Leaders Achieve Great Results When They…
Interview with Ivy Slater

Ivy Slater is a professionally certified business coach, speaker, international best selling author and podcast host. After owning and operating a 7-figure printing business, having been in the industry for 20 years, she started Slater Success. As CEO, Ivy works closely with C-Suite executives and upper-level managers to advise and create clear strategies that provide instant and long-term impact on businesses. Ivy has hosted dozens of both live and recorded webinars, training and business challenge events for clients, as well as non-clients. She speaks all over the country at corporate conferences, seminars and workshops on the topics of leadership, sustainable growth and sales.

Ivy is an expert on nonprofit leadership.

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Hugh Ballou: Hey, it’s Hugh Ballou. We’re back for another edition of The Nonprofit Exchange. Russell Dennis in Denver, you and I will be together in Florida tomorrow, the day after this podcast. How are you doing?

Russell Dennis: Wonderful. Wonderful day here in the neighborhood. We are at Kaiser University in West Palm bright and early Thursday morning. I’m excited about it, but I’m more excited about who we have today. We have a young lady here by the name of Ivy Slater. She is here to talk about results leaders can get when…  

Hugh: Ivy, we like people to talk about themselves. It doesn’t make sense for somebody who doesn’t know you much to introduce you. Give us a sense of your background and why you are doing the work you’re doing now. What’s your passion?

Ivy Slater: What’s my background? My background is I owned a printing company in New York City. I was in the printing industry for over 20 years. Built a successful, profitable business by raising my children here. Got into that industry. It was a male-dominated world. There were a lot of obstacles and hurdles to navigate in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. I built a book of business that enabled me to build my own company, my own brand, and identify what success was for me, which was great.

In 2007, I reached the prime age of 45 and said, “Oh my goodness, what am I doing?” I am not going to die a printer. I was going to be a dancer growing up. I was going to do this and this. I ended up with a great business and with a great life, but my self-identity was questioned. Where is my legacy? What am I going to leave behind? What am I going to stand on? I said, “There has to be something more.” I was working out with a girlfriend doing walking lunges in a park in New York City. She looked at me and said, “You ought to become a coach.” I said, “You want me to coach children in what?” “She goes, “No, Ivy, you have helped me build my business.” “Yeah, I know business. What’s your point?” “There is this whole world of consulting and coaching out there.” I scratch my head.

I went home, and we were laughing about the Internet a few minutes ago. I hit Google, “What is coaching?” Soccer? No, not me. Tennis? Not so good. Business? “Is there coaching in business?” is what I Googled next. From that moment, this was April of ’07. I am a decision-maker. This leads to what I do today. I signed up to get educated on what coaching is by June. I spent the summer reading profusely, book after book after book. What can I get my hands on in every direction? In January of 2008, I opened Slater Success. We are a coaching/consulting/leadership company. I help companies scale and grow. I help great leaders build and scale and grow themselves.

Russell: That’s fun. It’s all about growing. Every organization needs to scale and grow, doesn’t it?

Ivy: Every organization, every human being needs to scale and grow. If we’re not growing, we’re stagnant. If it’s an organization, or people in organizations, when you’re stagnant, what happens next? What do you do? Who do you become? If you’re content on living on a plateau, what does tomorrow look like for you? When we engross ourselves in organizations, we engross ourselves. When the organization is put in a strategy to up-level, scale, grow, we look at marketing and sales and finance and the leadership leading them there. That is a beautiful thing. I’ll always say the secret sauce, and I do love to cook, watch out, what is that herb you throw in? What is that special ingredient that makes that recipe yours? It’s that mindset. What is that mindset for success?

Russell: There are some common barriers that nonprofits face when it comes to growth.

Ivy: One of the biggest misconceptions is that nonprofits are businesses. They sell differently, right? Their end user is not their purchaser. You look at marketing and sales differently there. The people they are servicing are not the people they are selling to. They are selling to their donors. But they are still presenting a value proposition. How do we make an impact? Why is this impact important to you? What is the effect it makes on you as a human being? Why do you care? That is the value proposition and the investment. What the beautiful thing about nonprofits are is then it goes to the finance collective then goes to make a difference in parts of the universe that need this impact.

Russell: It’s really about capturing the measures, both in terms of how well you use the dollars and how you impact people. What do you think is the best tool to help leaders balance the two?  

Ivy: I think great leaders have a couple of things here. Great leaders are visionaries. They are always looking ahead. We are looking ahead. We are visioning ahead. If it’s 2019, we are seeing 2020. We are seeing 2023. We are seeing 2025. Especially in nonprofits, what can we do by then? What can we raise by then? What impact can we make on the community by then? In the vision, they implement a goal. They break it down in the SMART goal process. What is specific? What is measurable? What is achievable, where your action plan is sitting? What is the action plan that the strategy put in place? is it realistic? What is the time frame? Is it a 12-month time frame, 24 months, 36 months? That’s how this works. That’s how this works.

Russell: You’re definitely talking our language here in terms of how you go about building an organization. Talk a little bit about how you coach people to do that. You have been working with both for-profit and nonprofit businesses. What is commonly the first thing you have to say to a nonprofit leader to make a shift into the need for strategy and systems? How do you prime the pump to start that conversation with them?

Ivy: I break it down really simply. To your audience, this will sound, “Really? That’s it?” It will sound simplistic. What do you want, and why do you want it? What do you want for your organization? What do you want for your life? Why is this important to you? Because it comes down to that why that creates that purpose. Without it, it becomes irrelevant. It just becomes- We can put a strategy in place. The three of us could sit down. I got to know you guys enough that the three of us could hunker down together. Give us a board, give us some insight, and we could put together an organizational strategy to grow and scale and impact the world. But how do you actually make that happen? If the leadership is not connected to their own why or their own sense of purpose and why this is important to them, then they get off track. All those bright shiny objects start showing up in a thousand directions. Maybe I’ll do this now, or this now. Hey, slow down all of you. What is your purpose? What is your why? This is the strategy. Once that is connected and in alignment, that is the ability to stay on course.

Hugh: Ivy, I’m sure Russell has this issue, too. I constantly find business leaders who say, “Oh, that leadership stuff in the nonprofit, that is different from what we do in business.” I discover the gaps in skills and understanding are pretty much the same with a corporate leader or a nonprofit leader, even clergy. My response is, “I think they’re similar skills, but it’s a lot more difficult in the nonprofit space.” How would you handle that kind of comment?

Ivy: People are people are people. You want three? People are people are people. This isn’t about the business; this isn’t about the nonprofit; this isn’t about the religious organization; this isn’t about parenting or schools. People are people are people. The more you grow great leaders, the greater impact we make when those leaders are in their place of business. Parents at home, clergy of any sort, it doesn’t matter. It’s about the leadership of people.

I think one thing that is just, people don’t realize it is a great thing to acquire, is become great at your habits. Habits are underrated. Russell is giggling. Habits are underrated. If you go to the gym every day at 7:00, go to the gym every day at 7am. Have that religious habit.

In the same way, you look at your numbers, your finances. I teach something that is called Money Monday and Financial Friday. Know your numbers. You have a responsibility to know your numbers. You want to look it as a business, you want to look at it as a CEO, you want to look at it as an executive director, you want to look at having sales meetings, having donor meetings, having board meetings about numbers. Do you want to look at it as your personal finances? Money Monday and Financial Friday. Habits. I challenged a client today, this morning. I said, “I expect you to be picking up the phone, three times, four days a week on reachouts.” It doesn’t matter if this person is the CEO of a for-profit or the executive director of a nonprofit. It’s irrelevant. You will get the results.

Hugh: She challenged a client. I love it.

Russell: Sometimes we have to push ourselves to get the results we want. Speaking of habits, that works a lot toward mindset. I think mindset with doing social good and doing work to improve society, there are some disconnects between some of the thought processes and people have challenges around money, no matter what their tax status is. Nonprofits in particular. When you speak to why, that is what keeps the engine going. Being connected with that. That is what drives you when the going gets tough. A lot of leaders end up in overwhelm mode, and they are doing a lot of things. How common is it to see a lot of folks lose focus because they lost track of that why? What habits do they fall into?

Ivy: I had mentioned earlier that my hobbies, especially in the summertime, are gardening and cooking. From the gardening perspective, you have to weed every week to keep the weeds out of the garden. Here is the question on the analogy here. Do you get stuck in the weeds? If you do, are you really focused on growing and expanding your garden? I know at certain times of the year, we can split things and have even more. We could have more flowers, we could have more grasses, we could have more hydrangeas and roses and lilies. You can split and have more. Without all that much effort, if you’re paying attention to it. But if you get caught just weeding, you miss the opportunity of splitting and growing. That is for the gardeners out there.

Russell: It is. It’s the seeds of your plant. When you start a nonprofit, you are planting seeds. Everything you do, you are planting seeds. You bring value to people. This is what leaders do. Is there a tendency to get stuck in how and lose sight of the big picture? How can we avoid that?

Ivy: It’s so easy to get stuck in the how. It’s the day-to-day business of running an organization. You get stuck in the how. You get stuck in the clutter of it, in the weeds of it. There are so many words we can use there. How do you motivate yourself out of it? You have to make a decision, and you have to identify what you can do. I challenge my clients. I say, “I’m going to ask you if you can do one thing in the next 24 hours, and I want you to text me when it’s done.” Identify one thing you can do in the next 24 hours that will move your organization forward.

Russell: I’m certain that one thing has to be something that is tied to the big picture strategy.

Ivy: Exactly. I say it doesn’t have to be big because you only have 24 hours to get this one thing done, and you have to do your job. Find one thing that you can do that will move your business forward in 24 hours. They’re like, “Well, I have been meaning to reach out to this person. Or I have been trying to get this meeting on the calendar.” I am putting it on. That’s it. I am making sure it’s confirmed. Or I am reaching out to this one person who has been on my to-do list. When you start doing that one thing each day, and then we can increase it to two and then three, let’s not go beyond three. But if you can identify one thing, then two, then three, and keep it simple. People overcomplicate this so bloody much. Keep it simple. And do them. Create that habit, and do it. Block it off in your calendar. Huge fan of calendaring.

Russell: That’s the start of getting great results, folks. You heard it from the source. That first thing is to do that one thing that is most important. Add on later, but do that one thing. I believe that leaders should do the things that only they can do when you start talking in terms of high-level people like your executive director. I sit on the board of trustees at my church. One of the things that happens with us, and with a lot of people, is we get stuck in conversations about day-to-day things. That is not the place the board needs to be. What are your feelings on that? What have you seen? How have you helped the organizations you work with deal with that problem? I think leadership on the board of directors should have a focus on strategy and not day-to-day.

Ivy: A board of directors is moving that organization forward. We said earlier it’s about the leaders in the organizations are the visionaries. That doesn’t mean, and no disrespect, that my job is to take out the trash. I might be Gee, can we make money from the trash leaving? That might be my vision. What can we recycle? What can we sell? That goes into the vision of moving things forward. Everything that does not move that organization forward is delegatable. Also anything that is not in your sweet spot. We all don’t have, especially on a board, the same skillsets. You don’t want the same skillsets on a board. You want complementary skillsets. What my skillset is might not be what Hugh’s or Russell’s is. What Hugh’s skillset might not be Russell’s sweet spot. Know what your sweet spot is. That’s what brings you the vision. Anything that takes you away from that sweet spot is what should be getting delegated.

Hugh: That’s a misunderstood word in my world, Ivy. There is a connection between what you were just talking about. We are champions for transformational leadership, which is about the vision. The first thing for transformational leaders is you have to take things off of your plate. There is a skill in delegation. You spoke about the calendar a minute ago. We poll people at these symposiums what their primary issues they are dealing with are. One is always leader burnout. It’s about half of the group, at least. That is not only a function of a calendar; that’s part of we don’t have the discipline of utilizing our time correctly. It’s also this paradigm of you don’t have to take out the garbage. I keep hearing it as an excuse. I need to be willing to do what I ask other people to do. I say, the key word is willing. Every time you do it, you are robbing them of a service opportunity. How do you help people grasp this thing? This black hole goes into a vortex that we get sucked into. It’s usually a matter of our own makings. How do you advise people to deal with the black hole we get sucked into?

Ivy: How raw can I be?

Hugh: Go for it.

Ivy: Let go of your stankin’ egos. Let go of your egos. You are not the end-all, be-all. Okay? Bottom line. You might believe you can do something better. And you might do something more efficiently. You might have your way of doing something. Be open to the job can get done in not your way. The key is that it gets complete. Stop saying your way, or feeling and believing your way is the right way. Leaders don’t have to be right. Leaders need to see tasks complete. The more time a leader can spend on developing and fulfilling that vision, raising the capital and seeing the mission implemented, that is their J-O-B. That is their job. Writing the marketing copy because I write it better is not their job. Identifying a great marketing person is their job. That doesn’t mean they will be as good as them; they just need to be really good. Let go of your ego.

Russell: That is something that is going to move people toward results. I call it getting out of my own way. When people ask me how my day is going, I say it’s been great. I managed to stay out of my own way. A lot of it boils down to getting the right people on board. Jim Collins calls it getting the right people on the bus when you bring in the right team members. It’s finding the most talented people, which is tricky in nonprofit circles because there is almost a mindset where you have to reel everything in. When profit-making companies spend big money for certain people, they frown on it. It’s a value exchange for results. It’s bringing in the right people, with the talent and skills to get things done. And then letting them do it.  

Ivy: Get out of your way. Get out of their way. Empower them to do their job and trust that it’s going to get done. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to have check-ins and touching base and meetings, and you have to submit things. Hugh and I were talking at the beginning and catching up. You can’t let the animals out of the zoo. You need to do your job and touch base with your team and have those meetings and have things submitted. Guess what? Maybe they shouldn’t be read by you next. Maybe the person doing the marketing should be passing it over to this one to read beforehand. Create layers and systems.

Hugh: That’s a little like letting inmates run the prison. We do call it leadership. My simple definition of a leader is an influencer. We influence people. I am a conductor. People think a musical conductor is a dictator. I gotta tell you, when you hire a union orchestra and have a little white stick, you can’t make them do anything, but you can influence them. We have our own ensemble on our board. Our job is to influence them.

This is a big area of struggle for nonprofit leaders all over. This delegation thing. How do we build a strong culture that performs at a high level? We talked about SMART goals. We have a vision for the organization. It’s our job to be clearly able to execute the vision. You are not speaking a book; you are speaking a statement. When you delegate, part of that vision is here is your piece of it. Here is your goal for this point in time. We find that a lot of leaders can’t define the end result. There is some confusion. Yes, we can have them do it, but if they want to delegate it, they will do it differently. Be clear about the end result. There is a good chance they might do it better. Talk about vision and goal setting, and how we transfer that information and nurture the process, not micro-managing.

Ivy: One of the things I love about leadership is that collaboration and bringing out the best in everyone. If I am running something, or I have an influence, that we’re going to pull that leadership team together and create a vision and strategy together. Then I will ask for volunteers to take components. Guys, who has relationships here that you can reach out to? I will ask great questions. I will ask people to step up. That is part of their exercise. That is part of their commitment to the organization. We created a list. These are the things. What has not been checked off our list yet? Who is willing to take this on? Now you’re going to create a schedule for each component. Guess what? That schedule goes in the calendar. Then you will say, before you walk out of that room, “It is August 20^th today. Our great next meeting, we might meet in person or on Zoom. Everyone will show up on September 15 with three things they have accomplished and three things they need help with.” We’re going back to specifics. You have an assignment at the meeting. What have I gotten done? Where do I need help?

Russell: It’s definitely setting direction. What you talked about in there is what we call accountability. People being champions for things that resonate with them is important. From the sound of that, leaders get great results when they bring in people who have their strengths. There is involvement on some level of formulating how something gets done, or just having people say, “You know what? I know this lady has the skillset. I set the parameters. This is the result that I want. We will leave the how to her skillset.”  

Ivy: That is where you gather people with you that you believe are responsible, committed, and action takers.

Russell: Sounds like a lot of fun. Sounds like we would enjoy sitting in on meetings you conduct. That is one thing we talk to people about meetings for. A lot of times, you walk into a room, and people are stuck in that day-to-day stuff. Meetings are check-ins. It’s a place to find out what’s working and what’s not working. There is not a lot of fingerpointing. How do we advance things? We talk about deliverables. As you said, we agree on what you’re going to get done. I don’t think you wait until the next meeting. If somebody needs something in the interim, or they have challenges, sometimes they can’t come to a leader. I’ve had people I work for in the past where I try to be proactive and go to them and say, “I might be having a bit of a bottleneck.” The response is, “You’re a smart guy. Get it done.” I stopped going to that particular supervisor. How common is that in your experience, and how do you help people work around that?

Ivy: I’ll go back to my printing days. Let’s go to reality. You have a client who comes to you who is paying you to produce a job. They have a set delivery day. They’re running late. “Obviously, I’ll need more time.” “Sorry, the delivery date is as is. You’re running late. We realize you are having internal issues, but we are launching this to the public on this date. It is what it is.” Then you are scrambling. How do I make this happen? What do I have to do to make this work? I can’t go back to the client. They don’t want to hear my problems. This is where nonprofit and business run hand in hand. The client doesn’t want to hear that I’m struggling to get it done. They want it done. The leadership has other things to deal with. Do your job; get it done. How am I going to do this? I could sit at my desk or twirl my hair and think about it. I could say, “I don’t know. Who can I talk to?” I referenced earlier, what is one thing I can do? I used to say, “Okay, who can I talk to to help me with this?” Let me call my paper people. Let me call my press people. Let me call my bindering people. If I have a truck ready and waiting, maybe if they charged me extra, I could expedite my delivery and see what my trucking options are.

Who are the people I can talk to who can help me think out of the box? Who can help me navigate? When I am thinking by myself, all I am seeing is my own swirl of I don’t know how to do this. Get out of your own way, as you referenced earlier. Go to your colleagues and peers. Go to your network and brainstorm it. When we’re hit with that obstacle, we can’t see how to get around, over, or through that obstacle. When we open that to a discussion with one, two, or three great minds, people are seeing things from different perspectives. Know who those people are in your world, and use them. Be there for them as well of course.

Russell: I’ve seen that. This speaks a little bit to what I call culture. In some cultures, and in an ideal environment, that’s the way everything works. However, I’ve been in moments where you have shutdown culture. You’re accused of goofing off when you’re in a huddle. Mercifully though for most of my work, in a lot of instances, we have a lot of conversations. I’d walk around the corner and have great colleagues we could run things by. That’s the way of living. We did that because we were dealing with very complicated things. Sometimes a culture is tight, where you don’t have these conversations. My thought was in and around a culture that doesn’t encourage innovation, brainstorming, and people feel like, If I screw this up, I am so done. They are afraid to try anything new because if they make a mistake, they think they’re out the door. If you walk into an environment like that, how can leaders avoid creating that type of culture?

Ivy: I told you I’m going to tell it like it is. The biggest problem when you have a culture that is not a growth and expansion culture, not a culture from a positive mindset. Those problems start with the leaders. Until the leader is willing to do the work around their own mindset, their own communication skills, it’s difficult to change a culture. Cultures start from the leadership above.

Hugh: There is a saying in the orchestra that what they see is what the conductor gets. If the orchestra respects the conductor, they play as the conductor intends. If they don’t, they play just as the conductor conducts. Every movement may not be perfect. Talk about when we get to a place where we don’t know what to do. You spoke a while ago about being right. To me, it’s not about having all the right answers; it’s about having really good questions. I think there are places where leaders get stuck trying to do too much, but we also run out of energy and ideas and direction. How do you help people get unstuck?

Ivy: In getting unstuck, and this is one of our biggest challenges, is we get stuck when we feel we are getting backed into or pushed into a corner that is constricted on all sides. That is that emotional feeling of it. You can’t push out of your own way. In order to get into the light, you just need a little peephole. How do you find that one peephole? Don’t look for the biggest, baddest, bestest solution. In all honesty, it goes back to my philosophy on keeping things simple.

Find the one small thing you can do that will create a little action. “Well, you know, I can call this person, but I don’t really know they’re the right person to call. There might be a better person to call. I can really stay here, and maybe they have better people who I could be calling to really help with that. I could call this person.” Oh, just pick up the phone and call them. They might not be the end-all be-all, but that one phone call could lead them to connecting you to the next right step. But staying stuck in that dark corner doesn’t accomplish anything. You just look for the pinhole, the pinhole that turns into a bigger peephole, that then starts opening up to rays of sunshine. It’s the small action. It’s not the big action. It’s not the greatest idea.

In all honesty, I have been stuck. I have plenty been stuck. I was developing something in July this summer. I sat down and gave myself my creative space. I was outdoors, I was in nature, I was walking, I was writing. Some way here is a solution. I kept pushing at it and pushing at it. You know where I was getting? Nowhere. I was like, Okay, who are some great people when I talk? I identified a couple of colleagues and asked them, “Hey, do you have a minute? I want to connect.” One literally had a minute.

One was like, “I landed in Florida with my kids. I’m on vacation. I’d love to say hello.” This is not business, understand? This is not business. This was not a business call. I needed to get an action. This is a colleague that I respect enormously. She has a great business. She is no longer in the U.S. We stay in touch. She happened to just have landed in Florida for a visit to see family. The family was so excited to see her kids, and she was so excited to give them her kids. “Hey, I’d love to chat for a couple.” We chatted about our kids, about the summer. “Hey, what are you working on?” “Ivy, I know this!” I was like, just hearing her voice because we have collaborated before opened up an area of my mind, of my brain. I just started writing. Everything started coming through. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I owe those children of yours a huge hug and a kiss. When am I going to see them?” She was confused. “I just got clarity.” She goes, “You had this done ages ago.” I said, “I just couldn’t see it.” She goes, “I know, but it’s been done. You just couldn’t connect to it.”

Hugh: Isn’t that amazing? That’s why folks need others like you and me and Russ. We can’t see our own blind spots. Russell is teaching about money funding worthiness and several dynamics. I am going to ask the question. There is a correlation between leadership and funding. We are in sales. We are raising money, donor money. We are selling sponsorships. What is the leadership piece that blocks us from being able to receive those sales, those donations, those sponsorships?

Ivy: Big question. Sure, Hugh, just come at the end with a pow. Honestly, there is some work to be done about how you perceive and handle money. I’ll also say there is something that is taught by our lineage, our parenting, that they teach us about money that they never realize they teach us. Here is an example. “Don’t go to Daddy right now! He is paying the bills.” All of a sudden, it’s like paying the bill becomes a stressful thing. Your mom never intended it. She was just trying to give Dad privacy for a few minutes. It’s not that big of a deal. But as a child, we took it on as that was a monumental thing. In the same way, “I have to pay the mortgage payment. This has to be paid.” There is a heaviness around it. Yet money is the biggest gift to give and receive. Yes, I paid my mortgage yesterday. It could be pure joy. I love my home that I paid my mortgage on. It gives me the greatest joy. It’s with pleasure. Shifting it to that mindset. As leadership, executive directors, your board members, do some coaching work. Bring in somebody and coach around the heritage of money and the perspective around it. Why money is the greatest fertilizer you can give your garden. Looking at it that way. As opposed to it being, “Oh my goodness, I am going to put chicken manure in my garden. Ew.” “I am going to give my garden the greatest gift.” It is very much a shift in perspective and mindset there.

Hugh: Hey Russell, there’s a sound bite. Russell, do you want to do another question?

Russell: We probably have some discussion around that. Our friend David Gruder, we did a whole program on the relationship people have with money. it really doesn’t matter what type of organization you’re in. It all comes down to how you grew up. We will talk a bit about how that plays into the influencer conference as well. Talk a little bit about some of the tools that you’ve used to help leaders get their minds around that. It’s one thing to acknowledge, “Maybe my thinking could be better.” But how do you have conversations with your team around money that move them in a constructive way and make it safe for those team members if they’re not comfortable around it but are afraid to say it? How do you create that culture where it’s okay to talk about it so you can move through it to get rid of those blocks to money?  

Ivy: We want to see that money is a tool, and that’s all it is. It is not the end-all be-all. Money does not change the world. It is the tool to make an impact on the world. Very often, just like sometimes Mommy and Daddy can’t teach our kids certain things, they have to be taught by teachers. With these principles, you sometimes have to have the coaches and consultants be brought in on this. It has to come from an outside perspective. You’re shifting deep intrinsic mindsets around things people learned in their childhood. You have to have a buy-in from the group that they are willing to learn. You could laugh at me. I always like to start it with experiential exercise. I might bring in a potting exercise with fertilizer and everything else. I might bring in something that is easy to get at a 99-cent store, those garden tools. What does this tool do? Understanding the impact. When you’re looking at it from a different perspective. Shifting the visual from raising money for the organization and the weight around we have to raise another $100,000 or $10 million. That heaviness. Who is going to do what? How will we get the money? it becomes heavier and heavier.

Simplify it in the mind. Ask people what is their first thing they learned about money. What was their first job? Maybe it was a paper route or babysitting. When they had that money, what did they do with it? Create very happy connotations. “I remember going to the candy store for the very first time, and I bought a pack of gum. I went on my bicycle.” Every penny you raise now, think about giving a pack of gum and seeing your face, having that feeling of that 10-year-old or 12-year-old. Creating that emotional connection that is different from the emotional connection you’re having as an adult.

Hugh: That is really good stuff. Ivy, there have been some good sound bites in this interview today. Thank you so much. They can find you on your website at SlaterSuccess.com. When they go there, what should they look for?

Ivy: When they go there, they have access to a ton of content. They can download “Seven Traits of Great Leaders.” You can have my resource of my latest book that came out this year, From the Barre to the Boardroom: Choreographing Business Success Through Authentic Relationships. You can go to the Insights section and have access to my podcast Her Success Story, my blogs, and my videos. Here to serve, here to educate.

Hugh: That is awesome. Based on what we’ve seen today, there is a lot of benefit people could have by going to SlaterSuccess.com.

*Sponsor message from Wordsprint*

Ivy, what do you want to leave people with today?

Ivy: You referenced a challenge. I challenge every listener today to take one simple action that will move you forward.

Russell: And that’s enough of a challenge there to keep anybody moving. It really is. It’s trickier than it sounds. That’s probably the biggest thing that gets leaders results. They get results when they find that one thing and hone in on that.

Thank you so much, Ivy, for taking the time to be with us and to share your insights and knowledge. That book title again. Could you tell me what that was?

Ivy: From the Barre to the Boardroom: Choreographing Business Success Through Authentic Relationships. The greatest successes in my life have come from the relationships I’ve made.

Russell: I will be looking for a copy of that book. Part of our offerings in 2020 will be grabbing books and having things highlighted that nonprofit readers should read. We want to make sure our gests who have been here are among the books we talk to people about reading.