Is Life Only One Pie? How Leaders Reach Their Full Potential

Bringing together people in community is critical for our future. We need to continue bridging the gaps in understanding and learning to show empathy toward others.

Nikki Green is a Life & Business Resiliency Expert who has been in the international business industry for over 20 years and is a 4x published author. Nikki is an avid traveler, visiting 14+ countries and completing 7 marathons and dozens of triathlons across 3 continents. Nikki has dedicated her life to assisting others reduce their fear and go after their dreams. Nikki’s greatest passion is empowering people to reach their full potential.

Read the Interview Transcription

Hugh Ballou

Welcome to the nonprofit exchange. This is Hugh Ballou, Founder and President of SynerVision Leadership Foundation, where we inspire leaders, we transform leaders, transforming organizations, transforming lives. I’m here with our co-host David Dunworth, who’s the chair of the Center Vision Leadership Foundation’s board of Director. And our special guest today is Nikki Green. Nikki. Welcome to the nonprofit exchange. Please tell people a little bit about who you are and the passion you have for doing this.

Nikki Green

Well, thanks for having me, guys. It’s great to be here. And I belong to a number of great networking groups, and many of them for nonprofits. And it really just brings me back to all the important moments in my life where people gave back to me. I grew up, I had a single mom. She was working two jobs. The only way I got to kindergarten every day, my teacher came and picked me up. Throughout my life, whether it was teachers, preachers, coaches, and more, there were many people throughout the community who made sure that I got to where I needed to be and I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. And I just love continuing to do that and helping other companies do that. Nonprofit for profit and any mixture in between.

Hugh Ballou

We talked a little bit about going live with this recording about mindset, and there’s a follow on from that word nonprofit that kind of puts us into this scarcity thinking. So abundant thinking, abundant mindset, thinking in abundance applies to all aspects of life. So how do we show others that scarcity mindset does not serve us?

Nikki Green

Yeah, it’s so often that we describe life as one pie. Like we’re all trying to split the same thing and get our piece of what’s going on. And what I really try to encourage people is that through this community, through this bonding, through sharing our skills and services, we can actually make the pie bigger. We can make there more opportunities for each other. And whether that’s through business, it can also be in relationships. We too often think of ourselves as, it’s like, me against you, and I have to fight you. We’re past the caveman days and we need to really evolve. It’s really important. We’re in a time of so much abundance, and especially in this knowledge economy where much of what we do is sharing our experiences, sharing what we know, sharing the school we’ve gone to all those years, and that’s not going to go away. The more we share that knowledge, it grows exponentially. And people kind of forget that, like, we’ve got to go me versus you. But it really isn’t like that. So I love to encourage people to really think of things in that way, to let’s make it a bigger pie for all of us.

David Dunworth

Wow. Hey, David.

Hugh Ballou

It’s almost like she’s been reading our notes.

David Dunworth

We’re on the same you know; I was just thinking the same thing. Who lets her goodness. It’s great. I’m glad you have that perspective, because not enough people do. And the scarcity mindset is its universal, except for those who take the time and realize that things are unlimited if we want to make them that way. And businesses go into business for a profit, they do a lot of things that nonprofits don’t think of, like the for profit solutions. They don’t work for nonprofit, businesses problems. How can we reimagine those solutions to better support important community institutions? How do we get the mindset to change?

Nikki Green

Yeah, it’s really tough. And for many years, 20 years, I worked in Silicon Valley, I worked for many for-profit big companies. So I know what their driving force is, is, hey, I make a cool product and then I get people to buy it and I make more money. That’s the math. Right. It’s like, I sell more, I get more. The nonprofit equation is exactly the opposite. The more need I find for the service that we’re offering right. The help that we’re giving, the support that the community needs, actually we have less to give. There’s nothing there. Right. So it’s a very reverse equation where we’re going out to different people that don’t receive the service donors, fundraisers, grants, other ways that we can get that money in and we’re helping somebody else in return. And this is, again, where that abundance mindset has to come in because you’re not going to see where your dollar necessarily goes. You just have to believe in the cause and make sure that you’re helping continue that idea. But so many people in for-profit situations come into nonprofits and try to treat it the same way, and the math just doesn’t work out.

David Dunworth

Yeah, you hit on something important, and there’s always been a saying, you’ll see it when you believe it. But in the nonprofit, in the for purpose business world, it’s when you believe it, you’ll see it again. That reverse that you’re talking about. Wow, Hugh, pretty amazing stuff we’re getting. Here.

Hugh Ballou

It is. David and I want to piggyback on both of those questions. So can you give us an example of how we bring in business leaders to our boards? Now, there are some good procedures, but we also inherit some bad things from businesses that they’re doing that aren’t working there either, but they just have a lot more money to cover it up. But give us an example of something that a business leader brings in and tries to overlay on what we’re doing, and it just doesn’t work. Can you think of an example?

Nikki Green

Yeah, I mean, a lot of times in for profit, the first thing we do is come in and we’re going to cut expenses. Right? Because that’s how you’re going to get more profit. Revenue minus expenses equals more money to the bottom line. So chop chop, people, chop. Whatever software, whatever things we’re doing. Well, again, normally they’re at a scale where somewhere of that can get absorbed. There was probably some fat that they’re trimming. Usually in the for-purpose space. There isn’t a lot extra. You have a lot of volunteers, you have unpaid people. So you can’t cut unpaid people. I mean you can, but you’re not paying them anything. So you really have to rethink. That whole equation again is like I can’t just come in and cut expenses. They’re probably already barebone. And so when I go into for-purpose organizations, I talk about how can we optimize what we have, how can we best use it to get more out of it, whether it’s software, people process, whatever all the combinations are. But we really have to rethink like, doing better with what we’ve got rather than let’s try to cut back severely, like what happens in a lot of for-profit kind of areas.

Hugh Ballou

And even when they cut back in business, like, we’ve been through some downturns in the economy over the years and businesses that cut back on marketing, okay, business down, we’re going to cut back on marketing. But the smart business leader increases their marketing because everybody else is pulling back. So some of the things that we want to think about is counterintuitive. So that’s one theme I’m picking up on here. We need to think differently. I want to go back up to my first question. We just kind of jumped into this scarcity mindset when God’s given us abundance and we don’t take it. But how do we get to this? What’s the cause of this scarcity thinking? Do you want to tell us what your thoughts are on that?

Nikki Green

Yeah. In my business I work with a lot of young people. I was very fortunate throughout my career to work with all these great minds coming out of Silicon Valley, out of top universities. But when they came to work, they could only do the task in front of them. They really couldn’t imagine something different, better and they were afraid to fail. We’ve taught so many people throughout school that there is only a bad, better best, that we’re always in this stack ranking. There’s only one A, there’s only two B’s, a couple of C’s and everyone else is below the line. That’s not life. In life we can actually all exceed. There’s no limit to how many of us can do well if we’re supporting each other. Instead of putting people down and saying, nap, we’re cutting you off, you’re below the line, we need to really reimagine it. And this is why so many people, at least in my experience, come out with the scarcity mindset because that’s what we’ve been teaching them for years and years of school. That top or nothing, right?

Hugh Ballou

Shame on us. We like to say that we’ve learned leadership wrong and we’ve inherited systems that aren’t functioning like we need them to. So we’re called to think differently. So let’s talk about getting with other people networking, collaborating. So why is networking critical to support? We don’t drive revenue by selling products. We drive revenue by encouraging philanthropists to support us, whether it’s foundations or donors or whatever. So why is networking critical to getting the support that we need?

Nikki Green

It’s a lot like other businesses is where are you going to find your revenue streams? Donations and grants and things are where your revenue streams come in, in this for purpose business. So the more you know, the more you can grow, the more people you can support. And through those networks, many that I belong to, you guys have a great one as well, is how do we get to know that person? And we have to have the same mentality that I have in my for-profit business. It’s not, I’m going to meet you and you’re going to make the sale, you’re going to give me a million dollars and I never have to do anything else for my business again. Right? And it all magically falls.

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