though they eat the wood in our siding and they cost us a lot of money in renovations, um. And so now the kid knows that the bee doesn't sting, but it's still generally for the bee.

Speaker 3:

So I sort of take this exercise and like, take an idea and start to build characters around this story, um, and then occasionally, if I can, I try to then scale it back and bring it back to the tree, um, so in this exercise it would probably be, which is also I promise I didn't plan this, but like some to go from the idea of this family to, you know, back to the ecosystem. The family is sustained, like we all are, by food, which is provided by the tree, or by oxygen, which is a primary byproduct of. So that's sort of an exercise that I do just to make things bigger, because I think what we've done as society is in an effort to understand. We've oversimplified everything, every single thing we strive to simplify. It's a human, it's our impulse as humans to find pattern so that we can understand, as creative beings, as created beings, in allowing ourselves, just as an exercise, to be overwhelmed by the bigness of all of the things.

Speaker 3:

We are trying so hard, as nonprofit leaders, to help people understand these very, very complex problems. And maybe we need to allow room to intentionally overwhelm our audience with how big these problems are, or overwhelm ourselves to re, to reorient to the thing that we're holding fast to right. A lot of non-profit leaders are so we've talked about this. A lot of non-profit leaders are so in the trenches and so hard at work, um, and trying not to let anything fall through the cracks which is a noble pursuit that they've actually accidentally lost sight of the vision for the future that they're working towards. So to sit and take enough time to make that vision big and say, okay, in this utopia that I've created for my community or that I've contributed to for my community, what does that actually look like, starting from the tree? What's the tree feeling? And then how does that affect the bee? And then how does that affect the kid who encounters the bee?

Speaker 3:

We need to be overwhelmed in the direction of action and overwhelmed in the direction of expanding our moral imaginations to be able to see the world that we're actually working towards. Moral imaginations to be able to see the world that we're actually working towards. And I think that begins to feed everything. That's the fertilizer and the food that bears the fruit. Also, interestingly, fruit is just a byproduct. Like we think about fruit as a product, fruit is a byproduct of a process and when that process is healthy, the fruit is good. When that process is bad, the fruit is bad. Fruit just doesn't become bad.

Speaker 3:

I'm now again rambling and you asked me a question and I think I answered it Slow down and make the big bigger, make all the things. Just exercise, making it as big as you can and sit with that and then go about doing whatever else you need to do, and I think all of that will begin to create sort of new synapses. Like, all of all of my processes aren't necessarily about the product that I'm working on. I'm constantly in the same way that, like, my story is built on so many other stories that could have never imagined a me. It's just like everyone. John talks about this briefly Everyone's a fucking miracle. Everyone's a miracle. Yeah, everyone's a miracle. Everyone's a miracle. Like everyone's a miracle of, of call it a miracle of science, a miracle of magic, a miracle of faith. So all of these processes for me are just to try to help me orient myself back to this idea that, like it's all going to happen. All these things are interrelated. All of these things are related.

Speaker 2:

And right now we've just got to listen to the world around us and ask it what it needs, which requires stillness, slowness, but, like a storyteller, go through their process. Because what's really surfacing for me right now is that you have absolutely moved us away from this tactic that is storytelling, this thing to get someone to move from A to B in a certain way, be in a certain way, and what you've invited in is an experience, which is what I think philanthropy is. It's our experience to come in to feel something, to be a part of something, to invest time, money, talent, whatever it is, into something, and the ability to sit in the experience is going to allow us to have wonder and wonder, and those are luxuries, john. I don't even know that I would fully, that I could fully point back to that in my career moments that I've had to wonder and wonder, and that's what I feel this conversation is leading us to, not just the stillness, not just the rejection of frenetic energy of judgment, because when we feel something and we have that gut reaction, it's typically I don't like that or I have opinions about that, and what you're really reorienting, obie, which is why I just think you're so much more of an artist than even a storyteller is that we find our humanity in ourselves and when we can sit in that we see the humanity in others, and then it awakens curiosity, it awakens humility, it awakens the sense that we are so small and what a privilege it is to be able to come together and make things new, make things better and make the world a little bit easier for somebody else.

Speaker 2:

So I just, I just want to thank you for that Cause I've got a lot of images in my mind about stories that I think have done this really well in my lifetime, and not just in nonprofit, whether it's entertainment or whether it's real life experiences, and I want you to kind of just bring it to a crest for us today, like bring it down to a one good thing as it relates to this topic. What could you tie this all together with? With a beautiful bow?

Speaker 3:

Look back and borrow strength from the elders. I mean that in every sense, like I think about. We talk about story and we get really complicated really fast, but there are some stories that have truly been timeless, that have been told for generations on generations and have iterated and evolved themes of stories that are basically the same and the names are different. We don't tell our kids the story of Little Red Riding Hood across time and space because it's a true story. We tell our kids the story of Little Red Riding Hood across time and space because there is something true about the story that we are trying to communicate. So I think again taking a beat and figuring out how you got here, looking at all the ways and people that contributed to that and allowing them to bolster you and, if they're still alive, talking to them.

Speaker 3:

No, either of my grandfathers spent a lot of time with one of my grandmothers and I find myself now missing her so much because she went through so much and you know on paper what she went through is definitively harder than what I'm going through, but like I can't talk to her about that and so what I'm going through just feels really, really hard. It feels impossible, but I know it's not, so I think figuring out a way to like. The one good thing is we have all the stories. They're all at our fingertips and maybe this is a season where we all need to stop trying to tell more stories than we're listening to and hearing. Hear more stories, oral histories, all of the above, maybe that's my one good thing. Was that even one thing, one good?

Speaker 1:

thing, oh my gosh. I mean, obi, you are a gift, my friend, the way you show up, the way you share and the way this conversation has led us. I mean it's fascinating to me that we've recorded probably half of this series and it's like so much of it comes back to listening, which seems so counterintuitive when it's like we want to go fix all the problems. It's like, actually, how can we ground ourselves in creating that space to reflect internally, externally, listen to other people's stories Like this is the moment for that. So thanks for bringing us back to that. Um, I want folks to find you on LinkedIn, on the places you hang out online. I want them to find bittersweet. Would you connect us? I mean, where's the best way for people to connect with you? Can we give a plug for your amazing coffee brand that launched also that I'm completely obsessed with?

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you brought that up. Drop that there's so many things. Talk about a storytelling challenge.

Speaker 3:

My life is a storytelling challenge. Where do you connect? You can, yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. That's my full name O-B-I-E-K-W-E-O-C-O-L-O. O-k-o-l-o, you can find all of it. Um, the coffee is taste coffee t-a-s-t. Coffeecom. Uh, you can get that to your home.

Speaker 1:

It's really good coffee um, beautifully packaged, as you can imagine john's a snob about these things, so another product and then I think my primary sort of outlet is mostly Instagram, given the visual medium, and writing on there.

Speaker 3:

So it's O-B-I-E-K-W-E-O-C-O-L-O is my handle on Instagram and that'll point you to my website and other things. So, yeah, I really appreciate you all. I feel like the three of us could talk for hours, years, so it never, never feels. Never feels like enough, but we will have other opportunities for sure.

Speaker 2:

Well, the story will keep unfolding between us and between these beautiful missions that are in this community. And, yeah, such a time to listen, such a time to just sit in our grounding, heal and connect and be changed. I'm ready for this moment and thank you for awakening that my friend Appreciate you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, taylor, it's an honor.