Episode 133: Fearing Fear Itself - Calling and Putting Yourself Out There

Welcome to another edition of "Around with Randall" your weekly podcast for making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett. It's an honor to have you joining me right here on this edition of "Around with Randall".

Today I want to spend a little bit of time talking about fear. To do so I want to go back in time, and I'm what might some people call an amateur historian. Love reading the history of our country, in particular, but also the world. I am enamored by the timeframe that came just before my parents were born, which would include World War II, the depression, World WarI, The Roaring 20's if you slide it in there all the way back to Theodore Roosevelt. And so I have read and listened to a lot of speeches given at the time, obviously historical novels written about the various aspects of the time, today drawing you into 1933.

It was in the height of the Depression and there was a transition in the White House. We went from Herbert Hoover, former Commerce Secretary who had become president in 19, election, 28 taking the oath of office in 1929. And was he was being shepherded out to, after being defeated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democrat from New York, former Governor, actually Governor at the time, a former Naval secretary. And at the inauguration Franklin Delano Roosevelt in one of the better speeches in American history, not the best, I'm not putting it up with Lincoln's Gettysburg address or second inaugural or George Washington's inaugural or even the speech that MacArthur gave to Congress in 1952 or three or Kennedy in at Bay, at Rice University in 1961, but I would say it was not bad. And one of the terms he used in the particular outreach to the country, mostly obviously covered by radio, he couldn't see anything with no televisions or almost from televisions, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

As the Depression was roaring on people were terrified of what was coming. It had been an incredibly hard three-and-a-half years after the stock market crash in October of 1929, and people were scared. And what Franklin Delano Roosevelt was talking about was that if we really look in the mirror or look ahead into the future, look at our situation, is that sometimes it's the fear that cripples us. And if we have enough fear we don't have any ability to overcome it, whatever the challenges, whatever the need is. And so in some ways it's about becoming less paralyzed by that emotional state.

So what does all of that have to do, after about a two-and-a-half-minute history lesson, my apologies, with philanthropy? It has to do with the number of conversations I'm having right now, for whatever reason, with gift officers and more particularly with Chief development officers, and CPOS, chief philanthropy officers, around gift officers struggling to make phone calls, particularly to new people. There seems to be an epidemic of fear. And as I delve into as part of the work that I do, the individual relationships with gift officers, talk to them about what they say, why they call, when they call, how they call, what's holding them up, why aren't they making the calls, I'm getting more and more into and certainly not a psychiatrist or psychologist but more into psychiatric states of fear.

Some of that fear is self-doubt. Some of it is inadequacy. Some of it is the unknown. Some of it is, there's other things going on in the in their lives and this, it kind of permeates into the work that they do. But most of it is just fear, and reminds me of what Franklin Delano Roosevelt was trying to talk about in that inaugural address. The key becomes how do we overcome that concern? And in particular, with people we don't know. There's no question in my business, currently, or which actually translates very well to a gift officer, that I'd rather call someone I know than someone I don't. And I have an issue with that right now. A project that I'm working on is going to require me to do some outreach that I think will be well received, that I've been pushing off, and we'll talk about that project here probably in June. But I am hesitant to do it. I'm not saying fearful, but I find other things to do. It's not my priority. And I can tell you as of this recording, taping, it'll be my party this weekend because I've come up with some deadlines. I got to get some stuff done.

We don't like natural, use, most of us human beings to talk with people we don't know. It's not unusual. There's study, after study, after study, after study that talks about that. We'd rather deal with the people that are in kind of in our network. I've always been enamored with people who have such a natural ease with calling and talk someone they don't know, and in the last several weeks and months as this fear of calling has seemed to, I don't know, picked up or just kind of in my world all come together I started asking some questions of some people that I trust, and I said what do you do about this natural apprehension we have as human beings to develop new relationships, to take risks, to put ourselves out there? They gave me five, and this becomes the part one of the tactical. Part two is incredibly tactical. If they gave me five things to think about, five things that I looked up, and I found out well other people were talking about it. How do you deal with this emotionally when you really don't know what to say when you call someone? How do you get over that just first ability to pick up the phone and call them?

The first thing is is to face your fears. I find it much more rewarding when I have the ability to talk about it, and maybe today's podcast is a little therapeutic for me with the project that I have to work on. Just gotta do it. Is it my favorite thing? No it wasn't when I was a gift officer. But I also know that my success, which we'll talk about here in a second, is the fourth thing, was just much higher in life when you can get over that apprehension. Make phone calls. Build relationships. So face the fears.

Number two is look at the evidence. I think one of the things I'm hearing quite a bit is that gift officers, particularly younger ones, newer ones, are apprehensive because they think they're unique, that that the situation is indicating that well I'll make 10 phone calls and, you know, six aren't going to like me, and or not call back, or not answer the phone, or whatever. Two will talk to me, and I don't get a chance to take the relationship to the next step. And I might have a chance with two and look that's a failure rate of 80 percent. Look at the numbers. What I've always talked about when we talk about particularly things like qualification, or re-qualification, or first-time outreach is that what our numbers show for whatever it's worth is more like baseball teaches us how to look at the negative and see it as a positive, to look at the numbers, the evidence. In baseball if you're a batter you want to go to the Hall of Fame. If you hit 300 for your long-standing career and you don't hit a lot of home runs you're just, get the ball and play, you're going to the Hall of Fame. That means you failed 70 percent of the time. The evidence says, like baseball, that if you hit 300 you're a Hall of Famer. If you hit 200 you're probably staying in the major leagues for quite a number of years. The evidence says that most of the time we don't really know someone, we actually have less success than if we do. We just don't see successes at 70, 80 percent of the time. So knowing that's to your advantage, know the evidence, know the data.

Number three, don't be prof, don't be perfect. Don't try to be a perfectionist. Just get it done. The old adage don't let perfection get in the way of greatness. If we waited for perfect we would never do anything. Depending on your particular belief in religion and other things, perfection is not possible. I've heard people say this many many times. You've probably heard the very same thing. If we aim for the stars we might hit the moon. It is natural to want to do it really, really well. If you just do it well you'll build more opportunities to get really good at it.

Number four is, I was kind of referring to this earlier, is find or feel or imagine or close your eyes and imagine that kind of thought process about a happy place, meaning where success was and has been in your career. Where have you had examples when it's gone really well? And then channel that into the next call. We'll talk about the second level of tactical here in a second about some things you can physically do when you're making those phone calls. Find and remember when things were great. When you develop the relationship from the start and how accepting that donor or couple or individual or Foundation or whoever was and jump at the opportunity to relive that with a new opportunity in this next phone call.

Number five, which is going to lead us into the second level of tactical, go back to the basics. Don't make it more complicated than you need to. I do a lot of coaching and teaching about this idea of qualification and the basics really can be, and this is the second part of the tactical, can be identified as just having some control. So what is, the what are the basics when we talk about making phone calls? What are the basics when we think about the work that we do when we're trying to build new relationships? Well the first thing is is that our world in philanthropy and those of us who are on the fundraising organizational side the only and the first place you should always start is the simple thought process of thank you. If they've made a gift and you're following up, thank them. If they've taken your call and you've had time with them, thank them. If you appreciate the things that they're doing out in the community and maybe they're not giving to you yet, thank them.

If we did more thinking we'd have a more harmonious world, but in the world of philanthropy it's quintessential. I mean it's 101, but I don't hear a lot of it. It reminds me of what I work with with. My kids' basics of please and thank you, yes or no sir, yes ma'am, no ma'am, respect. It's amazing when you just do those base level things how much better you feel about yourself and how much better the relationship gets. And being genuinely appreciative for someone who engages with you, and engage with the organization, should be easy. The second tactical thing that you can do, the basics, is ask the question. Why are they engaged with you?

I just had a call here recently with a gift officer who's new to the organization and he's a high-level fundraiser. He is going to be phenomenal in this organization. It really, my first interactions with him over the last month-and-a-half or two, they got a home run. He's spectacular. We were talking, he says yeah they gave me 16 names. I'm on the phone. All I do, these are people who've given one, two, three gifts. They're not quite sure where they fit but maybe they screen kind of well for wealth. He's just, and he's starting every call off with thank you and then pivoting quickly to why did you engage, why are you involved, what made this important to you? And then it begins these longer conversations about why. Why is it this was a priority? And the deep, he is deepening the relationship quickly. Number of them, if you just remember one thing from this podcast, if you spent more time thanking people and asking why it was important you're going to cover a lot of the ground that comes with fear because then they do all the talking and all you have to do is listen. People like to be appreciated. People like to tell their story. Why in the world would we use those more often? Then you can pivot into what you're doing and why you want to talk with them, based on the thank you and why they engaged.

The other thing I would be remiss is about not talking about is kind of the technical aspects of what you can do to make your calling better. So once you get over the fear and once you kind of know where that is and you can looking, you look, you know kind of deal with it and think about the good places that in successes that you've had and going to those places kind of mentally and you can visualize that, and you can then talk, you know, not worry about perfection, you get into the basics. And now you're like I gotta pick up the phone.

Number one is, I just don't see this done but it should be easy with zoom, go to meeting, teams, and other things where we can record things very quickly. Do a call to someone and record it, or do a practice call with someone else and record it, and listen to yourself. When I was in broadcasting many many years ago, I used to come home and this is when we had VHS tape, so that'll tell you how long ago it was. I would watch the game again or I'd have my wife, when I was on the radio, literally use a cassette player on an AM station, tape it, and I'd listen to it. I'd listen to the rhythm. I listened to the description. I could remember what I saw. did I describe it? Did I like what I said? Did I mess up? What I said in terms of what I was seeing and telling the story, you'd be surprised what you can learn about yourself. I just don't see it done very often. It's highly effective.

Number two is if you could do anything is to smile when you're on the call. We know that when we smile from medical and scientific studies our voice inflection changes. We sound more positive. We sound more engaging. It may sound strange to be sitting in an office by yourself on the phone, calling someone and smiling. I'm telling you it works. Try it. Practice it. Put a smile on your face. You sound different.

Number three is how do you find a way to create an environment where you don't have to feel like you're alone? I actually advocate finding another person in the office, if you have it, who's also needs to go make phone calls and do a game. We're gonna go call, you go to your cubicle, your office, I'll go to mine, we're gonna call for 30 minutes. We're going to make 10 calls apiece. We're gonna do it together. We don't care about winners and losers. We're doing it together. Find someone, or if you're by yourself, I'm not going to get up and go to the bathroom until I make three calls. Or I got a little time for a little break. I'm not going until I make those two calls. We have to get to a point where if we're struggling with ourselves, my guess is other people are. How do I find people that can help me motivate and get to that action piece?

The last tactile thing is distractions. The more distractions you have the less likely you are to do something you don't want to do. It's kind of why we push major gift work over special events. Not only is it the ROI, but major, it's not that events are bad, but they have long checklists. Who doesn't feel great when they can go over here, you can't see but on my screen and you can check things off like I got that done. Well in an event there's a million checklist things. Major giving, there's a lot less, and so it's tougher to have those intermediate moments of feeling good. So you've got to take the distractions away. That's why we say if you're doing major gifts, as much as you can, stay away from special events so you can concentrate. If there's someone who's bothering you all the time when you need to make calls, get away from them. If you need to put a sign on your door or on the cubicle, hey I'm making calls don't bother me, how do you turn off your phone, your cell phone or the ding on your computer for the issue involving emails coming in, what is it you can do to remove those distractions.

Calling techniques, try recording it, smile when you do it, find a friend who can help you do some games, or by yourself create some I'm gonna do this before I do that, and finally eliminate the distractions, and I think what you'll find is that's leading you into the basics about willing to pick up the phone and thank someone for their engagement. And ask them why they're engaged. And if you can do that, you begin to move that paradigm to being more comfortable with what's going on. One last note. I'm all for email. I'm all for texts. Use them in between calls, but if you're trying to make a million appointments and outreach with, through text emails, without voice contact, it is my experience that it is not going to go the way you want it to. I'm not saying eliminate them. I'm saying use them as a part of the process. Leave some old voicemail. Say I'm sending you an email, I just want to see if we can find a chance, I'd love to say thank you for your opportunity, for the gift you gave. I want to tell you a little bit about it. I'd love to hear why you're involved with us, what makes this work for you. Follow with an email. I sent you a voicemail, would love to follow up, is there a way we can find time, then call. But you can't just rely on. It's easy. I understand that. But the numbers haven't changed. We still need to pick up the phone and call people. Use those other mechanisms as support for the calls.

Fear can be overwhelming. It can feel like oh my gosh I'm not doing what I should be. Find ways to deal with it in your own world, and don't allow it to overcome. And when reaching out to people you don't know you will be surprised how many people really want to hear from you and to talk about why you're involved the organization, and be willing to tell you as you listen why they believe in the mission of your organization. Pick up the phone and find the ability, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in 1933, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Get over the fear. You'll find success.

Don't forget check out the website and on that website the blogs, two or three a week, 90 second reads. That's halletthilanthropy.com. And if you'd like to reach out to me that's podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. It's an interesting time. There's a lot of moving pieces. Fear and lots of ways is on a running ramp it for a million different reasons. I'm hoping today not only is about philanthropy but it finds other ways that you can overcome and conquer fear in your life, and in doing so you will be making your life and the life of your community better. That's the joy of philanthropy. Love of mankind, love of humankind. Don't forget some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, then there are those who wondered what happened. You are someone making something happen for people and the things your community. The most important you partner with people who want to do the same, and usually those people in those things are wondering what happened, and that's the joy of what we do. And I hope you can find that a little bit today and overcome that fear because when you do you're going to do terrific things. I appreciate your time today, I look forward to seeing you next time right back here on "Around with Randall". And don't forget making a great day.